365 Days at the Met

 A friend told me that when she was growing up, the period rooms were her favorite galleries at the Met. It's pretty obvious from the foregoing that they don't have the same appeal for me. One reason is that, for the most part, the rooms don't represent the way the homes' owners actually lived, but instead, how the museum's curators imagined that they lived (though the curators' judgments were based, of course, on expertise and research, not just imagination),  Most of the furniture and the decor isn't original to the homes; the pieces come from the same periods as the homes, but that's as far as authenticity goes. Moreover, as I understand it, these objects were selected because they appealed to the curators' sense of good taste. One can't possibly see the rooms as representative rooms of the period, but rather, as examples of the way that members of the landowning and mercantile elites might have lived.  This makes the educational scope of the

  August 29, 2024 Gallery 742,  the last of the American Wing galleries I've visited this second time around, is the dressing room from a house on West 54th Street that was owned by Arabella Worsham, the mistress and later wife of railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington and then purchased by John D. Rockefeller.  It's notable for its elaborately carved and inlaid cabinetry, which Worsham commissioned from a well-known New York cabinetmaker and which lines one whole wall and part of another. Worsham could check her outfit in two full-length mirrors; a third mirror is suspended over a marble-topped dresser. The dressing room measures, I'd estimate, 22 feet by 18 feet- considerably larger than my living room, much less bedroom. It has plenty of drawer space for folded garments. But I wonder if all my hanging garments would fit inside.  I have too many clothes!

  August 27, 2024 At last I find in gallery 741 a period room I really like, a "stair hall" measuring perhaps 20 feet by 18 feet from a house built in Buffalo in 1883-1884. Is it the fact that it's lit well enough for me to see it reasonably clearly? The warmth of the cherry and oak wood paneling? The pilasters and striated grain of the wood veneer above the mantel, echoed in the spindles and pilasters lining the staircase? The cushioned benches flanking the fireplace (an arrangement called an "inglenook," I learn) that appear to offer comfortable seating beside the hearth? The light-colored stone of the fireplace itself? The varied geometric shapes - squares, rectangles, circles, ovals, and diamonds - in the paned windows? (The windows in the stairwell employ a different, equally refined geometric design that largely consists of octagons enclosed in circles.) The low ceiling that conveys a feeling of coziness?  Or - and this is less flattering to me - is it the

  August 25, 2024 Gallery 740, the Gothic Revival library, comes from a house built in 1859 in a residential area of Newburgh, New York. At that time, Newburgh was viewed as a leafy retreat for New Yorkers of means; now it's known as a city where many residents struggle with poverty. The room is so dark that it's hard to see what elements might be described as "Gothic," other than the pointed arches framing the windows. Perhaps the elaborately carved chairs, whose backs form a pointed arch, and the ornamental carving on the bookcase might also qualify. None of the furniture is original to the house, however. More interesting to me than the room itself is the museum's description of it. It notes that Gothic revival homes, in contrast to Italianate villas, were meant to signify a preference for a quiet, intellectual lifestyle, and in such homes, the library often served as the main parlor. Of course, in an era where there were no televisions or computers or other fo

  My first reaction on seeing gallery 739 was, "Yet another dark period room." I later asked a guard whom I heard commenting to another visitor about the need for a flashlight  why the rooms are so dark. Her first response: "To show how they were back then." But this can't be completely true, since many rooms had large windows, albeit these are sometimes shrouded in deep crimson curtains. I think it has more to do with the absence of backlighting behind the windows in most of the rooms and the difficulty of retrofitting the spaces. In any case, this room, formally called "The Richard and Gloria Manney [again] John Henry Belter Rococo Revival Parlor," is intended  to  illustrate how a parlor in the home of an affluent family might have looked in the mid-1850s. A number of the architectural elements actually come from a mansion built around 1850 in Astoria, Queens for a wealthy fur and hat merchant.  It's interesting to think of Astoria as a highly d

  August 4, 2024 Gallery 738, the "Richard and Gloria Manney Greek Revival Parlor " is presumably named after the donors whose gift enabled the creation of this space. The descriptive placard makes clear that, perhaps more than any other period room, this room relies on the imagination and knowledge of Met curators working with pattern books of the mid-1830s, the period the room is intended  to reflect. Only two architectural details are authentic to that era: the entrance, which is framed by tall Ionic columns, and the black mantelpiece. The room was designed with two full-length windows, but is nonetheless quite dark.  The space, which measures perhaps 35 feet long and 25 feet wide, showcases a suite of furniture that includes a round table at the room's center, a marble-topped chest and secretary, a number of chairs, and two long day beds that are mirror images of each other. Much (all?) of the furniture, made of mahogany, came from the home of a New York City attorney