Personal Essays

For every expatriate, there’s a special place, one that stands above the rest as the embodiment of all that once was. Spots all over Manhattan have meaning to me, like the giant upended cube outside Cooper Union, but when it comes to which place is my Emerald City, it could be only one – the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street. The Met (not to be confused with the Metropolitan Opera House, which is also called “the Met”) is a 25-acre testament to humanity’s quest for beauty and immortality, filled with the finest examples from 5000 years of human art and craft. Its current home was built at a time when Man was still the measure of all things and there is nothing even remotely modest about it. It is a humanist cathedral in the finest sense, a combination of church, library, classroom and shopping mall.

I don’t remember my first visit to the Met. It might have been when the treasures of King Tut came to New York in 1976. It might not. But whenever it was, it was the beginning of a passionate affair. Visits to the Met were like glimpses of a far-away love – a second was too much and an hour never enough. And when I decided to go to art school, the Met and I became even further entwined. After that, not only was it the focus of an expatriate’s affection, it was the touchstone of an artist’s growth and development.

But familiarity often dooms lovers and it had been fifteen years since I last visited the Met. Not for any good reason, of course. It just became something to get to “next time.” It was finally going to be next time.