Five years after the Metropolitan Museum of Art set off on a major renovation of its galleries for European painting, the super-prime real estate at the top of its grand staircase is open again.
Down in the galleries, the Met’s designers have widened the rooms, rearranged the sightlines, shellacked the walls purple and blue.
The curators have reassembled the whole painting collection for the first time since 2018, shuffled across 45 new galleries and bathed in beautifully tempered light.
(When it comes to light, this New Amsterdam institution definitely leans more Dutch than Italian.)
Duccio’s break-the-bank Madonna and Child, painted in Tuscany around 1300, now shares a case with Ingres’s painting of the same subject from 1852.
Persons:
Beyer Blinder Belle, Truman, Bacon, Beckmann, Kerry James Marshall, You’ll
Organizations:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Met
Locations:
New Amsterdam, Italy, France, Spain, zigzags, Tuscany