Gravestone from Ancient Greece
Though New York has often been considered an aesthete’s
paradise, it boasts a great deal of dross along with the gold. There are magnificent things in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection, as well as a few fine
things in the Museum of Modern Art –
and aficionados well-remember the past glories of the late, lamented Dahesh Museum.
However,
New York is also home to the trashy post modernism found at the Whitney and the errant tushery store-housed
in the Guggenheim, along with
galleries aimed at the well-heeled sucker and crammed with all manner of
pickled sharks, troughs of broken glass and other detritus peddled by a
pandering and corrupt marketplace.
The great
shame of all of this is that it often so hard to see the great things that are
here; a thought which crossed my mind repeatedly this weekend while visiting
the Greek and Roman Gallery at the
New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Fully renovated
and reopened in the Spring of 2007, the Greco-Roman wing now has some 57,000
square feet of exhibition space for classical antiquity – about as much space
as all the Whitney Museum galleries combined.
And unlike the Whitney, here are treasures actually worth seeing, if one could.
The
Greco-Roman wing houses some magnificent statuary, stunningly preserved bits of
pottery and jewelry, and gravestones that left your correspondent deeply moved
by our universal humanity and capacity for grief. It is easy to see the deep and abiding debt
the modern world owes the Greeks and the Romans: everything from the language of
our art to the confines of our thought and the boundaries of our
aesthetics. We are the Greeks and Romans – no other ancient (or modern, for that
matter) cultures have had so titanic an influence over us.
Considering
the size of that debt – both aesthetic and intellectual – one would think that
the Metropolitan would make it easier to see the work on display. Good luck.
The grand halls housing the treasures are quite wonderful: lofty
expanses with many windows, allowing a generous amount of sunlight. However, many of the pieces are behind thick
pieces of reflective glass, and I often found myself looking at my own
reflection (or that of the window behind me) and not the art.
Museums in
Rome have conquered this problem by leaving treasures in the open, surrounded
by sensors which beep when one peers too closely. It’s something that the Metropolitan might
want to consider.
Many of the
statues are placed so high that details are lost – which is a puzzlement,
considering that many of them are on a human-scale and meant to be seen
eye-to-eye. It’s great for connoisseurs
of thighs and the occasional ankle, but we big-picture types have nothing for
but to look up.
More disturbing
still is that it seems neither the curators nor the staff have bothered to
proof-read the information cards near the exhibits. When one statue is described as having a
wound under the breast, when it is clearly bleeding beside the breast and near
the armpit, it means that either the curators are sloppy or the staff
negligent.
However, with
all of that grumbling aside – New Yorkers and art historians with an interest in
the ancient world will find that there is much to savor in the Greco-Roman wing
of the Met. It is a surprisingly
comprehensive collection, tracing the evolution and decline of a mighty
civilization. We can only hope that
millennia from now, we are treated as kindly by our successors.
Tomorrow: Extravagant Inventions; The Princely
Furniture of the Roentgens
2 comments:
Nicely expressed regarding the pandering and corrupt marketplace.
I was amazed in London to see treasures nearly eyeball to eyeball, as it should be (with guards watching for errant touching). I was also amazed at the strangely treasured items at the Tate Modern.
Thanks for your erudite blog!
this post reminds me, quite tangentially, of the joy of wandering round the museum at Olympia in Greece, with its gorgeous statue of Antinous, the most convincing of the various representations of the Emperor Hadrian's lover.
thanks for the alert to the new space for such antiquities at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art
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