Met Museum Tour: A Guided Crash Course with Skip-the-Line Tickets

The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses one of the most significant and comprehensive art collections in the world, spanning more than 5000 years of art history and containing more than 2.5 million objects. As with the Louvre in Paris, this massive museum of art can prove daunting to the first-time visitor. With this in mind, we’ve designed this “crash course” Met tour that is led by an art historian and provides a thorough overview of the museum’s most important collections.

Beginning in the Museum’s Great Hall, we’ll start with a brief introduction to the museum, which first opened its doors in 1872, and discuss why it strategically borders the east side of Central Park in the very exclusive neighborhood of the Upper East Side. Since our guide is an art historian with extensive experience with the Met, he or she may share some inside stories about curating shows here, or research in the galleries before diving into the collections.

Our first stop will be in the Egyptian galleries where we’ll see the Museum’s world-famous collection of artifacts, including statuary, tomb decoration, and jewelry, which our guide will use to paint a portrait of Egyptian dynasties. We’ll also visit the iconic Temple of Dendur, a Roman structure rescued from Aswan during dam construction, before moving on to the Chinese and Japanese galleries, where we’ll see the Chinese Garden Court, a replica of a Ming dynasty scholar’s courtyard.

As we move through the galleries with our guide, we’ll let the conversation glide from history to curating to the role of art in politics, work, and love. The tour is intentionally designed as a seminar-like experience so that participants can ask lots of questions and follow their interests.

Eventually, we’ll shift gears and move into Western art of the modern era, periods well represented by the Met. Our art adventure will bring us face to face with masterworks by such artists as El Greco, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Degas, Matisse, Sargent, and Picasso, among others. It’s an eclectic mix, to be sure. However, our guide will expertly weave a narrative skein from gallery to gallery, tying works together around themes and ideas, and creating a magical intellectual experience.

Our guide will also curate our time together by selecting a mixture of famous and lesser-known works and crafting a narrative around our interests and questions. Our visit may also include a stop to the Islamic, Ancient Near East or Greek and Roman galleries, or the light- and sculpture-filled atrium of the American Wing, depending on time and interest.

This Met tour is designed to provide a general overview of the Met Museum and its collections.

As part of this tour, we will provide pre-purchased entry tickets to the Met Museum, which allow you to skip the long entry lines to the museum. These will be added to your cart when you check out. Your guide will have these with him/her on the day of the walk. All ticket sales are final and cannot be refunded. There will be a mandatory security line that we must wait in together.

PLEASE NOTE: The Annual Met Gala Event happens on the first Monday of May every year. The Met is only closed on the day of the event itself, but many galleries (usually including the Temple of Dendur) will also be closed in the week before and after the event.

The walk starts and ends at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Your confirmation email will have the exact meeting point details along with a map.

We pre-purchase tickets to the museum. Your guide will have them on hand.

What are skip-the-line tickets?

For this tour, your tickets are pre-purchased which allows you to skip the ticket office line upon arrival at the venue. You may still have to wait in a security line or in a line to have your pre-purchased ticket scanned.

Tours operate rain or shine, but this tour takes place almost entirely indoors.

Yes! We have some excellent family-friendly guides who can appeal to the learning styles of children. We also have a separate Met tour for kids called Stories in Art, designed for families with children 12 and under. When booking, please provide us with information about your children, such as favorite school subjects and hobbies. This way we can match you with the best possible guide.

Overall, the museum is mobility-friendly. There are wheelchair-accessible entrances, elevators, and wheelchairs that are freely available to use. If you require a wheelchair, please mention this in the notes section when placing your order.