The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially known as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. It is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. Founded in 1870, its mission is to bring art and art education to the American people. Its permanent collection contains more than 2 million works of art ranging from the ancient Near East and Egypt, through classical antiquity to the contemporary world, including paintings, sculptures, graphic works, textiles, music instruments and fashion and spanning 5000 years of culture around the globe.