Met Museum Explorer

What it does

Met Museum Explorer connects your AI client to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's entire open-access collection. Ask about Van Gogh, filter by department, or browse by keyword — then launch the interactive Met Explorer App to visually search and inspect artworks without leaving your conversation.

Key features

• Interactive Met Explorer App — a full-screen browser for The Met's collection rendered as an MCP App directly inside Claude Desktop
• Artwork image retrieval — fetches base64-encoded JPEG images of open-access works inline in tool results
• Department filtering — browse all 19 departments including European Paintings, Asian Art, and Greek & Roman Art
• Paginated search — search by keyword, title, or department with full pagination support
• HTTP transport — run as a local or hosted server; a hosted instance is available on Fronteir AI

Installation

Claude Desktop (recommended — via npx): Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "met-museum": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "metmuseum-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop (via MCPB bundle): Download the .mcpb file from Releases and drag it into Claude Desktop → File → Settings → Extensions.

ChatGPT: Run npx -y metmuseum-mcp --http locally, expose with ngrok, then add as a Connector in ChatGPT settings.

LibreChat:

mcpServers:
  metmuseum:
    command: npx
    args: [-y, metmuseum-mcp]

Supported hosts

Claude Desktop, ChatGPT (via HTTP transport), LibreChat