365 Days at the Met

July 19, 2024 I am so happy to have found gallery 734. It’s a good-sized space, perhaps 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, with a light planked floor, part of which is covered by a long, narrow rag rug.  The furniture includes a narrow single bed (I hear a visitor exclaim, “It’s tiny!"),  a very small writing desk, a washstand, a green chest of drawers topped by a couple of covered baskets, a couple of tables, several slatback chairs with rush seats, and a large floor-to-ceiling cupboard; a pegboard runs all around the room. I initially think that, because the bed and the desk are so small, it must be a child’s room. And then I read the caption and think, “Of course! How could I not have known that?” It’s a “retiring room” from the Shaker colony in Mount Lebanon, New York, and dates from about 1835. I learn that “retiring rooms” served as bedrooms but also as places where community members could rest (and meditate?) before attending meeting;  I imagine that the dancing and si...

 July 15, 2024 Gallery 722, the Powel room, named for the Philadelphia family that resided in it during the last decades of the 18th century,  is the last room on this floor, but quite possibly the first that a visitor less intent than I on seeing the rooms in numerical  order might view. Its electronic display is quite comprehensive and discusses not only the details of this particular room.but also a number of aspects of the period room project more generally.. The text emphasizes the boldness of the museum's decision to collect and install period rooms, but it also highlights for me the limitations of the period room approach, exemplified by the Powel room. Chief among these is the fact that, while the handsome woodwork is original, as with most of the other period rooms, none of the furniture or other objects in the room were actually owned by the family that lived there. In this instance,  authenticity seems to have been flouted:  While I admire the pattern...

 July 14, 2024 Gallery 721 is a small space that seems to function mainly as a pass-through to get to the other galleries on the floor. It holds just two works, a portrait of a boy by John Durand, a colonial-era painter, and the painted door with companion panels that is the subject of today's entry. The door actually seems to be a double door (or how would anyone get through it?), perhaps 40 inches wide and quite tall (10 feet?). At the top is a horizontal rectangular panel showing Elijah being drawn up to heaven in his fiery chariot. The remaining six panels are vertical and completely different in character: They show flowers arranged alternately in ceramic baskets or double-handled vases, all different from each other. (One vase, for example, has a human face on its front.)  The flowers are painted largely in delicate tones of pink with dark green leaves and also differ from one panel to the next. Among them, I recognize tulips, a rose, and a sunflower, and a gardener woul...

 July 12, 2024 Gallery 720 is another period room, known as the Marmion Room.  Unlike the other period rooms I've seen so far, this one strikes me as thoroughly luxurious, intended to show off the good fortune and good taste of its owners. I immediately, and correctly, deduce that it came from a Southern plantation, I suppose  because , rightly or wrongly, I associate  "the Southern way of life" with the conspicuous display of wealth, bought at the expense of enslaved labor.  (Truth be told, though, I may have spotted the signage first and held the room's provenance, the Tidewater area of Virginia, in the back of my mind.) The sign says that the rbe beautifully paneled room, a parlor that I estimate to be about 30 feet long and 18 feet wide, has seven sides, although I count only six. I note at once that the marble-lined fireplace is set into an angled wall. I've read so much about the importance of Neoclassical design elements in the new American republic that,...

 July 8, 2024 I am now officially beyond my 365th blogging visit to the Met - a good example of why one might want to give a project a title after it's completed rather than before! I have to say that the bloom is off the rose - I'm looking forward to ending this effort and moving on. But I'm still finding many things that interest me, all the better when they are unexpected. Today's visit is a good example. When I first looked at gallery 719, my first thought was, "Another gallery filled with side chairs." But as it turns out, the gallery is another period room, this one of real historical importance, not merely a rescue from a house facing demolition.  It's a ballroom from a hotel in Alexandria, where, as I learn from the signage, George Washington celebrated his last two birthdays, Thomas Jefferson held his first inaugural banquet, and the Marquis de Lafayette was feted. I don't pace out the dimensions of the room, but I would guess it's about 5...

 July 4, 2024 Gallery 718 is a period room known as the Verplanck Room because its furniture, paintings, and ceramics come from a New York City home, formerly on Wall Street, that was owned by Samuel Verplanck and his wife. The fireplace wall, wainscoting, and cornice, however, all come from a house in Coldenham, New York, near Newburgh, that was built in 1767 and owned by Cadwallader Colden.  (These names seem to embody the Dutch and English elements shaping New York's colonial history!) The Verplanck descendants gave their heirlooms to the Met, and I suppose that as a reward they got this gallery named for them. The room is inexplicably and dismayingly dark, especially because the electronic screen with information about the room's contents stopped working shortly after I arrived.  The furnishings include an elaborate writing desk with a bookcase on top with mirrored doors, a pie table, a marble-topped table, a wingback armchair, a settee, six side chairs, and - most in...