Spotlight on The Met: European Paintings

Art historian and Metropolitan Museum of Art educator Page Knox explores the re-installation of its iconic European Paintings Galleries, and the ways in which it allows viewers to experience European paintings in a new light. 

In 2023, The Metropolitan Museum of Art completed a five-year initiative to replace the aging skylights in its European Paintings Galleries. The project also resulted in an opportunity to reinstall the collection, rethinking the ways in which viewers engage with and understand it. Now chronologically arranged, beginning in the 14th century and ending in the era of the French and Industrial Revolutions, the galleries feature beloved masterpieces by well-known painters while highlighting new narratives and relationships among more than 700 works of art.  

Page Knox is an adjunct professor in the Art History Department of Columbia University. She works in a variety of capacities as a contractual lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she gives public gallery talks and lectures in special exhibitions as well as the permanent collection, and teaches classes at the museum. Page also leads groups for art related travel experiences worldwide.