Morrison Heckscher, chairman of the Metropolitan Museum’s American Wing, in the refurbished Engelhard Court last May (prior to the public opening)
Following up on my President’s Day post, where we tracked down the Metropolitan Museum’s George Washington-in-exile, here’s my very belated take on the museum’s refurbished Engelhard Court and period rooms in the American Wing.
But first, we should note that there’s another iconic George Washington portrait by Gilbert Stuart to be found on display at the Met (whose American painting galleries are closed until 2011 for renovation). Besides the ones that we visited in Sunday’s CultureGrrl Video (in open storage at the museum’s Luce Center), there’s also an important Stuart rendering of our founding father in the Alexandria Ballroom, 1793, one of the Met’s 19 refurbished American period rooms. You can peer across the furnishings at a version, ca. 1800, of the artist’s famous Lansdowne portrait, on loan from collector Michael Steinhardt:
The period rooms are visually stunning and brilliantly explicated by the new touchscreens, whose only “deficiency” may be superfluity. You can easily get engrossed in all the layers of detail about one room (its objects, its original occupants and its history both before and after arriving at the Met), leaving insufficient time for the other chambers.
For the first time, the American period rooms are arranged in chonological order. But to follow the intended path, you need to begin on the third floor. Many visitors, I suspect, will wander into the middle of the sequence, from the main level, entering through the preserved 19th-century bank façade at the far end of the sculpture court.
The courtyard itself is, to me, a largely unsatisfying experience. But first, this truth-in-advertising alert:
Below is the image of the redone court that the Met has been using in advertising. It was also seen last Sunday as the clickable “Enter Here” image on the homepage of the museum’s website.
What’s misleading about the Met’s advertising image? For one thing, it omits the very crowded café, just beyond the sculptures at the right in the above photo. What you DO see in the ad is the greenery of Central Park, through the windows at the lower right—a view that no visitor to the renewed courtyard has yet experienced. The glass, for now, is frosted over to mask the construction site just outside, which is visible from the balcony above (as shown in the above-linked CultureGrrl Video that was shot last Thursday).
Here’s the viewless café, where you can glimpse the tops of trees above the frosted panels:
Where once there were ample plantings, benches and subdued pavers…
…there are now vast expanses of highly polished marble, in the no-so-grand tradition of corporate lobbies:
Back to the Met: One reason for clearing its courtyard of plantings, Heckscher told me, was to call more attention to the sculpture court’s sculptures, by making it easier to view them up close (rather than surrounded by foliage). That turns out to be a mixed blessing.
Some of the works are sublime:
But others are ridiculous:
Even the courtyard’s signature work, Augustus Saint-Gaudens‘ naked “Diana,” who claims the central spot, is less than she seems:
Until its American Wing is completed, the Met could do a better job of displaying its masterworks of American paintings, through changing displays. A small group of nine landscapes has been on view in the museum’s Lehman Wing since May. The museum should rotate other dossier exhibitions of American paintings into that (or another) space, to satisfy visitors’ appetite for our country’s heritage, especially now that the comprehensive American Stories exhibition has closed.