Thought Portal

This was the theme of the fucking met gala this year:

In an unnamed place and time, a majestic villa overlooks a garden of delicate, glass-stemmed flowers. Home to Count Axel and the Countess, the otherwise elegant landscape is unsettled by a dark blot on the horizon. It is an army of furious workers, drawing nearer day by day. To slow its approach, Axel plucks the time flowers from his garden; each one dissolves in a burst of light which rewinds time itself, and so the threatening horde shifts back on the skyline. This solution, however, is only temporary. The garden of time is faltering, the flowers are almost all gone, and the masses will soon arrive to take their long-awaited revenge.

This is the premise of The Garden of Time, a 1962 short story by J.G. Ballard.

read the story here.

Join Dr. Andrea Myers Achi, Mary and Michael Jaharis Associate Curator of Byzantine Art in The Met’s Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, for a virtual tour of Africa & Byzantium. Art history has long emphasized the glories of the Byzantine Empire (circa 330–1453), but less known are the profound artistic contributions of North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and other powerful African kingdoms whose pivotal interactions with Byzantium had a lasting impact on the Mediterranean world. Bringing together a range of masterworks—from mosaic, sculpture, pottery, and metalwork to luxury objects, paintings, and religious manuscripts—this exhibition recounts Africa’s central role in international networks of trade and cultural exchange. With artworks rarely or never before seen in public, Africa & Byzantium sheds new light on the staggering artistic achievements of medieval Africa. This long-overdue exhibition highlights how the continent contributed to the development of the premodern world and offers a more complete history of the vibrant multiethnic societies of north and east Africa that shaped the artistic, economic, and cultural life of Byzantium and beyond.

Fran Lebowitz goes behind-the-scenes to The Met’s Paintings Conservation Lab to see Rembrandt’s “Aristotle with a Bust of Homer” (1653). Along the way, she tells her favorite story of visiting The Museum and contemplates the impossibility of choosing a favorite object in The Met’s collection.

Robyn Schiff returns to The Met to read from her poem, “Information Desk: An Epic” in which she recounts what it was like to work at the Museum while establishing herself as a young writer.

“Though I haven’t worked inside the Information Desk now for more than twenty years,” she writes, “the experience has so asserted itself into my art that I regard the Information Desk as my private writing desk; I am always seated there.”

From the epic halls of The Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim, New York City is home to some of the most famous museums in the world, each one looking completely different from the next. Today Michael Wyetzner of Michielli + Wyetzner Architects returns to AD for an in-depth look at how the iconic museums and art galleries of NYC developed their unique designs and became some of the city’s best landmarks.

Bélizaire and the Frey Children (c. 1837)

Anita Briey

Juan de Pareja (c. 1606 in Antequera – 1670 in Madrid)[1] was a Spanish painter born in Antequera, near Málaga, Spain. He is known primarily as a member of the household and workshop of painter Diego Velázquez, who enslaved him until 1650. His 1661 work The Calling of Saint Matthew (sometimes also referred to as The Vocation of Saint Matthew) is on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.

Valentine: Puzzle Purse 

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/775441