Mysteries at the Met

Class was cancelled today, so I had a class of my own at the Met. I've been there a few times since coming here, but I haven't spent a huge chunk of time there, just wandering and soaking things in, until today. Today I spent about 4 hours just in the American wing, and I didn't even see everything there was.

Some things were familiar, like Sargent's Madame X and the Mary Cassatt paintings. Other things were strange to see in real life, because I'm accustomed to seeing them in books. Washington Crossing the Delaware is enormous! I knew it was big, but how did Leutze even get it out of his studio? And that painting by Winslow Homer of the schoolboys playing crack-the-whip is tiny! My favorite pieces to see today were the paintings by Ryder and Blakelock--both very strange, enigmatic artists who had a similar style. Albert Pinkham Ryder is known for his small very dark paintings of sailboats on tossing waves lit by only the moon, and his use of paint was so fierce and thick that now all his works have the added mystery of an intensely cracked surface.

I also spent time looking at the furniture, because that's what we've been focusing on at school. And I have all the periods down--I just can't figure out how to tell the difference between regional style differences. What makes a Chippendale side chair from Boston different from one made in New York? There's a difference--it's still a mystery to me, though.

Of course, I didn't waste the whole day in the museum. I napped in Central Park in the middle of a flock of tiny brown birds that were having the best time eating tiny grass seeds. I read a book. I went back into the museum and sketched some Roman statuary (does anyone dust those things? My statue had a cobweb on him), and got freaked out by a glass urn still containing funerary ashes of a Roman person. What would they have said if they knew that someday their final remains would be sitting on view in New York City being stared at by high-school students and tourists?