The first quarter of the new year promises to be an exceptional time to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s upcoming season of exhibitions is exceptionally robust and ambitious,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French director, The Met. “It is exhilarating to present such an extraordinary range of compelling shows that reflect the depth and diversity of creativity and the human experience.”

Winter high points include Richard Avedon: MURALS, opening Jan. 19 and featuring three group portrait photomurals timed to celebrate the centennial of the artist’s birth. On Jan. 26, interpretations of place, identity and belonging is both questioned and weighed in an exhibition of works by Danish artists titled Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art.

American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) is the subject of Berenice Abbott’s New York Album, 1929. Beginning March 2, an unbound collection of Abbott’s black-and-white photos of New York City will be on display. Opening March 6 at The Met Cloisters, Rich Man, Poor Man: Art, Class, and Commerce in a Late Medieval Town turns a lens on how art and class intersected in early Tudor England.

Spring launches with Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter (April 3), which examines the life and struggles of the artist; followed by Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid (April 4), with around 50 paintings, drawings, monotypes and sketchbooks — including many never-seen works — detailing the trajectory of Brown’s career.

Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art opens April 8, and on April 18, The Roof Garden Commission: Lauren Halsey presents a full-scale architectural work by Halsey incorporating Egyptian symbolism, utopian architecture from the 1960s and modern-contemporary cultural visual expressions.

On May 5, The Met presents Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, providing a visual journey through the iconic designer’s themes, methods and stylistic vocabulary spanning his own brand and professional associations with Chanel and Fendi.

Looking ahead, visitors can plan for Van Gogh’s Cypresses, an exciting new exhibition of around 40 works by Vincent van Gogh on display at The Met Fifth Avenue, May 22–Aug. 27.