In the great city of Manhattan, in the great park called City Park, there lies a great Museum, world renowned for its archetecture, the art and history it holds, and simply the history of the museum itself. This place is the metropolitan museum of art. Outside the museum there are all kinds of street vendors selling art and the musuem is surrounded by Central Park, the park itself was designed around a competition of civil engeneers with ideas for the park. The park itself is a work of art.
After more than five hours of getting lost in its hallways, the museum has officially postitioned itself as one of my most favorite museums and certainly one of the best places to waste away an afternoon. As you walk through room after room full of everything from statues to ancient armor, it is easy to get lost as the museum itself is almost a maze. This maze is one of the best places to get lost in, and with a handy electronic tour guide your brain can be filled with as many factoids as you can handle. Every other peice has a little number on it to punch in and listen to associate curators give you their ten cents on a work.
Walking through many of the rooms full of paintings made me realize that many of my core classes that seemed so useless in college prove to be valuable in a place like this. These are all of the paintings and statues that I had to memorize for Art History and Humanities classes. Many of the paintings and sculptures were old news to me, I could mouth off the names of the artists and in some cases the year that the work was made. I could even pair up some of the music of the time with some of the works. It is easy when you are in school to get tired of taking classes that seemingly have no value to your future, especially when your future amounts to how drunk you are going to get when class gets out this afternoon. Although two of my humanities classes were the most intersting classes I have ever taken, I still regularly posed the question, "When in the hell is this ever going to be of use to me?" Overall, it does not really make much difference if I already know the names of the paintings on the walls or the history behind them, they all have labels and explainations. However, there is no doubt that a place like the Met becomes a lot more exciting when you are your own tour guide.
On the other hand, modern art (or at least some of it) is something that I may never be able to understand. Below, I have critqued some of the installations.
Ummm….This one has some paint splotches on the right and left, it also has a white spot in the middle. The composition is amazing, seriously I have never seen anyone slop paint on a canvas like this. And the idea of using two different shades of white…bravo my friend.
Holy Shit, I just think I had an epileptic seizure. I want to talk to the manager about this peice.
I am kind of angry about this one. I thought that the Metropolitan Museum of Art did not allow forgeries of other peoples work at the museum. I do recall a lad named bejamin moore doing this rendering first.
I think that I made something that looks like this in my graphic art class in middle school. Is this special because they were able to copy it to such a large canvas?
I put together a little video/slideshow of some of the photos and video(shhhh, video is not allowed) I took at the museum. Have a look.
