Metropolitan Museum of Art

The museum's special onscreen billing in Don't Eat the Pictures

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's largest and most important art museums, located on the eastern edge of Central Park in New York City. The Met's permanent collection contains more than two million works of art from around the world. The collection's holdings range from treasures of classical antiquity, like those represented in its Greek and Cypriot galleries, to paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, to an extensive collection of American art. The collection also contains extensive holdings of Egyptian, African, Asian, Oceanic, Middle Eastern, Byzantine and Islamic art. The museum opened on February 20, 1872.

The Sesame Street cast visited the museum in a 1983 special, Don't Eat the Pictures. In the special, they are locked in the museum overnight. They interact with various masterpieces and art objects, including Egyptian drawings, a Roman and Greek statue display, a suit of Maximillian armor and a portrait of George Washington.

The special was highlighted in Sesame Street Magazine issue 130 (Dec 1983).

In Muppets Most Wanted, Sam mentions one of the paintings Dominic and Constantine stole in Germany was from this very museum.

In February 2015, as promotion for the special The Cookie Thief, Cookie Monster spent a day visiting three New York museums -- the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. At the Met, he particularly admired Washington Crossing the Delaware and the Egyptian exhibit.

In 2021, the Big Bird-themed sculpture As Long as the Sun Lasts by Alex Da Corte was on display in the museum's Roof Garden.