NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be open to the public on Monday, December 29 (the Monday between Christmas and New Year's Day), as part of the Museum's popular "Holiday Mondays" program. The Museum will open the doors of its main building this winter and spring on three additional major Monday holidays: January 19 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), February 16 (Presidents' Day), and May 25 (Memorial Day).

"An extra day at the Met is our holiday gift to the public," commented Emily Rafferty, President of the Metropolitan Museum. "This year in particular, we are happy to offer this special opportunity to tourists visiting New York for the holidays, parents spending the long weekend with their children, and everyone whose busy schedule usually leaves little time to enjoy the restorative power of art."

Choirs of Angels: Painting in Italian Choir Books, 1300–1500 includes some two dozen illustrated manuscripts adorned with jewel-like colors and gold depicting singing angels, Hebrew prophets, heroic saints, and Renaissance princes. Rare examples of early Jewish art dating from the first through the thirteenth century can be seen in the newly renovated Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art and the Medieval Europe Gallery.

Art and Love in Renaissance Italy features beguiling and sensual paintings by Botticelli, Titian, and other renowned artists. And some three hundred of the Met’s masterpieces, dating from ancient prehistory to today and spanning the globe from America, to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, are on view in The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions.

Of special interest to families is the Museum's Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche—a brightly lit, twenty-foot blue spruce decorated with eighteenth-century angels, cherubs, and a Nativity scene—in the Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall. Discussion and sketching programs suitable for children ages five through twelve and accompanying adults will take place at 11:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 1:15 p.m., and 2:30 p.m. in the Museum’s Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education. These programs are free with Museum admission. Family greeters will be present in the Museum's Great Hall to direct visitors to areas of particular interest.