New York City — Fashionable Exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum

The hottest tickets in New York City during 2023 were for exhibits focused on KARL LAGERFELD and VINCENT VAN GOGH. “Lagerfeld’s fluid lines united his designs for Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, and his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld, creating a diverse and prolific body of work unparalleled in the history of fashion,” according to the Met Museum. The 150 creations by the German-born designer assembled by the Met’s Costume Institute, dating from the 1950s through 2019, were on view until July 16, 2023.

“Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” Closed in New York City on July 16, 2023

Through August 27, 2023, the Met displayed a tightly-conceived thematic exhibit of “Van Gogh’s Cypresses.” Some 40 works of art, including “The Starry Night” (above) from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, illuminated Vincent van Gogh’s fascination with the distinctive evergreen trees that sparked his creativity during his two years in the South of France.

“Van Gogh’s Cypresses” Was on View in New York City Through August 27, 2023

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is open from 10:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon, closed on Wednesdays, and we suggest you plan a visit in the early evening on a Friday or Saturday when the Met museum offers extended hours from 10:00 in the morning until 9:00 in the evening!

Enjoying the Permanent Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

With a collection of over 2,000,000 works of art, where to begin at the Met

The permanent collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially “the Met”) is curated by 17 departments, and the main building on Fifth Avenue in New York City is by area one of the largest art museums in the world.

Some departments, housing art from classical antiquity (Greece and Rome) as well as the ancient Near East, for example, cannot compare with stronger collections found in Europe. We therefore recommend you begin with some of the most impressive parts of the Met’s holdings such as Netherlandish painting, or “The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing” (opened in 1982) housing fine art from Africa, Oceania and the Americas. While some of the possessions of the Met may also be commonly found in other Western museums — such as furniture, tapestries, and antique weapons / armor from around the world — the most wonderful quality of museums in the United States in general is the broad range of ceramics, jewelry, timepieces, glass, fashion, photographs, mathematical & musical instruments, and architectural elements on display. In other words, art museums in North America are often surprising (and never boring) because they do not limit their purpose to the exhibition of sculpture and painting.

After seeing art from Japan, China and Egypt, we decided to view European paintings from the early part of the nineteenth-century, when many artists from Scandinavia and France would embark on sojourns to Italy and North Africa for inspiration. We also had a keen interest in seeing stained glass, seascapes and landscapes by some of the most talented artists from the United States, notably Tiffany, Homer, Twachtman and Inness — so we added the American Wing of the museum to our agenda.

Planting the Seeds of Impressionism

In 1830, the 18-year-old Frenchman Theodore Rousseau ventured into the rugged terrain of the Auvergne region to draw and paint from a high perch in the hills. Shortly thereafter, Rousseau’s panoramic view (shown above) of a hamlet at the base of a steep cliff was celebrated in Paris by leaders of the ascendant Romantic movement. As a result, the French countryside would soon take its place as the equal of Italy’s in terms of artistic inspiration and innovation, and the en plein air sketching expeditions of Rousseau and Charles-Francois Daubigny (below) would profoundly change the course of landscape painting over the next 60 years in France, North America and even Italy where in the late 1850s a group of Tuscan painters known as the Macchiaioli broke with the antiquated conventions taught by the European academies in order to paint outdoors to capture natural light, shade and color.

Édouard Manet & Claude Monet

While both Manet and Monet achieved initial success by submitting their paintings to the official Salon, their modernist tendencies and styles would eventually lead them down independent paths. In 1861, Manet submitted two paintings to the Salon; both were accepted and one — The Spanish Singer (on view at the Met) — won an honorable mention. Manet would not receive unequivocal recognition from the Salon for another 20 years. Luncheon on the Grass {Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe}, Manet’s 1863 submission to the Salon, was rejected and the scandal caused by the presentation of Olympia (1865) prompted Manet to flee to Spain.

In 1866, Claude Monet’s Woman in the Green Dress was accepted by the jury at the Salon and received positive reviews. In the following year, however, Monet’s submission was rejected and Monet proposed the idea of exhibiting independently — together with other painters who would one day be called the Impressionists — a proposition that would not be realized due to a lack of funds until 1874.

The Impressionists organized eight exhibitions between 1874 and 1886 but Manet never exhibited with them. Manet was one of the first nineteenth-century artists to paint modern life and his alla prima {at once} technique was adopted by the Impressionists because this style allowed them to paint quickly enough to capture on canvas the changing effects of light. In retrospect, Édouard Manet was the most pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

The Great Hall Inside the Met in New York City

The main entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, known as the Great Hall, opened to the public in December 1902. At that time, the Evening Post newspaper announced that New York City finally had a neoclassical palace for the display of art, “one of the finest in the world, and the only public building in recent years which approaches in dignity and grandeur the museums of the old world.”

During this visit to the Met Museum, we explored some of the artistic movements which enabled France to become the creative center of Europe during the 19th century, displacing Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Guardians of Neoclassicism such as Ingres in France and Navez in Belgium and leaders of Orientalism like Gérôme would gradually see their traditional movements wane in influence as proponents of Naturalism and Romanticism (Dagnan-Bouveret and Rousseau, respectively) gained recognition.

Of course, French Impressionism would surpass all of these 19th-century artistic trends in popularity and longevity. The Metropolitan Museum of Art possesses the finest holdings of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting in New York, so please take a look at our article entitled “New York City — 3 Incredible Art Museums” to enjoy the depth of the Met’s collection of art from the 1860s through the beginning of the 20th century.

Manet / Degas

We hope you will be able to visit New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to enjoy the upcoming special exhibitions when the Met will present “Manet / Degas” from September 24 though January 7, 2024.

This Manet / Degas show highlighting two significant (and contrasting) contributors to the “new” style of painting explored in Paris between the 1860s and the 1880s was displayed at the Musée d’Orsay until July 23, 2023.

Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism

The Met will be presenting an additional temporary exhibition entitled “VERTIGO OF COLOR — Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism” from October 13 through January 21, 2024. Co-organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 65 works of art (watercolors, drawings and paintings) by Henri Matisse and André Derain reveal how these two great Fauvists manipulated colors in radical ways — where nature took on hues responding to the artists’ sensations, rather than reality — to create the first important modernist movement of the 20th century.

Remember, the Met’s Roof Garden will be open (weather permitting) through the end of October and the Met Museum’s popular Christmas Tree and creche, shown below, will be on view before the “Manet / Degas” exhibit closes on January 7, 2024.

We sincerely look forward to seeing you in the future.