Nan Kempner - the late New York style icon, connoisseur of the couture, and member of The Best Dressed List's Hall of Fame - will be the subject of the winter exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, through March 4, 2007. Known for a seemingly effortless style that nonetheless displayed a meticulous attention to detail, she was a passionate client and collector of such designers as Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, and Oscar de la Renta from the 1960s onward.

The Greek and Roman collections, with works of art ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in A.D. 330, include the art of many cultures.

The Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts has evolved from one that was established as a repository of decorative art in 1907, during the presidency of J. Pierpont Morgan. Today it is responsible for a comprehensive and important historical collection, one of the Metropolitan Museum's largest, reflecting the development of art in the major Western European countries.

The Museum's collection of Old Master and 19th-century European paintings - one of the greatest such collections in existence - numbers approximately 2,500 works, dozens of which are instantly recognizable worldwide. The French, Italian, Flemish, and Dutch schools are most strongly represented, with fine works also by British and Spanish masters.

The Department of Egyptian Art was established in 1906 to oversee The Metropolitan Museum of Art's ancient Egyptian collection, which had been growing since 1874. Today, after almost a century of collecting and excavating, the collection has become one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world.

In 1880 Cornelius Vanderbilt presented to the Metropolitan Museum 670 drawings by or attributed to European Old Masters. In its early decades, the collection of drawings grew slowly through purchase, gift, and bequest. Among notable acquisitions of this period were major drawings by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rembrandt.

The Asian collection at the Metropolitan Museum is the largest and most comprehensive in the West. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works that provide - in both quality and breadth - an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Nearly 1,600 objects from Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas are on view in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. They span 3,000 years, three continents, and many islands, and represent a rich diversity of cultural traditions.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art received its first examples of arms and armor in 1896. Thanks to a substantial group of Japanese arms and armor and a major private collection of European arms and armor, both acquired by purchase in 1904, the Museum's collection quickly achieved international recognition. This led to the establishment of a separate Department of Arms and Armor in 1912, which remains the only one of its kind in the United States.

The Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art was formed as recently as 1956, although the first objects to enter the collection - cuneiform tablets and stamp and cylinder seals - were acquired in the late 1800s. The department covers both a lengthy chronological span and a vast geographical area. In time, the works of art in the collection range from the eighth millennium B.C. to the time of the Arab conquest in A.D. 651, more than 8,000 years later.

The musical instruments collection at the Metropolitan Museum originated with gifts in 1889 of several hundred European, American, and non-Western instruments from private collectors Joseph W. Drexel and Mrs. John Crosby Brown. Mrs. Brown continued to give musical instruments to the Museum until her death in 1918, by which time some 4,000 items had been catalogued and placed on display, making the assemblage the largest and most comprehensive of its kind outside Europe.

Since its founding in 1870 the Metropolitan Museum has been concerned with the art of its own time as well as that of the past. In 1906 and 1911 funds established by George A. Hearn particularly encouraged acquisitions of works by contemporary American painters. During the first decades of the 20th century fewer examples by European artists were acquired, but certain purchases are notable.