Secrets of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
12 fascinating facts and little-known treasures to discover at the world's greatest museum
You could lose yourself in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In fact, if you’re lucky, you will lose yourself, straying off the beaten track of masterpieces and discovering impossibly gorgeous and obscure objects to carry away in your mind’s eye.
Maybe you’ll end up in front of an enormous winged lion from Mesopotamia, carved from alabaster nearly 3,000 years ago. Perhaps you’ll find yourself gazing upon a 1950s Balenciaga evening dress and wondering how it would fit you. Or peering over the threshold of the elegant Damascus room in the museum’s newly refurbished Islamic Art department, imagining how 18th century noblemen sipped their tea on red plush cushions while they listened to the water play in a mosaic fountain.
The Met is one of New York’s most public places, but it is also full of hidden, private pleasures — open secrets that are silently shared by those who love it and visit again and again. Here are a few of our favorites.
The stone blocks on the façade
As you approach the museum’s grand and imposing main entrance on Fifth Avenue, look up above the cornice to find a secret hiding in plain sight. The ponderous pyramid-shaped limestone blocks atop the Corinthian columns that define the building’s façade were meant to be statues, complex allegorical figures of Sculpture, Painting, Architecture and Music. But artist Karl Bitter’s vision was never realized for lack of funds caused by a financial crisis in 1901. The museum’s patrons managed to complete the building in 1902, but fripperies such as the allegorical sculptures were deemed dispensable in a time of austerity that sounds all too familiar more than 100 years later.
Those gonzo flower arrangements in the Great Hall
You might be tempted to rush through the museum’s Great Hall on your way to whatever blockbuster exhibit or masterpiece drew you here. Stop for a minute. In five niches above you on the walls, you’ll see floral arrangements that are as much as 12 feet high, explosions of color and form. These are designed by the museum’s in-house floral artist, Remco van Vliet, who has quite a pedigree — according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, his father’s flower shop regularly worked for the Dutch royal family. The Met arrangements, funded by a gift from Reader’s Digest co-founder Lila Acheson Wallace, change every week — a refreshing breath of impermanence amid artworks that aspire to eternal grandeur.
Leaf imprint on a Pompeiian fresco, Gallery 164
Few places in human history embody the ephemeral nature of human existence better than Pompeii. In the Met’s Greek and Roman galleries, you’ll find a stunning group of frescoes from the villa of P. Fannius Synistor, a luxury country residence located at Boscoreale, about a mile from the doomed city. It, too, was buried during the eruption of 79 A.D. The frescoes, including the walls of an entire bedroom, were excavated in the early 1900s, and they give us some idea of the sumptuous lifestyle lived by the Roman aristocracy of the period. On one of the lesser panels you will discover a haunting silhouette — the ghostly outline of a grape leaf that must have blown onto the surface of the work while it was being painted.
Byzantine Egypt (Crypt Gallery), Gallery 302
Thousands of visitors traipse up and down the Great Stairs of the museum every day on their way to the sprawling galleries of European Painting. Few of them realize that tucked underneath that imposing staircase is a space that hints at unseen catacombs and undiscovered treasures. The so-called Crypt Gallery was until recent years a storage space. Then the walls surrounding it were knocked down, revealing rough brick archways and the raw granite underside of the steps — the bones beneath the museum’s usual elegant veneer. Intricately worked gold jewelry, works in ivory and somber stone heads from the Byzantine period in Egypt are on display in this little-visited recess, where you can escape the crowds streaming by just a few feet away and fancy yourself in your own secret castle crypt.
(Photos: Lucy Redoglia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Surviving Victorian Gothic staircases
Just off the ground-floor medieval galleries, a little-used staircase takes you up to the second floor and back in time. This is one of the surviving features of the original Met building, dating back to 1880, designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, featuring decorative ironwork and a richly colored paint scheme that restores it to its historic glory. If the motifs seem familiar, it’s no surprise — Vaux and Mould were responsible for many of the design elements in Central Park, the museum’s backyard.
