A Summer Friday at The Met

With the end of summer upon us and only one remaining Summer Friday in my work schedule, I decided to take the kids to The Met for a scavenger hunt. A day of art and Manhattan adventures seemed just right for a last excursion before school starts and fall madness sets in at work.

Way back in 2009, my mom, Memee to her grandchildren, gave Deston a lovely book entitled Museum Shapes (perhaps available at an art museum gift shop near you). The book teaches children about shapes through works of art from The Met's collection.

We've read this book many times throughout the years though now that my kids are 12 and 7, the need for shape instruction has passed. And yet, this lovely book offers a diverse and beautiful sample of work from The Met's vast collection. It's a special window into all the treasures waiting in the galleries. The challenge of keeping a large book collection is similar to the challenge of seeing a collection of art like The Met's--how do you interact with it all? A scavenger hunt using this book as our guide drew it off the shelf and into rotation once again.

For the hunt, the kids chose one piece of art for each shape. I imagined we'd use the museum map to figure out which section the art could be found in and navigate our way from there. Because Lucinda and I recently read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, she was keen to see a Michelangelo statue. We, therefore, started our trip by wandering through the Greek and Roman galleries and then into European art. Marble statues are very alluring, aren't they? After admiring the Sprite by a metalsmith close to Donatello and Cupid by Michelangelo himself, we broke for lunch.


After our midday repast we began our hunt in earnest with Deston as our seasoned navigator. He studied the map and decided which way we'd need to go to to find the items on our list. We searched Arms and Armor and found our first item, Portions of a Costume Armor, attributed to Kolman Helmchmid, German, from 1470-1532 (the bottom right item in the picture above).



Next, we set out to find Procession Carrying Rekhmira's Equipment to His Tomb (detail), Egyptian, Thebes, Sheik abd el Qurna, 18th Dynasy, Copy of a wall painting from the tomb of Rekhmira. We started on the dead wrong end of the Egyptian galleries and saw nearly the entire collection before we finally found what we were looking for. It was a triumphant moment though the fatigue had really begun to set in by then. Our feet paid the price for all the amazing artifacts we saw.

The kids chose three pieces of Japanese art for the arch, diamond, and circle shapes. By the time we got to the Asian art galleries and tried to figure out how to find our various items, it was clear Lucinda had had it with searching. I overestimated our ability to find specific pieces of art from all over such a huge museum but in the end, we were all satisfied with our visit. And we still have more art to find!