The Metropolitan Museum of Art charges a bundle — the suggested admission price is $25, though you can always pay what you wish — but it works hard to justify the admissions charge by constant improvement.
Several years back, it unveiled a brilliant overhaul of its Greek and Roman galleries that elevated a great collection of individual pieces into a great experience. It has just done the same with its Islamic Art section, making a destination out of a museum section that people had simply passed through on their way to 19th century European Art.
Many of the improvements are merely aesthetic. The old galleries stuffed a bunch of artifacts into musty, generic rooms. The new one decorates the rooms to evoke the Middle East (nothing kitschy, just suggestive colors and architectural elements) and adjusts room dimensions so that they complement the works. The new arrangement also spaces the works out enough that you can appreciate each piece.
I feel a bit shallow admitting that these touches change the experience for me — why should a faux horseshoe arch on the door enhance my experience of a tapestry? — but they do.
On a more substantive note, the new galleries also improve the description so that folks like me, who know little about the art on display, can appreciate it. There’s also a new audioguide.
Like the descriptions at all museums, even the new and improved version here could still be far, far better. Even the best museums still assault patrons with material that is still laughably dry and obscure. (Is there anything worse than when the curator with the astonishingly nasal voice pops up on the audioguide and stutters for five minutes about the brush strokes on a painting?)
I would love nothing better than to work with a museum to create a really good series of written and audio description because nothing I’ve even seen or heard ever does the displays anything close to justice.
Still, by the standards of museum descriptions, these new ones here are good enough to give you an inkling of what makes the pieces world-class and to make the new gallery well worth a visit, particularly if you have already been to the Met.
What, exactly will you see in the gallery? It’s tricky to sum up an exhibit with 1,200 pieces (which makes this one of the smaller sections of the Met and only represents about 10 percent of its total Islamic art collection.) But here’s a review from Business Week that gives you a taste.
I’ll be going back to see the new American Wing soon.