Japanese Reading Room, Gallery 232
This peaceful room adjacent to the Sackler Wing Galleries, which focus on Japanese art, is modeled on similar rooms in Japanese museums. Here, you can sit at a gorgeous low table designed (as is all the room’s furniture) by the master Japanese-American woodworker George Nakashima, and peruse books on flower arranging or tea ceremonies. A large square window overlooks the Temple of Dendur pavilion below, giving you a perfect vantage point from which to watch the light as it shifts over the ancient structure. This is the ideal place to escape the museum’s crowds.
Graffiti on the Temple of Dendur, Gallery 131
The Temple of Dendur is one of the Met’s most famous gems, set in the soaring glass-walled Sackler Wing. This beautifully proportioned building dates back to around 15 B.C., during Egypt’s Roman period, and its graceful stone walls and columns incorporate motifs such as lotus blossoms and papyrus, with delicately carved reliefs depicting Isis, Osiris and the Emperor Augustus in pharaoh’s guise, among other figures. Look closer, though, and you will see some clumsily carved graffiti in the temple’s Aeolian sandstone walls. Some of it dates back as far as 10 B.C., but most of it is the work of 18th and 19th century European visitors who felt compelled to leave a record of their presence with mundane inscriptions such as “Leonardo 1820.” Resist the temptation to follow their bone-headed example, there’s a guard right behind you.
Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio, Gallery 501
Walk through a doorway and enter the sanctum of a 15th century Italian scholar and aristocrat, Duke Federico da Montefeltro. Dating to around 1480, the walls of this little room are paneled in the wood-inlay technique known as intarsia. Look around you and marvel at the astonishingly intricate trompe l’oeil creation crafted from walnut, beech, rosewood, oak and fruitwoods. The walls are designed to mimic cabinets filled with musical instruments, scientific apparati, books and other objects of interest to a cultivated and wealthy gentleman of the time. Installed to appear as they would have in their original home, they are a triumph of perspective and visual playfulness.
Bedroom from the Sagredo Palace, Gallery 507
There are many fanciful and enticing bedrooms in the Met that seem to invite visitors to spend the night, the way the truant kids in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler managed to do. But none can rival the extravagant early 18th century example from the Venetian Palazzo Sagredo. The ceiling above the bed is covered with sportive amorini, plump baby angels that symbolized Eros in the Baroque era. They beckon you into the lavishly appointed room, hinting that a truly good time could be had in here after hours.
Ambrym Slit Gong, Gallery 354
Head into the galleries showcasing Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas to see some of the museum’s least celebrated but most spectacular holdings. Among them is a slit gong from the Pacific island of Vanuatu — at about 14 feet high, one of the largest freestanding musical instruments in the world. This one dates to the 1960s, but the tradition of slit gongs is ancient. Drummers play them in complicated patterns that are used to communicate messages between villages. The slit in the gong, which is carved from a breadfruit tree, represents the mouth of the ancestor, and the instrument’s sound is his voice.
“Madonna and Child” by Duccio di Buoninsegna, Gallery 624
Want to see the most expensive item in the whole museum? It is a tiny little thing, really, just 11 by 8-3/4 inches including the frame, which shows burn marks from the candles worshipers once burned before it. Now the devotees who gaze on Duccio’s “Madonna and Child,” dating to around 1300, are either appreciating its status as “a keystone of Western art,” or wondering whether it was really worth the reported $45 million it cost the museum in 2004.
The Met wasn’t always exactly accessible to the masses
When the museum opened in 1880, its founders claimed that it would appeal to “the vital and practical interest of the working millions.” However, as the Met’s current director, Thomas P. Campbell, points out in his introduction to the museum’s most recent official guidebook, there was a teensy problem with that: “[I]t kept genteel opening hours that exactly coincided with the working day.” It wasn’t until 1889 that the collection opened up on weekends. Now, the institution’s original promise is being fulfilled: more than 5 million visitors walk through the Met’s doors each year.
