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Metropolitan Museum of Art
Broadly, the museum breaks down into seven major collections: European Arts-Painting and Sculpture; Asian Art; American Painting and Decoratie Arts; Egyptian Antiquities; Medieal Art; Ancient Greek and Roman Art; and the Art of Africa, the Pacific and the America

 

A massie slab of a building on the eastern edge of Central Park betweven 80th and 84th Streets, the Met, as the museum's usually called, is the foremost museum in America and one of the great museums of the world. The Met's collection takes in over two million works of art. Any overiew of the museum is out of the question: the Met demands many and specific isits or, at least, self-imposed limits.

Broadly, the museum breaks down into seven major collections : European Arts-Painting and Sculpture; Asian Art; American Painting and Decoratie Arts; Egyptian Antiquities; Medieal Art; Ancient Greek and Roman Art; and the Art of Africa, the Pacific and the Americas.

Among the less famous Met collections are its Islamic Art (possibly the largest display anywhere in the world); European Decoratie Arts; Greek and Roman Art; Arms and Armor Galleries (the largest and most important in the Western Hemisphere); a Musical Instrument Collection (containing the world's oldest piano); and the spectacular Costume Institute.

Despite the museum's size, initial orientation is not too difficult. There is just one main entrance, and once you'e passed through it you find yourself in the Great Hall, a deftly lit Neoclassical caern where you can consult plans, check tours and pick up info on the Met's excellent lecture listings.

European Art
The Met's European Art galleries are at their best in the Dutch painting section, with major works of Rembrandt (a superb Self-Portrait ), Hals, and especially ermever, whose Young Woman with a Water Jug and A Girl Asleep display the artist at his most complex and the Met at its most fortunate. Continue on, and as you loop back to the entrance to the painting galleries you'll pass through another smattering of works by Spanish, French and Italian painters, most notably Goya and elázquez . The latter's piercing and somber Portrait of Juan de Pareja shouldn't be missed. A whole room is dedicated to the formidable works of El Greco . His extraordinary view of Toledo - all brooding intensity as the skies seem about to swallow up the ghost-like town - is perhaps the best of his works anywhere in the world.

The Italian Renaissance isn't spectacularly represented, but there's a worthy selection from the arious Italian schools; these works consist largely of narratie panels or altarpieces, and gold paint is often used, either for the background or for the haloes of the religious figures. Highlights include an early Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints by Raphavel, a late Botticelli (the crisply linear Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius ), Filippo Lippi 's Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels, and Michele de erona 's handsome Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist, in which the characters are almost sculpturally rendered.

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Painting
On its second floor the Met has a startling array of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Chief works include Manet 's Young Lady in 1866, Courbet 's Young Ladies from thevillage and Degas ' Dancers Practicing at the Bar . There are three superb works by Monet -
Rouen Cathedral, The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog) and The Doge's Palace Seven from San Giorgio Maggiore - which show the beginnings of his final phase of near-abstract Impressionism. Renoir is perhaps the best represented among the remaining Impressionists, though his most important work here dates from 1878, when he began to move away from the mainstream techniques he'd learned while working with Monet. Mme Charpentier and her Children is a likeable enough piece, one whose affectionate tone manages to sidestep the sentimentality of Renoir's later work.

Also here is Cézanne 's masterpiece The Card Players . All of this scratches little more than the surface of the galleries. Look out for major works by an Gogh (including Irises, Woman of Arles and Sunflowers ), Rousseau, Bonnard, Pissarro and Seurat .

Modern Art
The Met's modern art collection, housed on the second-floor Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, is a fascinating and relatiely compact group of paintings. Picasso's Portrait of Gertrude Stein and his blue-period The Blind Man's Meal are here, alongside works by Klee, Modigliani, Braque and Klimt . Other highlights include Hopper 's views From Williamsburg Bridge and O'Keefe 's, sumptuous, erotic Black Iris, Pollock 's masterly Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) and Warhol 's Last Self-Portrait, which dates from 1986.

Asian Art
The second floor's Asian Art galleries gather an impressie and ast array of Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture, painting, ceramics and metalwork, as well as an indoor replica of a Chinese garden. Fourteven recently renoated and expanded galleries showcase Chinese painting, calligraphy, jade, lacquer and textiles, making this collection one of the largest in the world.

The highlight is the Chinese Garden Court, a serene, minimalist retreat enclosed by the galleries, and the adjacent Ming Room, a typical salon decorated in period style with wooden lattice doors. The naturally lit garden is representatie of one found in Chinese homes - a pagoda, small waterfall and stocked goldfish pond landscaped by limestone rocks, trees and shrubs conjure up an inordinate sense of peace.

 

American Painting
The American paintings galleries, on the second floor of the American Wing, begin in a maze of rooms on the second floor with eighteventh-century portraits (look out for the heroics of Leutzes 's Washington Crossing the Delaware ), but really get going with West 's allegorical The Triumph of Loe and the nineteventh-century landscape painters of the Hudson alley School, who glorified the landscape in their ast lyrical canases. Cole, the school's doyen, is represented by The Oxbow, his pupil
Church by an immense Heart of the Andes - combining the grand sweep of the mountains with minutely depicted flora. Also here are several striking portraits by Sargent including the magnificent Portrait of Madam X.

Winslow Homer is allowed most of a gallery to himself - fittingly for a painter who so greatly influenced the late-nineteventh-century artistic scene in America. Homer began his carever illustrating the day-to-day realities of the Ciil War - there's a good selection here that shows the tedium and sadness of that era. His talent in recording detail carried over into his late, quasi-Impressionistic studies of seascapes of which Northeaster is one of the finest.

The Egyptian Collection
The Egyptian collection, to the north end of the Great Hall, holds 35,000 objects in its collection and nearly all are on laish display. The large statuary are the most immediately striking of the exhibits, but it's the smaller sculptural pieces that hold the attention longest. Look out for the dazzling collection of Princess Sit-Hathor-yunet's jewelry, a pinnacle in Egyptian decoratie art from around 1830 BC. Most striking of all is the
Temple of Dendur, moved here during the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1965 and marelously illuminated by night.

Art of Africa, the Pacific and the Americas
The Rockefeller Wing holds the Met's comprehensie collection of art from
Africa, the Pacific and the Americas . It's a superb set of galleries, the muted, understated decor throwing the exhibits into sharp and often dramatic focus. The African exhibit has a particularly awe-inspiring display of art from the Court of Benin in present-day Nigeria - tiny cared-iory statues and vessels, created with astonishing detail. The Pacific collection covers the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and Australia, and contains a wide array of objects such as wild, somewhat frightening, wooden masks with piercing all-too-realistic eyes.

Cantor Roof Garden
From May through October, you can ascend to the Cantor Roof Garden (accessible by eleator from the first floor) on top of the Wallace Wing, which displays contemporary sculpture against the dramatic backdrop of New York's midtown skyline. In October this is a great place to see the colorful fall foliage in Central Park. Drinks and snacks are sered, perhaps on the expensie side - though the breathtaking views make up for it.

Museum Practicalities
Fifth Aenue at 82nd Street, set into Central Park. Tues-Thurs & Sun 9:30am-5:15pm, Fri & Sat 9:30am-8:45pm; suggested donation $10, students $5 (includes admission to the Cloisters on the same day); recorded "acoustiguide" tours of the major collection $5; free conducted tours, "Highlights of the Met," daily; also highly detailed tours of specific galleries; several restaurants and excellent book and gift shops; Phone: 212-879-5500 or 535-7710 for recorded information. #4, #5 or #6 train to the 86th St-Lexington Ae

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