At brunch David had strongly suggested that we visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art if we had a chance, so we decided to do that before dinner. Fortunately the Met is open until 9pm on Saturday night, so we didn't have to race Uptown before it closed.
We ended up being there for almost 3 hours, and saw only a tiny fraction of the collections. The variety of works there is really incredible - parts of medieval churches, 18th-century nativity scene, an entire Egyptian temple, sculptures and artifacts from ancient Greece and Babylon and China, and paintings and other works of art from Europe and the US to the present day.
We could have spend days looking at it all, but focused most of our time on the Nubian temple of Dendur, which was given to the US by Egypt to save it from the flooding upon completion of the Aswan High Dam; and the musical instruments collection, which had thousands of years worth of musical instruments from from all around the world. In between we saw some of the Asian art, Egyptian art, the armor collection, bits of and, shortly before the Museum closed, the European art collection, including the late 19th/earthy 20th century French art - Degas, Picasso, Monet, Braque and colleagues.
It was both overwhelming and exhilarating to see so much in such a short time. And in a move was obviously meant by nature to keep me in a cheerful mood , it was snowing a wee bit when we left the museum.
More to come . . .
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