The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“ EVOLUTION AND ORIGINALITY IN ART.
WHEN we compare pictures of the sixteenth and of the nineteenth centuries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, we are conscious that the charm of modern work is in the truthful delineation of scenery and character, in a certain reflection of our experiences, and in fitness as related to the drift of our imagination. We see a reality and daylight effect which we miss in allegorical and other subjects by artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ”

“ Their citizens who travel will send to it rare and costly things from every quarter of the globe they visit, while those who remain at home will give or bequeath to it of their treasures. In this way these collections will grow until our cities will ultimately be able to boast of permanent exhibitions from which their own citizens will derive incalculable benefit, and which they will be proud to show to visitors. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in this city we have made an excellent beginning. Here is another avenue for the proper use of surplus wealth. ”

“ A well-equipped aquarium has been opened under the auspices of the city; the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been entirely rebuilt to accommodate its increasing collections; a magnificent building is in course of erection for the Public Library to contain its great assemblage of books, which with its endowment is largely the result of recent years. ”

“ The Metropolitan Museum contains paintings, statuary, ivories, tapestries, porcelains, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities. Beginning with one structure erected by the city at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars in 1880, it now comprises a series of buildings which cost several million dollars. The collections of paintings, sculpture, antiquities, porcelains, jades, armor, etc., are valued at ten million dollars, most of which has been contributed by art lovers of the city. ”

“ A single building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the objects it will hold, would not he over-valued at from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000. At an exposition the public is called upon to pay fifty cents admission each time to enter the gates and an additional fee for each special exhibition. The great New York celebration will be free for all, even for those who have no car fare to enable them to ride. The demonstrations are in the heart of the city itself. ”

“ New York has a Metropolitan Museum, filled with the finest specimens of ancient and modern art, which is always [121] open to the public, besides an Academy of Design, a Society of American Artists, an Architectural League and any number of galleries that are constantly instructing the people in what is being done by native and foreign contemporaneous artists—whether they be painters, sculptors, or architects. ”

“ The Museum is the fortunate possessor of one of the three Russian Reproductions, the other two being in the South Kensington Museum of London and the Metropolitan of New York. Thus, by private enterprise, in the true American way, the city is graced and honored by art buildings which give it distinction, and has a school of art so well equipped and conducted that it attracts students from far and near, filling its departments of drawing, painting, sculpture, and wood-carving with eager learners. It has over 400 scholars in the various departments. ”

“ A “Winged Victory” at the U.S. military academy at West Point, New York, is of importance; and his “Bacchante,” an extraordinary combination of realism and imagination, rejected by the Boston Public Library, is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He also became well known as a painter, mainly of portraits. ”

“ In fact, one can hardly take a step in the New World without everywhere coming on some crying contrast between mighty growth and the oppressive remains of outgrown or abortive activities. As one comes down the monumental steps of the Metropolitan Museum, in which 254priceless treasures of art are collected, one sees in front of one a wretched, tumbled-down hut where sundry refreshments are sold, on a dirty building-lot with a broken fence. ”

“ I doubt that any museum in the world, whether the Metropolitan in New York, the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, or the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, could present such a catalogue as this; in fact, should they pool their treasures, the result would certainly fall short of the art collection that Germany amassed for itself, at the expense of the other nations of Europe. Never in history has a collection so great been amassed with so little scruple. ”

“ We assembled weekly for several winters in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, for the discussion of the masterpieces in historic order, from Egypt to America. From that standpoint, the work least often found, hardest to make, least popular in the street, may be in the end the one most treasured in a world-museum as a counsellor and stimulus of mankind. Throughout this book I try to bring to bear the same simple standards of form, composition, mood, and motive that we used in finding the fundamental exhibits ”

“ In Boston the Athenaeum, in New York the Metropolitan Art Museum, and both in the latter city and Philadelphia the private collections—which the kindness of their owners makes almost as accessible as public ones—afford us examples of most contemporary painters and of some of the older masters; while our schools of design are provided with casts from the most celebrated antique statues, and many of the best modern ones come to our shores. ”

“ Last, but far from being least, is the group by Puvis de Chavannes (poo ́-vee de sha-van ́) to show the power of that great mural painter.
FORENOON, ADIRONDACKS. By Alexander H. Wyant
American Artists
Naturally, American artists are well represented in the Metropolitan Museum. Nine pictures stand sponsor for Gilbert Stuart’s skill, and several are surprisingly fine. Such work as John Singleton Copley’s “Mrs. Bowers” and Stuart’s “Mrs. Anthony” do not suffer from comparison with the productions of the English School of their time. ”

“ There are especially lofty steps built around the Metropolitan Museum, which either repel or tire out visitors before they get in. Of those who do finally arrive at the doors, up on top, many never have enough strength left to view the exhibits. ”

“ It is not only in shops that we in England have to learn how to "dress our windows." But at any rate, no one will deny that we have of late made enormous advances in the art.
Nevertheless, the beauty and grandeur of the British Museum collections, beauty on which I have already touched in the Bloomsbury chapter, impress us in spite of fog, and grime, and dull London galleries. And the feeling for the suitable arrangement and disposal of our artistic treasures grows upon our directors year by year. ”

“ The first is that an art museum is of the greatest value to a community when its collections embrace both the major and minor arts of all countries and all times. The second is that the standard must be high. It would be idle to pretend that every object in our collection is a masterpiece of the highest order, but it is better to have an ideal, which may not be wholly realized, than to have none. ”

“ In the Metropolitan Museum at New York is a splendid example, the like of which I have never seen in this country, but which is so much closer in feeling to his numerous drawings and sketches in chalk or pencil that it is impossible to believe that no similar examples exist. ”

“ He had just got back from a big official reception for the inauguration of the new galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, and the spectacle of those great spaces crowded with the spoils of the ages, where the throng of fashion circulated through a series of scientifically catalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rusted spring of memory. ”

“ It is never under any circumstances, however, justifiable to treat an object of art and one worthy of a place in a museum as though it were a part of the decoration of the museum. It may by its nature be a decoration to the room, but it must be so arranged that for light and for space and for general effect it is shown to its best advantage. To cut a piece of sculpture, a painting or a tapestry, as a layman might do, to make it fit a given spot in a museum is to commit a crime. ”

“ It is in many cases an intelligent taste, that readily responds to cultivation. A writer in one of our daily papers called attention recently to an impressive scene that may be observed every Saturday morning at the Metropolitan Museum. It is a gathering of school children, who are assembled with open eyes and ears and eager and hungry minds to see and hear and know the things of beauty and of curious interest in the museum. ”

“ In the National Gallery one finds a throng of nursery-maids, and men just come from their work; true, they make a great deal of noise thronging to and fro on the uncarpeted floors in their thick boots, and noise from which, when penetrated by the atmosphere of Art, men in the thickest boots would know how to refrain; still I felt that the sight of such objects must be gradually doing them a great deal of good. The British Museum would, in itself, be an education for a man who should go there once a week, and think and read at his leisure moments about what he saw. ”

“ Most people in thinking of an art museum have in mind a picture gallery, and the museum director who only collects minor arts or sculpture would be very unpopular; on the other hand, it is not well for the public to forget that all art is not painting and good collections of the other classes of material are essential.
The difficulty of selecting from a mass of modern paintings the ones which will be considered worthy of a place in a museum fifty years hence is extreme. It is unfortunate that we are biased in our views by temperament and by fashion. ”

“ They gained high prices in their day, and are now mostly consigned either to cellars or to the darkest rooms of suburban galleries.
Time is, after all, the greatest of art critics, and its judgment is sure. The best of all the centuries adorns the walls of the National Museum. It is the best only that survives. To us, in all our painful twentieth-century newness, it is given to inherit the mystery and magic of the old Greeks and Egyptians; the charming imagery of Raphael, filled with simple faith and sweet imagination ”

“ The Freer collection will go, ultimately, to the Smithsonian Institution (the National Gallery) in Washington, a fact which is the cause of deep regret to many persons in Detroit, more especially since the City Plan and Improvement Commission has completed arrangements for a Center of Arts and Letters—a fine group plan which will assemble and give suitable setting to a new Museum of Art, Public Library, and other buildings of like nature, including a School of Design and an Orchestra Hall. ”

“ For the first time in the history of the world, a national museum is formed in which a whole nation is interested; formed on a scale which permits the exhibition of monuments of art in unbroken symmetry, and of the productions of nature in unthwarted growth,—formed under the auspices of science which can hardly err, and of wealth [Pg 246] which can hardly be exhausted; and placed in the close neighborhood of a metropolis overflowing with a population weary of labor, yet thirsting for knowledge, where contemplation may be consistent with rest, and instruction with enjoyment. ”

“ We must not be content to contemplate merely; we must create; we must be active in our dealings with art.
It is here that I shall fall foul of certain excellent men and women who are attempting to "bring art into the lives of the people" by dragging parties of school children and factory girls through the National Gallery and the British Museum. Who is not familiar with those little flocks of victims clattering and shuffling through the galleries, inspissating the gloom of the museum atmosphere? ”

“ This is a national museum for art and manufactures allied to art. Its collections are becoming enormous and of priceless value, and include many fine paintings, among them Raphael's cartoons, with galleries of sculpture and antiquities and museums of patent models. There are art-schools and libraries, and the buildings, which have been constructing for several years, are of rare architectural merit. The Royal Albert Hall is a vast amphitheatre of great magnificence devoted to exhibitions of industry, art, and music. ”

“ The great museums of the world are in the great cities; and it is fitting that New York, one of the few great centres of culture, should at last take her proper place in science, and found a museum, worthy of herself, for the diffusion of knowledge among her citizens. ”

“ The museum is, of course, largely educational and not entirely or even largely artistic in its aims. It and the art-gallery are also in a very different position from such activities as the subsidized theatre because they are devoted to the unique object—the specimen or the picture—which must be in the hands of the State if it is to be available to all. There is no alternative to the public ownership of museums and art-galleries. ”

“ She has two accomplished daughters, and these young girls spend all their time in selecting peasant women with typical features, dressing them in these costumes, photographing them, and then coloring these photographs in water-colors. They are making ten copies of each, to make ten magnificent albums, which are to be presented to the ten greatest museums in the world. The Hermitage in St. Petersburg is to have one, the British Museum another, and so on. Only one was to go to America, and to my metropolitan dismay I found that it was not to go to Chicago. ”