story and photos by Kayte Deioma
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s largest and finest museums. Ironically, that’s why I hadn’t visited it in any of my previous trips to New York. I felt that a great art museum like the Louvre, the Prado or the Met deserves a full day to really appreciate its collections, and I’ve never stayed in New York long enough at one time to be willing to devote a whole day to one activity.
Since I was in New York this time with my sister and her kids, I decided that it was more important for the kids to get a taste of great art than to worry about not having time to see the whole thing, and thereby miss everything. We didn’t expect the kids to have the patience to stay in a museum more than a couple hours anyway.
I was much more relaxed once I gave myself permission to miss lots of wonderful stuff.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located in a massive Gothic-Revival building on Fifth Avenue along the western edge of Central Park. After getting our tickets, we went to the information booth in the center of the Great Hall to find out if there were any family programs scheduled that day. It was a Saturday, and we were in luck with a “Hello, Met!” family introduction to the museum scheduled an hour later.
With just an hour for exploration on our own, we chose to start with the Egyptian exhibit, with the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside Cairo.
We rented the audio tour headsets, which I don’t usually do on my own, but it turned out to be great for the kids. It was easier for the younger ones than reading the information panels. As we moved through the colorful sarcophagi, carved limestone monuments and painted hieroglyphics, they really enjoyed punching in the numbers and having control over which descriptions they heard. There wasn’t a child-friendly version of the tour like there is some places, but they seemed to do just fine.
Becca was somewhat selective in which pieces she wanted to learn more about, but Sarah could have spent all day “listening to stories” and didn’t appreciate being hurried to keep up.
We hadn’t made it much farther than the maze of corridors through the Tomb of Perneb – a part original, part reconstruction of a 4300 year-old Egyptian burial chamber – when it was time to head downstairs to the family program.
The Hello, Met! Family Program
We met the rest of the families downstairs in the Uris Center for Education. After a brief introduction, our guide, Amir Parsa, took us back upstairs to the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. We all settled on the floor in front of a glass case lined with carved wooden masks from Mali. After a brief Q and A about the use of masks around the world, we learned more about these Dogon Masks, used in mourning dances several years after the person died.
We moved around the corner to Papua New Guinea to study more masks and spirit boards from the temporary exhibit “Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf.” After studying the intricately carved and painted spirit boards and learning how art and culture go hand in hand, children and parents were given paper and pencils to copy their favorite board designs, or create their own.
Our last stop on the Hello, Met tour was in the Modern Art wing, where our guide used a series of Jacob Lawrence paintings to talk about shapes and colors before distributing colored pencils and letting the budding artists get back to work, either coloring their spirit boards or creating something new.
After our hour-long journey into art appreciation, we planned our exit route to take in the new Greek and Roman sculpture exhibit in the sky-lit Leon Levy and Shelby White Court. The atrium, populated with Roman statues from the first century BC to the third century AD, was a great preview for Derick, who would soon be setting off on an excursion to Italy.
The girls took the opportunity to throw a coin in the fountain and make a wish. They wouldn’t reveal their wishes. Maybe, like Trevi, it was a wish that will bring them back to the Met someday.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York 10028-0198
General Information: 212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is included in the NYC Go Select Pass and the NYC Explorer Pass.
Reviews of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Year’s ago, I took some of my siblings to see Blood Brothers on Broadway during a weekend getaway to the city. They only went along to humor me. There was a universal attitude among them of “What’s the big deal? We’ve seen lots of plays.” After the performance, my sister Ellie looked at me with her eyes still lit up and said, “Now I get why you love Broadway!”
production to introduce them to the magic of Broadway.
I was looking for something more original, where the story and music would be fresh and new, so we’d have no preconceptions. Ellie and I agreed on the award winning musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” playing at the 623-seat Circle in the Square. Even though the age recommendation was 10 and up, we decided the content looked innocuous enough, and our 7 and 9-year olds are relatively
sophisticated.
In addition to the Broadway experience, another New York original production that’s worth a visit, especially when traveling with kids, is the Blue Man Group. This New York spectacle is still better in the 300-seat Astor Place Theatre in the Big Apple than at any of its giant spin-off homes around the world.
spattered with the beat of a drum or spit skillfully onto a canvas. They manage to keep most of the mess miraculously on stage, but some flying substance that bore a strong resemblance to macaroni and cheese did manage to reach Becca in the fifth row. She was blissfully clad in plastic, so she was immune to the yuck factor.
Madame Tussauds was the one thing that my nephew Derick really wanted to do in New York, and he’d been such a good sport about American Girl Place, that we made the effort to squeeze it in on our last day.
Marie Tussaud’s mother worked for a doctor in France who had some skill in making wax models. She learned the craft from him and on his death inherited his collection of wax figures of notable people. She began to exhibit his figures with some of her own in a traveling exhibit and opened the first permanent Madame Tussaud museum in London in 1835. Until 1971, when Madame Tussauds opened in Amsterdam, you had to go to London to see the French woman’s original collection (remade from original molds after shipwrecks and fires).
It was fun to watch the kids get excited about having their photos taken with favorite movie stars and other notables. I was amazed how many movie stars 7-year-old Sarah knew by name. She claimed me as her personal photographer as the others went on ahead
. “Take my picture with Whoopi! Take my picture with Julia Roberts! Take my picture with Robin Williams!”
Derick got right up close to Usher to take a photo, and we could hear the music playing, but we were unaware that this was an interactive exhibit that lets you play DJ by changing the music choices.
If you look closely at the refrigerator in Rachael Ray’s Kitchen, magnetic letters spell out “LOOK INSIDE.” I didn’t see this until I zoomed in on the photo of Ellie in the kitchen, so we didn’t realize we could or should open the fridge to find a touch screen monitor with Rachael Ray trivia. In the photo, I also noticed a sign on the oven that says “See What’s Cooking” with an arrow, so there’s probably something interesting in there too.
The best participatory exhibit was the American Idol karaoke stage with a wax Simon Cowell critiquing singers. The live KJ crooning between volunteers gives this one away. The karaoke area, which is also the snack bar, was pretty quiet when we came in, so Becca and Sarah stepped right up to sing “The Start of Something New” from High School Musical. Derick grabbed some ice cream dots and joined Ellie and me and a wax gentleman in the audience.
People gathered as they sang and they got a nice round of applause after they finished. The voice of the almighty Simon sounded from overhead: “That performance can be summed up with one word. Congratulations!!!…” Since Ellie videotaped the performance with her own camera, we skipped buying the DVD.