Week of July 18th 2011: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The next day, I finally got to explore some of New York City. Elissa had to wait for some couches to be delivered to her apartment (she had only moved in a couple of weeks earlier after all) so we got lunch and then she left me to explore the Met on  my own.

To be honest, I kind of like exploring museums like this on my own. It's such a big museum with so many varieties of art that it's nice to just get lost and figure out what kind of things I like best. I quickly found a few things that I really loved about the Met. Since this trip was a while ago, my memory is a little fragmented so this post is going to jump around a little bit.

The thing I love most - was just the age of the building. One of my favorite things in the old European museums are the worn down steps that show just how many people have traversed over them though out the years. Another thing that I really loved about the Met were the buildings inside the building. Apparently when the Met was built, it was significantly smaller than it is now. In order to expand, they just continued to build around it, leaving the original pieces intact. This makes for a really cool aesthetic where you can often see parts of the original. I was so fascinated by this. It is so fun to see history as part of your surroundings - it's why I love the Paris museums so much as well.


I continued to wander around the museum in no particular order. The photography wing had a highlight that the nerd in me went crazy for. There was a wall that was covered in identical photos of the Lincoln side of a penny at different stages of oxidation. I was so amused by how different the penny could look depending on how far along it was. I think the exhibit itself focused on those kinds of intricacies in every day life.

I was excited to see Degas' ballerina statue though. I had learned about it in art class years ago and saw it at the Musee D'Orsay the first time I went. I knew the museum was under renovation so I figured this was where the original was hanging out until the renovation was done. I would soon find out how wrong I was.

Near the end of my trip to The Met I just wandered around the contemporary and modern art wings. Like I had mentioned before, contemporary art has really been growing on me. It definitely made my day to see a statue of a man crouched against a wall. It had a very fun Nightcrawler vibe to it and even though it's missing the tail, I decided to think of it as the Nightcrawler statue.


I really wish I had taken more notes about the museum when I went because I'm at a huge loss for things to say even though I know I really loved it. I guess I'll just scatter some pretty pictures through this post and call it a day.