An Evening in New York City

Vasylivka I got to the Metropolitan Museum of Art late and surveyed most of what I’d not seen the day before in little over an hour before closing (quite rewarding). It’s amazing how much I can see in an hour at a museum! I saw the impressive large collection of ancient Greek artifacts . . . I could see why the period from the 8th to the 4th centuries B.C. might have been called a “flowering.” Next I saw African art (my favorite probably continuing to be that of Benin), the art of Oceania, including New Guinea, Irian Java, et. al., then early art of the Americas, including Peruvian, Columbian, & Mayan.

I breezed through European paintings with nary a glance but took a closer look in the European sculpture hall (for some inexplicable reason, my picture of another European sculpture hall from above came out with a large dark blob spread across the center).

I quickly took a close look at the photographs of Walker Evans (a special exhibit), then finished my tour with the art of India and Southeast Asia, cut short on time before getting to Chinese or Japanese art. Nonetheless, I experienced a massive amount of art appreciation in a short period of time. I found myself wondering (without time to really work it out) which art, periods, styles, had informed others. To what extent did artistic flowerings arise independently, as opposed to being based on what had come before. I wasn’t able to take many pictures as I was breezing through, but, I did get a few (although most of these I took the day before):.