Architecture Rally & The Met

Painting of Egyptian woman in American Wing

Saturday was not our typical relaxing day! I wanted to just sleep and get some work today but it seemed like we had to go on a scavenger hunt around the city looking for so many buildings we were assigned to do. I did not know that's what our assignment was going to be, so I had sandals on and I had to walk all day in those which really hurt my feet. I hated it. I hated everything about the assignment. It was too hot out, my feet were killing me, I did not know how to get around, and we kept having trouble finding the buildings and the people who give us directions when we asked always led us the wrong way. It was really annoying. By noon I was already done for the day and just wanted to get home.

Marble statue of Aphrodite

Following that Monday, we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I absolutely loved this museum! I had fun going around and seeing the thousands of artifacts and learning new things. There was so much to see that I decided to be by myself so I can go to every exhibit (which I did). I ended seeing every exhibit on every floor, WOOT! I would do it again! There were so many exhibits that were interesting from clothing to statues to paintings, there were exhibits like the ,  Lost Kingdom: Hindu-Buddhist Sculptures from the 6th centuries, Greek & Roman Art, Contemporary Photography, Italian Art and Sculptures, and my favourites were the Islamic Art and Middle Eastern exhibits.
Charles James: Beyond Fashion
One of my favorite artifacts in the Greek & Roman Art wing was the marble statue of Aphrodite. It was sculpted in the 1st or 2nd century A.D. and it is a copy of a Greek statue of the 2nd century B.C. Originally, her arms reached forward to shield her breasts and pubis that accentuated her sexuality, as the Goddess of love. Nude statues of Aphrodite were very common during the Hellenistic period. They were all inspired to some degree by Aphrodite of Knidos. As i was making my way to the American Wing, I came across a building, which was a facade of the Branch Bank of the United States. The architecture was done by Thompson who was a leader in the Greek revival-style architecture.

Kaaterskill Waterfalls painting by late Hudson River school

The two-story, seven-bay facade of the Branch Bank building is followed by eighteenth-century English Palladian traditional architecture. Only the Ionic pillars and cornice moldings were Greek inspired. This building was located on the north side of Wall Street and in 18850 it was converted into the United States Assay Office. It was then demolished in 1915, but this particular facade of the building was saved and reconstructed as the front of the American Wing exhibit in 1924. (I initially thought that the they actually put a mansion inside the museum...and I spent the longest time wondering how they did that).
On the 3rd floor, I came across a George Washington painting that looked similar to the one I saw in the museum near Washington's Headquarters. But this canvas was one of the first four identical revised versions done by artist Gilbert Stuart. In this painting, he turned Washington's body slightly to his right, rearranged his feet, and altered the position of his sword to give him a firm stance and a dramatic image. The elongated figure may have been truer to Washington's actual physique. I also saw paintings done by artists part of the Late Hudson River School in the 1860's. The idea was to awake emotions with compositions of the Hudson's beauty and colours, which was a trend popular in European art. Here, artists are preoccupied with the use of light to articulate naturalistic effects into their paintings as they expressed the country's nostalgia for wilderness. The last exhibit I saw was the Islamic Art, which was my favorite out of all the others. It ranged from traditional

Old Quran in Islamic Art exhibit

Islamic patterns to carpets, and the holy Quran. My favourite piece was this large part of a Quran that was from Morocco or Spain during the Marinid period. It is written with ink on gold and opaque watercolours on parchment paper. The codex contains no colophons and contains intricate geometric strap work which holds designs closely related of Andalusian and North African tiles. I thought this piece was absolutely beautiful and I could just stare at it all day and not get bored. I just loved it, I loved all the artifacts I saw in the Islamic Art exhibit.

Branch bank of United States