Day 23 – 7/5/14: Photographs, Drawings & Prints, Musical Instruments(start)

After driving to New York Saturday morning, I took a guided tour of Central Park’s Belvedere Castle area, then spent late afternoon and evening at the Met. I started in the Roman galleries that never seem to be open, and, sure enough, after a few minutes, the guard announced that those galleries would be closing! I’ll try again tomorrow.

Carol Hentschel, Adam & Eve, 1895

Next I went through the few galleries devoted to photography, prints, and drawings, located along the main corridor on the second floor. I had seen these galleries before, but always assumed there were more somewhere else. In fact, only a tiny portion of the collections are exhibited at any one time. Only a single gallery is permanently used for drawings and prints, three for photographs, and three more can be used for either purpose, depending on the particular exhibition. On this day, the special exhibition space was devoted to photographs by Garry Winogrand, who captured mostly New York street scenes, but also some historic events, from the 50s to early 80s. Across the corridor is gallery devoted to rotating exhibits of large, contemporary photographs. Finally, along the main corridor, is a small collection of historic photographs from the permanent collection.

Also along the main corridor is the only gallery permanently devoted to Drawing and Prints, currently featuring Renaissance etchings (termed Pre-Raphaelite), along with prints made in the same style by 19^th Century British artists. Also in the gallery was a random sampling of modern prints.

Nepal ensemble

After dinner, I went to the relatively small area devoted to Musical Instruments, located in an out-of-the-way part of the museum. It is divided into two sections: European and the rest of the world, specifically Asia and Africa (but, curiously no indigenous America or Australia). In the Indian area, I came across instruments such as the sitar that became suddenly popular in the late 60s when the Beatles used them. The next area had Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan instruments, which I’d often heard, but not seen. Finally came the African and Mideast area, which included only a sampling of instruments, and left out the ones with which I’m most familiar such as djembe and doumbec, popular in American drum circles. I left the European room for the next day.