Having grown up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the `70s and `80s, I feel reasonably confident in suggesting that, like most of my fellow UES residents, I probably took the Metropolitan Museum of Art for granted. Here was this truly monolithic cultural institution of almost incalculable significance, but it was right there for us at all times – virtually at our beck and call. My mother started bringing my sister and I there as tiny children – primarily as a time-filling activity, probably, more than as an means of broadening our little minds. It was an affordable, educational and versatile destination. Sure, it housed priceless antiquities and rarified works of art, but it was also this giant, labyrinthine palace filled with stately galleries, towering ceilings, grandiose vistas and sweeping staircases, to say nothing of all its hidden nooks, secluded chambers and clandestine meeting spots. Not only was it home to countless items of ravishing beauty, the building in itself was an astonishing work of art. Once ensconced inside, we were let off our little leashes and set free to explore it. And explore we did.
As a child, it was a place of genuine wonderment. I remember regularly spending hours in the Arms & Armor wing, marveling at the gleaming knights on horseback and feeling creeped out and claustrophobic in the narrow corridor of the tomb at the entrance of the Egyptian Wing (technically the Mataba Tomb of Perneb). I remember being taken to see the gigantic tree, every Christmas, and staring at all the Renaissance filigree arranged all over the boughs and the Neapolitan Baroque creche at its base. I remember being taken to “luncheons” with my grandmother in the (long-since vanished) restaurant in the southern wing (just beyond the Greek and Roman statuary). The tables were organized around an elaborate fountain, if memory serves, wherein many a coin was tossed. In later years, I remember the much-feted openings of the American Wing, the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing filled with oddities from far-flung islands and, of course, the acquisition of the iconic Temple of Dendur.
There was also a great deal of fun in simply getting lost in the museum – willfully charging as deep and as far into the massive building to see how disoriented you could actually get. I remember “discovering” whole new exhibits and comparatively under-celebrated galleries this way. That sheer, disorienting vastness of the museum is also a recurring theme it his lore, as documented in films like “Dressed to Kill” and “The Thomas Crown Affair” and in an iconic children’s book called “From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiller” wherein two kids (not at all unlike my older sister and I) carefully manage to elude security and spend several, painstakingly strategized nights within the museum. I’m also reminded of a passage in my (cheap plug) friend Dave Gilbert’s novel “& Sons” wherein the protagonist is informed by the girl he is romantically pursuing that she is hiding “somewhere” within the sprawling confines of the museum. She offers a beguiling challenge in that if he manages to find her before an appointed time, he gets to sleep with her. I won’t ruin it for you by telling you how that ends.
By the time I got to high school in the early `80s, I knew the ins and outs of the museum like the back of my hand. At this stage of the proceedings, while we might still stroll around within the giant building, we’d become more inclined to hang out on, around and literally on the very edifice of it. The iconic front steps were frequently a spot for gratuitous loitering. The sloped rear lawn directly behind the glassed-in courtyard of the American Wing was a particularly favorite plot of grass whereupon certain friends of mine to regularly convene and waste time over several spring and early summer afternoons. Less salubriously, in the summer of 1986, one Jennifer Levin met her grisly end at the hands of a former grammar schoolmate of mine just steps away from that favorite plot, but that’s a post for another day. During that same era, a certain friend of mine and I discovered a handy little alcove tucked just behind and underneath the southernmost pedestal on the front façade, a hidden little perch that became the perfect locale for surreptitious, evening get-togethers. I’m not sure when they closed it off, but that covert little spot cannot be accessed today. Just as well, though, as the outdoor security has invariably been beefed up since those days.
My visits to the Metropolitan Museum largely tapered off again until I had kids of my own. When they were still delightfully small, I replicated my mother’s methods and frequently took them there to while away an afternoon or resourcefully defy a rainy day. I remember being struck by how – when met with certain works of art – they assumed the same comedic poses my sister and I used to when we first encountered them. Much as evoked in this post about Holden Caulfield and the Museum of Natural History, I love the feeling of (relative) permanence at the Metropolitan. Times, trends, circumstances and chapters come and go, but most of the familiar items at the Metropolitan tirelessly remain right where you left them. There is comfort in that constancy.
In more recent years, my daughter attended high school at Marymount directly across the street from the Museum. As a result, she, too, spent hours inside and out of it in much the same way I’d done years earlier. She now knows it in a manner that is both parallel to mine but still entirely her own. I love that.
My reason for writing this weepy post stem from two discoveries, the first being the photo at the top of this post, which I brazenly purloined off of the New York Times’ excellent Tumblr, The Lively Morgue. Snapped by one Neil Boenzi on a hot June day in 1976 (I’d have been in Fourth Grade, at the time), it shows a group of kids frolicking in one of the (old) iconic fountains. Even back then, this sort of activity was frowned upon, but hey … a hot day is a hot day. Today, those fountains have been replaced by new ones that put on the sort of hydraulic….ummm…. aquabatics one might expect to see in the fountain of a Las Vegas hotel. That they were donated by the noxious Koch Brothers makes them even more lamentable.
The other discovery is this weird little video below. Also shot in 1976, this details a day in the life of one Ray Cusie, a faithful employee of the museum, at the time (might he be still?), wherein he recounts his duties in the audiovisual department. It’s a telling little glimpse back in time to a seemingly simpler era of New York City (does anyone have accents like this anymore?) and a love-letter to the institution in question.
I’m also quite amused by the incongruous workout scene, wherein our Ray takes a breather from his work, puts on a “heavy metal” record (a strangely instrumental cover of “Radar Love” by Golden Earring) and demonstrates his weight-lifting prowess.
Enjoy….
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