Today was my big treat: I went back to the Metropolitan Museum after a year and a half away. There was a problem with New Jersey Transit, so I had to take the train plus the PATH plus a walk across Greenwich VIllage and a subway and then a walk across the Upper East Side--all pure pleasure, my tour of New York--to get to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
THis kind of day represents one of the main reasons I left the satisfactions of my home in Harrison County, West Virginia for the Northeast. I wanted to be able to experience major art whenever I felt like it. It’s not that I go to Broadway plays every week or do clubbing or even music or ever have--I’m not actually a huge fan of Broadway musicals for example, and I do a lot of reading, but you can do that anywhere.
But I love New York City, where I lived from 1967 to 1987, and I love being able to walk into a building for free or very little and seeing what people made to show their cultures and their beliefs and their personalities for five thousand years and more. Romans, Egyptians, Africans, European white guys, Chinese vase makers. All of it.
You need to be in a city to see lots and lots of visual and architectural and sculptural art, and you need to be in a city to see the full panoply of human activity displayed all day everyday and all night as well.
So today I saw a splendid exhibit of portraiture from Florence under the Medici and next to it, the wonderful ALice Neel exhibit of her 20th century poor people and pregnant women. I was just so happy to be back.
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