365 Days at the Met

  November 23, 2021 Galleries 736 through 742 are closed for renovation, a guard tells me. These are period rooms, one of which is John D. Rockefeller's dressing room. I hope that one will not be altered much - it would be interesting to catch a glimpse of the lifestyles of the rich and famous of the Gilded Age. With the guard's help (the gallery numbers are not always posted), I find gallery 743, which turns out to be a large space filled with furniture and decorative objects from the Aesthetic Movement and the Arts and Crafts Movement (approximately 1870-1920).  A third of the gallery is devoted to the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and while I am not a great Tiffany devotee, I do admire his inventiveness and his desire to produce beautiful works in a number of media (jewelry, ceramics, glass, etc.).  The gallery also holds several pieces of furniture by Gustav Stickley;  the name "Stickley" always makes me think of Neoma Berger, who, like Stickley, came from Syrac...

 November 18, 2021 As I enter Gallery 735, I exclaim, "Oh wow!" under my breath but audibly. It's a large space topped by a dark dropped ceiling filled with recessed lights, but what's most notable are the two huge canvases that line the curving walls that, I assume, were especially built to accommodate them.  The placard says that together, the two canvases are 166 feet long; I would estimate that they are 10 feet high. The paintings depict, on one side, an enormous and imposing facade, in front of which are spouting fountains and a grand approach, and, on the other, a formal, highly symmetrical garden, with a circular fountain in the foreground and a wide, tree-lined walkway leading to another fountain in the distance.  I immediately think, "This can't be anyplace in the United States; there were no buildings that were that large in the early 19th century" (and maybe not now, either). I then think, "It looks like Versailles" - or rather,  the...

November 13, 2021 After having asserted my lack of interest in furniture, I'm abashed when I enter gallery 733 and immediately see three pieces I like quite a lot and find interesting for one reason or another. The first is a very large "French sideboard" (perhaps 6 feet long, 40 inches high, and 20 inches deep)  made by Charles-Honore Lannuier i (the same person responsible for that dreadful bed!) in New York City between 1812 and 1819.  I read that the piece is closely related to French Empire designs; hence, its name. What I especially like about the sideboard is that other decorative elements -- the brass fittings and lion's paw feet -- are subordinate to the grain of the mahogany and mahogany veneer, whose beauty really shines through.  A man near me who's also looking at the piece asks, "How'd you like to have that in your home?" I say I'd love to have the room for it! But I suppose the sideboard's massiveness is partly the point  - it ...

 November 8, 2021 Gallery 732 has more Federal-period furniture, along with silver and glassware from the same era. I don't care for most of it, but this pier table immediately catches my eye because of its relative simplicity and the pleasing contrast between the strict geometry of the rectangular marble top and the graceful curves of the mahogany legs and base, and the mirror at the table's bottom. The table measures about 42 inches wide,  36 inches high, and 18 inches deep and was made in New York City around 1825. According to the placard, pier tables typically were placed in a space between two windows and topped by a mirror. That said, I imagine this table in a front hall, as a place where the home's residents could park their keys and check their appearance in the mirror upon leaving or re-entering the premises. I finally came to grips today with the fact that most furniture just doesn't interest me all that much. Yet, when I first saw this piece, I immediately t...

 November 4, 2021 Gallery 731 displays Classical period objects dating from 1810 to 1830. Most of these are pieces of furniture, but the gallery is also home to an idealized but still recognizable bust of George Washington by Horatio Greenough,  as well as to imported French porcelains (including an ice cream cooler - all hail Dolly Madison!). The latter were highly prized, and led to the establishment of several American porcelain-making firms.  Despite the high quality of the domestic wares and the existence of protective tariffs, most of these American porcelain firms failed; apparently, the imported goods counted far more as status symbols. I like a number of objects, including a beautiful - and simple - dressing table that resembles designs in a French design book of the period. But I chose today's object, a bedstead,  because I find it so altogether laughable, so out of step with modern tastes. Made in New York by a noted furniture-maker, Charles Lannuier, betw...