The Met: Musical Instruments

One day we wandered into the musical instruments department of the Met...

In addition to all the instruments, there are many paintings, sculptures,
etc., relating to music...

As related in various posts previously, I played the oboe in
5th through 11th grades (Allapattah Elementary, Horace Mann
JHS, Miami Edison HS), and naturally feature the oboes and
other double-reeds in posts such as this...

I was also principal oboist in the Miami Symphonic
Society...when no other oboists showed up...pretty 
intimidating for a 13 year old, especially when the other
two youngsters in the orchestra were genuine prodigies
who went onto some fame in the musical world

Obligatory Stradivarius

Obligatory Erard...decorated for English nobility..Erard was the choice
of Wagner and other composers...

19th century oboes; I eventually learned to make my
own reeds, thereby saving my family a small fortune

Contra-bass saxophone

Said to be the oldest surviving piano, early 18th
century, by Cristofori; I also played piano in my teens;
but did not attempt to play this one

The Met: Henry R. Luce Center For The Study of American Art

The Luce Center does for American art what the Greek and Roman Study Center does for classical art: it stores a lot of things not on permanent display, but in a mode accessible and well-cataloged and well-described. The Center is immense: the Met itself is immense because of its relative youth and situation in Central Park. Imagine, all the spare parts are under the same roof...

Helpful map

Some of the silver

Plates, bowls

Aisle after aisle of all these things

How to make a Tiffany lamp

Paintings

Chests

More paintings...in the portraits division...note the screen whereby
you can identify pieces, read descriptions...

Frames

More paintings

Including a Mary Cassatt

A Benjamin West

Elliot portrait of Mathew Brady...1857...before he became
really famous

Glass...evidently I was overwhelmed, wandering aimlessly...

Another Bierstadt...

OBF

Chairs dept.

Overcome, we retreated to the roof-top cafe for a sunset view

The Met: American Wing

We did the Met's American Wing over the course of several days...it's a bit spread out, and, as one might expect, it is quite large. Many rooms of OBF (old brown furniture), some as nice as our Statton bedroom suite (can be yours, $4k OBO), but much else too, some historic. As usual, we were drawn mostly to the paintings.

Beautiful Tiffany windows here and there (some already
posted)

"Period" rooms all over the wing, but this Frank Lloyd Wright great
room was the prize catch

The great whatever outside the American wing

Blown and molded glass on one of the terraces

Whistler, Portrait of Theodore Duret

St. Gaudens, Bob Louie (Stevenson; very distant relative on Vicki's
side...)

John Singer Sargent, The Wyndham Sisters, 1899 (three-fer)

Sargent, Lady with the Rose, 1882

Francis William Edmonds, Taking the Census, 1854

Francis William Edmonds, The New Bonnet, 1858

Enoch Wood Perry, The True American, 1874 (a study in the willful

ignorance of the Reconstruction era; it said)

Unknown, Moving Day (in Little Old New York), 1827; from the Colonial
period through the 19th century, leases expired on May 1st, a day of
bedlam as entire households and businesses moved....

Frederick Edwin Church, The Parthenon, 1871

Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851; muy famoso

Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859

Albert Bierstadt, The Matterhorn

Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, 1863

John Trumbull, Alexander Hamilton, 1792

Gilbert Stewart, George Washington, mid-1790s

Samuel F. B. Morse (yes, that Morse), Portrait of Susan
Walker Morse (his daughter), 1837

Only in America

Miniaturist's kit

OBF

More OBF

Easy Chair, Caleb Gardiner, upholsterer, Rhode Island,
late 18th

High Chest, enameled, Boston, mid-18th

More period rooms

More OBF