Introduction 

A Brief History of the Cloisters 

When he returned to America at the eve of the First World War, George Barnard founded a museum in upper Manhattan on Fort Washington’s Ave. The Metropolitan Museum purchased most of Barnard’s collection in 1925. The funds were given by John D. Rockefeller Jr., who also purchased a strip of over 700 acres of the undeveloped Palisades woodlands across the Hudson River.

Rockefeller then presented the land to the State of New Jersey as parkland; preserving the view and land around the museum. The museum gets its name from the idea of the medieval cloister, which is a covered walkway surrounding a large, open courtyard. The Cloister functioned as the heart of the monastery, functioning as a place of meditation and ideal location for reading scripture.

The Cloisters contains 5,000 works of art and architecture; all focused on Romanesque and Gothic styles of European art. The museum is ensembles of spaces and gardens, that suggest the European Model. The Cloisters consist of varied objects including stone and wood sculptures, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, and panel paintings.

Hours