Metropolitan Museum of Art

In all the years I've come to NYC and the year I lived here, I have never been to the Met.  I made sure to correct this today.  My partner arrived at 4pm and we headed uptown since the museum was opened until 9pm.  The museum is vast and the collections are overwhelming.  It would certainly make sense to be a member...for NYC residents or frequent travellers to the city...so it could be digested in chunks.

We walked around the first floor for about an hour.  There was literally so much to see we just took the "stroll by" approach and stopped if something grabbed our attention.  We were intrigued by the Greek and Roman statues - so old!  We commented how they made us realize what specks in time our lives are. 

In the distance we both noticed a slumped over statue who looked tired.  We joked that's how both of us looked at times.  When we approached it, we saw that it was Sappho by Comte Prosper d'Épinay.  I couldn't find this statue on the Met's website, but I found a picture on the web.  She looked very masculine in some ways (very short hair) but was obviously a woman in terms of dress and figure. 

What is interesting to me is that I noticed her lyre was missing two strings (and therefore had only two) when we saw her tonight.  This picture depicts four of them.  I'm now wondering what happened to this statue.  Maybe they were removed for a reason?

A special exhibit with the musical instruments of Oceania (the Pacific Islands and surrounding areas) was fascinating.  Some of the instruments are as large as canoes!  The one depicted here is from Papua, New Guinea from the 19th or early 20th century.  It is called a slit gong and is 12 feet, 8 inches long.  According to the Met website,

In many parts of New Guinea, the sounds produced by certain types of musical instruments, played during ceremonies, are said to be the voices of supernatural beings. Among the Iatmul and other Sepik peoples, the most important musical instruments were sacred flutes and slit gongs. The gongs were carved from massive logs that were hollowed out to create a resonating chamber with a narrow, slit-like aperture. Musicians produced a deep, sonorous tone by striking the edges of the gongs with wood beaters. The ends of Iatmul slit gongs are typically embellished, as in this example, with ornate finials depicting totemic animals or other clan emblems, while the sides of many examples are adorned with geometric carvings.

There were dozens of such interesting instruments.

Another interesting special exhibit (there through May 23, 2010) was The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy.  These dozens of statuettes were so expressive. Some wiped tears from their eyes, others held arms to their heads while others held their heads low. They were beautiful and each was unique.  We were lucky to have seen them.  According to the Met website,

The renovation of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon provides an opportunity for the unprecedented loan of the alabaster mourner figures from the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria. Each of the statuettes is approximately sixteen inches high. They were carved by Jean de La Huerta and Antoine Le Moiturier between 1443–1456 for the ducal tomb originally in the church of Champmol, and they follow the precedent of the mourner figures carved by Claus Sluter and colleagues for the tomb of Duke Philip the Bold (1342–1404). The tombs are celebrated as among the most sumptuous and innovative of the late Middle Ages. The primary innovation was the space given to the figures of the grieving mourners on the base of the tomb, who seem to pass through the real arcades of a cloister.

We also enjoyed the armor collection.  It's almost unbelievable that people used these.  They are truly works of art, and seem heavy!  The Met website debunks this last comment.

An entire suit of field armor (that is, armor for battle) usually weighs between 45 and 55 lbs. (20 to 25 kg), with the helmet weighing between 4 and 8 lbs. (2 to 4 kg)—less than the full equipment of a fireman with oxygen gear, or what most modern soldiers have carried into battle since the nineteenth century.

There was a very rotund suit of armor and we learned that was for one of the King Henrys near the end of his life.  There were also suits of armor representing different cultures. It was interesting to be able to see all of the styles in close proximity and make cultural comparisons.

We also saw some beautiful Louis Comfort Tiffany murals and columns.  It wasn't until about an hour later, during a tour, that I had a "duh!" moment regarding this artwork.  During the tour, a French tourist asked "What Tiffany?" when we walked by this area.  It was only then that I learned that Louis Comfort was related to the Tiffany of jewelry fame.  Because he grew up in the presence of emeralds, rubies, and other colorful stones, he later incorporated color into his work because he thought NYC was too gray.  The Tiffany columns we saw in the museum were actually installed in Louis Comfort Tiffany's shore home in Long Island.  Must have been like something out of The Great Gatsby!

After we looked around for awhile, we circled back to the entrance, the Great Hall, for a 6:30 Musuem Highlights tour.  It was a whirlwind, hour tour. 

The first stop we made on the tour was this Statue of Eros Sleeping (3rd century b.c.–early 1st century a.d.).  The guide explained that to the Greeks he was known as Eros and to the Romans he was known as Cupid. (I hope I'm remembering that correctly, but it seems to make sense.)  The back of the statue displayed finely detailed feathers in his wings and curls one could seemingly run fingers through.

The unique thing about this piece is that it is "one of the few bronze statues to have survived from antiquity" (Met website).  The guide explained that this is because bronze was often melted down during wars to be used in weaponry.  Maybe this little guy looked so peaceful that no one wanted to disturb him.

We saw a commode (a chest of drawers, not a toilet) that belonged to Marie Antoinette.  I really enjoyed that, instead of just being plopped down with a sign to describe it, it was staged in a Parisian apartment overlooking the Seine. (One had to imagine the river behind the backlit curtain sheers).  It was very well done.

We saw a contemporary art exhibit by Damien Hirst - a shark in formaldehyde.  At first glance this just seemed bizarre.  The tour guide was good, however, it that she got us to walk around the exhibit.  In doing so, we saw that, at times, there was the illusion of two and somethimes even three sharks in the tank.  I read in an old New York Times article that the original shark disintegrated.  Guess the formaldehyde doesn't keep it forever. 

Ironically, one or two days ago, there was a question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? about "What artist dissects animals for art displays?"  Of the four choices, the only artist I knew was Cy Twombly, and I knew it wasn't him.  One of the other choices was Damien Hirst!  I won't forget him now, even if he didn't dissect this shark.  (Apparently he has artwork with dissected cows and other farm animals.)  But I digress...

In this general exhibit area we saw a Jackson Pollack and the tour guide spent some time talking about him and the particular work with just one, ever-so-slight drop of red paint.  "Planned or accidental?" she speculated.  No one knows.

We left contemporary art to go to the Old Masters - quite a transition!  We saw a haunting self-portrait of Rembrandt.  (I never knew that was just a first name, or maybe I never thought about  it.  His name was Rembrandt van Rijn.)  Rembrandt painted this at age 54 in 1660.  He died 9 years later.

As was the case with the shark, the tour guide made us walk from one side of this portrait to the other.  His eyes seemed to absolutely be following our paces.  The guide explained this was done by painting an asymmetrical face.  She went on to explain what most people can see in the mirror by middle age - our faces are not symmetrical.  I found that painting technique interesting.  Upon closer inspection of the portait, the different features on each side of the face were obvious.

We walked from the Old Masters to an Egyptian temple.  Remarkably, The Temple of Dendur was given to the United States by the Egyptian government in 1965 and awarded to the Met two years later.  This, and many other temples, were completely flooded by the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt.  Because the United States helped save many of these submerged temples, Egypt gifted the US this one from 15 b.c.  It's condition is remarkable, as are the inscriptions in the stone.

We saw more sights during the tour, but I wanted to circle back after the tour was over to see the Frank Lloyd Wright period room that our tour guide simply pointed to when we went passed it.  It was...well...very Frank Lloyd Wright-ish.  (He has a notable signature.)  This is the actual living room, complete with furniture, from the Little House Wright designed in Wayzata, Minnesota, 1912–14.

After our tour we were quite hungry so we headed back downtown on the 6 train for a late dinner.  We stopped for dinner at Hudson Place on 3rd Avenue around 36th.  The atmosphere was nice and the food was good.  After dinner we headed for sleep...with visions of centuries of artwork dancing in our heads.