Open Monday through Saturday; 10am to 11pm (6pm on days with no performance); Sunday, noon to 6pm.

Located in the Met's south-side lobby, the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met hosts works by some of the contemporary art world's most innovative and provocative figures. Created by General Manager Peter Gelb and curated by Dodie Kazanjian, the new venue continues and reaffirms the Met's long history of groundbreaking relationships with major visual artists-such as Chagall and Hockney-while fostering new opportunities for collaboration. The Schwartz Gallery Met is open every day, and admission is free to ticket holders and the general public.

An extraordinary $1 million gift from Marie Schwartz, an Advisory Director on the Met Board, has made this initiative possible, and in recognition the Met has named the gallery for her and her late husband, Arnold.

Gallery Met opened in September 2006 with an exhibition of works inspired by the 2006-­07 season's new productions. The artists represented included Cecily Brown, John Currin, Barnaby Furnas, Makiko Kudo, Richard Prince, David Salle, Sophie von Hellerman, and others. During the summer and fall of 2007, the space was home to Opera by Design, an exhibition of set models for the new productions of the 2007-­08 season, and Stage Fright, a collection of opera-inspired works by Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca.

This past winter, works by a variety of artists from The New Yorker and the contemporary art scene, based on the Brothers Grimm story of Hansel and Gretel, were on display during the run of the Met's new production of Humperdinck's fairy tale opera. To coincide with the Met premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha in May, Gallery Met presented Chuck Close Philip Glass 40 Years, a selection of Close's more than 100 portraits of his composer friend, created over a period of four decades.

Currently on view is The Sopranos, an exhibit featuring renowned Italian painter Francesco Clemente's series of portraits of Met divas in roles they will be performing during the upcoming 125th anniversary season. The paintings of Diana Damrau, Natalie Dessay, Renée Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu, Susan Graham, Karita Mattila, Anna Netrebko, and Deborah Voigt are on display through July 12, and from September 16 to 26. (Due to the renovation of Lincoln Center, Gallery Met will be closed in August.)