A New Look at The Cloisters
Last Friday, Eric and I went up to he Cloisters. Visiting this offshoot of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has become an annual event. Given good weather - and Friday's weather was perfect - the visit is so completely agreeable that it's impossible to tell whether The Cloisters itself or the park surrounding it was the destination.
The Cloisters is one of New York's most notable institutions. It is the most comprehensive assemblage of medieval European architecture outside of Europe. The ancient bits have been built into a sympathetic structure, with medieval-looking limestone interiors, that is laid out to facilitate a walking tour through successive centuries. "Written in stone," it is both old and new at the same time; from the moment you enter the Froville Arcade, time doesn't so much stop as gel. If you have known the museum for as long as I have - at least forty years - it is beguilingly easy to tick off the rooms in order. Every once in a while, something is moved, but The Cloisters goes on, as if it really were an opulent monastery in medieval France.
But then the jaded eye blinks and begins to see again. There are changes everywhere. They're small, for the most part, but they add up to the conclusion that a new abbot is in charge, so to speak. James J Rorimer is no longer directing the museum. (Nor is Thomas Hoving still an Assistant Curator!) Comparing the guidebook that I've very luckily held on to from the Sixties with the one that was published two years ago reveals some interesting shifts.
The Cloisters, in short, has a history of its own.
¶ A New Look at the Cloisters.
Photo by Eric Patton.
