Shows (1 of 12)
Saturday was a 1 of the gifts I had given to D for Xmas, which was a day in the city. The first stop of the day (after lunch) was going to be the Met. The idea was for us to have a full day in NYC, starting with a quick lunch, a trip to the Met, dinner, then a show. The 3 pieces (after lunch) added up to form our plan to spend the day here. When we woke up it was snowing, which made the drive in easy and made the city much more charming than it normally would be. Maybe a little messy, but all in all I think I like the city better with an inch or so of snow on the ground.
After a quick stop at Whole Foods for lunch, we trekked across Central Park in the snow and made our way to the Met for our first stop of the day. Museum link here:
http://www.metmuseum.org/
As a note of clarification, "shows" refers to any show, museum, play, concert, performance, etc.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Just about a year ago we had spent a few days in DC going to museums and after that I made a list of places I want to go sooner or later. The Met was more or less 1 of the places on the top of the list. I was originally going to let D pick between this and the American Museum of Natural History across the park, but after looking at the wiki pages for both of them I opted for the Met. The other would be better with the kids and this would be better just the 2 of us.
Quick stop outside for a photo op before we headed into the warmth of the old building. You can see the banner for the Jerusalem exhibit but that would proved to be absolutely mobbed so we didn't spend any time in it.
The wiki page says there are 17 sections of the museum which is probably impossible to do in a given day. We went in with the intention of seeing the Asian wing and the Impressionist stuff. I find Asian art pretty bipolar in the hit/miss category and for the most part, I wasn't overly amazed by what I saw here. In contrast, the Philly Museum of Art had a really good Asian section whereas here was a lot of standard stuff. I mean to be fair, the Met has over 2 million pieces so in a way it serves as an art library. And like a library where all the books are not all winners, the same can be said of the pieces here.
With that said, of course there was some pretty cool stuff here. The numerous Buddha versions through Asia are always interesting to look at. I forget the details of this but the amount of effort spent on this stuff is always pretty awesome. Look ma no hands:
At the very end there was a relatively small room on the 3rd floor above the Asian wing with some finer arts, which we almost didn't go into. If I were to go back I would spend most of my time in the Asian section here. I always enjoy the jade and ivory carvings. These are 2 different kinds of jade in 1 of the display cases:
This upper section of the Asian wing had a lot of cool things and much less of the standard scroll poems/paintings and vases. Here is a piece of decadence from ancient Asia. A snuff box made of ivory with a coral stopper at the top.
After the Asian wing we made our way to the Impressionists, which are the names many of us are familiar with: Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro, Degas, etc. My option was to see the Asian stuff and D wanted to see the Impressionists. There is also an early European wing but honestly I can only look at portraits and pictures of Christ and/or angels for so long. I also find with that stuff you need the history of it, as political statements were often made through painting and if you don't have the back story a lot of times all you see is a fat angel with a little penis.
I digress.
Probably one of the most famous ones if this Van Gogh painting of...well, himself:
Beyond that there were something like 30 rooms of paintings from this era alone. I think there must be 100 different Degas paintings here (D says 20). Some of them are good, some of them maybe not so good, but in all it forms some semblance of a collection of the time period. Aside from the fact my legs & feet were tired, it was an interesting breeze through the galleries. I think I like the pointillism stuff (below) the best. I also tend to like the Dutch paintings as well.
We took a break after this and got coffee/tea and a banana. Why do French fries smell so good? We sat in the cafeteria in the basement and talked a bit while we took a break. Between the walk across the park and the walking in the museum we had been on our feet for 4+ hours. It adds up. So it was nice to take a load off.
Doing the mental math we figured we had a little time to hit another small section and someone had posted on my Facebook pic of D (up at the top) that they really liked the Armor and Arms section. So we swung through that quickly and took it in before we left. The guns are of little interest to me and the swords are sort of redundant after the first batch. But the Japanese stuff was cool as hell. I mean check out the absolutely awesome style of this war helmet:
I also think the full coats of armor are pretty wild and show some serious craftsmanship. The chain mail armor is really cool stuff. In all that section was pretty small so we were able to hit that and be out the door in plenty of time to walk back across the park and make it in time for dinner.
The cool thing about the Met is that you can pay whatever you want. They suggest $25 but I guess in theory you could pay $1. We decided that $30 for the 2 of us was fair, and we were fine with that for the 4+ hours we were there. I think the trip is worth it, I very mush recommend it for anyone who likes any of this stuff on any level. You can pick & choose what you want to see and like I said, you pay what you think it's worth. I have to imagine we'll be back some day, maybe even this year if circumstances line up right.
Show #1 in the books. Of all the 12s I have in line this year, I imagine this one will be the easiest to knock out.
