365 Days at the Met

  -  June 25, 2021 I have almost invariably treated gallery 690 as a passthrough, to get from one set of galleries to another. I've been aware that,  along with galleries 691-6 93, the gallery displays a rotating assortment of prints and drawings, but I rarely stopped to look at them with any care Today I realize how much I 've been shortchanging myself. and the visit confirms my sense of the museum's incomparable richness.   The exhibit currently on view is the fourth and last of a series of shows of prints and drawings marking the Met's 150th anniversary. The exhibit focuses on techniques of printmaking (woodcuts, engravings, mezzotints, screenprints, lithographs) and materials used in drawing (watercolor, pastels, chalk, graphite), with examples of each genre, many of which span the centuries. The explanations of these techniques are brief but so lucid I almost understand them.  Among the works I'm  struck by:  a highly detailed woodcut by a 16th ce...

  I have little to add to my previous entries. I began my visits unconvinced that musical instruments should be displayed in an art museum. My doubts have vanished.  I'm stunned by the depth and breadth of the collection and by the physical beauty of some of the items. And I'm grateful for the lucid and interesting texts that accompany many of them. I realize how much the exhibits made me look in wonder, and how much I learned.  These galleries help to bolster my belief that the Met is arguably the greatest museum in the world.

 June 21, 2021 Gallery 684 is the last of the five musical instruments galleries and my undoubted favorite for the incredible richness and diversity of its contents. It's basically organized chronologically, from percussion instruments dating from almost four thousand years ago to the electric guitars of today.  Introduced into  this time sequence are exhibits discussing various factors influencing how instruments were developed (e.g., the use of new materials, trade). Instruments are also juxtaposed with artistic representations of them. For instance, a case holding a lute is positioned next to a 1692 painting by Bartholomeus van der Helst of a woman playing a lute, while a hunting horn is shown next to an elaborate Meissen hunting cup that depicts on its base a man in a yellow jacket (the 1740s equivalent of the red jackets hunters today wear?) playing such a horn.  Finally, I'm thrilled - I'm not quite sure why -  to see the instruments owned by several famou...

 June 17, 2021 Gallery 683 also contains only two main items. The first is a spectacular pair of silver kettle drums, each perhaps 28 inches in diameter and 16 inches high, that was made in Germany in 1779 for the Hanoverian Life Guards of King George III. The placard informs me that George was not only king of England but also an elector of Hanover. The drums bear the royal coat of arms, and,  as one might imagine, were ceremonial instruments that were used in processions marking state events.  The refinement of the silver work is remarkable; you can see the musculature in the bodies of the rampant lion and the unicorn that flank the coat of arms I'm struck by the fact that the coat of arms is replete with fleur-de-lis (a design element that clearly wasn't uniquely French) and bears the French inscriptions "Honi soit qui mal y pense" and "Dieu et mon droit." It's a reminder of the complex interconnections between the Brits and the French.  The second in...

 June 7, 2021 I came to Gallery 682 after spending almost an hour and a half at the Alice Neel show, which was crowded with pictures and people (not to mention waiting in the heat for 20 minutes before the museum opened in order to avoid an even longer wait to get into that show).  So I was intensely grateful that the gallery contains only one instrument, a piano. But what a piano! I'm blown away by the beautiful finish and only slightly disappointed to learn that it's walnut veneer on spruce rather than solid walnut. And I love the lyre-shaped design that supports the pedals - a reminder that a piano is a string as well as a percussion instrument. The piano was made in about 1838 in Vienna by Conrad Graf, who became one of the leading piano builders in that city. Graf pianos were owned by a panoply of greats, including Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms, as well as by Carl Czerny (who, I learned, was Beethoven's student). It's interes...