The Marvelous Memorable Metropolitan Museum of Art

posted on 7 January 2011 | posted in Arts and Entertainment

When I was twelve, I lived in a small New Jersey town across the Hudson River from Manhattan. My parents and I lived together with my maternal grandparents who had immigrated from Italy many years before.

My mother and father both had only a sixth grade education and were working class. When I was in the sixth grade, a family from Germany moved next door. They had two girls my age and we soon became friends in school and at home. Totally different than me, they were both tall, blond, and slender. But the biggest difference was our backgrounds. Their parents were well-educated, well-read, well-traveled and were financially quite comfortable. Their mother was a professional musician and their father an engineer.

They were allowed to enter the country from Germany soon after World War II with no problem because of his engineering expertise. One weekend summer afternoon, they asked my parents if I could go with them for a drive across the George Washington Bridge to New York City for the day.

My parents agreed and we drove to the Upper East Side, pulling up in front of the most gigantic and lovely building I had ever seen in my life. My friends excitedly told me it was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which they had apparently been to numerous times. I, on the other hand, had never been in a museum and, although I acted excited, I really did not know what to expect when we entered - my only experience of art was the graffiti artwork on the walls on New York.

As we walked into the main lobby with its height and breadth, I was in awe. Stepping onto the grand staircase, we strolled through room after room of paintings and sculptures. I began to think I was in a dream. I was a fairy princess I was a rich debutante living in a mansion I was anything but a little hick who had no experience with art or art galleries or artists. As we looked at the paintings, I heard names like Van Gogh, Boucher, El Greco, all names that meant nothing to me, but the works of art had no description in my vocabulary. They were exquisite and awe-inspiring. I had a special feeling when we were viewing the artwork of Asia, with inscriptions like Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, artifacts from a Fourteenth Century mosque, Egyptian sphinxes and so many other items that held me in their grip.

When it was time to leave, I almost cried to have to turn my back on so much beauty and culture. It was an eye-opening experience that I will never forget. As a matter of fact, I believe that my life was changed by that visit. My imagination opened up to the world around me and the knowledge that there was so much more to see in the world. It gave me a hunger to learn about it, which I did from that day on. The special feeling I got when I was transfixed by the Asian art in the museum eventually led me to that part of the world as an antiquities dealer where I spent my days wandering through Indian, Egyptian, and Indonesian sreets filled with vendors' stalls that held the wonders of their culture. I owe a lot to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a lifetime of exciting travels and culture that may never had happened if it wasn't for that first visit. I am still close friends with the sisters and, strangely, when I told them the story of our trip to the Met, they didn't even remember it!