New York City Art — Mapping the path

Art in the Big Apple

Dad and I drive across the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan to take in as much art as humanly possible in a single day. We visit two world-class art museums, the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Our nourished souls are matched by nourished stomachs with lunch in between at Pazza Notte.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dad and I arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City just before the doors opened. Our plan was to tour the museum in the morning before lunch, a was a ridiculous and audacious plan: The Met is the largest museum in the Americas, with over 1.5 million works in its collection. You don’t just pop by for a couple of hours in the morning and try to absorb 5,000 years of artistic endeavor across two million square feet of space. Nonsense. The mind simply cannot process and appreciate what it is seeing.

But we did our best, which is all we could do. And the Met was a marvel.

*Auguste Rodin,* Orpheus and Eurydice, 1893

We made the expert move of going directly to the second floor, while most visitors started on the first. For 30 minutes or so, it seemed like we had the museum to ourselves. We started in a hallway of European sculptures, then doubled back to see art from Arab lands, Iran, and Turkey ranging from formal artwork to the beautifully decorated Damascus Room, a reception chamber from the late Ottoman period in Syria.

We moved on to the Met’s 40 or so rooms of world-famous European art from 1250 to 1800 — a dizzying collection of masters and masterpieces. Like so many Americans, I am drawn to 19th-century Impressionism, and I found plenty to gawk at.

Claude Monet, *Bouquet of Sunflowers,* 1881

Claude Monet, *Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies,* 1899

Claude Monet, *Île aux Fleurs near Vétheuil*, 1880

Claude Monet, *Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun),* 1891

Auguste Renoir, *The Daughters of Catulle Mendès,* 1888

Vincent van Gogh, *The Flowering Orchard,* 1888

Vincent van Gogh, *Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat,* 1887

Vincent van Gogh, *First Steps,* After Millet, 1890

Georges Seurat, Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” 1884

Georges Seurat, *Circus Sideshow, (Parade de cirque),* 1887-88

Georges Seurat, *Gray Weather,* Grande Jatte, 1886-88

Further on, I walked through a special exhibit called, “Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India,” featuring art that appeared between 200 BC and 400 AD on religious monuments from ancient India known as stupas. The detail on the well-preserved sculptures was incredible.

The Met is not only a fabulous collection of art. Every room, every hallway is immaculate and carefully arranged, so each step feels part of an artistic experience.

I continued on the second floor to an array of breathtaking Asian art.

*Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in Water Moon Form (Shiyue Guanyin),* 11th century, China

*Posthumous Portrait of a Queen as Parvati,* 14th century, Indonesia

*Stela of a Four-Armed Vishnu*, 10th-11th century, India

*Jain Svetambara Tirthankara in Meditation, Seated on a Throne Cushion,* 11th century, India

*Dainichi, the Cosmic Buddha (Mahavairocana),* 12th century, Japan

*Bishamonten, Guardian of the North,* 1124, Japan

From there, I descended to the first floor to see priceless works from ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece, breezing through the meticulous craft of some of the greatest civilizations the world has known.

Before long, it was time to meet up with Dad and head off to lunch.

Pazza Notte

We drove south of Central Park to Pazza Notte on 6th Avenue, an attractive Italian spot not far from the Museum of Modern Art. We shared the Pizza Cacciatore, with pepperoni, ground beef, sausage, and bacon. Now, this might be a good time to talk about what constitutes a proper New York pizza.

I’m just kidding. I couldn’t care less. Our Pizza Cacciatore was perfetto in my book.

Museum of Modern Art

Dad and I walked from lunch to our second world-class art museum of the day, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). First opened in 1929, the museum is the fourth most-visited museum in the United States (just behind the Met), with modern and contemporary art from the 19th century to the present day.

We moved through MoMa’s six floors of galleries expressing a wide range of ideas and movements across many cultures, from abstract impressionism to Italian futurism, cubism, symbolism, pointillism, post-impressionism. and much more.

Jackson Pollock, *Number IA, 1948,* 1948

Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, *K+L+32+H+4. Mon père et moi (My Father and I),* 1962

Mokuma Kikuhata, *Roulette: Number Five,* 1964

Eduardo Kingman, *Los Chucchidores (The Gleaners),* 1936

Diego Rivera, *Festival de las flores: Fiesta de Santa Anita (Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita),* 1931

Diego Rivera, *Zapata lider agrario (Agrarian Leader Zapata),* 1931

Piet Mondrian, *Composition in White, Black, and Red,* 1936

Piet Mondrian, *Broadway Boogie Woogie,* 1942-43

Fletcher Martin, *Trouble in Frisco,* 1938

Umberto Boccioni, *Dynamism of a Soccer Player,* 1913

Fernand Léger, *Exit the Ballet Russes,* 1914

Pablo Picasso, *Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier)*, 1910

Pablo Picasso, *Still Life with Liquer Bottle,* 1909

Vincent van Gogh, *Portrait of Joseph Roulin,* 1889

Vincent van Gogh, *The Olive Trees,* 1889

Georges Seurat, *Evening, Honfleur,* 1886

Salvador Dali, *The Persistence of Memory,* 1931

Vasily Kadinsky, Soft Pressure, 1931 — Vasily Kadinsky, *Soft Pressure,* 1931

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