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These are the dog-days of August.
Hot and humid summer days, when restaurants feature their air-conditioned dining rooms as if they were the special of the day. And retail stores deliberately leave their front doors open during business hours, so that sweaty passersby feel the irresistible blast of cold air emanating from the shops and are pulled in like magnets from the street. For lunch this Wednesday Dan and I dined in air-conditioned bliss in Zeytuna's basement restaurant.
So, I thought, what better place to spend a sultry afternoon in New York, than inside one of my favorite museums in the world: the Metropolitan Museum of Art!
It's a massive building, made up of many wings from several different eras. The original gothic building was built in 1880 and is now completely absorbed into the larger structure. You can see one of its "exterior" brick walls in the European Sculpture Court (check out my shot taken in the Court- it's the one with the guy and his buns, holding the sword). :) Inside on a rainy, cold or unbearably hot day, one can get lost for hours looking at the Met's extensive and varied collections. Pick an era or style of art, depending on your mood. You'll find it there.
For once I skipped the Special Exhibits and made my way past the sweaty crowds of sulking teens with their lecturing parents, the naughty schoolkids taking illicit flash photos and some nattering tour guides. Deep in the museum's permanent collection I found some elbow-room in the American Wing (handy tourist tip: the bathrooms back there are clean and not at all crowded).
Here I spent nearly two hours learning about American silver, furniture, paintings, pottery, stained glass and jewelry. It was complete bliss for a history buff like me, who happens to dig the decorative arts too. I stood enthralled in the Tiffany section. And the period rooms were stunning- particularly the Metcalfe House staircase, which was originally located in a private home in Buffalo, NY (my family's hometown), and removed before the home was demolished. Also in the collections was a silver commemorative cup presented to DeWitt Clinton on behalf of Pearl Street merchants, in 1824, in honor of his work in bringing the Erie Canal project to fruition. (There's some strong personal appeal for me in that: I finished a wonderful book by Peter Bernstein about the Canal not so long ago, so it was still fresh in my mind. I am an upstate New York native who grew up around the Canal. And Pearl Street is near my downtown home). I found that very cool.
Many of the American Wing galleries are closed for renovation. But that didn't stop me from enjoying paintings by John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt. Cassatt impressed me. Her work appeared at the French salons in the 1880s, going toe-to-toe with those of Monet and Renoir. My kind of woman.
When my eyes started crossing from the effort (yup, I'm one of those folks who has to READ about everything I'm looking at) I took a visual rest break and wended my way through the back galleries, and up to the roof garden. It's a rotating sculpture garden exhibit, with terrific views of Central Park. And hot and bright to boot. I suddenly remembered why I had come to the museum that day in the first place.....so after a brief interlude under the hot sun, I ducked down a back staircase and found myself in the newly revamped Greek and Roman galleries.
What a treat!
I had never been especially curious about this era, or its art, before. But I came away stunned, not just by the beauty and craftsmanship of the artworks, but by their age, and the realization that these pieces were done very expertly by people THOUSANDS of years earlier.
Hmmm. It made me rethink the timeline a bit. We Americans do tend to have a short collective memory and often see the past as somehow "primitive", while the future is always assumed to be shiny new and advanced. It's really no wonder the Europeans shake their heads at our brash optimism. It dawned on me (finally) that civilizations do come and go- that the past is rediscovered and recycled, or sometimes completely discarded and something new has then to be invented in its place- something not necessarily better, just different. History is more of a roller-coaster, rather than a cable car, ride it seems.
Hot and humid summer days, when restaurants feature their air-conditioned dining rooms as if they were the special of the day. And retail stores deliberately leave their front doors open during business hours, so that sweaty passersby feel the irresistible blast of cold air emanating from the shops and are pulled in like magnets from the street. For lunch this Wednesday Dan and I dined in air-conditioned bliss in Zeytuna's basement restaurant.
So, I thought, what better place to spend a sultry afternoon in New York, than inside one of my favorite museums in the world: the Metropolitan Museum of Art!
It's a massive building, made up of many wings from several different eras. The original gothic building was built in 1880 and is now completely absorbed into the larger structure. You can see one of its "exterior" brick walls in the European Sculpture Court (check out my shot taken in the Court- it's the one with the guy and his buns, holding the sword). :) Inside on a rainy, cold or unbearably hot day, one can get lost for hours looking at the Met's extensive and varied collections. Pick an era or style of art, depending on your mood. You'll find it there.
For once I skipped the Special Exhibits and made my way past the sweaty crowds of sulking teens with their lecturing parents, the naughty schoolkids taking illicit flash photos and some nattering tour guides. Deep in the museum's permanent collection I found some elbow-room in the American Wing (handy tourist tip: the bathrooms back there are clean and not at all crowded).
Here I spent nearly two hours learning about American silver, furniture, paintings, pottery, stained glass and jewelry. It was complete bliss for a history buff like me, who happens to dig the decorative arts too. I stood enthralled in the Tiffany section. And the period rooms were stunning- particularly the Metcalfe House staircase, which was originally located in a private home in Buffalo, NY (my family's hometown), and removed before the home was demolished. Also in the collections was a silver commemorative cup presented to DeWitt Clinton on behalf of Pearl Street merchants, in 1824, in honor of his work in bringing the Erie Canal project to fruition. (There's some strong personal appeal for me in that: I finished a wonderful book by Peter Bernstein about the Canal not so long ago, so it was still fresh in my mind. I am an upstate New York native who grew up around the Canal. And Pearl Street is near my downtown home). I found that very cool.
Many of the American Wing galleries are closed for renovation. But that didn't stop me from enjoying paintings by John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt. Cassatt impressed me. Her work appeared at the French salons in the 1880s, going toe-to-toe with those of Monet and Renoir. My kind of woman.
When my eyes started crossing from the effort (yup, I'm one of those folks who has to READ about everything I'm looking at) I took a visual rest break and wended my way through the back galleries, and up to the roof garden. It's a rotating sculpture garden exhibit, with terrific views of Central Park. And hot and bright to boot. I suddenly remembered why I had come to the museum that day in the first place.....so after a brief interlude under the hot sun, I ducked down a back staircase and found myself in the newly revamped Greek and Roman galleries.
What a treat!
I had never been especially curious about this era, or its art, before. But I came away stunned, not just by the beauty and craftsmanship of the artworks, but by their age, and the realization that these pieces were done very expertly by people THOUSANDS of years earlier.
Hmmm. It made me rethink the timeline a bit. We Americans do tend to have a short collective memory and often see the past as somehow "primitive", while the future is always assumed to be shiny new and advanced. It's really no wonder the Europeans shake their heads at our brash optimism. It dawned on me (finally) that civilizations do come and go- that the past is rediscovered and recycled, or sometimes completely discarded and something new has then to be invented in its place- something not necessarily better, just different. History is more of a roller-coaster, rather than a cable car, ride it seems.
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