Anthony and I were standing on line at The Met as I was figuring out how to politely ask for change when I handed over a 20 dollar bill when the suggested admission was even more. A museum employee came over and announced to the line that we were on the credit card only line. That's when my dilemma turned into how I was going to say Put five dollars on this please without sounding cheap. However, I did just that and the cashier asked, For both of you? I said, No, only me. So I didn't appear as cheap as I could have! Anthony didn't need to pay anything because of one of his education passes. Off we went to possibly find the exhibits we wanted to say.
Getting around the Met, even with their map, is near impossible. Usually I roam around and bump into cool stuff until I find myself in the Egyptian room and then find the exit from there.
We did manage to find the photography exhibits pretty quickly. The world of photoshop was on display (not its official name, but I know it was something about manipulating photos). But first, I found this little piece of wonder--a piece of art you're allowed to touch!
Okay, technically you're not supposed to touch the art. You're supposed to touch the velvet drape to see the art being protected from the light behind it. I wouldn't have known that until my brother picked it up and I was like, You can't touch anything! And he was like, You're supposed to...what did you think...that was the art? In my defense, I've seen a lot of crap called art, so a piece of velvet hanging on a wall could very well be art.
We then found another photography exhibit that I hadn't realized would be animated. It was actually very neat. The photographer took pictures from a cab with a camera that takes action photos and then strung them together and its all in a slo-mo video. The drawback is that it's about an hour long. We stood in the dark room and watched about ten minutes of it and then decided we'd had enough. We couldn't see anyone standing there for a full hour. I mean, you see one slo-mo person staring at the camera in wonderment, you'd seen them all.
The Eggleston exhibit was nearby, so we went through that. It was neat. Then we found a container of bottle caps that's called art and figured it's something that either of us could do in our own homes and call it art.
We stumbled upon the contemporary art rooms. I love it. My brother thinks it's dumb because he knows 8-year-olds who can paint blocks of color on a canvas just as well. As I always say to him and Eddie and anyone else who questions it: sure anyone can do it, but these artists did it first. The debate fell by the wayside as we rounded a corner and I was able to exclaim, Good God, it's a Lichetenstein! Not the piano, the painting! (Weekend at Bernie's, anyone?). Unfortunately, the interactive sculpture that you could step on a button and make it make noise and move was no longer available for us to interact with.
We went down the stairs, passing by a very scary Kiki Smith piece hanging off the wall.
It has, like, real eyeballs. Seriously, go to the Met and look at its eyeballs. It's freaky.
Anthony found Mao and I found an old guy's ass.
This is what museums are for.
And then we found Mark. The cool thing about Mark is that it's a huge painting that looks like a photograph. Actually, everything about Mark is cool. Mark is our new friend.
After getting through the contemporary stuff, we decided we should find the American wing. We backtracked through contemporary. We got sidelined at India and Eastern art.
We backtracked through Eggleston and the photography rooms. We found ourselves looking at a rattan and wicker exhibit. We somehow got back to contemporary. We tried following the map, but every time I tried to find a room, it wasn't on the map. Like I would try to find 819, and on the map were 800 through 818 and then 820 to 900, but no 819 was there.
We rode the glass elevator between floors and wound up on a weird halfway between floors floor. We got back on the elevator and then found some stairs. We found a third floor and then went down some other stairs. We went through some Fashion of Impressionism exhibit that was packed. Packed! Who knew so many people wanted to look at frumpy dresses?
Then, we saw this:
Don't ask me how we'd found it. I couldn't even get back to it if we tried. We went through and saw that famous picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware. Then we pointed out faces of old men and named the Founding Father. We found the exhibit for Women in Sports in America,which was half a wall large. Finding the wing was more thrilling than what was actually in the wing.
Then we stumbled upon Egypt. Meaning, it was time to go.
Once we got outside, we went to the park to eat and watch people ride bikes. I told him about the time I got lost in the Ramble. He agreed it was the worst part of the park to get lost in because it's actual park, like with trees and no pavement. We decided to walk downtown and to the west side. On the way, I figured I'd teach him something about the park because he'd never been to that place where the milk is. I couldn't remember the name of it, so he kept asking if cows were involved.
Then we found it. It was the Dairy! Of course, the Dairy. See? Milk is involved.
Also at that point, we found that we were zigzagging. There's really no possible way to walk to where you want to go in the park. If you want to go downtown, you can't also go across. It's just impossible. So by the time we got to the south end, we'd walked from east to west, but then back to the east, so once more, I had to go west so I could catch my line. He came with to get to the 7, which apparently is the most convenient line ever, but first, one last stop in the park.
And while we waited for the subway, we listened to the soothing sounds of Annette Taylor. As we'd gone through the museum, my brother asked, What are you writing in your book? I told him that I write down titles and names that I would look up later. As Annette Taylor sang, we took note because she had a great voice. Unfortunately, that's not the part that was most memorable. She was singing over a Whitney Houston CD. However, she wasn't singing with the words. She was more scatting over Whitney, and out-singing her if that's possible, but we couldn't tell which song it was because the CD was so low and she was so loud. And between singing, she was plugging her website. My brother was like You gonna write that down, too? I was like, you know what...and I did because I really needed to find out if she did more than scat over Whitney. And here's what I found.
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