Today, we are travelling to New York City to visit one of the world’s most famous museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection spans five thousand years of human culture from around the globe. The museum, also known as the Met, was founded in 1870 by a group of businessmen, artists, and thinkers. Their goal was to establish a world-class museum that would make art and art education accessible to the American people.
We will start our visit on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, climbing the many steps to enter the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In this vast room with soaring ceilings, visitors can pick up a map and decide which part of the museum they would like to explore. With more than two million works of art, it is a hard decision. Let’s start with the Greek and Roman art collection.
We examine a marble statue of a ‘kouros’, or young man, which was crafted over two and a half thousand years ago. It is one of the earliest known marble statues of a human from Attica, a region of Greece. The man is standing very straight with his left leg slightly forward. His form is composed of smooth lines and geometric shapes. The statue was found on the grave of a young nobleman from Athens.
To see how Greek art evolved, look at a statue made about a hundred years later. This bronze statue depicts a male discus thrower. However, the artistic style is very different from that of the earlier statue. This work is extremely detailed and lifelike. It demonstrates careful consideration of how the muscles of the body work.
The Met’s Egyptian art collection takes us even further back in time. One such object is a brightly painted coffin that is nearly four thousand years old. It once held the body of a man named Khnumnakht. The painted drawings and inscriptions depict gods of death and rebirth. There are many other examples of funerary art, such as statues, coffins and jewellery, which were used to protect the deceased.
This department requires an entire room to house one important object. The Temple of Dendur is over two thousand years old. It is one of many religious buildings that the Roman emperor Augustus had constructed in honour of Egyptian deities. This temple honours the goddess Isis. Originally, the temple stood about eighty kilometres south of the Egyptian city of Aswan. Egypt gifted it to the United States in 1965.
Visitors can view a variety of artworks. There are treasures of ancient and contemporary art from Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Central and South America. There is also a department dedicated entirely to musical instruments and historical clothing.
The Met’s medieval art collection focuses on pieces created in Western Europe between the 4th and early 16th centuries. This area of the museum has the feel of a church. Many of the objects came from Christian religious centres. For instance, there are stained glass windows from European churches, as well as many items that were used in religious ceremonies.
In the Equestrian Court, a group of sixteenth-century warriors on horseback welcome you. The warriors and horses are wearing finely crafted steel armour. Such protective armour was a symbol of a ruler’s wealth and power. It also demonstrated the exceptional skills of a country’s finest artisans. One protective head covering from Japan dates back to the fifth century. This iron and copper helmet was probably used for ceremonies. There are also two Japanese swords, one long and one short, which date to the 15th century.
It would take a whole day just to explore the Met’s extensive collection of European paintings. The paintings hanging in these large rooms provide an overview of the history of art spanning hundreds of years.
There are many Italian paintings depicting religious stories. But one is especially important: The Italian artist Duccio painted his ‘Madonna and Child’ in 1300. This painting had a huge influence on later European art. Previous paintings depicted Mary and Jesus in a more impersonal and severe manner. However, Duccio chose to depict the very human and emotional interaction between Mary and Jesus.
The Spanish painter Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez created an intriguing portrait of his assistant in 1650. The artist skilfully captured Juan de Pareja’s intense gaze. When the painting was first exhibited, a critic wrote that while all the other works were merely paintings, this one represented truth.
A well-known work by the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau depicts a man playing a musical instrument in a garden. The colourful painting is called ‘Mezzetin’. Watteau is best known for his sensual portrayals of actors and dancers. He was influenced by Italian theatre traditions of the late 17th century.
The English painter J. M. W. Turner painted Venice, from the Porch of the Madonna della Salute around 1835. He specialised in depicting the effect of light on an environment using colour and loose brushstrokes.
Turner’s awareness of changing light also interested a group of nineteenth-century artists known as the Impressionists. The Met’s collection of Impressionist works includes paintings by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Auguste Renoir.
The American Wing of the museum contains fine examples of American art, sculpture, glass, silver, and other design objects. There are also twenty historical rooms showing different periods of American architecture and furniture design.
The Samuel Hart Room was originally located in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and dates back to around 1680. It has white plaster walls and large, ancient pieces of dark wood furniture. It is very dimly lit and has low ceilings. It was used for cooking, eating and sleeping.
One area of the American Wing contains thousands of objects in storage. Storage areas are usually not open to the public in most museums. However, here, many of the objects are stored behind glass, enabling visitors to explore the Met’s rich collection of historical artefacts.
Some of the paintings in the American Wing depict important historical events. One of these is Washington Crossing the Delaware, painted by Emanuel Leutze in 1851. It depicts George Washington and his soldiers during a significant event of the American Revolution.
Others are portraits of individuals. John Singer Sargent’s painting, “Madame X”, caused a stir when it was exhibited in 1884. It depicts a wealthy American woman who lived in France. She was renowned for her beauty. Madame Pierre Gautreau wears a low-cut black dress that shows off her pale skin. Sargent considered this to be his finest work.
Another unusual painting, completed in 1819, takes up a whole room. John Vanderlyn created a panoramic painting of the gardens and palace of Versailles in France. This circular painting completely surrounds visitors standing in the middle of the room in which it hangs. This circular painting was first exhibited in a circular building in downtown New York.
Another area of the museum is named after a major donor: the Robert Lehman Wing. Upon his death, Mr Lehman left the museum with over three thousand works of art. The museum’s curators arranged the collection so that the rooms resemble Mr Lehman’s New York apartment. The many Italian and Northern European paintings are displayed in rooms complete with wall and floor coverings, lamps, and furniture.
So far, all the works we have looked at are from the past. However, the Met also has an excellent collection of modern art. You can see, for example, the colourful work “Reading at a Table” by the Spanish-born painter Pablo Picasso. The artist uses curving shapes and waving lines to depict his lover reading.
‘Cow’s Skull: Red, White and Blue” is a well-known work by the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe. She often painted animal bones due to their interesting shapes and simple beauty.
We will end our visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Roof Garden. Here, visitors can sit and enjoy views of New York City after spending the day learning about art from around the world.
