Our host leaves today at first light. He takes the bus to the country, to his summer retreat. I hope he recovers quickly from our invasion. We have croissants from our very local supermarket then head off in the sunshine to the 'Met', once again crossing Central Park.
My companion's ID gets us a warm welcome and free entry. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. It is an amazing experience, the National Gallery multiplied tenfold. Masterpiece after masterpiece. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to bring art and art education to the American people. It is the largest gallery in the United States and among the most visited museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The Ancient World is represented along with paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and Modern Art.
We start on the roof. Great views and a friendly pair of Filipino ladies takes our photo.
This spring Pierre Huyghe (born 1962, Paris) installed the third in a new series of site-specific commissions for the Museum's Roof Garden. Huyghe has spent the past twenty-five years experimenting across media to create ritualistic, engaging encounters with art. His practice extends beyond the use of traditional art forms like drawing and film to materials uncommon in a fine arts context, including living animals, plants, and other natural elements. At the Met, his project explores the transformation of cultural and biological systems through a dynamic gathering of components derived from the Museum's collection, architecture, and surroundings. It is an opaque box like structure which sometimes becomes semi-transparent to reveal a fish or two.
Here are some wonderful works from the Met.
Above is Mada Primavasi, 1913, by Gustav Klimt
Paul Signac. 1905.
And of course we have to mention our very own Hockney.
And a close up of Jackson Pollock's work.
We finally emerge and decide we should definitely have a bagel! We find a place in Mid Town and I enjoy cream cheese and olives! It will be some time before I enjoy a Berkshire Bagel.
Revived, we head along to MOMA, or The Museum of Modern Art, Downtown.
Unfortunately a thousand others, like ourselves, have come along because it is free on Fridays. It is heaving, impossible to relax and my companion is upset as she feels the wonderful art is being put at risk.
We escape, determined to write to Mayor De Blasio on our return and tell him what we think of the elitism of charging for museums.
We escape, determined to write to Mayor De Blasio on our return and tell him what we think of the elitism of charging for museums.
There seems no option but to head to The Jeffrey. http://thejeffreynyc.com/
Soon we are in the garden enjoying IPA from Connecticut and a wheat beer from NY. The waitress as ever is attentive. She wants to take my card away but I say I don't have one. Would I like to pay up front then? What if I say no? But the beer is cool and refreshing and delicious.
We walk all the way back via the park . It is a gorgeous evening. Then to the supermarket. The produce is much lusher and fresher than back home; it reminds me of southern Spain. The pool is empty and I watch the sunset over Manhattan as I swim. We cook pasta and tomatoes and sleep like babies.
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