New York: Closed for Renovations.

Today an American girl and an English girl decided to tour New York City, starting with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The conclusion is that either the Met generally sucks, or the American girl has been spoiled and jaded by recent visits to the Louvre and five other world-class museums in Paris, and both the American and the English girl were too influenced by experiences at the National Gallery, the Tate, the V & A, and the British Museum. In addition, the English girl compared her visits to the Gaudi museum(s) in Barcelona and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. The guide book promised that the Met was in an international class with the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Uffizi. Sounds promising, right? Pffft.

After paying $20 each and navigating crowds, we finally found a friendly guard who explained that our sole reasons for visiting, the 19th Century European paintings room including Van Gogh, Monet, Van Eyck was completely closed for renovations. So was the Frank Lloyd Wright room and the Arts and Crafts room. So was the Islamic art collection (aka “we’re still bitter about the World Trade Center so we’ll pretend the Islamic world doesn’t exist here”).

“Are they any Van Gogh paintings here?” asked a deflated Elly.
“Yes!” said the guard excitedly. “We have one! Uhm, I think it’s not well-lit at the moment, however.” We groaned.
“But we have an excellent Greek and Roman collection!” she added hopefully.
“Hrmph. So does the British Museum. Is yours at least plundered?” I snarked under my breath.
“You should definitely see the Etruscan chariot…” continued the guard. She went on to explain the story of how the chariot was sold in pieces for scrap metal in Paris over 100 years ago, and bought by the Met and eventually restored and finally put together correctly (it took them 100 years to figure it out?) but now the original owners of the chariot in Italy wanted it back. “…So you should really see it while you’re here, before it might go back to Italy,” she sighed. “I really hope it stays here at the Met…I mean, who would go all the way to Italy to see Etruscan ruins?!”

On that note, we thanked her for her help, and hurried off to see the lonely little Van Gogh on a dark wall in a basement room.

Along the way, I noticed that the museum felt haphazardly organized. Each room or collection was labeled with the name of a wealthy benefactor, but with no explanatory signage describing the era, theme, or even type of artwork inside. Some rooms seemed to be organized by period (“Baroque”) while others were simply geographical (“Art of the Americans, Oceania, and the Near East”). The Greek and Roman ruins were all housed in big glass cases, according to arbitrary themes (“Horses in Greek Art”) or with vague titles, “Archaic art from Greece and Crete”). No other signage including relevant dates, sites of discovery, civilizations, or importance of artifacts was anywhere to be found. Archaeologists would be horrified.

There were some fake things lying around, like a tiny copy of Rodin’s The Thinker, with no labels. Some of the sculptures in the Greek and Roman hall were described as “Copy of…”

So, to sum it up, underwhelmed was an understatement. Definitely unimpressed by the Met. Call me a snob, or bitter and jaded, I don’t care. Did I mention the British Museum is also free?

However, the “closed for renovations” theme continued throughout the day. After the Met, we wandered up the street to see the Guggenheim. Not so sure that we wanted to go inside, especially after being traumatized by the Met, we at least wanted to see the outside of it and take some pictures. Which we did. We got some great shots of white sheeting and scaffolding with covered the entire building.

Somehow we found our way back downtown despite the fact that the main subway line that takes us to and from our apartment was completely closed for construction. And the entrance to the subway station at Columbus circle was completely covered in scaffolding and mostly closed for construction too.

We are so annoyed we’ve decided not to run the bloody marathon tomorrow. I think we’ll just go shopping instead.