“The Starry Night” Makes Its Way to NYC’s Met for an Unforgettable Van Gogh Exhibit

Visitors to New York this summer hoping to view Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night at the Museum of Modern Art will need to adjust their plans and head about a mile and a half north. From May 22 to August 27, 2023, the iconic 1889 painting will be featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Van Gogh’s Cypresses exhibition. This groundbreaking show highlights the artist’s fascination with the swirling cypress trees and includes around 40 additional paintings, sketches, and letters from the Met and other collections that have never been shown together or lent out before.

“Because one of our key masterpieces, The Wheat Field with Cypresses from the Annenberg Collection, cannot leave the Met . . . this exhibition can only occur here at the Met,” stated Max Hollein, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, during a media preview on May 15.

The exhibition occupies three galleries, organized chronologically to illustrate Van Gogh’s evolving exploration of cypress trees during his time in southern France, where he spent much of the last two years of his life. Leaving Paris in February 1888, he sought to escape the city's hustle for the tranquility of Provence. Here, he shifted his focus from still lifes and cityscapes to landscapes, including many featured in this exhibition.

“To a degree that has gone unrecognized, Van Gogh infused his signature ambition, determination, and thoughtful reconsideration into giving distinctive shape to the legendary cypresses,” remarked Susan Alyson Stein, the Met’s curator of 19th-century European paintings. “The flame-like trees,” a native species prevalent in the Provence countryside, “continuously sparked, fueled, and ignited his imagination from the moment he arrived in Arles until he left the asylum [at Saint-Rémy] two years later.” Following his departure from Saint-Rémy in May 1890, Van Gogh tragically ended his own life that July in a village near Paris.

Key highlights of this exhibition include the side-by-side display of The Starry Night (1889) alongside its daytime equivalent—the Met’s Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889). This marks the first time these two masterpieces have been shown together since 1901, during a retrospective of Van Gogh’s work in Paris.

Other notable pieces include Country Road in Provence by Night (1890), on loan from the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, and A Wheatfield, with Cypresses (1889), borrowed from the National Gallery in London. Visitors will also have the opportunity to explore Van Gogh’s artistic journey through a collection of letters featuring sketches, on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

“The cypresses continue to captivate me,” he wrote in a letter to his brother Theo dated June 25, 1889. “I’d like to create something with them similar to the sunflower canvases because it surprises me that no one has yet depicted them as I envision.”

Planning Your Visit to “Van Gogh’s Cypresses”

Van Gogh’s Cypresses is open from May 22 to August 27, 2023, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art located at 1000 Fifth Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Admission to the exhibit is included with museum entry, and no advance or timed tickets are needed. However, visitors must enter a virtual queue via QR code once inside the Met, as access to the exhibit is on a first-come, first-served basis and subject to gallery capacity. The exhibition is situated in Exhibition Gallery 199, accessible through the Greek and Roman Art wing, directly to the left of the Great Hall.

The museum operates daily (excluding Wednesdays) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours until 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Admission to the Met is $30 for adults, $22 for seniors 65 and older, and $17 for students. Children under 12 enter for free. Residents of New York State (along with students from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) can visit on a “pay what you wish” basis.

The nearest subway station to the Met is the 86th Street stop on the 4/5/6 line. If you're planning a visit to New York for this exhibit, the Carlyle, a Rosewood Hotel is just a 10-minute stroll from the Met, having hosted guests like John F. Kennedy and Ingrid Bergman since 1930. Even if you’re staying at a more budget-friendly place, be sure to stop by its famous Bemelmans Bar after your museum visit to enjoy martinis and admire the murals by the renowned European artist Ludwig Bemelmans, who created the Madeline books.