The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. In 2022 it welcomed 3,208,832 visitors, ranking it eighth in the list of most-visited art museums in the world, and the second-most visited art museum in the United States. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately 2-million-square-foot (190,000 m2) building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European Old Masters...

...

Lapis lazuli (UK: ; US: ), or lapis for short, is a deep-blue metamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense color. As early as the 7th millennium BC, lapis lazuli was mined in the Sar-i Sang mines, in Shortugai, and in other mines in Badakhshan province in modern northeast Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli artifacts, dated to 7570 BC, have been found at Bhirrana, which is the oldest site of Indus Valley civilisation. Lapis was highly valued by the Indus Valley Civilisation (7570–1900 BC). Lapis beads have been found at Neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus, and as far away as Mauritania. It was used in the funeral mask of Tutankhamun (1341–1323 BC).By the end of the Middle Ages, lapis lazuli began to be exported to Europe, where it was ground into powder and made into ultramarine, the finest and most expensive of all blue pigments. Ultramarine was used by some of the most important artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, including Masaccio, Perugino, Titian and Vermeer...

National service is the system of compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term national service comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939.The length and nature of national service depends on the country in question. In some instances, national service is compulsory, and citizens living abroad can be called back to their country of origin to complete it. In other cases, national service is voluntary. Many young people spend one or more years in such programmes. Compulsory military service typically requires all citizens to enroll for one or two years, usually at age 18 (later for university-level students). Most conscripting countries conscript only men, but Norway, Sweden, Israel, Eritrea, Morocco and North Korea conscript...

Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orchestration is the assignment of different instruments to play the different parts (e.g., melody, bassline, etc.) of a musical work. For example, a work for solo piano could be adapted and orchestrated so that an orchestra could perform the piece, or a concert band piece could be orchestrated for a symphony orchestra. In classical music, composers have historically orchestrated their own music. Only gradually over the course of music history did orchestration come to be regarded as a separate compositional art and profession in itself. In modern classical music, composers almost invariably orchestrate their own work. Two notable exceptions to this are Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's solo piano work Pictures at an Exhibition and Malcolm Arnold's orchestration of William Walton's String Quartet in A minor, producing the latter's Sonata for...