So I finally made my way over the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who also makes it's home on Museum Mile. First thing I have to say is if you ever visit The Met....do not pay admission. There is no admission to get in the museum although they do have a "suggested contribution" ($20 for adults by the way) but it is actually free to get into the museum. I was warned about this before I arrived because they like to charge people to get in anyways and if you don't know....most people usually just pay. I decided that I had no problem giving a contribution but it was not going to be $20. I waited to see what they would charge me...they rang me through as a student ($10) but I simply gave them $5. Very interesting to see how they charge people so much money to get into a free museum.
The outside of the museum.
But whatever, I decided from there the art could speak for itself. It is a very large museum but easily done in an afternoon...if you don't need to look at every single thing. I have recently decided that there a few things that I just cannot look at in museums in North America anymore so that actually cuts down on what I need to see.
Does this look familiar? It should. This is a copy of Antonio Canova's Psyche rarimee par le baiser de l'amour (Psyche revived by Cupid's Kiss). If you go back to my January 2009 posts you will see a picture of the original that I saw while in the Louvre in Paris.
The first thing is Egyptian Art. Don't get me wrong....I love everything about Egyptian Art but now that I have been to Egypt and visited The Egyptian Museum in Cairo (see posts in October 2008) I find it hard to look at these kind of things in NYC. Especially after being in Turkey where many of their art and artifacts and history, have actually been removed from the country and are on display some where else in the world. I think I have just developed the need to see things where they belong.
This actually is a pretty cool piece of Egypt. This is the Temple of Dendur. Like Abu Simbel, this temple would have been flooded when The High Dam was built in Aswan. Abu Simbel of course was rebuilt in Egypt but Dendur was transported and rebuilt here. If only there were camels and tourist police and 45 C (113 F)heat......it would have been just like standing in the Egyptian sand.
The second thing I don't really need to see anymore, almost anything Greek. Partially for the same reason....that I saw it in Greece and that is where it belongs and partially because I am still a little tired of marble statues of Greek gods and warriors and stuff.
Yeah I know, it is only a partial statue but it is all the same.
Don't worry I found a lot of things I really did enjoy looking at and it was $5 well "spent". Here are a few of my very favourites:
This is a room sized portrait of Versailles. When I walked into the room it instantly took me back to December when I was standing looking at this exact view of the palace.
Here it is, my December view of Versailles.
I think I am becoming a fan of Georgia O'Keeffe. This is Grey Tree, Lake George dated 1925.
The African art always gets my attention. This is a Kongo Power Figure from the Kongo Peoples of the Chiloango River region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Angola. It is from the second half of the 19th century.
This is John Christian Dahl's Copenhagen Harbor by Moonlight (yes there is another one of those clever names again). It is dated 1846.
Odds are you are already familiar with Andy Warhol's "pop art". Sometimes his art just looks like giant advertisements for some product. This his is Self-portrait dated 1986. Andy Warhol died in 1987. Next time I am in Pittsburgh I will have to check out the Andy Warhol Museum.
I found this one in a room that was nothing but self portraits by artists (but that isn't where I found the Andy Warhol self portrait). This is Samuel Joseph Brown Jr an American artist who died in 1994. This portrait is dated 1941.
Can you guess this one? If you said Van Gogh you would be right. This is Shoes (clever yet again) dated 1888.
This one really lost a few aspects when I took the picture. This is Kaaterskill Falls for Frank Moore and Dan Hodermasky by artist Stephen Hannock. He has incorporated photographs of tiny figures, an Art in America magazine cover and a red AIDS ribbon to pay tribute to his two deceased friends. Unfortunately those things are hard to see in my photograph of the print but I assure you they are there.
This is Water Lilies by Claude Monet. Water lilies dominate a lot of Monet's work.
This is the view of the city from the roof of the museum.
So there is a little tour of my afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a great place to visit and as usual.....I would recommend it.
Julie
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