• Traveling Exhibitions Traveling Exhibitions
  • Traveling Works of Art Traveling Works of Art
  • Conservation Conservation Projects
  • Excavations Excavations
  • Fellows Fellows
  • Exchanges & Collaborations Exchanges & Collaborations
  • Multiple Categories Multiple Items
    About The Met Around the World

The Met Around the World presents the Met’s work via the global scope of its collection and as it extends across the nation and the world through a variety of domestic and international initiatives and programs, including exhibitions, excavations, fellowships, professional exchanges, conservation projects, and traveling works of art.
The Met Around the World is designed and maintained by the Office of the Director.

Traveling
Exhibitions

The Met organizes large and small exhibitions that travel beyond the Museum's walls, extending our scholarship to institutions across the world. See our national and international traveling exhibition program from 2009 to the present.

Traveling
Works of Art

The Met lends works of art to exhibitions and institutions worldwide to expose its collection to the broadest possible audience. See our current national and international loans program.

Conservation
Projects

The preservation of works of art is a fundamental part of the Met's mission. Our work in this area includes treating works of art from other collections. See our national and international conservation activities from 2009 to the present.

Excavations

The Met has conducted excavations for over 100 years in direct partnership with source countries at some of the most important archaeological sites in the world. Today we continue this tradition in order to gain greater understanding of our ancient collections. See our national and international excavation program from the Met's founding to the present.

Fellows

The Met hosts students, scholars, and museum professionals so that they can learn from our staff and pursue independent research in the context of the Met's exceptional resources and facilities. See the activities of our current national and international fellows.

Exchanges & Collaborations

The Met's work takes many forms, from participation in exchange programs at partnering institutions and worldwide symposia to advising on a range of museum issues. These activities contribute to our commitment to advancing the work of the larger, global community of art museums. See our national and international exchange program and other collaborations from 2009 to the present.

There are currently no international activities in this region.
Excavations throughout Met History, 1870–present
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  • Excavations at Nippur, Iraq, view from the southwest with the Ziggurat in the background, 1961.
  • A workman removing a statue from a foundation deposit dating to the Ur III period (ca. 2100–2000 B.C.), Inanna Temple excavations, Nippur, Iraq, 1956.

  • Foundation figure of king Shulgi of Ur, carrying a basket

    Ur III, ca. 2094–2047 B.C.

    Mesopotamia, Nippur

    Rogers Fund, 1959 (59.41.1)

Nippur

Iraq

1957–1961

Located in the center of the southern Mesopotamian floodplain, the city of Nippur had a special function as the great holy city in which Enlil, the supreme god of the Sumerian pantheon, resided. Since archaeological fieldwork began in Iraq in the mid-nineteenth century, excavations have been conducted at Nippur. The first American expedition to work in Iraq excavated Nippur between 1888 and 1900 under the sponsorship of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1948, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania formed a Joint Expedition to reopen excavations at Nippur. After the University of Pennsylvania withdrew in 1952, the University of Chicago continued the excavations until 1962 in partnership with the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research. During the 1957–58 and 1960–61 seasons, the Metropolitan Museum also contributed funds to the Expedition and received a share of the finds. The archaeological remains of Nippur are unparalleled and span more than 6,000 years, from the beginning of the Ubaid period (ca. 5500–4000 B.C.) to about A.D. 800 in the Islamic period. Excavations of the temple of the goddess Inanna provide the longest continuous archaeological sequence for a Mesopotamian site, with more than twenty building levels dating back into the Uruk period of the fourth millennium B.C.

Partnered with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research.
 
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