Art is Popular When it Rains

When you take a vacation trip to New York, you will invariably make plans to visit at least one of the great museums that the city has to offer. The heavy hitters in this category include MOMA, the Guggenheim, the Whitney and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). Each of these has something unique to offer. The Guggenheim has got the funky Frank Lloyd Wright motif, MOMA has its modern art and photography collections, and the Whitney has got edgy cool. And the Met is just plain big. But, sometimes the choice of which one to visit comes down to which one is closest. If you happen to be in Central Park, then the Met wins, hands down.

I said the Met was big. I mean really big. Like it has five restaurants, big. Its permanent exhibits include room after room of Dutch masters and impressionists. There are two rooms with nothing but Cézannes. All fabulous stuff, but after a while, it becomes a bit overwhelming. I found myself adding up the presumed values of all of the paintings that I liked. When I hit $500 million or so I started to replay the museum heist scenes from The Thomas Crown Affair in my head to see if any of the schemes might actually work. I don’t think so.

After three hours, it was time to leave. On returning to the entrance lobby we observed that there were now about five times as many people milling about as when we arrived. Then I looked outside. It was pouring. Obviously, the appreciation of great art is directly proportional to the nastiness of the weather. In any case, the rain gave us a good excuse to try out the museum’s wine bar.