Metropolitan Museum Of Art

I was in NYC for new years 2008 and only had a few days to see as much as I possibly could. I whizzed through the Met and was simply astonished at the number of types of art and artifacts. I could have easily spent years looking at their collection. It was absolutely fascinating and I can’t wait to go again, hopefully at a quieter time if there even is one at the Met.

The Met is the reason I want to go back to New York!

I didn’t bother with a map and just wandered around taking it all in. Visiting on a rainy weekend morning was a mistake but I still got a chance to see everything. . . just had to be a little more patient. Klimt’s “Girl in White” was one of my favorite finds but the design/architecture section was surprisingly interesting as well.

My many years in NYC have allowed me the opulent luxury of knowing the MET intimately; sometimes going with the intention of seeing just one gallery room that i’m less familiar with, or one artist’s works.

Sunday mornings are bliss and can be preempted or followed by a stroll into Central Park, on Friday and Saturday eves the Astor, Temple of Dendur, and The Charles Engelhard (American Wing) courts are sublime; and suprisinginly few people take advantage of the bottomless well of the MET’s Thomas J. Watson Library.

I was a docent for corporate and student groups for years, so you might expect me to say this, but joining one of the many brilliant gallery tours is also a terrific feast.

(Even the sales area of the MET shop is a treasure trove for great birthday gifts that support the museum’s ambitious goals.)

Be sure to wear comfortable shoes; don’t use flash photography (which flash-by-flash destroys paintings) when you see a restroom, consider using it – they can be quite a hike to find.

So, go—and if you can, go often.

I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see and I don’t.
—Georgia O’Keeffe

I love art. The best part of this place is you can stand a foot away from an original piece of art by Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, etc and see the actual brush strokes. You get a sense of “being there” when you do this. I was awed by the absolute magificence (?). It is definitely a 3 or 4 day trip. When you go, go to one particular area, because you can spend all day just in that section. Check out the weapons & armor and Frank Lloyd Wright. Can’t say enough good things!

that place is huge…how long would take to actually see everything…but i do have to say…my friend and i had a lot of fun…messing around in the musuem…scaring kids…

Though I’ve never been to NY, I am most fortunate to have seen the MET’s exhibit The French Masters on display in Houston. What an amazing day that was. I stood in front of the Monet painting “Waterlillies” and cried. Fewer moments in life are as memorable or as satisfying as when we fall in love with art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is vast, to be sure, and if you have the time and resources to spend several days, it is definitely worth it!

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, when I was old enough to travel on my own I haunted SAM and PAM. Even now, I can remember the buildings and permanent exhibits better than my elementary school or the house I grew up in. I can recall two or three samples of a Monet, a single Rembrandt miniature, a lone John Singer Sargent. When I arrived in NYC the immensity of the museum was hard to appreciate – and after years of enjoyment I still find an overlooked room filled with quiet treasures, a solitary hall with an eye-popping Tiffany tile mosaic, or a newly renovated gallery will take my breath away.

Obviously this is a wonderful place to wander in solitary reverie. However, I’ve been taking my children to the Met for six or seven years now – the eldest now approaching 17, his younger brother 12 – and the sheer scope of the museum offers them a luxury I never had at their age: they can wander and ‘find’ their own personal tastes in art. The setting does require some limits: I encourage ‘inside voices’ and will not tolerate pushing or running, and insist on looking with eyes and not hands. An unexpected benefit of these trips has been their developing propriety outside the museum, and I confess to an inner delight when they stare aghast at less-civil adults in our midst.

With children, lunch and dinner are priorities. The cafeteria is a cross between Ikea and the food court at the local mall – pedestrian, certainly, but far more healthy options than burgers and fries are available in the form of pannini, fresh salads, fuits and veggies, and pasta. Although we prefer to eat at MOMA, with higher priced but more adventurous offerings – bruschetta, pumpkin-leek soup, short ribs, couscous, etc., the Met provides a lunch that is reliably good quality in a clean environment. (Out-of-towners, remember this is NYC.) I’m especially excited to about the newly restored dining room in the Petrie Court, which abuts Central Park. Lunch and dinner as well as afternoon tea service are offered every day and tableside service is pleasant and the indoor sculpture garden is predictably gorgeous.

Yes, yes, by all means take the guided highlights tour the museum offers. I’ve found more than one hidden gem this way. If you are like me, love of antiquity is a huge part of the Met’s draw: the Renaissance, Near-Eastern Art and Egyptian wings will literally give you shivers they are so impressive. The tombs of Perneb and Raemkai have been re-constructed in the Egyptian wing overlooking Central Park. Another can’t miss are the rooms depicting early American life – we call the entrance into the exhibits like these a “time-space continuum” and in an eerie way they are a sort of time travel.

I usually find myself in the European wing or in the Greek and Roman galleries before we leave – but my boys have spent an entire day devouring ancient armor and weapons, or impressive Persian and Chinese textiles, or even the vast musical instruments and ancient household items from what seems like every imaginable culture and time period on Earth. The impact of all of these everyday things, beside the collection of religious and purely decorative objecs is a springboard to deeper conversations about cultural values and personal tastes. I cannot imagine a better way to foster appreciation for diversity than by visiting the Met with a child – and often.
An often missed “extra” included with the price of admission is the Cloisters, in Fort Tryon State Park in Harlem. This is worth the trip. The medeival collection that you can sample at the Met proper becomes immersive when you step into the Cloisters. The Cloisters are filled with medeival architecture: painstakingly assembled private chapels (or cloisters), and gardens, tapestries and paintings, reliquary, tombs and fountains. The religious overtones are fairly stuffy from the perspective of an eight year old boy, but self-serve lunch is available in a charming garden setting, and the sense of stepping back in time is almost magical. When you hit sensory overload at the Met, and the mix of cultures and eras seems too much, the Cloisters will be a serene endpoint to the day. Many times, we’ve ended up returning to the Met when we leave the Cloisters, their effect is so rejuvenating.

Even if you’ve been to the Met dozens and dozens of times, see it with new eyes by bringing a vistor with you. It isn’t an understatement to say the experience can be transcendant.

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