A Weekend Spent Largely at the Met

Skipping out of order: on Sunday, Sal and I ventured up to 190th St. to visit the Cloisters, the Met branch dedicated to medieval art and architecture. Sal joked that we had ventured so far from Brooklyn that we were likely to see unicorns roaming the streets. Little did he realize that we actually had entered the land of unicorns. The Cloisters are home to the "Unicorn Tapestries," an incredible collection of 16th century tapestries that depict the hunting of unicorns.

Though I had some inkling of what to expect, nothing quite prepared me for the splendor of seeing these tapestries in person. They are beautiful, whimsical, and heart-rending. There is a vivid aliveness to their representation, as if the men marching through the forest will step out of the tapestry and into the gallery themselves. In The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle one can almost hear the men on castle's ramparts whispering to one another.

We explored the rest of the Cloisters too, but nothing is quite as breathtaking as those mind-boggling tapestries. I doubt if Athena's tapestry of the gods at play on Mt. Olympus could have rivaled these. How on earth could someone have woven, by hand, these intricate, detailed images. How does thread become an rabbit's eye that twinkles with such rabbity good humor?

On Friday night, Patty and I had the pleasure of taking a private tour of American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life at the Met. Our friend Katie is a curatorial assistant in the

American Wing and has spent the last year working on the exhibition. She also authors the exhibition's blog (make sure to check it out). On our tour, she regaled us with stories of how the show came together--from choosing the paint colors on the gallery walls to writing labels to make sure the color correction in the catalogue was correct. We particularly enjoyed this shop talk because Patty and I had our own small part in the exhibitions' behind the scenes. On a road trip in the Berkshires, we drove Katie to the Smith College Museum of Art so she could look at the sky in a Lily Martin Spencer painting in person. Happily, it really was blue and not the yellow the museum's slide indicated it was.

But about the show: it was pretty great. It sweepingly showed how America perceived and conceived it's nationhood from the time of the Revolution to the start of WWI. It's only open until the 24th, so head over to the Met soon. It's unlikely that such an impressive grouping of American paintings will be seen together anytime soon.