Return to the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- the Megablog

It's been a while since my last visit to New York.  Three years apparently.  One of the things I really wanted to do again was visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art again.  The last time I was there, a full day of staring at artifacts wasn't enough to take it all in, and I was pretty sure my brain had melted before the end anyway.  This time, I was pretty sure I knew how to pace myself.

a piece of one of the many wonders at the Met

I started with the greek and roman era.  Marble busts, marble statues, rooms and rooms of it.

And the pottery.  I realized that when I think of the classical theme in my head, I picture gods and war scenes, so this one jumped out at me because it was based on a fisherman.

When you go to the Met, your eyes and mind cannot take it all in during the span of a day trip.  I quickly realized that what I absorbed on my first visit 3 years ago -- my eyes had locked onto everything I had seen before in pictures and magazines and shows, happy to see the classic rare treasures with my own eyes.  On my second trip, I quickly recognized and remembered some things from my past visit, but my eyes sought out something new -- the things that were different that what I expect from those pictures and magazines, and shows.  The bust below is actually a bit uncommon for the smoothness of her eyes.  In most, the eyes are placed using a second material, such as limestone, that do not withstand the ages, making this bust a beauty amongst the remains.

This next bust shows the more typical limestone eyes and cuts a beautiful figure on an intricately weathered stone.

And if you stop to look at every trinket, you would need days, but some just catch your eye.  They had this labelled as a two headed creature, type unknown.  I remain convinced they are double heading snapping crocodiles.  World history would be different if I had gone into archaeology (not necessarily for the better)!

I wandered out of the time of the greeks into a more modern era.

But it turns out modern art is still too modern for my tastes.  All I could think about when I saw this was the poor mother who has to explain to her friends why they really shouldn't go to her child's show.

I found a favorite piece from my last trip, the Demidof table, which actually isn't all that old.  1845 to be exact, carved in Italy for a russian prince with a bit of a bad reputation, but a beautiful piece.

I came across a man sitting quietly and drawing one of the statues in charcoal.

Turns out he looked talented enough to be on display himself!  Check out that drawing!

This is perhaps the oldest painting I saw.  It's a funerary painting from Egypt around 60AD.  It's amazing that something as fragile as a painting survives 2000 years.  I fear our only legacy will be plastic.

And speaking of Egypt, it's always fun to visit the Egyptian wing.  Once again there are the more classical sarcophagus figures...

...and the likes of which I have never seen in my books.  I acutally think I like the mummy with the lifelike painting more than the traditional form.

I am used to thinking of Egyptian culture as being adorned in gold, such as this below.

However, I honestly didn't realize they had glasswares, like these shown below.

Nor did I associate Egyptian relics with the brightly colored artifacts of adornment seen below.

There were rows upon rows of carved Egyptian figurines, but this little section of cobalt blue ones caught my imagination. 

And in a "yick" moment, there were shelves and shelves of these.  Creepy little carved scarab beetles.  Yuk.

This room has hardly changed since I was here last.  I had to ask -- is this just a fake display?  They wouldn't seriously have gotten all these stones from Egypt, would they?  Well, it turns out, yes, they did.  This is the Temple of Dendur, built in Egypt, under Roman rule, 15 years before Christ.  For millenia it sat peacefully overlooking the Nile.  However, with the construction of the Aswan Dam, it was to be flooded and lost.  Since the United States assisted Egypt with relocation of several ruins threatened by the damn, the Temple was given to the United States as a gift from Egypt in 1965 (Jaqueline Kennedy was on hand for the occassion).  The Met took possession of the temple in 1975, promising to build a room in which the temple would be protected from the elements (and further vandalism and grafitti such as that which adorns its walls from the 1800's), and also in a location where it could be seen even at night, through the windows, when in Central Park.

The temple isn't too lonely -- Cleopatra's needle, another gift to the U.S. stands in Central Park to this day.

I walked through one door and found I had left Egypt and arrived in America's Industrial Revolution.  If you were a Vanderbilt, this was what your clock would look like in New York in the mid 1800's.

And this is the kind of chair you would sit your rich butt in.

The American wing hadn't changed much since my last visit, so I went on a mission to find the Masters.  En route, I was happy to find this, one of my favorite statues in the whole museum.  It HAD been moved since my last visit (9 days out of 10 I can't find my car in the parking lot, but I remember the placement of 1 object out of 2.4 million in a building I saw once three years ago...my brain is wierd).  Again, from the 1800's, but I like it.  The children are Apollo and Diana, the woman, Latona, mother of the two gods.

I lost a few hours in the European Art Collection.  Literally.  I couldn't find my way back out of the maze of paintings.  Here is a classic Rembrandt.

And another not so classic (ok all Rembrandts are classic, but a female nude was an unusual painting for him).  This is "The Toilet of Bathsheba," a somewhat erotic rendition of a biblical tale.

Overall it turns out I was in a Monet mood.  Monet paintings look more beautiful and lifelike the further you are away from them in my opinion.  I am still a little too close to get the best effect, but look at how well done the reflections are (and not the one on random dude's head -- he was just going to stand there all day so he got in the picture).

Up close it's easier to see the individual brushstrokes that create the effect.

Another Monet...the water in this reminded me of my Bermuda days.

One of my favorite paintings however remains Monet's "Bouquet of Sunflowers."  The museum notes a letter from Van Gogh, saying Gaugain saw this painting by Monet but preferred Van Gogh's, but Van Gogh believes Monet's is the better.  While I like Van Gogh's Sunflower very much, Monet's just always makes me smile.

And speaking of Van Gogh, he had many gorgeous works on display himself.

Pablo Picasso is so known for his bright and bold works, but my favorite piece of his is this almost sepia simple image of "A Woman in White."

