In Pictures: Inside the Met Museum

By Kin Enriquez -

For this week's In Pictures I will highlight the treasures inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the people who patronize the museum.

The Met Museum, located in the Museum Mile of New York, is one of the largest museums in the world, and also one of the most visited. Only the Louvre can boast of higher number of visitors.
Salvador Dali's Corpus Hypercubus

The number of treasures found within the Met is vast, and I'm sure that I haven't even scratched the surface of seeing all of them. 

I've featured some of the artworks that I saw in the museum during my past posts, including that of Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, Georgia O'Keefe, and Edgar Degas, among others.
Etruscan chariot

Still, there are loads of them left, and I'll be featuring some more of them in this post.

One can get lost in the vastness and richness of the museum's collection - 2 million pieces in all -  which is grouped into 18 galleries. 

An Asmat canoe from Papua
The galleries include collections spanning Near Easter art, European paintings, European sculpture and decorative arts (top picture), medieval art, arts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, photographs, Asian art, and musical instruments. The museum even has several Philippine artifacts in its collection, including a bulul. 

A medieval altar
Of course I did not linger on many of the galleries when I was there. I have my favorites (medieval art and Renaissance paintings mainly, plus Egyptian art including the mummies) and I've only given other collections a cursory visit. 

A patron studies a Van Gogh painting
The visit to the museum appealed very much to the inner geek in me though. Before I started traveling I've always wondered how it would feel like to look at a painting or sculture that I previously have only seen in my Humanities books. When I finally git there, it was almost a religious experience for me. Especially after seeing that Crucifixion painting by Dali. And this reliquary that contains a bone of a saint. 
A medieval reliquary that contains a saint's bone

How to get there: 
If taking the subway, take Line 6 and get off 77th Street and walk to the direction of Central Park. 

Useful Info:
The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 9:30 am to 5:30pm. Admission for adults is $20. It is best to purchase the tickets online to avoid the queue.

Art class students

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