Uncover more hidden treasures at New York’s most amazing places with our Secrets of New York.
Maybe you’ll end up in front of an enormous winged lion from Mesopotamia, carved from alabaster nearly 3,000 years ago. Perhaps you’ll find yourself gazing upon a 1950s Balenciaga evening dress and wondering how it would fit you. Or peering over the threshold of the elegant Damascus room in the museum’s newly refurbished Islamic Art department, imagining how 18th century noblemen sipped their tea on red plush cushions while they listened to the water play in a mosaic fountain.
The Met is one of New York’s most public places, but it is also full of hidden, private pleasures — open secrets that are silently shared by those who love it and visit again and again. Here are a few of our favorites.
Facade detail of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
As you approach the museum’s grand and imposing main entrance on Fifth Avenue, look up above the cornice to find a secret hiding in plain sight. The ponderous pyramid-shaped limestone blocks atop the Corinthian columns that define the building’s façade were meant to be statues, complex allegorical figures of Sculpture, Painting, Architecture and Music. But artist Karl Bitter’s vision was never realized for lack of funds caused by a financial crisis in 1901. The museum’s patrons managed to complete the building in 1902, but fripperies such as the allegorical sculptures were deemed dispensable in a time of austerity that sounds all too familiar more than 100 years later.
The Great Hall (Photo: Jasmine Ramig, Flickr/theleftfield)
You might be tempted to rush through the museum’s Great Hall on your way to whatever blockbuster exhibit or masterpiece drew you here. Stop for a minute. In five niches above you on the walls, you’ll see floral arrangements that are as much as 12 feet high, explosions of color and form. These are designed by the museum’s in-house floral artist, Remco van Vliet, who has quite a pedigree — according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, his father’s flower shop regularly worked for the Dutch royal family. The Met arrangements, funded by a gift from Reader’s Digest co-founder Lila Acheson Wallace, change every week — a refreshing breath of impermanence amid artworks that aspire to eternal grandeur.
Leaf imprint on a Pompeiian fresco, Gallery 164 (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sarah Goodyear)
Few places in human history embody the ephemeral nature of human existence better than Pompeii. In the Met’s Greek and Roman galleries, you’ll find a stunning group of frescoes from the villa of P. Fannius Synistor, a luxury country residence located at Boscoreale, about a mile from the doomed city. It, too, was buried during the eruption of 79 A.D. The frescoes, including the walls of an entire bedroom, were excavated in the early 1900s, and they give us some idea of the sumptuous lifestyle lived by the Roman aristocracy of the period. On one of the lesser panels you will discover a haunting silhouette — the ghostly outline of a grape leaf that must have blown onto the surface of the work while it was being painted.
The Crypt Gallery under the Great Stairs (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Thousands of visitors traipse up and down the Great Stairs of the museum every day on their way to the sprawling galleries of European Painting. Few of them realize that tucked underneath that imposing staircase is a space that hints at unseen catacombs and undiscovered treasures. The so-called Crypt Gallery was until recent years a storage space. Then the walls surrounding it were knocked down, revealing rough brick archways and the raw granite underside of the steps — the bones beneath the museum’s usual elegant veneer. Intricately worked gold jewelry, works in ivory and somber stone heads from the Byzantine period in Egypt are on display in this little-visited recess, where you can escape the crowds streaming by just a few feet away and fancy yourself in your own secret castle crypt.
Left, one of two restored staircases from the museum’s original 1880 building. Right, medieval galleries.
(Photos: Lucy Redoglia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Just off the ground-floor medieval galleries, a little-used staircase takes you up to the second floor and back in time. This is one of the surviving features of the original Met building, dating back to 1880, designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, featuring decorative ironwork and a richly colored paint scheme that restores it to its historic glory. If the motifs seem familiar, it’s no surprise — Vaux and Mould were responsible for many of the design elements in Central Park, the museum’s backyard.
