Life In The Big Apple

Ryan "Cooper" T. Chong
19 years old
Singer
Artist
Starbucks barista

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Wednesday, July 09, 2008 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

7/09/2008 09:56:00 PM

Ahh yes. The "Metropolitan Museum of Art, art museum in New York City, one of the largest and most comprehensive art museums in the world. Founded in 1870 by a group of civic leaders, philanthropists, and artists, the museum has occupied its current location in New York’s Central Park since 1880. Its collections number nearly three million objects in every known artistic medium, representing cultures from every part of the world, from ancient times to the present.

Popularly known as the Met, the museum is a private institution. Its collection is housed in a building owned and maintained by New York City. Visited by more than five million people each year, the museum is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city. It is also a major educational institution, offering a wide array of programs for children and adults. In addition, scholars of archaeology and art history conduct advanced research projects at the museum." (Fletcher)

"There are several large museums in New York but the Metropolitan Museum of Art is truly gigantic. From the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, the Met, with its tall columns and windows, immense stairways and water fountains, looks like it could be an emperor’s palace. The size and diversity of the artwork on display is even more impressive; the museum’s collection contains works from every part of the world, spanning the Stone Age to the twentieth century. The Egyptian Art gallery includes a whole temple that was shipped to America as a gift.
Getting at least a little bit lost at the Met is inevitable. Floor plans help, but only so much. Despite their seeming complexity, though, the galleries are arranged to help you navigate through with ease. If you get mixed up, there are always museum personnel nearby who can give you directions If you’re planning on visiting the Met and another museum on Museum Mile in one trip, you’ll have to prioritize; going through the entire Met is a full day (or two) affair. The Met is a must see when visiting New York and is always worth another trip."(Wiggins)

Kim invited me along to accompany her to the museum last night. I've been wanting to go and visit the museum again since I only spent like 4 hours there the last time (prompting my art professors to go like: "What!? Just 4 hours?" The museum is almost a quarter of a mile long and has over 4 million square feet in floor space. So it takes like 2 long hour trips there to actually visit everything. I've been there twice so far and I have yet to see everything or been to every exhibit in the entire museum.

We met up at 10am at Starbucks, then after getting ourselves 2 iced grande, extra caramel, caramel macchiato, we got onto the subway and made our way to the Grand Central station where we transferred to the uptown bound #6 train and got off at the 77th St. Station. From there, we walked westward till we reached Central Park, made a left and walked a few more blocks till we reached the museum itself.

I love the building's neo classical architecture. Its size is massive! More like a in-your-face sort of massive.

The Grand/Main hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This small temple here was shipped all the way from Egypt to New York City. Must've been a load of work!

We walked through many more different exhibits that I skipped or just walked by without looking during my first trip. Probably cause during my first trip, I had 2 works that I needed to find in that huge building. There were a few rooms where the artwork was done directly onto the wall itself. Like this one for example:

After wandering around the Egyptian, Native Australian, Southern American, Pop Art, Dadaism, Medieval, Romantic, Gothic and so on, we stumbled upon a rather interesting looking sculpture that looks very familiar...

Now we know where Starbucks coffee got their logo in the first place.

It was fun to see Kim go: "ooh, pretty~" at a whole lot of works at the museum. It was very cute, like a little girl looking at something that she thinks is cute. She loves almost all of the animal works (Kim, "aww.. kitty~", "ooh a bunny!") hehe... Well we got kinda hungry after looking at the weapons and armor section so we decided to have lunch at the Balcony Cafe overlooking the main hall (neither of us had had breakfast). She loves brie cheese alot and was pretty happy to find out they had a ham and brie baguette sandwich. It was pretty expensive though ($8.50). I bought a bowl of tomato and mozzarella salad ($8.50) and 2 bottles of water ($2.50 each). She didn't like how the ham overpowered the taste of the cheese and how hard the baguette was. We shared our food and both agreed that the sandwich wasn't worth $8.50 at all. It was much more expensive than any of our sandwiches at Starbucks and yet doesn't even taste half as good as the ones that we have. The salad was much better (lettuce, cherry tomatoes, small lil cute mozzarella balls and olives with balsamic vinagrette dressing).

After eating, we had a look at the Asian exhibition and Egyptian exhibition before finally moving on to the American exhibition. We had to leave soon cause she was supposed to meet up with her boyfriend at Queens Place at 5:15pm. So after the American exhibition was done (including some work by the founder of Tiffany and Co.), we took one photo of us together at the exit and made our way back to the subway station (though not before grabbing 2 cones of ice cream. It was really hot and humid outside). We parted ways at Queensboro Plaza station where she took the R train to Queens Plaza Mall and I continued back to Flushing on the #7 express. Went to Starbucks after that to get an iced venti, sweetened, green tea lemonade then walked through the rain (Tommy wanted to give me a bright pink umbrella) to pick Edric up from tutoring before heading back home all sweaty because of the damn heat. LOL... Gotta get to QCC tomorrow to settle some stuff about my fees. ugh... Good night!