The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan (大都市的) Museum of Art (the Met) is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Today, art comes alive in the Museum’s galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing both new ideas and unexpected connections across time and cultures.

Sunday - Thursday: 10 am - 5:30 pm

Friday and Saturday: 10 am - 9 pm

Closed Thanksgiving Day, December 25, January 1, and the first day in May.

Suggested Admission

If you buy tickets at a museum ticket counter, the amount you pay is up to you.

Adults              $ 25

Seniors (65 and over)              $ 17

Students              $ 12

Members (Join Today!)              Free

Children (under 12; accompanied by an adult)       Free

Exhibitions are free with Museum admission.

Avoid waiting in admission lines! By buying tickets online you agree to pay our suggested prices.

Groups: Advance reservations are required for all adult and student groups of 10 or more, and for any third-party guided tours, regardless of size.

Like Indiana Jones (a fictional character), who undertakes daring adventures in his spare time, my father is a businessman by day and a thrill-seeker by night.

His enthusiasm rubbed off on me, and I have been lucky to be his companion on many adventures. We started out by riding America’s fastest, most twisted roller coasters. After that a whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon（峡谷）on the Colorado River started our search for other extreme thrills across the globe.

Amazing thrills awaited us at every corner of the world. Skydiving was especially thrilling when performed from a helicopter over the breathtaking Swiss Alps. We have bungee jumped from the world’s highest platform, Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa. Most recently, in Interlaken, Switzerland, we attempted canyoning（溪降运动）.

Anyone who loves a challenging thrill should try canyoning. Our adventure began with a 90-foot rope down a canyon wall into a rushing ice-cold river. Then we crossed the bone-chilling water toward the mouth of the river, our final destination, where the reward for the journey would be a whole view of the beautiful Interlaken basin. We slid over slippery rocks at one moment, jumped from waterfalls and swam through underwater tunnels the next. Back and forth we alternated, climbing rope ladders before going back into the fresh mountain water. Certainly, danger was waiting for us in each of these activities, but that very danger provided the rush. Canyoning was indeed one thrill after another, from beginning to end.

While canyoning is possible only in certain places, thrills and adventure can be found anywhere. Our beginnings in the U.S. showed us just that. We continue to seek the big thrills, but in doing so, we have learned to seek lesser excitement in daily life as well. After all, we can’t go canyoning every day, and small thrills are better than none for us thrill-seekers.

Robots will have taken over most jobs within 30 years leaving humanity facing its “biggest challenger ever” to find meaning in life when work is no longer necessary according to experts.

Professor Moshe Vardi, who works in Rice University, says that many middle-class professionals will be assisting the work of machines within the next few decades leaving workers more leisure（休闲）time than they have ever experienced and as a result, the rise of robots could lead to unemployment rate greater than 50 percent.

“We are approaching a time when machines will be able to do better than humans at almost any task,” said Vardi, “Robots are doing more and more jobs that people used to do. I believe that society needs to face question before it’s upon us. If machines can do almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? The question I want to put forward is, ‘Does the technology we are developing finally benefit mankind?’”

Prof. Vardi said existing robotic and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies were already getting rid of a growing number of middle-class jobs and that pace of advancement in the field is increasing.

But Prof. Vardi is not sure that a workforce of human like robots will be good for mankind. “A typical answer is that if machines will do all our work, we will be free to pursue leisure activities,” he said. “I do not find this a promising future, as I do not find the idea of leisure-only life appealing. I believe that work is essential to human well-being.” He added, “Humanity is about to face perhaps its greatest challenge ever, which is finding meaning in life. If machines can do all the work or even 50 percent of the jobs that we used to do, what will people do?”

Last summer, bird-watchers confirmed the discovery of a new species of bird in Cambodia（柬埔寨）: the Combodian tailorbird. It was not an event of particular biological significance but it was striking for one reason: This species of tailorbird was discovered not in an unspoiled rain forest but within the limits of Combodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

We don’t typically think of the city as a likely habitat for natural life except rats and pigeons（鸽子）, let alone as a hiding place for an undiscovered species of bird. But a new paper, published last week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, proves it incorrect. A team of 24 researchers has studied birds and plants in 147 cities, and found that cities much more closely resemble their native habitats than they resemble each other.

It’s also true that in the world of birds and plants, as in human society, there is such thing as a world species who feels equally at home in Francisco, Milan and Beijing. Four birds appear in more than 80 percent of the cities studied, and 11 plants in more than 90 percent of the cities. On the plant side, those include meadow grass, shepherd’s purse, weeds. In the air, it’s the usual species: the pigeon, the house sparrow and the European starling（惊鸟）. They all have become completely adapted to urban life.

However, not all cities are equal protectors of plants and animals, though. City design plays an important role in greening a city. In fact, the amount of green space is a stronger predictor of the biodiversity than a city’s size.

In a world where architecture, food, language, fashion and commerce are increasingly globalized, a city’s native plants and animals are considered as a kind of city identity. Cities tend to become similar, but their natural environments stand differently apart.