Cabinets of Wonder: Week 1

THE FRICK COLLECTION

First Impressions:
Beautiful, but oppressive. The building is fenced; the space is hushed. The entrance is marked by a large outdoor sign indicating the hours and ticket prices. The visitor is directed by guards three times at the enterance: first to a ticket counter, then to the audio tour, and finally, to the first room of the collection. Like the Neue, the Frick was once a home and, despite its transformation into museum, continues to be treated by guests as such. It is immediately apparent that the space is not your own, that you will follow directions and behave appropriately.

Social, emotional, and informational:
The Frick is not a place to go with your chatty friends. The vast majority of guests wander around holding audio guides up to their ears, occasionally stopping to punch in a painting or sculpture number. The windows are heavily draped and most of the floors and walls are carpeted, dampening footsteps and lending an air of intimacy and mystique.

The museum is not quite house, not quite exhibition space. The effect is unsettling. There are dozens of cushioned chairs decoratively placed throughout its halls, but ropes prevent their use. Occasionally, the visitor happens upon a long-unused desk or side table, perhaps with a lamp or quill on top. Moving through the space recalls the feeling of looking a photograph of the deceased. The house may have been preserved, but it is far from alive.

The Frick’s disquieting effect plays to its advantage. Informationally, the scenery is as important as the paintings. The atmosphere captures a particular place and time. In any other space, the lack of provided contextual information (dates, titles, and the like) would be frustrating, but at the Frick, the limited labels add to the museum’s charm. But of course Mr. Frick didn’t display Goya’s birth and death dates!

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

First Impressions:
Large signs, food and art vendors, street performers, marble steps, loiterers. Everything on the walk up to the Met signals this is a *capital-I* institution. Once past the bag check, the scene is overwhelming. The large information desk in the center of the lobby is the first thing I see, and it takes me a while to decide which of the three clusters of ticket counters seems the least busy. I stand off to the side and try to get my bearings. Sensory overload! I’m getting over an illness, so I’m feeling weak as it is…

Social, emotional, and informational:
I decided to tackle one hall and opted for my childhood favorite, the Egyptian collection. The visit was exhausting. The Met does a fantastic job of offering different layers of engagement to visitors, ranging from large signs and walk-through ruins to tiny labels and exhaustive captions. The visitor can choose the level of detail appropriate to him or her. They employ a taxonomic curatorial method, grouping artifacts by type, period, place of origin, etc. There are over 35,000 artifacts in the collection, each contextualized, labeled, and displayed.

Most people meandered through the collection in flexible groups, by which I mean they frequently strayed apart and meandered back together. The larger artifacts became ad hoc meet-up points–everyone wants to look at the enormous sarcophagus, so everyone collects there before moving into the next room. The exhibition space itself inspires relative quiet on the part of the viewer. Something about the sand colored walls and the backlit ruins makes it seem as though you are wandering through a calm and somewhat sacred space. The ceilings are, for the most part, quite low. One doesn’t notice this, of course, until one enters the magnificent Sackler room, a sprawling, multi-story room dedicated to the reconstructed Temple of Dendur.

REVIEWS

Family (12 y/0, 14 y/0) at the MET (from Mother’s perspective): Where did Bobby run off to now? I’ll bet he’s by the mummy’s again. He always heads straight for the mummies. I wish he would slow down a bit and read these captions. I keep trying to get him to look at these models but he thinks they’re too much like dolls. He loves stories about Egyptian life, so you’d think he would want to see what day-to-day activities looked like.  “Susan! I’m going into the next room now! Come along when you’re done looking at that gold jewelry!” Susan loves the jewelry. She’s even learned all the different kinds of beads that the Egyptians used.  Hmm..now if only I knew which was the next room. Back to the map. Okay…now here’s the Middle Kingdom, there’s gallery 17…which means it should be to the right. Okay. “Susan, I’m going to this room to the right! If you see Bobby, tell him I’ll meet you two at the Sackler room. That one with the temple and the water…”

Student (17 y/o): Today for our assignment we had to focus on the Egyptian Hall at the Met. The teacher let us wander around by ourselves until 3, when we had to meet at the entrance. Our worksheet had a list of ten questions that we had to find the answers to. Some of them were easy (How did the Met aquire the Temple of Dendur? duh…it’s only written on the wall like 5 times), but some of them were waay too hard. The exhibit has these tiny rooms that they call galleries (more like closets!) where they squish together hundreds of artifacts from one or two excavation sites. Our teacher wanted us to identify the year of a stupid tiny scarab in gallery 18. It took me like 20 minutes to even find it! And then I couldn’t even find it’s label. I had to ask my friend, Matt, for his answer, and he only knew it because he asked Sandra. After that I had to rush through the rest of the exhibit to catch up. I barely finished by 3, and then I got lost looking for my way back to the entrance! Thank goodness for the guards that directed me back. Ms. Stamson would not have been happy.

Older Woman at the Frick: Perhaps my favorite aspect of the Frick is the staff.  They are impeccably trained, and impeccably dressed. Each stationed at his or her own spot, the guards watch over both the Collection and the museum itself. This very morning as I walked into the West Gallery, AcoustiGuide in hand, a foreign lady called out, quite loudly, to her friend. I quickly looked up to see what was wrong, as did many other guests, but it seemed as though the call was merely an inappropriately audible greeting. The two ladies continued to chat, and moved toward the table at the entrance of the room. This table, of course, is part of the collection, and not intended for use. These foreigners clearly did not understand that, however, and placed their pamphlets and bags on top of it as they continued to talk. Like an angel, a nearby guard quickly and silently moved toward them, motioning with an aggressive, blade-like hand that the table was off limits. They moved away, and calm was restored. Later on, I saw the same pair attempting to abscond with a $2 guide from the information booth. They grabbed the guide and began to walk away, but the desk attendant briskly cleared his throat, and motioned with the same blade-like hand signal toward the “Guides: $2″ sign. If there ever were a well-trained group of guards, then they certainly work at the Frick Collection. Silent, professional, and effective.