Hey guys! Jennifer here-long time no talk! I have been CRAZY BUSY with work as well as traveling with Ady all over the damn place, and will be making up for my lack of blogging over the next week BIG TIME with a bunch of awesome NYC posts. Soo let’s get down to business- I’m going to kick start our NYC blog-a-thon extravaganza with a post about my FAVORITE place in New York {possibly the world} *drum roll please* dadadadadadada- THE MET.

I am obsessed with all things art, and The Met scratches all my art itches-I visited for the first time when I was 15 with my equally art obsessed Grandma and I’ve been hooked ever since {I’ve been 3 times just this year..Roll Tide to that}.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the US and is one of the most prominent and renown museums in the world. This place is HUGEEE (It’s permanent collection contains over two million pieces) and it is near impossible to take in what all it has to offer in a day, or even a week-but if you make a plan before you go and keep your eye on the prize (literally) you can hit all the high points in a couple of hours…considering art is subjective, you can hit my high points at least!

If you only have a couple hours to burn at the Met (or if you are traveling with kids/man children who would rather be anywhere in the world/girlfriends who would rather be day drinking and brunching their faces off, etc. etc.) I would recommend hitting up the following collections:

Check out my MET musts!

Modern and Contemporary Art

SO MUCH DOPE IN ONE PLACE. It’s amazing-there is this awesome Andy Warhol nose job piece pictured below, you got your Jasper Johns and your Rothkos and Jackson Pollocks and Picassos and a bad ass gigantic Chuck Close self portrait-literally everything a human could want in life (read that in a Stefon from SNL voice). It is worth it to visit this collection just to see Chuck Close’s self portrait Lucas I-he is one of my favorite artists and is just a ridiculously impressive human being. He is actually paralyzed and tapes a brush to his hand, then paints from a grid-it’s insane. If you want to learn more about him (you should) google that shit, I am not wikipedia damn it. Duh.

19th and Early 20th-Century European Paintings and Sculpture

So if you took one art history class in college and that’s the extent of your Art background, this is the collection for you my friend. This has all the Impressionism that your cold black heart desires. Degas, Monet, Matisse, Van Gogh, Seurat-you name it, they got that shit. This is by far my favorite collection as a whole because French Impressionism is what started my love affair with art! My mom got me these cartoon books when I was about five that taught me all about Monet, Van Gogh and Degas. I still have them and I have had an unhealthy obsession ever since. I actually asked Santa for a Monet lily pad painting as well as the Degas sculpture pictured below for Christmas when I was about six. I knew there was one in Chicago at the Chicago Institute of Art, as well as one at the Met. I knew he couldn’t pull that shit off because he was a fraud. True Story.

Faberge

So these two collections alone (if you don’t blaze thru them and take that shit in and actually enjoy it) should take you a couple hours to visit.  No visit to The Met is complete without seeing their collection of Faberge which is located in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Collection.  You can easily hit it on your way out of the Modern Art Collection.

I don’t know if you have caught onto this yet, but I have OCD (no really).  I am obsessed with a bunch of random crap that never helps me in real life unless I am playing trivia at the bar. Faberge is one of those obsessions. I went thru a “Russia castle/Russia princess/Russia egg (thats what I called Faberge eggs)” phase when I was about 7 or 8. I wanted to take my Russian princess drawing game to the next level (I loved to draw princesses) so I checked out a book from the library about Faberge because they were sparkly and the rest is history. My favorite piece in their collection is the Faberge chameleon pictured below. If I could ever own a piece it would be something weird as hell like a jade and diamond lizard-you can’t hide money. Duh.

Well, that’s all I have to say about that (Forrest Gump voice). I hope this post entices you to visit the most awesome place on earth (like you need convincing). I would love to hear what some of your favorite Met exhibits/works are in the comments below. Peace out girl or boy scouts and Roll Tide.

*All photos by Jennifer Oetting Photography