Metropolitan Museum of Art
A spectacular collection of art spanning 5000 years.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (commonly known as the Met) is the foremost art museum in America with over two million works from across the world, of which tens of thousands are on view at any given time.
The Met's origins date back to 1866 in Paris, when a group of Americans led by lawyer John Jay agreed to create a 'national institution and gallery of art' to bring art and education to the American people. Under Jay’s leadership, support and resources for the project grew, and in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was incorporated and slowly began to collect historic pieces. Ten years later, the museum opened to the public at its current site on Fifth Avenue.
There are many stand-out exhibits within the huge gothic structure, including the awe-inspiring Temple of Dendur (an Egyptian sandstone temple painstakingly rebuilt in the Sackler Wing), and the Asian Wing, with its fascinating collection of complex and intricate works, including Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave Off Kanagawa’.
And during late 2011, the museum's intriguing New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands , Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia finally opened to the public.
World-famous artwork such as Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Caravaggio’s The Musicians and Degas' Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, are given their dues here, supported by a labyrinthine maze of wondrous pieces set in a tranquil environment. This is most definitely a place of thought and reflection, enabled further by strategically placed leather and soft fabric seating.
The newly revamped American Wing is a clear highlight, and virtually a museum in itself. The renovations within the wing include new touch-screens, providing more detailed information about the surrounding objects. Enter the exhibit through a three-storey colonial facade to explore a huge selection of paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts. Four rooms are dedicated to the latter, consisting chiefly of colonial furniture and silver, laid out as though in an authentic colonial residence.
Indeed, the American Wing has something for everyone including the celebrated 1851 painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. This gargantuan depiction of America ’s greatest General is perhaps also its most famous canvas.
Hidden gems such as Sarah Goodridge’s tiny but salacious portrait of her breasts (Beauty Revealed) can be found in section 754. Goodridge intriguingly sent her self-portrait to famed lawyer Daniel Webster, whom she had painted twelve times, causing a stir among academics and art-lovers which has long endured.
Like most museum cafés, the eateries within the Met are expensive. Outside the front steps, however, stands a perfectly placed hotdog cart ($2 at time of writing). From there it’s just a few steps to Central Park for some fresh air.
The museum’s treasures could be described at length, but it’s far better to go exploring yourself. There’s a story behind each piece of art, an artisan’s hopes and dreams carved into every sculpture, and the Met captures this perfectly.
