NEW YORK CITY — The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that it will be adding 30,000 square feet of new skylights over its European paintings galleries. “It’s only with natural light that one can get the full range of colors, the quality of depth and the serenity,” says Keith Christiansen, the John Pope-Hennessy chairman of the department of European paintings. “The quality of light in the galleries has a psychological effect. We have become so used to the dramatic effects of artificial light, where a light engineer has come in and they’ve made a decision of how that picture should look and they impose that vision on the picture. It’s the natural light that liberates paintings from that tyranny.” The four and a half year project will necessitate the storage of many works, though the collection’s masterworks will be moved to other viewing galleries within the museum for the project’s duration. For more information, www.metmuseum.org or 212-535-7710.