Iconic art pieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Artful Experiences for Casual Viewers
The entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City is the largest art museum in the United States. The Met Museum art collection consists of over 1.5 million works and covers 5,000 years of art history.
To the casual art viewer, like myself, the sheer vastness of the Met collection can be overwhelming. So to create a more enjoyable Met museum visit, we went through the website to make a list of our must-see art at the Met before arriving so we could make sure to see the pieces we wanted to see in the time we had available!
We got there right when it opened and so we were able to see everything that was on our “casual art” guide and walk through the majority of the other Metropolitan Museum exhibits! We strongly recommend doing this and start your day by going directly to the second floor and turning left to go into the 800s galleries. We did this and were able to see our art highlights at the Met by ourselves which allowed us to spend as much time as we wanted in front of each piece without feeling pressured to keep moving along.
Our art highlights for beginners' guide
There are SO many artistic treasures at the Met-and we ended up finding so many more hidden gems at the Met than we expected (we surprised ourselves with how many pieces of art we recognized!), but here was our starting list!
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer-Degas (gal 815)
The Thinker-Rodin (gal 800)
Bouquet of Sunflowers-Monet (gal 819)
Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies-Monet (gal 819)
Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat-Van Gogh (gal 825)
Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”-Seurat (gal 825)
Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children-Renoir (gal 824)
George Washington-Stuart (gal 755)
Washington Crossing the Delaware-Leutze (gal 760)
Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)-Hokusai (currently off view, not pictured)
While there, we chose to listen to the audio guides. Some of the Met Museum artworks have numbers on the information placards. These numbers correspond to the audio guide on the Met’s website (https://www.metmuseum.org/audio-guide). The audio clips are done by professionals who have studied the various works of art and give insight into the pieces, the artists, or other pertinent information. Doing this plus starting on the second floor literally felt like we were getting a private Metropolitan Museum tour!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a must-see when visiting New York City! By following the highlights above, you could make it into a short exploratory stop for a casual gallery visit, but you can also spend all day there if you’d like to study the artistic wonders at the Met. Regardless of how long you spend there, you will have an enjoyable art experience!
