Visiting the Met, Part 1

STEVE EMBER: I'm Steve Ember. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: And I'm Shirley Griffith with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today we travel to New York City to visit one of the most famous museums in the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art collection covers five thousand years of human culture from all over the world. The museum, also known as the Met, was created in eighteen seventy by a group of businessmen, artists and thinkers. Their goal was to create a leading museum that would bring art and art education to the American people. STEVE EMBER: We start our visit on Fifth Avenue at Eighty-Second Street and climb up the huge number of steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to enter its Great Hall. In this huge room with tall ceilings visitors can pick up a map and decide what area of the museum they want to explore. It is a hard decision as there are more than two million works of art. Let us begin with the collection of Greek and Roman Art. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: We look closely at a marble statue of a "kouros", or young man that was made over two thousand five hundred years ago. It is one of the earliest known marble statues of a human from the Greek area of Attica. The man is standing very straight, with his left leg slightly forward. His form is made up of smooth lines and geometric forms. The statue was found on the grave of a young nobleman from Athens. To see how Greek art evolved, you can look at a statue made about a hundred years later. The bronze statue is a male diskos thrower. But the artistic style is very different from the earlier statue. This work is extremely detailed and life-like. It shows careful attention to how the body's muscles work. STEVE EMBER: The Met's Egyptian art collection takes us even further back in time. One object is a brightly painted coffin that is nearly four thousand years old. It once held the body of a person named Khnumnakht. The painted drawings and writings tell about gods of death and rebirth. There are many other examples of funeral art such as statues, coffins, and jewelry to protect the dead. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: It takes an entire room to house one important object in this department. The Temple of Dendur is over two thousand years old. It is one of many religious buildings that ruler Augustus Caesar of Rome had built to honor Egyptian gods. This temple honors the goddess Isis. The temple once stood about eighty kilometers south of the Egyptian city of Aswan. Egypt gave it to the United States in nineteen sixty-five. STEVE EMBER: Visitors can choose to see many other kinds of artworks. There are treasures of ancient and current art from Asia, Africa, the Pacific islands and Central and South America. There is also an entire department for musical instruments and for historical clothing. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The Met's medieval art collection centers on works made in Western Europe from the fourth to the early sixteenth century. This area of the museum has the feel of a church. Many objects came from Christian religious centers. For example, there are stained glass windows from European churches and many objects used in religious ceremonies. STEVE EMBER: A group of sixteenth century warriors on horseback welcomes you in the Equestrian Court. The warriors and horses are wearing finely made steel armor. Owning such protective armor helped show a ruler's wealth and power. The armor also showed the extreme skills of a country's best artisans. One protective head covering from Japan dates to the fifth century. The iron and copper helmet was probably used for ceremonies. There are also two Japanese swords, one long and one short, that were made in the fourteen hundreds. Source: Voice of America