“5000 years of art” is how The Metropolitan Museum - usually just called The Met - describes its collection. It is nearly a quarter mile long, and in its more than 2 million square feet of display space, it sure lives up to expectations.

Egyptian stone age artifacts -some over 100,000 years old

Our first stop at The Met was in the Egyptian section. This one section is extremely massive, covering everything from early Egyptian artifacts - some over 100,000 years old - up to “recent” Egyptian art made during the times of Roman occupation.

Fully transfered Egyptian temple

There is even an Egyptian temple that was moved stone by stone from its home in Egypt, thus saving it from being flooded by the building of damns on the Nile.

3000-5000-year-old papyrus on display

By the time we made it through just half of the Egyptian section, we realized we would have to hurry up if we wanted to see anything else in the museum before it closed. It seems that the curators of the Egyptian section felt somewhat similar about cataloging the innumerable items on display, and there is a section with thousands of artifacts grouped by artifact type or where they were found. This section looks more like an archeologist’s cataloging room than a neat museum display, and that gives a feel as to the immensity of items held at the museum.

Greek/Roman statues on display

The Greek and Roman section of the Met seemed as equally massive as the Egyptian section. But due to time constraints we had to zip through it pretty quickly. Some notable exhibits include 2500-year-old Greek armor (it’s amazing it has survived in such good condition), a huge display of Greek and Roman statues, pottery, and more.

European room transferred to the Met

Just like the Met was capable of transplanting an entire Egyptian temple from its original home to the museum, it has also done the same with important and intricately painted/carved bedrooms from 1600-1800’s homes in Europe. These rooms look so at home at the Met, thus giving us the feeling we were visiting an old European palace.

The Toilet Of Venus , by François Boucher, 1751

There is far more in this museum than I could write about in one blog post. But there is one more interesting section we saw: Exhibits of art. Visiting this section was a pleasure especially after having bought a piece of renaissance art at Christie’s in New York. Many of the renaissance artists whose pieces were being sold at Christies, also have pieces displayed here at the Met.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 16th, 2008 at 9:40 am and is filed under Art, New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.