Day 31 – 2/7/2016: Costume Institute; Byzantine and Medieval (part)

The Costume Institute offers a series of special exhibitions each year on the museum's ground floor. This marked the final museum area of my tour, although there are several areas that I plan to revisit for various reasons. The current exhibition is devoted to Jacqueline de Ribes, who apparently is a countess, a fashion designer and collector, and high society celebrity. Her world seems as distant as Palace of Versailles, or perhaps the Hollywood Red Carpet, but some of the gowns are fun to admire. In addition to the fancy evening gowns, there are even more outlandish Masked Ball costumes and well as some some assemblages of pieces from here and there entitled Flights of Fantasy.

Back in the Byzantine area, I discovered the Egyptian Byzantine Gallery, also known as the Crypt Gallery, which some web sites call a one of the museum's hidden treasures. It is located under the grand staircase and was restored in 2000 to reveal structural arches and underside of the staircase. After finishing the Byzantine section, which focuses on the Mediterranean area, I toured the first large Medieval gallery (304), which focuses on Western Europe. That one hall had a huge variety of mostly religious objects, including statuary, stained glass, and ritual objects.

Ritual objects in gilded copper and enamel, Limoges, France, about 1200

Day 30 – 1/18/2016: Byzantine revisited (part)

The Attarouthi Treasure, Syria, 550-650

I had seen the Medieval areas back in 2005 -- before I started going through all the rooms meticulously -- so I decided it was time to revisit those areas, which includes a Byzantine section and a separate department devoted to Arms and Armor.  The first galleries off the Great Hall is devoted to Byzantine Art, and the first thing one encounters is the impressive golden chalices from the Attarouthi Treasure.

Glass vessels with Jewish and Christian symbols

The prior evening, coincidentally, we had a discussion about whether the main market street of the Old City of Jerusalem had changed over the centuries. It turned out I was right: it had not. I discovered a display (pictured here) suggesting that even in the 6th century, merchants were selling souvenirs to visiting pilgrims. Although hard to decipher now, some of these have Jewish symbols, some Christian, to accommodate all possible buyers (Muslims weren’t around yet). After this one gallery, the rest of the family joined me, and we saw the extensive special exhibit, Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom.