Early start at the Met

~ lcbull2003

This tour (yes, another one!) was a real treat: an hour and a half in the Metropolitan Museum of Art before it opened to the public at 10am. There were five of us with a staffer who guided us around at a fair clip – it’s not a greatest hits tour: more a smattering of interesting things chosen by the guide that highlight the collections and get you around the different areas.

So we saw modern and traditional works in the Asian Galleries, arms and armour – including their current special exhibit about the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I called The Last Knight (which I found more interesting than I thought as our guide gave some really good explanations of the pieces themselves and their social context), some contemporary art pieces, but also Washington Crossing the Delaware (iconic, if not historically accurate), the Impressionist galleries, Rembrandt and Vermeer. And we saw sculpture being dusted and all those other things that happen before the public stampedes in.

After our tour we stayed on and wandered around in the near east and asian galleries for a bit before being arted out for the day!

Here’s a smattering:

Wet, cold and almost really this grey as we arrived
An entire museum to ourselves!
Modern japanese piece playing with light and reflections in the glass bubbles – inside the bubbles is a stuffed deer
Jousters in the arms and armour gallery
A tight fit!
In the sculpture gallery: Rodin’s The Hand of God
Contemporary japanese pottery: a large contemporary piece by Tsujimura Yui
A luohan – protector of Buddhism
This little pig comes from 14th century Java
And this exquisite little tea bowl is from 13th century China
This piece made me smile – but unfortunately I don’t remember where in our museum travel I came across him – late breaking news: I found him – he’s a cypriot man carved somewhere between 475 amd 450 BC
Of the many impressionists we saw here’s Monet, The Manneporte near Étretat, painted in 1886

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