365 Days at the Met

 May 18, 2024 When I enter this room (gallery 711), which was taken from a house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that was built in 1695-1700 for John Wentworth and his wife, I'm immediately struck by how much grander it seems than the Ipswich room, in spirit if not in scale. (The Wentworth room appears to me to measure about 35 feet long and 20 feet wide.)  For one thing, the fireplace, set against the long wall, is framed by beautiful dark wood paneling. (Such paneling may have lined the other walls as well, but if so, it has disappeared.) The single placard presents only very basic information about the room, but it includes  a QR code, which I dutifully scan, and to my surprise, once I've joined the Met's wifi, the website opens and contains much more detail.   I have to remind myself that, as with other period rooms, the furnishings in this room didn't come from the Wentworth home. Instead, they reflect  Met curators' knowledge about furniture styles and t...

 May 17, 2024 Gallery 710 is primarily a pass-through to reach the next period room, but it contains two display cases holding 21 items - among them,  dishes,  porringers, tankards, and a candlestick - that some reasonably prosperous colonists used in everyday life. The large majority of these goods were imported, mainly from England. But I see a blue-and-white plate painted  with a scene of a house on a body of water, with two sailing boats in the background, two ducks in the foreground, and what might be an oversized stork nesting on the chimney, and I think, "That looks like it's Dutch."  It is. I'm surprised to see two small porcelain teacups with saucers that were made in China; apparently, colonial Americans, like their British contemporaries, quickly developed a taste for tea and for attractive utensils for serving it.  Two dishes imported from England catch my eye. Both depict the royals and are painted in blue and umber against a white ground....

May 16, 2024 The first thing I note about Gallery 709, a period room that comes from a house in Ipswich, Massachusetts that was built around 1680, is how dark it is. Its two small leaded glass windows with triangular  panes are actually quite decorative (you can join the triangles in your mind to form diamonds, six-pointed stars, and possibly other geometric shapes as well), but  they don't admit much light. A low-beamed ceiling also makes for a closed-in feeling.  But as I then notice, the room is actually quite large - perhaps 30 feet on each side. It would appear that the space served multiple functions: parlor, sitting room, likely kitchen as well. A large brick-lined fireplace occupies one wall, and two long-handled pans are on view One I immediately recognize as a warming pan. The other, according to the signage, was used for cooking; its long handle prevented the person using it from having to stand too close to an open fire.  A canopied bed occupies a corner ...

 May 10, 2024 Gallery 708 is reached by a glass-walled elevator (shades of a Hyatt hotel!) that carries me to the third floor. The museum is absolutely jammed today (a new Costume Institute show at the end of the Met Gala week? Student groups descending on New York before the end of the school year?), but I see only four other visitors in this space during the course of an hour or so. The gallery appears to be the first of many devoted primarily to American furniture. My first reaction is that the upcoming visits will be something of a slog. Instead, today’s visit feels like a homecoming, in two ways. The gallery centers mainly on furniture made in New England before 1730 Many of the pieces are made of oak and have simple, straight lines; low-relief carving is the principal form of ornamentation. I cry out in delighted surprise (with no one to hear me) when I see a pine chest with two drawers, about 42 inches high, 40 inches wide, and 18 inches deep,   that was made in Hampshi...

 May 7, 2024 Gallery 520 is at the area behind the large choir screen in the Medieval Art galleries. (At Christmas, the front of that screen is the site of the "angel tree" and the Neapolitan creche, where I make an annual pilgrimage; the figures of peasants tending their flocks and coming to adore the Christ child never fail  to move me.)  The gallery contains tapesetries, a large coffer, and a 14th-century Italian column head showing Saint Veronica holding up her veil on which a rather ugly head of Christ appears. A display case holds a parchment from 1466-67, during the War of the Roses, that charts the genealogy of the kings of England.  Edward IV's claim to the throne is substantiated by the inclusion among his forebears of King David, Alexander the Great, King Arthur, and William the Conqueror.   Most of the gallery, however, is devoted to sculpture.  Dating from about 1325 to 1550, the statuary comes from all over Western Europe (France, Germany...

  May 3, 2024 It's  a bit strange to be back in the museum after so long an absence. I pick up a new map of the museum, but I need a helpful guard to guide me to gallery 514, the first of my "make-up" destinations on this go-around.  The gallery turns out to be the "tapestry room " from what a Wikipedia picture shows me is a very grand 18th-century manor in Worcestershire, Croome Court.  The placard says that it was designed by Robert Adam, but I’m initially not sure whether the “it” in question was the house, the room, or both.   (I subsequently learn that it's the room.)  The house and its surrounding park are still in existence and are operated by the National Trust. I'd love to visit it, although I gather that the tapestry room, which the Met acquired in 1955,  was its chief glory.  Actually, in the early 20th century, the house's owner, the ninth Earl of Coventry, sold off the tapestries and seating to a French dealer. I guess he needed the m...