NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art's next upcoming Holiday Monday—Columbus Day, October 11—will give visitors a special opportunity to view such new and popular fall exhibitions as The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty and to spend time in the Museum's encyclopedic collections galleries. The Metropolitan Museum announced today that April 25, 2011—the Monday when many schools will be closed for spring break—has just been added to the roster of Met Holiday Mondays for the coming year.

Met Holiday Mondays are extra public viewing days that take place on the Mondays of major holiday weekends, when historically the Museum has been closed. A different selection of exhibitions is open on each Met Holiday Monday. The Metropolitan's public cafeteria and several of the gift shops in the main building will be open on all of these special viewing days.

Metropolitan Museum President Emily K. Rafferty commented: "Met Holiday Mondays have been extremely popular since the program began in fall 2003. We are delighted to expand the program to include an additional day—the Monday that occurs during spring break—when many parents are looking for activities to take part in with their children, and older students wish to sample the city's cultural offerings. Our permanent collection includes masterpieces from all parts of the world and all periods of history—ancient to modern—and our ever-changing special exhibitions provide a more focused approach to particular topics. With more than a million works of art on view at any one time, the Met truly offers something for everyone to enjoy"

Special exhibitions that will be available for viewing on Columbus Day include: Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980 (through October 17); The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty (through January 2); and Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart's Renaissance (through January 17).

Charles H. Tally Holiday Monday Family Programs specially organized for Columbus Day include discussion and sketching activities that will be available for families with children ages 5 through 12 at 11 a.m., 12 noon, 1:15 and 2:30 p.m. These programs are free with Museum admission.

The list of upcoming Met Holiday Mondays for 2010 is: Columbus Day (October 11) and Christmas/New Year's Week Holiday Monday (December 27); for winter through spring 2011, the schedule is: Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 17), Presidents' Day (February 21), Spring Break (April 25), and Memorial Day (May 30).