Best Kept Secrets of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art isn't called the world’s greatest museum for nothing. If you've never taken your kids to see its treasure troves, don't wait another week.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, aka the Met, is one of the most popular museums in a city of great museums. But it doesn’t have the most child-friendly rep. And that’s just not fair. I took a recent trip there with notoriously tough museum critics: sixth graders. Here’s why this renowned tourist stop should be a must-see for your family, too.

Museum Overview

A person could get lost in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, literally as well as figuratively. The place is huge, with multi-levels, twisting hallways, and ornate staircases. Where else can you see a 3,000-year-old alabaster winged lion from Mesopotamia, a 1950s Balenciaga gown, and the famous 1851 painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware? Arguably second only to the Louvre in Paris for its extensive collection of masterpieces, it can be a lot to take in, especially with kids in tow. Go with a game plan that includes frequent breaks, hitting the kid-friendliest highlights first, and, for younger children, splitting your visit up over two days.

RELATED: Get more museum-going tips for families.

Standby Faves for Kids

A Book-Based Tour

Two kid lit classics, The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Percy Jackson and the Olympians, are set in the Met. While some of the original works mentioned in the volumes are no longer part of the Met’s collection, there is still plenty they’ll recognize. So much so, the museum has free guides to self-guided tours for fans of the novels to download.

The Egyptian Art Wing

You’ll want to get this perennial kid pick out of the way early, and that’s easy to do. If you go in the main entrance on 82^nd Street, the gallery starts right past the ticket booths. It begins with the maze-like Tomb of Perneb, which starts your outing off with a bang. Hey, it’s not every day you get to walk through an ancient tomb and make it out, well, alive! Continue past mummy after mummy, of varying ages, genders, and social classes. If your kid is known to race past exhibits, you can be pretty sure that’ll end today. The history of people who found their final resting places at the Met is pretty fascinating to kids, especially since some of them were kids themselves. (“Yes, there really is a person inside there. Yes, really!”)

Budding fashionistas will spend a few minutes gazing wistfully at the jewelry exhibits. One case had enough solid gold, from bangles to necklaces to hoop earrings, to put the Kardashians to shame. You’ll find lots of statues along the way that make for great photo opps (just don’t touch them as you pose).

You’ll finally wind up at the Temple of Dendur, a life-size monolith alongside a huge reflecting pool in the soaring glass-walled Sackler Wing. Show the kids the graffiti on the temple’s Aeolian sandstone walls. Yes, graffiti, most of it from European travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries. See if you can find “Leonardo 1820.”

Best-Kept Secrets

The Roof Garden

On the Fifth Floor, in Gallery 926, you’ll find an exhibition featuring the work of one living artist. It changes annually, and is installed from spring to late fall. The open-air setting gives you views of the skyline and Central Park. It has elevator access from the first floor.

The Period Rooms in the American Wing

Three floors of furnished rooms, from bedrooms to dining rooms to studies, circa the 17^th to early 20^th centuries, go hi-tech with the addition of oversized touch screens. Kids get pulled into imagining what it would have been like to have a room like that if they’d been born in the Victorian era, say. Then they can head to the screen and watch the components of the room break out one by one. So if none of you is sure what that thing in the corner that sort of looks like a toilet brush is, the answer is just a swipe away. To get to the period rooms, you’ll need to walk through a bright and airy indoor sculpture garden, a perfect place to sit and take a break. Don’t miss the trio of bears, so big they attracted a gaggle of wee gawkers.

Picasso

The second floor galleries, rife with Romanticism and Post-impressionism, may not seem like an obvious must-go with the kids. But tucked away in the back of the early-20^th century room is a nice-sized collection of Picasso paintings. This area seemed to draw an inordinate number of kids. Maybe because these works looked more like paintings they’d make than anything else in the museum? There was definitely an air of “Maybe I can be famous too!” afoot. We all played a rousing game of “What do you think it is?”  That’s time well spent.