Meet Me at the Met

Friday, January 18, 2012 – Meet Me at the Met

A wicked wintry wind whisked me from the subway station at 86^th and Lexington Avenue to the stately stone steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue. In other words (without alliteration), it was so damn cold and windy out that I practically ran the seven blocks from the subway to the museum.  The Met’s Great Hall was as impressive as I remembered, and it was packed with people from around the globe, judging by the number of languages I heard.  As soon as Audrey, my friend and former piano teacher, arrived, we set out for Henri’s exhibit.  Matisse: The Search for True Painting focuses on the artist’s process of creation.  It was a fascinating glimpse into the development of his style and his working and re-working of certain compositions.  Matisse has always been a favorite of mine.  I admire the way he seems to combine drawing and painting in his canvases.  Not surprisingly, the show stirred up some of my latent desire to paint again.  I can foresee a time, perhaps in a couple of years, when I’ll venture back into the studio. 

Elisa, who works in the development department of the Met, was able to join us for lunch.  She brought us down to the basement, to the staff cafeteria, where reproductions of some of the museum’s masterpieces adorn the walls.  Afterwards, Audrey and I spent a while perusing the offerings of the museum shop before she had to catch a bus across the park, then the subway down to Penn Station to take the Long Island Railroad back home.  Did I mention that she’s 80 years old and still teaches piano, still performs regularly, still comes into the city frequently to attend concerts and visit museums, and still travels around the world to visit friends?  She is an amazing woman, and I hope that I’ll be as energetic twenty years from now. 

Since I still had a couple of hours in the museum before Elisa could leave, I decided to find a comfortable spot to sit with a cup of coffee and a book I’d brought along.  Since the Met is enormous, I put my navigational skills to work finding the café in the American Wing.  Along the way, I passed through Greek and Roman sculpture, the Medieval collection, and American decorative arts.  It was an unexpected treat to see some Tiffany stained glass windows and a Byzantine-inspired glass mosaic column set alongside the café.  Returning to the Great Hall, I took a slightly different route.  This time, a section of an immense Ionic fluted marble column caught my eye.  The column with its scrolled capital was so large that I stopped to read the description.  It turned out to be a Hellenstic (300 BC) column from the Temple of Artemis in Sardis (in present-day Turkey). 

Although DC has some excellent museums, none of them can compare to the Met in terms of the breadth and depth of their collections.  I overheard someone saying that if you stood for one minute in front of every object in the museum’s collection, it would take more than ten years to see everything.  It’s not hard to believe.  Now I’m especially looking forward to my upcoming art history course at George Mason to provide a focus for my next visit to the museum.

Because it was Friday, the museum was open late.  So when Elisa finished work, we strolled up to the Balcony Bar, overlooking the Great Hall, for a glass of wine and a little snack.  My California Syrah was delightful – nose of dark chocolate and blackberries, extremely smooth on the palate.  Although our two glasses of wine and a plate of three chocolate-covered strawberries cost more than last night’s dinner, it was a perfect ending to a day at the Met.