On October 1, 2026, The Met Cloisters celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month with an evening of art, music, and the exhibition, Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas, while a live mariachi band filled the medieval spaces with music. The musicians moved easily between famous Hispanic songs and familiar American classics, giving the evening a lively, welcoming atmosphere that felt both connected to the museum’s history and very much alive in the present.
There is something almost too perfect about putting an exhibition about mythical creatures inside The Met Cloisters. The medieval architecture, stone walls, gardens, and dim galleries already make the place feel slightly removed from reality. Add dragons, hybrid animals, strange human figures, and creatures that seem to belong somewhere between this world and the next, and the setting starts doing half the work.
Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas brings together more than 50 objects made between roughly 500 and 1500 CE. The exhibition moves between Europe and the Americas, showing how very different cultures imagined creatures that could cross the boundaries between human, animal, and supernatural.
One work that caught my attention is a small but incredibly detailed Tairona gold pendant from northern Colombia. The figure has a crocodile-like head, an oversized headdress, and a stance that feels almost confrontational. It is tiny, but it has a strong presence. You can immediately understand why these objects were connected to status and power.
Then there are the European dragons—much larger, more theatrical, and often tied to religious stories. A monumental fresco from the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza in Spain gives the dragon a completely different kind of presence. It isn’t cute, and it isn’t meant to be. It is a creature designed to make you think about danger, evil, faith, and everything that exists outside the boundaries of ordinary life.
What I like about the exhibition is that you don’t need to know every story behind every creature to enjoy it. Some of these figures are immediately recognizable; others are genuinely strange. And that strangeness is part of the appeal.
Walking through the Cloisters, the objects start to feel less like illustrations of old myths and more like evidence of how people have always tried to give shape to things they couldn’t fully explain. We still do it. The monsters just change.
Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas is on view at The Met Cloisters through October 18, 2026.