Each summer the Met offers a free outdoor performance, and the one-night-only event is going down in Prospect Park later this evening. Two of the opera world's biggest stars, Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna, will be belting out duets as Ion Marin conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Fun fact: Gheorghiu and Alagna were married backstage at the Met during a run of La Bohème in 1996...by Giuliani! Head over to the park (there's......

Tourists, museum-goers and Gossip Girl-esque Upper East Siders...the Metropolitan Museum steps are no longer for you to sit on...at least, temporarily. CityRoom reports that the steps are undergoing a yearlong renovation, and until the project is done, the 1/3 of the steps left open are for walking only. Even tourists taking photos with the famous backdrop are getting booted. How are people reacting to the change? Reportedly the museum staffers are quite busy shooing resting......

Paintings by Jasper Johns, from left: Periscope (Hart Crane), 1963; Flag, 1958; Winter, 1986 (all photographs by Jamie M. Stukenberg / Professional Graphics Inc. Jasper Johns, a South Carolina native currently residing in Connecticut, first came to New York City in 1949 when he (briefly) attended Parsons School of Design. In 1954 he painted his first flag picture, and by 1958 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery. Today, The......

Alex Ross has worked as the music critic of The New Yorker for over a decade. Somehow he still had time to churn out a book though, his first, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, hit shelves late last year. The tome delves into the cultural history of music since 1900, and even has Björk touting: "Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music." Tonight he'll step away from......

The NY Times reports on a farewell of sorts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend. The Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year old vessel, will depart its home for nearly 30 years on Sunday and make a trip to Italy, where that country's government has been vying for the piece.The krater, a Greek bowl for mixing water and wine, will be sent to Italy as part of an agreement reached nearly two years ago with......

ART: The Met opens its doors on a Monday for a special Christmas Eve event. They suggest stopping by for the 18th-century Neapolitan Nativity scene Christmas tree, along with some of their special exhibits -- the Age of Rembrandt, Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works and their fashion exhibit will stock your stuffing with eye candy. 9:30am to 5:30pm // The Metropolitan Museum of Art [1000 Fifth Ave] // Pay what you want MOVIE: The......

The world's sultan of song, Luciano Pavarotti, died at 71 from pancreatic cancer early this morning. He was at his home in Modena, Italy -- where he was born in October of 1935. Last summer he was in New York for surgery and hadn't made any public appearances since then, apparently retreating to Modena afterwards. The AP received the following email statement from his manager: “The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic......

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, also known as the shark in a tank by British artist Damien Hirst, will be shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Labor Day, according to the NY Times. The artwork, bought by hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen for $8 million, isn't the exact same one that was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art's Sensation show in 1999 - the shark has......

Not that anyone should ever need an additional good reason to visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located on 5th Ave. and edging into Central Park, but The Met is opening 30,000 square feet of new exhibition space in 11 new galleries. The space will be used to expand the museum's display of Greek and Roman antiquities. The New York Sun described that the "new series of 11 exhibition spaces continues the sequence of eight......

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores. Apparently a huge shipment of strawberries has just hit New York, as three of our favorite groceries are featuring them at discounted prices. So why not indulge? The Met has them for $2.50 a pound, a fine deal, but one that’s equaled by Fairway’s 2 packs for $5. No, the winner of the strawberry showdown is Pathmark, which is......

The Met just opened a new exhibit called “Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: An Artist’s Country Estate” on Tuesday. Many aspects of Tiffany’s home (which took 3 years to build, from 1902 to 1905) are represented. The 84-room, eight-level house was nearly 600 acres overlooking Long Island Sound, was in Oyster Bay, New York. Tiffany himself designed the home inside and out, and this exhibition is a window into his art, through design, furniture......

The holiday season is upon us, and with shorter work hours and more days off, it often seems like the perfect time to hit up those museums you never have a chance to. Beware the holiday hours, however. Below is a little cheat sheet of what to expect at the (major) museums over the next month. • MoMA Closed on Christmas day and Thanksgiving day, closes at 4:00 p.m. on December 24. The Museum......

Opera isn't just for the swells! Starting today, the Metropolitan Opera is offering $20 rush tickets for $100 orchestra seats at performances Monday through Thursday. The tickets will be available two hours before the performance (if there are any $100 tickets available at the performance to begin with), with a limit of two per customer. It looks like you can get rush tickets for tonight's performance of Faust! Here's what the Metropolitan Opera will be......

Last night, the Metropolitan Opera's new season opened, with its usual gala at Lincoln Center and something new - broadcasting the performance of Madama Butterfly for free on different screens in Times Square as well as a free broadcast on Lincoln Center's plaza. catelinp has a nice set of pictures from Times Square on Flickr. The Post and Times have stories about hundreds people enjoying the free Times Square showing and how this marks......

Until March 5, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a show dedicated to Santiago Calatrava, the already-beloved in NY architect behind the new PATH Transit Hub at the World Trade Center. The show, Santiago Calatrava: Sculpture into Architecture, features two dozen sculptures amongst drawings and architectural models. However, in a skeptical review in the NY Times, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wonders how the sculptures actually figure into Calatrava's process (plus, the sculptures are "mostly derivative......

This case of New York Region > Protest Art Left at Museums, Causing Brief Security Flap" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/nyregion/10protest.html">protest art being left at the Met and Guggenheim as well as other museums on the East Coast is really gross, but who knew that if you tape your crazy guerilla art that has semen mixed in it with acrylic gel, it's not a federal criminal violation. The Met's spokesperson described the mixed-media work as "a cartoonish, Warholish- influenced......

– Gothamist reads Everyday Matters – Brooklyn tells Sex and the City writers they're outdated – Last two days of tax free week – Golden Globes coverage, if you want to relive it – City and NYPD are split on dealing with Brooklyn rooftop shooting – The Met's mummy paintings are naked – City freaks out, even closing schools, but most feel ashamed we're so wimpy – Thoughts on the Oscar nominations and why the......

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be opening its newly renovated $30 million cafeteria on June 17. The Times notes that it's like the Conde Nast cafeteria in its price tag, use of metal and glass (laminated, thought), and the chef who formerly headed up the 4TS Conde Nast cafeteria, but the main difference is that the Met cafeteria is open to the public, not underfed fashionistas, although Gothamist would like to see a......