Suggested Admission Saturday at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art Fifth Avenue; Free Admission for Members and Patrons and Children (under 12) - see INFO below.The Met Fifth Avenue presents over 5,000 years of art spanning all cultures and time periods. The Museum's collection continued to grow throughout the rest of the 19th century. The 1874–76 purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot art—works dating from the Bronze Age to the end of the Roman period—helped to establish The Met's reputation as a major repository of classical antiquities. When the American painter John Kensett died in 1872, 38 of his canvases came to the Museum, and in 1889, the Museum acquired two works by Édouard Manet. The Museum's Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue facade and Great Hall, designed by the architect and founding Museum Trustee Richard Morris Hunt, opened to the public in December 1902. The Evening Post reported that at last New York had a neoclassical palace of art, one of the finest in the world, and the only public building in recent years which approaches in dignity and grandeur the museums of the old world. More Info below.