Making the MET Memorial Day Weekend 2021

Making the MET 1870-2020 AUGUST 29, 2020–JANUARY 3, 2021, a monumental exhibition celebrating the Museum’s 150 year anniversary, came and went in the haze of a global pandemic. At the time, I couldn’t get myself organized enough to post my take on the landmark exhibition and now, nine months later, my photographs of masked museum-goers nearly feels to be in our rear-view window. The MET continues to have a mask policy in place for visitors, vaccinated or not. But, things are turning around in the city with secured vaccinations. The Museum recently reported its first 10,000 visitor day since the pandemic! And this Memorial Day weekend the Museum is launching two new initiatives on the Museum’s plaza, The Plaza Café, The Museum’s first foray to providing food and beverages on the Fifth Avenue plaza and Free Bicycle Valet, a complimentary bicycle valet service for all weekends from Memorial Day to Labor Day (though I wish they would offer the bicycle valet for all of its opening hours, weekdays as well).

 We are experiencing an unusually cold and rainy holiday weekend here in New York City. With the cooler temperatures, I am looking forward to binge watching PBS’ three-part TV series Inside the Met. Available online (the first episode expires June 18th), the series explores the legacy and future of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Go behind the scenes as the largest art museum in the Americas plans its 150th anniversary and responds to the coronavirus pandemic and calls for social justice.

I hope you enjoy my picks (roughly 19 out of over 250 works) from the Making the MET exhibition and that you are savoring some vaccinated freedoms. Don’t forget to take some time this weekend to honor the fallen who died while serving in the military.

La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle; Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin, 1851–1930)

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, Zundert 1853–1890 Auvers-sur-Oise)

Date: 1889

Medium: Oil on canvas

Accession Number: 1996.435

Marilyn Monroe, Actress, New York City

Richard Avedon (American, New York 1923–2004 San Antonio, Texas)

Date: May 6, 1957

Medium: Gelatin silver print

Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 2002

Accession Number: 2002.379.11

Rights and Reproduction: © Richard Avedon

The Age of Bronze (L’Age d’airain)

Auguste Rodin (French, Paris 1840–1917 Meudon)

Date: modeled 1876, cast ca. 1906

Medium: Bronze

Accession Number: 07.127

Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo

Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, Antwerp 1599–1641 London)

Date: 1624

Medium: Oil on canvas

Accession Number: 71.41

Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo stopped me in my tracks. Painted while quarantined in Palermo, Sicily, due to an outbreak of the plague in 1624, it resonated with the intensity of the pandemic I was living through.

Bronze Bells (Fritillaria atropurpurea)

Margaret Neilson Armstrong (American, New York 1867–1944 New York)

Date: May 2, 1912

Medium: Watercolor and brown ink over graphite, with page design indicated in graphite

Accession Number: 2010.341.2(2)

Dimensions: sheet: 13 11/16 x 9 15/16 in. (34.8 x 25.2 cm)

Classification: Drawings

Credit Line: Gift of Helena Bienstock, Cynthia MacKay Keegan and Frank E. Johnson, 2010

Door from the Grand Salon in Hôtel de Belle Isle, Paris

Date: ca. 1785

Medium: Oak, painted white and gilded

Accession Number: 07.225.463b–m

Swan-Neck Glass Bottle

Date: 19th century

Medium: Glass, blue; dip-molded, blown, folded foot

Accession Number: 17.190.829

Ewer (Brocca)

Medici Porcelain Manufactory (Italian, Florence, ca. 1575–ca. 1587)

Date: ca. 1575–87

Medium: Soft-paste porcelain, decorated in underglaze blue

Accession Number: 17.190.2045

Seated Statue of Hatshepsut

Date: ca. 1479–1458 B.C.

Medium: Indurated limestone, paint

Accession Number: 29.3.2

Hatshepsut was brilliantly placed in the viewing path of the Obelisk, Cleopatra’s Needle, behind the Museum in Central Park, which were both created around the same time BCE in Egypt.

Basin

Master Potter A

Date: ca. 1650

Medium: Tin-glazed earthenware

Accession Number: 12.3.1

Covered goblet

New Bremen Glass Manufactory (1784–1795)

Date: 1788

Medium: Blown and engraved glass

Accession Number: 28.52a, b

Easy Chair

Caleb Gardner (died 1761)

Date: 1758

Medium: Walnut, maple

Accession Number: 50.228.3

Textile

Paul Poiret (French, Paris 1879–1944 Paris)

Date: ca. 1920

Medium: Printed linen

Accession Number: 23.14.9

Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue

Georgia O’Keeffe (American, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin 1887–1986 Santa Fe, New Mexico)

Date: 1931

Medium: Oil on canvas

Accession Number: 52.203

Dusasa II

El Anatsui (Ghanaian, born Anyako, 1944)

Date: 2007

Medium: Found aluminum, copper wire, and plastic disks

Dimensions: 236 x 288 x 2 in. (599.4 x 731.5 x 5.1 cm)

Classification: Sculpture

Credit Line: Purchase, The Raymond and Beverly Sackler 21st Century Art Fund; Stephen and Nan Swid and Roy R. and Marie S. Neuberger Foundation Inc. Gifts; and Arthur Lejwa Fund, in honor of Jean Arp, 2008

Accession Number: 2008.121

Rights and Reproduction: Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY

Street Story Quilt

Faith Ringgold (American, born New York, 1930)

Date: 1985

Medium: Cotton canvas, acrylic paint, ink marker, dyed and printed cotton, and sequins, sewn to a cotton flannel backing Dimensions: Overall: 90 x 144 in. (228.6 x 365.8 cm)

Classifications: Textiles, Paintings

Credit Line: Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund and funds from various donors, 1990

Accession Number: 1990.237a-c

Rights and Reproduction: © Faith Ringgold

Kouros

Isamu Noguchi (American, Los Angeles, California 1904–1988 New York)

Date: 1945

Medium: Marble

Accession Number: 53.87a-i

Visitors viewing Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851)

Roderick Aichinger (right). Composite image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Date Created: 1910/2019

Location Created: New York

Forgive the multiple images, but I really admired the use of projections and the morphing images that unfolded as well as the recurring arch theme throughout the exhibition.

Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau)

John Singer Sargent (American, Florence 1856–1925 London)

Date: 1883–84

Medium: Oil on canvas

Accession Number: 16.53

I was taken with these last two photos that were on the exhibition walls.

The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer

Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)

Date: 1922 (cast), 2018 (tutu)

Medium: Partially tinted bronze, cotton tarlatan, silk satin, and wood

Accession Number: 29.100.370

Photography Beth Horta for Sweet Sabelle.