Japanese Reading Room, Sackler Wing, Gallery 232 (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
This peaceful room adjacent to the Sackler Wing Galleries, which focus on Japanese art, is modeled on similar rooms in Japanese museums. Here, you can sit at a gorgeous low table designed (as is all the room’s furniture) by the master Japanese-American woodworker George Nakashima, and peruse books on flower arranging or tea ceremonies. A large square window overlooks the Temple of Dendur pavilion below, giving you a perfect vantage point from which to watch the light as it shifts over the ancient structure. This is the ideal place to escape the museum’s crowds.
Graffiti on the Temple of Dendur (Photos: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sarah Goodyear)
The Temple of Dendur is one of the Met’s most famous gems, set in the soaring glass-walled Sackler Wing. This beautifully proportioned building dates back to around 15 B.C., during Egypt’s Roman period, and its graceful stone walls and columns incorporate motifs such as lotus blossoms and papyrus, with delicately carved reliefs depicting Isis, Osiris and the Emperor Augustus in pharaoh’s guise, among other figures. Look closer, though, and you will see some clumsily carved graffiti in the temple’s Aeolian sandstone walls. Some of it dates back as far as 10 B.C., but most of it is the work of 18th and 19th century European visitors who felt compelled to leave a record of their presence with mundane inscriptions such as “Leonardo 1820.” Resist the temptation to follow their bone-headed example, there’s a guard right behind you.
Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio, Gallery 501 (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Walk through a doorway and enter the sanctum of a 15th century Italian scholar and aristocrat, Duke Federico da Montefeltro. Dating to around 1480, the walls of this little room are paneled in the wood-inlay technique known as intarsia. Look around you and marvel at the astonishingly intricate trompe l’oeil creation crafted from walnut, beech, rosewood, oak and fruitwoods. The walls are designed to mimic cabinets filled with musical instruments, scientific apparati, books and other objects of interest to a cultivated and wealthy gentleman of the time. Installed to appear as they would have in their original home, they are a triumph of perspective and visual playfulness.
Bedroom from the Sagredo Palace, Gallery 507 (Photos: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
There are many fanciful and enticing bedrooms in the Met that seem to invite visitors to spend the night, the way the truant kids in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler managed to do. But none can rival the extravagant early 18th century example from the Venetian Palazzo Sagredo. The ceiling above the bed is covered with sportive amorini, plump baby angels that symbolized Eros in the Baroque era. They beckon you into the lavishly appointed room, hinting that a truly good time could be had in here after hours.
Ambrym Slit Gong, Gallery 354 (Photo: Sarah Goodyear)
Head into the galleries showcasing Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas to see some of the museum’s least celebrated but most spectacular holdings. Among them is a slit gong from the Pacific island of Vanuatu — at about 14 feet high, one of the largest freestanding musical instruments in the world. This one dates to the 1960s, but the tradition of slit gongs is ancient. Drummers play them in complicated patterns that are used to communicate messages between villages. The slit in the gong, which is carved from a breadfruit tree, represents the mouth of the ancestor, and the instrument’s sound is his voice.
Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna, Gallery 624 (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Want to see the most expensive item in the whole museum? It is a tiny little thing, really, just 11 by 8-3/4 inches including the frame, which shows burn marks from the candles worshipers once burned before it. Now the devotees who gaze on Duccio’s “Madonna and Child,” dating to around 1300, are either appreciating its status as “a keystone of Western art,” or wondering whether it was really worth the reported $45 million it cost the museum in 2004.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street in 1880
(Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
(Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
When the museum opened in 1880, its founders claimed that it would appeal to “the vital and practical interest of the working millions.” However, as the Met’s current director, Thomas P. Campbell, points out in his introduction to the museum’s most recent official guidebook, there was a teensy problem with that: “[I]t kept genteel opening hours that exactly coincided with the working day.” It wasn’t until 1889 that the collection opened up on weekends. Now, the institution’s original promise is being fulfilled: more than 5 million visitors walk through the Met’s doors each year.
Uncover more hidden treasures at New York’s most amazing places with our Secrets of New York.
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