Ruth Leon recommends… Great Museums – Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ruth Leon recommendsGreat Museums – Metropolitan Museum of Art
Founded in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is a three dimensional encyclopedia of art history and this is a documentary about New York’s signature museum,
part of a series for American Public Broadcasting, now available on YouTube.
It includes commentary from many experts and curators but, most of all, it shows some of the sublime art captured in museums, only a glimpse, but sufficient to whet the appetite. This film is a sort of commercial for the Met but, if you’ve never been there, it gives you a taste of what’s in one of the world’s greatest collections of art – Asian, American, European and all the other regions of the world throughout history.
I wanted to share this with you because I love the Met and, having visited it many, many times, have only scratched the surface of what’s there. I’ll try to find more of these fine documentaries about the great museums of the world in future weeks. But, first, get acquainted with the Met.
This is an old film, made before the Met started to remake itself as a venue for contemporary art and wokeness. The collection is too vast and too great to be ruined by this, but growth in its traditional areas of emphasis and excellence may be sidelined now in favor of the politically correct and ephemeral. The direction of the institution since Max Hollein took office as director in 2018 has been disappointing.
I like the Met but this has NOTHING to do with classical music and doesn’t belong here.