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Cloisters, the, museum of medieval art, in Fort Tryon Park, New York City, overlooking the Hudson River. A branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was opened to the public in May, 1938. The building includes four French cloisters, a 12th-century Romanesque chapel, and a chapter house. The core of the collection it houses consists of six or seven hundred examples of medieval painting, sculpture, and other forms of art gathered in France by George Grey Barnard. This collection was bought by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in 1925, and presented to the Metropolitan Museum. Later additions to it include a series of 15th-century tapestries, Hunt of the Unicorn; a tapestry series of the 14th cent., The Nine Heroes; the famous MErode Altarpiece by Robert Campin; and the Bury St. Edmunds ivory crucifix.
See J. J. Rorimer, The Cloisters (3d ed. 1963), and Medieval Monuments at the Cloisters (rev. ed. 1972).
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