The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a genuine blockbuster on its hands. Its ambitious new exhibition, spanning centuries and continents, has drawn record crowds to Fifth Avenue, with timed tickets selling out weeks ahead.

Curators spent years assembling loans from collections around the world for the show, which the fictional critic Adele Marsh called the museum's most confident statement in a decade. The galleries have been packed from opening to close.

The success is a welcome jolt for an institution navigating the economics of the modern museum, where a hit show can fund quieter scholarship for years. For visitors, the exhibition is a reminder of the Met's singular ability to marshal the world's art under one roof.