Last week I visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Having spent most of my childhood there, memories always sweep into my mind as I walk into the grand halls, laced with gorgeous paintings. Only a few turns and you can jump continents and centuries of art. This semester I am taking Art History and Global History and both subjects find the Met to be quite handy. I went to my favourite place in the Met, The Lehman collection.
Walking the round galleries, filled with Reniors, Van Goghs, Monets, and Degas, the impressionist beamed before me. It made me very happy that I go to college in the best city in the world, in which an infinite archive of the most talented artists in the world have their art housed all together. It only takes about 25 minutes to get to The Met from Baruch, so as I sit in my art history class and see pictures of art, I often times wonder how much better it would be if field trips were still a regular thing.
Later this week I will be going back to the Met, this time with my History professor. She will offer us a tour, that will count as an assignment(isn’t that lovely?). As I walked through The Met, I saw art and artifacts presented to me in both my art history and global history classes. Seeing many works of art from the same period all together allows one to gain a new perspective on the time period, gives greater visual memory of the essence of the time period, and contributes to one’s learning experience when they see their academic subject matter in such a special setting. The Met has one of the best collections of Ancient Egyptian artwork in the world, which even includes a while Temple(The Temple of Dendur) that was transported from Egypt just for the museum.
So as my history midterm comes closer and closer, I see The Met as a great tool to study, but I also see it as an amazing opportunity to explore the art I love and connect with the culture that the city that I’m so lucky to call home has to offer.
