From the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, 30 May 2012
The breadth and quality of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum afford an opportunity to explore the grand theme of nature as it has been depicted by painters, sculptors, and decorative artists in Europe, America, and the Near East, from antiquity to the present day. The exhibition features masterful representations of landscape, flora, and fauna rendered in a wide range of media, including painting, ceramics, tapestry, silver, stone, and bronze, and dating from the third millennium BC to the twentieth century.
Drawn exclusively from the permanent collection of the Metropolitan, the exhibition highlights more than 130 works by major artists, including Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Poussin, Constable, Delacroix, Barye, Monet, Turner, Palissy, Tiffany, Hopper, and Atget, as well as anonymous masters from the ancient and medieval worlds. The installation is organized thematically to bring out engaging and informative juxtapositions.