American Wing Reopens 5/19

The American Wing courtyard and period rooms will reopen on May 19th! Found this YouTube video on urbanartantiques.com.

Tibetan Arms and Armor

A 17th-18th century Tibetan saddle and bridle.

My Favorite El Greco

View of Toledo by El Greco.

Still-lifes by Odilon Redon

Pretty flowers by Odilon Redon, whose other dream-like paintings also appear in the 19th- 20th- Century European Painting.

Costume Institute Gala 2009

The Costume Institute held its annual gala tonight at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate the new exhibition opening this week — The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion. Unsurprisingly, the event drew incredible fashions donned by supermodels and celebrity elites. Here are my top three best and craziest ensembles:

Faves

Claudia Schiffer's dress was my favorite of the pics I've seen. The black cutout gown has an artistic quality while maintaining a beautiful silhouette.


Chanel Iman looks like a tall, exotic nymph in a beautiful leopard print Zac Posen gown.


Of course, mega-hot model Gisele Bundchen rocked it in this Versace micro-minidress.

Crazies

(Disclaimer: I am not totally knocking these choices, since it is a "Costume" Institute gala, and who doesn't love a little avant garde? BUT these ladies take the cake for the most bizarre looks)

Ummm, we have a cray cray Shirley Temple on our hands. Leighton Meester's look leaves me speechless. I do like the bejeweled tights though... the pattern looks better with glitz and texture than it does on the dress itself. Maybe a bodysuit would have been an even bolder but more cohesive choice?


I don't know, Rhianna looks to me like a fembot gone masculine in this Dolce and Gabbana tuxedo.


If Carrie Bradshaw did it right, Madonna did it weird — the sculptural hairpiece is the crowning glory of her oddly hodge-podge Louis Vuitton ensemble that includes black thigh-high boots and fingerless gloves.


WELL, I would have loved to make it to the red carpet, but the workaholic in me ruled out and I had to live vicariously through other blogs/news sites. My new Twitter friend popwatch supplied the link to fabsugar.com, where I got the photos. The New York Times also has a nice story and accompanying slideshow, as does Vanity Fair and E! Online.

Mellow Yellows

Dancing Lines

Terry Winters: Shadowgraphs, 2002 (one of 12 wood engravings with embossments on handmade paper).

Kentridge's Stereoscopes

The new Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection include five photogravures, three with stereoscopes by William Kentridge. For lack of a better description, I'll borrow from the accompanying description by the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "This series of prints reflects his most recent interest in optics and the construction of sight. Kentridge created three-dimensional models in his studio, which he then photographed and made into photogravures. The prints were split and paired together on a single sheet. When viewed under a stereoscope, the images reconstitute their dimensionality and become mini dioramas filled with fantastic imagery." In two of these works, Kentridge pays homage to the sixteenth-century artist Albrecht Dürer by referencing his famous prints Melencolia I and The Rhinoceros.

I remember learning about Kentridge's technique in a digital photography class I too in college, where we actually made our own photogravures. The best one I did was a depiction of a bicycle rack, with about 20 bikes all in a row. The three-dimensionality that results is really impressive.

MAP:

Note from ME:
When I first started this blog, I made little maps detailing my course through the Met on each trip, and to show readers where they might find the artwork I highlighted. Though it mind seem like a small detail, it is actually somewhat time-consuming, so I regrettably stopped creating them. I still like the idea, but don't want to put in the effort if they're not useful, so I'm leaving it up to the readers. Please let me know if you like to see these little guys at the bottom of each post. Thanks!

My Birthday Visit With Jered

Today was my 25th birthday, and what better way to celebrate than to take a trip to the Met with a friend? It turned out to be a rather unique experience — I handed over my camera and let Jered have free rein, leading me along snapping shots of whatever interested him. We both work in a restaurant, so our pace was much faster than the typical museum goer; we power walked the length of the museum and back, starting on the roof. We wandered through 19-Century European Painting and Sculpture (love the tremendous collection of Rodin!). Then on to European Painting, Decorative Arts, a little Medieval, Egypt, American Arts, including the recently re-opened Frank Lloyd Wright room, Greek and Roman Sculpture, and finally Cast in Bronze, the French Sculpture exhibition. It was fun to cover so much ground in such a short time.

Maelstrom Opens on the Roof

The Iris B. Cantor Roof Garden finally opened for the season today with Roxy Paine's massive steel sculpture, Maelstrom. While the Metropolitan Museum of Art is hands-down my favorite place in New York City, the rooftop is truly its crown jewel — and Paine's sculpture serves to unite the architectural with the organic as it twists and mangles over the trees in the park with the midtown Manhattan skyline in the distance. I like the way the branches of the sculpture frame the negative space between them: a building in one slice, a person in another — it breaks up the background into interesting vignettes. It also reminded me of the drawings I'd make when I was a kid, freely scrawling loops and lines and then going back and filling the spaces between with different colors.