Ah, here is one of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, but I believe the one referenced in his letter is a vase of 15 sunflowers.  I quite like this one though.

Degas is most famous for his ballet scenes.  There were quite beautiful.  

The Degas images that I was most drawn to though were those with the bold, charcoal outlines.

One last Degas to end the day.  The Met.  Always a great experience!

59 Hours and a Plan -- The Met

Going back a few weeks, before the events of Christmas took over life and the blog, I was talking about my quick trip to New York, which one must do while in Bermuda because it's only a 2.5 hour flight.  As well, one visiting New York could easily tack on a couple of days and visit Bermuda -- staying in one of the cozy homes advertised on vrbo.com.  I had finished the events of Day One -- The Guggenheim, Central Park, the Macy's Christmas displays, and a walk through Manhattan to see the Christmas lights.  Last night I watched the movie "New Year's Eve" and smiled as I recognized specific places and even the some of the same Christmas displays that I photographed on that walk.

On Day 2 in New York, the main plan was to go see the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.  I now knew the subway route, and decided to take the train rather than walk it, which would also allow me to take a few daylight photos of Grand Central Station, and wander through some of the shops there.  It was inside there that I found an artist's stand called "Heart Art" and saw the perfect Christmas ornament reminding me of Jaycena -- a heart with a flannel "Love" pattern on it.

Grand Central Station

After that I hopped on the train and headed towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art, located at 1000 Fifth Avenue, not far from the Guggenheim in the area named Museum Mile.

The entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Looking out on one of the wings from inside -- the building itself if a work of art

Gravestone marker in the Roman/Greek room

I could not wait to get my geek on and study all of the displays.  I really had no idea what I was getting into.  I expected to be able to see thousands of things.  After an hour I had not yet worked my way through the Greek and Roman Art room, there was no time to read even just the label on each item.  The Met has amassed artwork covering 5000 years of human history and is divided up into American, Greek and Roman, Islamic, Oceanic, Egyptian, European, Asian, Arabic, and periods such as Medieval, Modern, Contemporary, 19th Century, and style including sculpture, painting, drawings,

A Roman hairclip -- making the bun sexy

photographs, plus instruments and decorum of all times.  Most of the art doubles as an archaeological treasure.  Like I said, I expected to see thousands of things.  I quickly realized there were hundreds of thousands of things in plain site.  When I actually looked into it, the museum is one of the world's largest and has one of the most significant collections.  There are actually two MILLION artifacts in its permanent collection, divided up into the 17 sections.  Plus 3 special exhibits, which were jewellery, an ancient Asian culture that I can no longer recall (told you I was overwhelmed), and my personal favorite, Girls and Cats.

the "headholder" -- eww

There are simply more stories housed in the Met than one can imagine in the span of a day, or even a few days.  After looking at a few hundred Greek and Roman grave markers, each exquisite and well preserved, many larger than me, I felt a pang of disappointment and decided they must be plaster casts, or they would all be under glass to ward off sticky little hands of its many young visitors.  On speaking to a staff member, she informed me that I was incorrect.  There is only a very small number of replicas in the collection, almost every piece is a genuine artifact in its original form.  Including the gilded head-holder that still houses the skull of a leader beheaded for Christianity.  I could have lived without that bit of knowledge!  But it did make the experience even more incredible, that I was looking at authentic pieces, carved and crafted our of the deepest human experiences -- love, grief, war, passion, death, religion...  I gave up photographing after a while -- although it is worth mentioning that you could photograph almost anything in the museum, including Picasso's, Renoirs, Rembrandts, etc.  The special exhibits were off limits, but everything else was fair game.  So I did

Cabinets with thousands of things

take a lot of photos of little things that caught my eye.  I can't include them all here, but there were Faberge eggs, ancient texts, some Egyptian structures rebuilt, rooms completely decorated in the period, be it French, English, or American -- and yes, the French rooms were literally gilded from ceiling to floor.  The arms collection is famous, ranging from all types of suits of armours and swords, and if there were guns I missed them -- easy enough to do in the maze of the Met.  The Sculpture hallway was fantastic, one called Winter really caught my eye.  The paintings were astounding.  There is just something about standing

Rooms with hundreds of cabinets with thousands of things

in front of famous works of art -- you realize that millions of people have gazed at the same thing as you, over centuries.  It makes the world feel like a much smaller place.

Winter

Picasso -- although more stunning are his works before he went all abstract

A beautiful fake -- the real one sits atop the grave of Elizabeth Duvenuck outside of Florence

Just a couple of full knights and steeds in armour on display

So that was my day at the Met.  But...I was only 28 into my 59 hours so there was still ground to cover.  I went for a fabulous dinner at an Italian restaurant, and headed on to the Empire State Building.  I apologize for the poor quality of this photo, but am including it because I never knew which building was the Empire State building in the New York skyline.

The Empire State Building is the colorful one with the needle on top in the NYC skyline

The interior of the Empire State building has recently been restored to its original shiny glory.

Lobby at the Empire State Building

Due to the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting happening at the same time, the lineups really were not too bad.  There is an open air patio that goes around the building allowing you to see NYC as far as the eye can see in all directions.  You can see all that you really need to see by going to the first level -- buying a ticket to go to the very top just gives you the same view, slightly higher, but behind glass.

View from the Empire State Building

Now that the Empire State Building was checked off the list, I decided to walk back to the Hotel Mela via Times Square.

Busy busy NYC

All lit up like Vegas

I have to admit I really enjoy all of the lights

I even stopped to get a drawing done for $5 by a street artist.

My trip souvenier

The next day I had time to pick up a few items, enjoy the last tastes of American civilization (Starbucks), post some items to Canada, and make my way back to Bermuda.  59 hours was just perfect to cross off the last few items on my NYC to do list.

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