Day 32 – 7/6/16: Met Breuer; Medieval (part)

  

On March 18, the Met opened its new Met Breuer building, devoted to modern and contemporary art, and, because of extensive traveling, this was the first time I was able to get there. The building was the former home of the Whitney Museum, but the Met barely mentions that fact in its publicity, preferring to highlight the building's architect, Marcel Breuer, and calling the building a masterpiece of Bauhaus architecture. I'm not convinced of that, but it certainly serves the intended purpose.

El Geco's Vision of Saint John (1608-14) appears
"unfinished" according to the caption, but had
enormous impact on 20th Century artists from
Picasso to Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

Aside from a small installation on the first floor, there are basically three floors of galleries plus a fifth floor with a cafe and bookstore. By the date I arrived, the initial exhibit on floor 2 had closed, and floors 3 and 4 were devoted to a single exhibition entitled, "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible." Despite the building's focus on modern and contemporary, the first half of the exhibit had works dating back to the Renaissance period, and these led to the more recent works in the second part. The juxtaposition was useful, since it seemed easier to tell whether the older works are finished or not, and if unfinished, whether intentionally or not.

It took just over two hours to see this museum, and fortunately it's just a 15-minute walk (with no additional fee) to see the main museum, now called Met Fifth Avenue to distinguish it. There I continued my tour of the Medieval section with a single gallery. It's the museum's central gallery and one of it's largest, best known for the huge Choir Screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, but also containing a wealth of religious statues and other impressive items. Nathan then joined me and we saw the special exhibit, "Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs."