Growing up in the Metropolitan Museum: Part I

CZ, age four, in the Venetian Rococo Bedroom at the Metropolitan Museum

If I had to pick my favorite place in New York City, I'd have to choose the Metropolitan Museum. The reason is partly that it's one of the best art museums in the world, but it's also because of personal history. When we first moved to the city, we lived on the Upper East Side, only a few blocks from the museum. I was a portrait artist who had never been in regular contact with master oil paintings, and besides, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment with a three-year-old. Almost immediately I bought a membership to the museum so that I could take CZ for a short visit whenever we wanted to see a bigger, grander space.

So that CZ wouldn't get bored, I used to let her take me by the hand and lead me where she wanted to go. I liked the whole museum, so it didn't matter to me where we went. Little CZ, on the other hand, had a clear favorite: The Venetian Rococo Bedroom. It featured a brocade bed that would have been the envy of any princess. Gentle afternoon light shone eternally through false windows, lending an appropriate sense of luxurious ennui. But the best part was the ceiling: It was supported by about a dozen painted wooden putti, holding up something that looked like an inverted soap dish over the bed, a painting over the antechamber, and some sort of shield that looked like a bit of insubstantial rococo exuberance in between. We called the room "Flying Babies." Naturally, CZ wanted one. We even found some in an antique shop once.

"They're $15,000, dear," said the gently smiling employee, to CZ's inquiry.

Bedroom from Sagredo Palace, Venice, 18th century (ca. 1718)

H. 25 ft. 2 in. (767.1 cm), W. 18 ft. 2 in. (553.7 cm), D. 13 ft. 2 in. (401.3 cm) Rogers Fund, 1906 (06.1335.1a-d)

Of course I had my favorite works, too, much appreciated after my own museum-free childhood: The five Vermeers, the Sargents, the Degas pastels of dancers and women bathers, the flat Manets, the Van Dycks, the Rubens painting of The Holy Family with Saints. All the Byzantine jewlery. The medieval manuscripts and a certain bejeweled gospel cover on loan from the Morgan Library. And a tender statuette of a Madonna and Child from 13th century Paris.

During this time I also discovered that I liked Asian ceramics and calligraphy. Sometimes we'd go to the Asian wing with a friend of CZ's who was adopted from China and the two girls would play in the Chinese Scholars' court. The friend was fond of playing "office," so they would use the railing to print out pretend documents under the skylights. They also liked to try to coax the oversized koi in the back of the fish pond out of hiding. Once a group of tourists came in and the girls scowled at them. They were willing to share the city playgrounds, apparently, but not the Chinese Scholars' Court.

After about two years of museum-wandering, one day CZ led me up a flight of stairs to a part of the museum I'd never seen before, a collection of Early Americana with a beamed Puritan meeting house ceiling in the main room. It was surrounded by a suite of period rooms, several of which no longer exist. By the time we started reading about American history, CZ was intimately acquainted with open hearths and iron spiders, crewel work, rugs on tables, and the old habit of carving one's name with a ring or penknife into the bedroom window. Not that she had any particular interest in history. She breathed it unnoticed, like 70 degree air.

And of course no Christmas season was complete without a visit to the Angel Tree.

But at some point within the first two years, CZ's focus at the museum began to shift to the balcony over the entrance lobby. There, every Friday and Saturday night, a group of chamber musicians would play from 5 until 8. Museum-goers could sit at little round tables along the balcony and enjoy an apertif while listening to the music. I remember having been mildly annoyed the first time I noticed the musicians because they were right in front of some of the best cases of Chinese ceramics. Little did I know how symbolic that displacement would become.

The balcony and lobby at the Metropolitan Museum from the grand staircase.