The Metropolitan Museum of Art played a vital role in the education of arts administration throughout our time in New York. We visited the met a handful of times exploring different facets of the institution each visit. In addition to our visit we read Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Danny Danzinger. This book gave us an introduction to the Met as wells as an overview of the functioning of a non profit art museum. From this book we learned about the importance of every employee of a museum. Most importantly, the book illustrated the importance of hiring employees that love their work place and their job. It is exactly that level of loyalty and pride that contributes to the overwhelming success of the museum.
We were able to witness this passion and commitment first hand by meeting with a handful of employees. We met with a few women who work in development, an events planner and a curator. With each successive employee we met, we shifted from the inner workings of the institution to the art work within the museum. This progression provided new insight to the museum that changed our perception of the art and the museum. We used our knowledge to explore the way art work is placed and displayed, in addition to the architecture that houses the work.
It’s nearly impossible to walk out of the Met with a feeling of indifference. We explored this idea through a class assignment that paralleled our progressive understanding of the museum. We were instructed to find a piece of art, in any medium or time period, that solicited a strong reaction of any kind within us. I decided to seek out a piece of art that evoked negative feelings because I usually walk out of the Met with a new love and appreciation for art I was previously unfamiliar with. Rarely do I leave the Met disgusted by what I had seen. I ended up picking a marble statue sculpted in the 1850s by the artist Erastus Dow Palmer entitled, “Indian Girl or The Dawn of Christianity”. The work itself was beautiful, but the connotations were quite the opposite. It enraged me that a statue was carved to commemorate the process of robbing Native American’s of their culture.
The assignment was a great chance for our class to learn about art through each other as well. With such an assortment of pieces we were really able to see just how broad the word “art” really is and what it means to different people. The following pieces were chosen by my classmates and professor.
Damien Hirst “The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living” 1999
Barnett Newman “Onement IV” 1949
Zhan Wang 2001 “Artificial rock #10”
Louise-Claude Vasse 1763 “The Nymph of Dampierre”
Charles Courdier “The Jewish Woman of Algiers “1862
Oba with Sacrificial Animals from the Ezmo’s Altar of the Hand
Charles Demuth “The Figure 5 in Gold 1928
Edward Hopper “Table for Ladies” 1930
-Whitney
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