BY Led Black
Marcus Yam/The New York Times
One of the editors at The Times, Jan Benzel, is being reassigned to Paris (poor Jan). Before she ships out she will attempt to do all the things in NYC that every New Yorker should do at least once. One of the first places she chose was the Cloisters.
Check out The Times article: cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/
For those that don’t know, the Cloisters is the branch of the Met that is devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. The museum is nestled on 4 bucolic acres of Fort Tryon Park overlooking the Hudson River. “The building incorporates elements from five medieval French cloisters and from other monastic sites in southern France. Three of the cloisters reconstructed at the branch museum feature gardens planted according to horticultural information found in medieval treatises and poetry, garden documents and herbals, and medieval works of art, such as tapestries, stained-glass windows, and column capitals. Approximately five thousand works of art from medieval Europe, dating from about A.D. 800 with particular emphasis on the twelfth through fifteenth century, are exhibited in this unique and sympathetic context.” The Cloisters were described by Germain Bazin, former director of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, as “the crowning achievement of American museology”. Such a gem in our own backyard should make us all proud.
For more info: metmuseum.org/works_of_art/the_cloisters
