Feast Of St. Gennaro, Little Italy

On September 21st, temporarily museum-ed out, we did the St. Gennaro Feast Day in Little Italy. It was simply the longest street party we have yet seen, a dozen or more (lots more) blocks along Mulberry St., pretty far down the island. 90% of it was food, and 90% of that was Italian food, which is certainly among our favorite cuisines. It was a Saturday, a beautiful day, the 98th edition of the Feast, and Mulberry St. was elbow-to-elbow most all the way. 

As far as the eye can see...

St. Gennaro Himself; patron saint of Naples and of
Little Italy

Among the many, many famous TV shows we have never seen

Can't be a gangsta without your stogie

Non-Italian stuff too, including the most expensive pasteis de nata yet
encountered, including Covent Garden

Super-fresh sugar cane juice (note machine)...childhood memories
from Miami...

Looking the other way, still as far as the eye can see

Healthy treats...sugar-coated fruit

Italiana

A bit crowded

State fair fare in addition to the Italiana; FWIW, I had a sausage
sandwich with onions and peppers and a beer...all for just $25;
Vicki had the funnel cake

Italian pashminas

Very famous, I was told

At the saint's own booth; indulgences?

Handy bowl for mixing your cheese and pasta

We happen to know that in Big Italy this is not what you get when
you ask for peperoni...

Cross a boulevard and you have space-warped into
Chinatown

Street scene: the lady on the left is holding a printed catalog of items
she can sell you...Apple phones, designer purses, luxury watches, etc.,
all at significantly deep discounts...the two tall guys are carrying armloads
of "Apple" phones...

No saints here, but they do have Dr. Sun Yat-Sen

The Met: Roman Art

We've seen a great deal of Roman stuff over the years...the National Roman Museum in Rome, the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Pompeii, most of the museums and sites in most of the places the Romans conquered in Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor...lots of it more than once. Just enter "roman" in the search box....The Met has an extensive Roman collection, but the pix below reflect just some things new to us and some curiosities.

Huge hall of sculptural antiquities, both Roman and Greek; the mosaic-
like floor was hand-laid

Thus

Obligatory bust of Socrates...Roman copy...there must
have been full factories manufacturing these...we have
seen scores of them...

Sarcophagus...saw scores of these in Turkey, some the size of small houses

Etruscan chariot: two horse-power

Mouse-shaped glass flask...Roman sense of humor...one supposes

Now in the vast upstairs Greek and Roman Study Collection; arranged
by nationality, era, genre...

Helpful map...actually, a touch-screen on the wall where you can
locate what's of interest, then key-in an item's inventory number and
get its description, analysis, whatever...Roman, Greek, back through
the neolithic and beyond, mostly smaller items in the glass cases;
thousands of items...but, alas, no Gabinetto Segreto, as in Naples...

Gold hairnet with medallion, Hellenistic, 2nd BCE

Another gold ornament, with micro-chimes, 3rd BCE, Greek

Golden arm bands, Greek, 3rd BCE

New to us department: we have seen plenty of reconstructed Roman
rooms, with original panting, but never this kind of architectural
landscape...from the villa of  P. Fannius Synistor, Boscotrecase, 
late Augustan, a bedroom...

Use of shading, perspective that would have enlightened the
Renaissance types a thousand or more years later...the villa was
unearthed in about 1900CE; all done in true fresco, pigment
applied to wet plaster

Known to art historians as Second Style Greek painting...well worth
the price of admission, we thought...

The Met: Cycladic Art

Our interest in Cycladic art stems from our visits to Greece in 2010 and 2011. Also from our interests in anything neolithic. Very briefly, the Cyclades are the many islands of the southern Aegean, north of Crete and between mainland Greece and Turkey. The islands have been inhabited for aeons, and Cycladic art is generally compared with Minoan and Mycenean art, from the bronze age. But Cycladic art is much older, some specimens going back into the deeper neolithic, 7,000 years ago. It consists very largely of marble figurines, nearly always female, nearly always in the same standing pose, arms crossed (usually left over right), devoid of any but the largest features. In age they range over several thousand years, and have been found all over the region, nearly always in burial sites, both male and female sites, always reclining, often broken into pieces. Evidence of paint has been found on many. Art historians have identified several different ages and styles of these figures. 

But that is absolutely all that is known. There has been much speculation about the purposes and functions of these figurines, but, as with anything about the neolithic, and beyond, it can never be anything more than speculation. Which gives rise to one of the first principles of anthropology: whenever you are utterly clueless about something's meaning or function, say it is "ceremonial." But I digress.

The Met has the largest and most impressive collection of Cycladic art we have seen, outside of Greece. (The British Museum's Cycladic room was closed during our last several visits). What is pictured here is just the Leonard Stern Collection. The Met has more in the Greek/Roman study hall upstairs and still more in the still-closed Rockefeller collection.

Helpful map of the immediate region

Among several display cases; Cycladic clay is said to have been of
poor quality, so there isn't much in the way of pottery 

An unusual specimen, headless, arms not crossed, with 

thigh-pads, and a "voluminous" posterior

Voluminous

Me and mini-me?

Pregnant?

Very rare...a musician

One of several relatively large specimens

Cycladic silver bowls, c. 3,000BCE

Terracotta vase for multiple offerings, c. 2,000BCE

Comfy chair

The largest of the collection, perhaps 4 feet high; alas,
only the torso is original, the head and legs modern 
additions...oh well...