Math at the Met

Amid the museum’s 2 million works of art lie numerous mathematical curiosities

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City—known worldwide and hereinafter as "the Met"—is the largest art museum in the United States, and one of the ten largest in the world. Founded in 1870, it holds two million works of art, from antiquity to today, from all around the world.

We propose here a guided tour of the Met's hidden math. The Met's collections include works of art with surprising mathematical content. These works span the globe, human history, and the Met's curatorial departments. They include numerals, shapes, perspective, astronomy, time, and games. 

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