Museum

Today I braved, the not-so impressive crowds at the not-so impressive met to see the J.M.W. Turner show AND the Superhero Fashion and Fantasy show. Overall I give the experience a 3.21463. Oh, yes, I would round that down. The met was lookin' shabby to say the least. After the ten dollars I spent willingly, I expected a bit more impressive experience. The best part of the trip, by far, was the Modern Art section in which I viewed some of my favorites including Guston, Pollack, Warhol, Leichtenstein, Rauschenberg, and Dubuffet.

I began perusing the Turner exhibit with excitement because, of course, it was all the buzz among the fanny-pack clad tourists. After entering the exhibit in a state of heightened glee, I came to the realization that the galleries doubled as the nursing home of the Metropolitan. I was reduced to audacious movements to weave through the mobs of slow and reticent grannies. One, middle-aged woman felt the need to interpret the art with full hand movement that reminded me instantly of my animated, overly maybelline smeared psychology teacher. She made huge hand gestures that she felt were important to fully and audibly describe her interpretation of the light that Turner so ingeniously used in his paintings. But apart from all the disadvantages, the exhibit was very enlightening, as I learned of the many stages that Turner had, originating in the Royal Academy, where Turner had many of his paintings displayed and exposed to many critiques over the span of his career. His genre was the English Romantic, but as he matured he ventured into the more abstract, with indistinguishable landscapes and figures that experimented with light. His most impressive work to me was that in which centered around the low light. In these he used the light to alter the colors of everything else in the painting. As many criticized him for the "blur" and less defined shapes of his later works, in comparison to his 18th century realistic pieces, I thought the opposite, in that he ingeniously used light in alternative way.

The Roof Garden which the Met hypes up to the nth degree of fabulousness was not as exciting as I had hoped, at first. Jeff Koons had a whopping three pieces displayed on the small terrace. I enjoyed the views of the city and central park though. 

The super hero exhibit was interesting as I am interested in fashion. This is obviously what I like to call the museum play-place. The token exhibit for where parents can bring kids and hope that they will cease to whine for the 30 minutes they spend walking through the exhibit. I really enjoyed seeing the costume worn by the beautiful Mr. Christian Bale in The Dark Knight and the costume worn by the equally beautiful Toby Maguire in Spiderman III. They also had many pieces by Giorgio Armani who apparently helped to fund the exhibit. I also enjoyed the pieces that Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga had designed inspired by superhero powers. I found it interesting that the mutant aspect, characteristic of the "X-men" had their very own section of couture pieces. It was not unpleasant, but seemed very Orlando amusement park to me, with distorted blown-up pictures as the rather make-shift backgrounds to the designer pieces.

Forgive me if I sound snobbish at all in this post, I just have learned over many years of museum browsing, what to get out of a good museum, and unfortunately I was not completely compelled by the facade of the Met. Maybe I am stuck in childish notions of grandeur, but I expected quite a different experience from the renowned Met.

Here are some of the highlights of the parts of the museum I was able to photograph.