Look Again: European Art 1300–1800 at The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent European Paintings galleries, spanning works from 1300 to 1800 and housed across 45 chronologically arranged galleries (numbered 600–644), showcase more than 700 works, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Caravaggio, Poussin, and one of the world's most extensive holdings of 17th-century Dutch art. The installation, known as "Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800," highlights fresh narratives among the works while also giving renewed attention to women artists and exploring Europe's historical relationships with New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru. The galleries also hold what curators describe as the finest collections of El Greco and Goya outside Spain itself, making the Met an essential stop for anyone tracing the evolution of European painting from the Renaissance through the early 19th century. Beyond the permanent collection, 2026 brought notable temporary exhibitions of European art to the Met. "Raphael: Sublime Poetry," running from March 29 to June 28, 2026, is billed as the first comprehensive international loan exhibition in the United States devoted to Raphael, one of the most celebrated painters of the Italian Renaissance. Earlier in the year, the Met also presented "Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck," running through April 5, 2026, which introduced American audiences to the Finnish painter — well-known in Nordic countries but largely overlooked elsewhere.