Today, after a huge brunch, Rosy, Patrick, and I made use of the stormy but crisp autumn weather and went to the Cloisters. Technically, this is the department of medieval European art of the Metropolitan Museum. But being real Americans, the people in charge of the Met decided in the 1920s that the best way to display medieval European art is to buy a couple of abandoned French monasteries, ship the stones over here, and assemble them into a building that is not quite like any of them, but captures all their essence and thus makes for a museum with great atmosphere. (And then they attached air conditioning, because modern times and convenience don’t stop before monasteries, you see.)
You can argue about the approach, but it worked. The building is situated in Fort Tryon Park, at the very northern end of Manhattan. Here’s a view from Tryon Park across the Hudson, just to give you an idea of the surroundings:
And here’s how the Cloisters building looks from the outside:
And an actual cloister (which was taken mostly complete from one individual French monastery that was destroyed in the French Revolution; it soothes my hurt European sensibilities about stealing buying our cultural treasures somewhat that they only took what we destroyed ourselves), seen from the inside:
They did their job well: The building, and in fact the entire park, feel utterly European. As a member of Columbia, I get in for free, and I’m thinking about taking a book and sitting in a cloister window when there’s snow in the courtyard. It’s really very nice, and also warm. (Thanks to the air conditioning.)
Now, I said it’s a museum of medieval European art. And boy do they have a lot of cool stuff there. The museum is most famous for its huge unicorn tapestries, which are quite cruel and totally unphotographable because their room is too dark, so I can’t show them to you. But there are also happy Three Kings and sad Marys (it happens, I guess, when Jesus loses his head), and camels and crosses and art students who draw pictures of it all.
But the coolest exhibit of all was a stained-glass window called “The Circumcision of Jesus”, which includes all the necessary anatomical details. :)
Isn’t that neat? Well, anyway, we topped of a really nice day with coffee at the Hungarian pastry shop. This was six hours ago, and I’m still not hungry.
