For the first time the big museum of New York shows a selection of its collection of European paint in the MNAC. MNAC (National Palace. Park of Montjuïc. Barcelona). www.mnac.es

The presence in Barcelona of this selection of woeks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gives the public the magnificent opportunity to take a look at the principal artistic movements in the history of European art, from the 17th to the late 19th centuries.

The 42 paintings in this exhibition come from the rich collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, an institution wich the MNAC began collaborating as a result of the exhibition "Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí" wich in Octiber opened at The Cleveland Museum of Art and will be seen at the New York museum from March 2007.

Represented in the exhibition are the French, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, English and Spanish schools, with names as important as El Greco, Hals, Ruisdael, Van Dyck, Teniers, Poussin, Claudio de Lorena, Tiepolo, Longhi, Guardi, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, Hoppner, Mengs, Angelika Kauffmann, Boucher, Fragonard, Goya, Corot, Coubert, Millet, Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Sisley, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh i Cézanne, among others.

The visit opens with El Greco's "The Adoration of the Shepherds", painted in about 1610, a late version of this recurring theme in his pictorial output, and closes with a still life by Cézanne -the centenary of whose death was celebrated in 2006-, a genre that this artist cultivated throughout his career.

Finally, the exhibition, wich enables us to learn of the tastes of the main American collectors, is also a reflection on the decisive role that private collecting has played so many times in the creation of a museum, a circumstance of wich The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an exemplary case.