New York Excursion

In mid-February, we escaped to New York City for a dose of high art and theatre. The lure was the reopening of the fabulously renovated Islamic wing of the Metropolitan Museum. It turned out that the American Wing was also just reopened after a sprucing up. So the day we visited was an Islamic/American cultural experience with renaissance sculpture, European painting, and Egyptian temple art thrown into the mix.

Being in a city of museums, it would have been a shame to stop there. Another day was occupied by a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, where, if one begins on the fifth floor and wonders down, one encounters the paradigmatic works of the whole period from gorgeous Monet’s, Cezanne’s and Van Gogh’s, the high modernist explorations of Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian, down to abstract expressionists, minimalists, and pop artists, down again to the puzzles of contemporary art seemingly more addressed to the mind than the eye.

We also managed to take in Broadway theater, a foreign film, and the varied sights of New York from the upper east side to Soho. Here are some photos of our visit.

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