Sunday, AM - the Met

vangogh@met
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

How can any visit to NYC Museums be complete without a tour of the Met? Clearly one of the most magnificent museums in the world.

I spend my first hour basking in the works of Medieval Europe. Having become a fast devotee of the audio tours, an hour was gone before I even realized it. And finding the voice of a curator who I met through my ex-, Mr. C., on the recording was also a pleasant surprise. And my last two hours there were divided between visits to the special exhibitions of the drawings of Vincent Van Gogh and the splendors of medieval Prague.

Van Gogh was simply fascinating. With over 1,000 works attributed to him in his relatively brief (10 year) career as an artist, did you know that over half are drawings? In fact, the earliest portion of his career was exclusively drawings, because he believed that it was necessary to master drawing before attempting painting. This nearly perfectly apportioned exhibition takes you from his earliest works right up to his final drawings and you not only travel with him across the breadth of his geographical wanderings in the low countries and France, but you also see clearly the evolution of his genius and the obsessive passion he felt toward his art.

My final stop was a leisurely tour of the works from Bohemia in the time period of 1347 to 1437. It was a time when Charles II and his followers sought to make Prague the cultural rival of Paris and the other great cities of Europe. To that end, artists, architects, and artisans of ever type were imported, trained, and commissioned to build and embellish churches, castles, and public spaces with art. The exhibit includes everything from manuscripts, altar pieces, reliquies, and vessels of various types to monumental sculpture and architectural elements. I confess that I was rather "arted-out" at this point and so my focus was very selective. I would enter a gallery and perhaps only spend time with 1 or 2 of the works. A fine way to end the weekend!