The Metropolitan Museum of Art Centennial

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Centennial was a series of events and initiatives celebrating the 100th anniversary of the charter of the Museum occurring between 1969 and 1971.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrated its centennial with exhibitions, symposia, concerts, lectures, the reopening of refurbished galleries, special tours, social events, and other programming for eighteen months from October 1969 through the spring of 1971. The highlight was an open house and Centennial Ball on April 13, 1970. The anniversary was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 100th Anniversary Committee, chaired by Trustee Roswell Gilpatric and including Museum President Arthur A. Houghton, Trustees Brooke Astor, C. Douglas Dillon, and Arthur K. Watson, advertising executive David Ogilvy, CBS President Frank Stanton, socialite and representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Marietta Tree, and collector and future Museum Trustee Jayne Wrightsman. Events were held both at the Museum and beyond, reaching cities throughout the United States and overseas.

"The Great Age of Fresco: Giotto to Pontormo," which was on view for only two months in the fall of 1968, was the first exhibition at the Museum to have corporate sponsorship. Olivetti’s underwriting of the exhibition was seen as a model for the pursuit of corporate sponsors for the Centennial exhibitions being planned at that time.

Centennial special events at the Museum centered around five exhibitions celebrating the breadth of the Museum’s collecting over the previous one hundred years: “New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970” (sponsored by Xerox), "The Year 1200," "19th-Century America" (opened by First Lady Pat Nixon), “Before Cortés: Sculpture of Middle America,” and “Masterpieces of Seven Centuries.” "New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970" was the Museum’s first exhibition of contemporary American art, curated by Henry Geldzahler to mark the inauguration of the newly established department of Contemporary Arts. It elicited reactions ranging from shock to relief at the new direction of collecting that it signaled. For each exhibition, a contemporary American composer was commissioned to create an orchestral fanfare. These included Shivaree by Leonard Bernstein (for "Before Cortes: Sculpture Of Middle America"), Ceremonial Fanfare For Brass Ensemble by Aaron Copland (for "Masterpieces Of Fifty Centuries"), Ceremonial Fanfare by Walter Piston (for "The Year 1200"), Anniversary Fanfare by William Schuman (for "19th Century America"), and Metropolitan Museum Fanfare: Portrait Of An American Artist by Virgil Thomson (for "New York Painting And Sculpture: 1940-1970").

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