MET II

Brian and I went back to the MET yesterday. We had a good time again. We toured the Greek and Roman section, the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas section and the European sculpture and Decorative Arts section.

The Greek and Roman Art section was pretty cool. They had rooms and rooms full of pottery. The designs were very geometric and contained pictures of mythical creatures and Gods.

The sculpture rooms were gorgeous. They were large, bright and airy. The sculptures were my favorite part.

The gold laurel wreaths were very pretty.

This column was so huge!

A second sculpture room.

They had a whole display of ornately carved stone boxes. These were used as sepulchers in the Roman and Greek culture.

A pair of gold arm bands.

Giant sculpted head of Constantine.

Roman Chariot

I loved looking at the Greek language written in slabs of stone. Some of the pieces we saw were from 300 B.C. Pretty crazy!

The African, Pacific Island, Mexican and Peruvian art section was just as neat, but very different. It was pretty cool to walk from section to section and see the difference in each culture, especially from the Roman and Greek items we had just seen. Each section was so unique.

The large room contained Pacific Island art. The huge thing hanging on the ceiling is the wooden ceiling of a hut.

These are giant wooden gongs. The slit in the front was made to allow the craftsman to hollow out the inside of the log.

These are bone daggers. These types of knives were carved from large ostrich like birds or from the femur bones of their human enemies! Yikes.

Ear jewelery...ouch! This pair is apparently a large set and therefore was probably worn by a male. The spikes were driven through a hole in the ear lobe. the little figures carved onto the spikes went through the hole and were made to keep the piece from coming back out of the ear.

This war mask was made from turtle shell.

The African section was neat. These are elephant tusks covered with carvings.

These were pretty cool. They are headdresses, worn on the head to symbolize snakes.

This is a power idol. Each community would have their own and anytime an event that affected the community (like a war or treaty signing) occurred, they would drive a stake into the statue.

The American art section was interesting. It contained items from Precolumbian Mexico and Peru. I loved the look and feel of the statues. I also love having the knowledge of the gospel as we are looking at the artifacts and art from different cultures around the world. It is interesting to try and place where they fit in with the gospel. When we were looking through this section, Brian and I both kept thinking about the Lamanites and wondering if this is what their world looked like.

This was a stone alter. They would choose large rocks and carve an animal into the rock based on its shape. This is a cat of some sort.

The European Sculpture and Decorative Arts section may have been my favorite this visit. The statues were beautiful.

Perseus after killing Medusa.

There were four statues that I absolutely loved. They are French and were made to symbolize the elements.

Air

Fire

Earth

Water

The remainder of this section contained household furniture, ceramics, jewelry, tapestries, etc. I thought these jewelry pieces were gorgeous.

They had entire rooms set up to look like the interior of European homes. It was so cool...I felt like I was in Pride and Prejudice. I could have stayed there all day, but Brian got bored pretty fast so we moved on.

All in all, it was a fabulous day touring the museum for the second time. We still have a few sections that we haven't even seen yet, so we are planning a third visit in the near future. :)