USA Trip Day 23 - 26 Sep 2014 - Touristy NYC (4)

We reached Madison Square Garden and decided to check with the ticket counter on tour timings. They asked us to quickly join the group as 2:30pm tour had just started 5 minutes ago! Lucky us didn't have to wait for another departure.  We were nonetheless praying for our tummies to behave and not to embarrass us with rumbling sounds though :D 

It was intriguing to learn the milestones this iconic venue has witnessed such as Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to the then-President Kennedy. 

Not a single pillar in sight

Indeed a humbling moment for us when we were led into the awe-inspiring stadium

 I would be too scared to sit here during the games.  It was way too high up and there was only a glass barrier between me and my potential fatal fall to the court! 

He was so excited to be in the actual changing room of New York Knicks where Jeremy Lin once lounged in!

With 10% discount entitled to all the tour participants, and Mister being a big fan of New York Knicks, of course he bought a jersey.

As it was linked to Penn Station, there were many food stalls to choose from and we enjoyed our simple tea break of pizza & doughnuts. It was already 4pm, too late to call it lunch :D

We then headed to American Museum of Natural History. Along the way, we had to walk through the beautiful residential area, not dissimilar to the ones we saw in movies like Notting Hill. 

We reached there around 5pm, with about 45 minutes to explore before closing.

After a short bus ride through the Central Park, we made it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We planned our visit on a Friday as museum would be open till 9pm, giving us almost 3 hours to delve into this massive museum.

I think we could have easily spent a few days inside this informative place but time just wasn't on our side.  Let me share a few highlights from our museum tour. 

Textile honoring the Goddess Hathor

1300 - 1250 BC

This complete painted linen was created as an offering to the goddess Hathor at her shrine at Deir el-Bahri. She is shown in her guise of a cow, sheltered in a shrine on the deck of a boat moves through a papyrus marsh. This marsh is a symbol of the world at its origins and as such, of fertility. 

Can you believe this piece of cloth is already 3300 years old?!!

Isis-Aphrodite

2nd Century AD

Isis-Aphrodite is a form of the great goddess Isis that emphasizes the fertility aspects associated with Aphrodite. She was concerned with marriage and childbirth and following very ancient pharaonic prototypes, also with rebirth. Elaborate accessories including an exaggerated calathos (the crown of Egyptian Greco-Roman divinities) emblazoned with a tiny disk and horns of Isis, heighten the effect of her nudity. 

Diadem with heads of gazelles and a stag between stars or flowers 

1648 - 1540 BC 

Middle Kingdom jewelry was typically decorated with flattened images of flowers, feathers and animals. This diadem's three-dimensional animal heads might therefore strike the view as foreign. Egyptian jewelry making was at a turning point around this time and three-dimensionality became a hallmark feature. 

Recumbent Lion

2575 - 2465 BC

This imposing granite lion once guarded the entrance of a pyramid-age sanctuary. As the most powerful predator of the steppes bordering the Nile Valley, the lion was a symbol of royalty from early on. This work is the earliest extant example of a life-sized lion statue that is almost entirely preserved (muzzle reconstructed). 

Mosaic Head of Christ

Made 1100 - 1200

Byzantine churches were often decorated with shimmering mosaics, portraying events from the life of Christ on their upper walls. This fragmentary head of Christ, with its caring expression, is probably from such a scene. 

Boxwood Cross

Carved 1550 - 1600

The intricately carved cross was used when the clergy blessed the faithful. On the cross are the related scenes from Christ's life. The intricate carvings are typical of later Byzantine works. 

The Studiolo from the Ducal Palace at Gubbio

1478 - 1482

The wall of this studiolo (study room) are decorated with images made using wood inlay. This demanding and expensive technique involves cutting grained woods of different colors into thin pieces, shaped according to the desired design and laid into a matrix. 

Hunting with a Hawk, from the Hunting Parks Tapestries

Woven about 1515 - 1535

This wool, silk and gilt-metal-wrapped thread tapestry belongs to a larger set of four, featuring activities that take place within and around an enclosed hunting park. Here, hawking is the focus. 

Bold pink set of porcelain from around 1700 

Jewel coffer on stand
1770

The coffer was used to store jewelry and other valuables. The curved plaque is purely ornamental; its painted decorations include a pair of doves, a quiver and a pierced heart.

  

The Jewish woman of Algiers

1862

Cordier was Europe's premier ethnographic sculptor. He presents our richly dresses young beauty as alert but also contemplative. The Algerian onyx-marble was quarried expressly for Cordier's use. 

Pablo Picasso's The Dreamer (1932)

Marie-Therese Walter, the subject of this sensuous painting, met the artist in 1927, when she was 17 and he was 45. She became his lover and muse soon after. While the female form was not a new subject for Picasso, the flowing, curvilinear style and bright, saturated tones used to depict Marie-Therese are departures from his earlier portrayals of women. By simplifying her voluptuous form into primary shapes, Picasso presents her figure as something resembling an ancient fertility object.

Pablo Picasso's Reading at a Table (1934)

The darkened room and glow from the lamp gives Marie-Therese Walter an ethereal presence, while her alabaster skin, blonde hair, and floral crown enhance her youth. Despite their relationship being the least public of Picasso's many amatory alliances, this painting was imbued with a sense of tender intimacy.

Pablo Picasso's Woman Asleep at a Table (1936)

The ovoid shape of Marie-Therese Walter's resting head and the simplification of her features recall the heaviness of sleep. Picasso moved his lover Marie-Therese and their one year old daughter to a country house outside Paris in 1936. This work may reflect the sweet exhaustion of the new mother, as well as the perplexity of the fifty five year old father, as Picasso had already met Dora Maar, his new lover, when he painted this canvas. 

The Kwoma are a group of people living in the Washkuk Hills north of the Sepik River in northeastern New Guinea. Most Kwoma villages have, or had, one or two ceremonial houses, consisting of a roof reaching nearly to the ground and supported by posts and beams. These structures have no walls and the sides are left open except when rituals are taking place inside. 

Marble Column from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis

Greek, 300 BC

The section of a fluted Ionic column stood over fifty eight feet high in its original location at the Temple of Artemis. 

We didn't know how 3 hours had passed, but it was time for us to leave. We had to spend a few minutes sitting at the steps, to re-orientate ourselves after soaking in awe-inspiring tidbits of our history. 

We then took a bus back to the Empire State Building to join NY Sky Ride. It was utterly underwhelming and I advise you to skip it. We were done by 1030pm and felt like we just wasted our time.  

So to cheer us up, we shopped! We got a pair of TOMS each haha :D It definitely put us in a better mode and you will see me wear those in my post about the next day, spent shopping at the Woodbury Common :D

Adios!

xoxo

Miss N