Dear Reader,
As soon as I caught wind of both exhibitions, I wanted to be
there, but chances were that my flight of fancy would remain
in the realm of ideas. And yet, here I am writing a blog post
about a real thirty-six hours, with a visit to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art at its heart. It became possible, once a hotel
room was transformed into my birthday gift. Thanks to my husband,
John, I climbed aboard a bus from Worcester to New York City
one morning and walked into the Met at 3:45 PM.
It was as if some invisible presence had ushered me into a charmed
existence. The volunteer at the main desk did a double-take
when she looked at the wait time to enter “Manet-Degas”
and said, “I can’t believe this! The wait time just
went from two hours to fifteen minutes!” When I tried to
scan the QR code to get in the miraculously shortened queue,
my smartphone wouldn’t do it, despite spending time with
my cell phone provider to upload the app. The volunteer took
pity on my frustrated face, then escorted me to a tiny corner
desk, where a uniformed staff member was creating handwritten
admission passes. He looked up, wrote “4:00” and said,
“Go right up!” Which is exactly what I did, careful
to make note of galleries I would return to later.
The crowd was waning as I stepped into the first galleries to
participate in the choreography of the art lovers’ dance,
with those silent agreements to make space for each other, all
the while holding our gazes upon paintings or wall labels. My
plan to view official and unofficial videos, as well as reviews
beforehand kept my label-reading to a minimum. Our dance proceeded
with little or no eye contact, like negotiating traffic in Worcester’s
famed Kelley Square. Music was in the form of multilingual voices.
Their exchanges spoke of long-held relationships or one trying
to impress the other with her vast knowledge of art history.
Each of us could take our time returning the bold stare of Manet’s
“Olympia” or stand puzzled by the implied narrative
of Degas’s “Interior.” There were luminous portraits
that took my breath away. It is a large exhibition, with 160
paintings and works on paper, but I could revisit my favorites
because, as dinner hour approached, the crowd thinned even further.
I was particularly touched by galleries showing works by Manet
collected by Degas, a sign of admiration and connoisseurship
not returned by Manet for the work of Degas. Theirs was a fraught
friendship.
Sated by “Manet-Degas,” I found my way to a smaller
exhibition that was part of my original fantasy visit, “Cecily
Brown: Death and the Maiden.” Controlled chaos, paint lushly
applied, crazy beautiful canvases, thy name is Cecily Brown.
Surveying the colors and shapes was like a bumper car ride.
I could barely hang on!
My journey continued, and I wandered into Rembrandt and Vermeer
galleries, and the exhibition “Art for the Millions: American
Culture and Politics in the 1930’s,” where I stood
mesmerized by a video of Martha Graham dancing her solo “Frontier.”
Feeling my energy flagging, I sat on a bench in front of Florine
Stettheimer’s trio of tributes to New York: Broadway, Wall
Street, and 5th Avenue. Then on to “Vertigo of Color,”
the Fauvist feast worth the trek to the other end of the museum,
with more stops to heed the call of Chagall, El Greco, Van Gogh
along the way.
More, more, more art. The following afternoon’s bus ride
home allowed time to write in my journal, and my mind’s
eye was filled with the joy, the need, the splendor of this
most human and satisfying thing we are compelled to do, MAKE
AND LOVE ART.
