Night at the Museum

Well, actually we only visited in the daytime. But we went to three museums while in NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Natural History and The Museum of Modern Art.

First up was the Museum of Modern Art. They had a child’s audio tour (love those!) so after we had primed our children not to say in loud voices ‘I could do that!’ or ‘That’s not art!’ or ‘That’s weird/rude’, we did the tour. It was great. It covered the highlights and famous pictures. Just as in Washington, the boys were very excited to see works by artists they’d studied at school – Mondrian, Monet, Pollock, Warhol, Lichenstein and especially Van Gogh – ‘Starry Night’ was there.
I loved the largest Jackson Pollock painting there. I have always liked ‘Blue Poles’ in Canberra and at MoMA they had quite a few of his artworks. (I bought a children’s book about him and read it to Aidan that night. A few days later at the Met Museum of Art, Aidan ran into a room with another Pollock on the wall and stopped dead. He announced ‘Mummy, that’s by Action Jackson. He listened to music then put it on the floor then did paint all around it and swished it’. He was so excited to see it! I was excited that he remembered and recognised it!)



A couple of days later we went to the Museum of Natural History. For those readers above 15, there is a movie called ‘Night at the Museum’ which came out a few years ago where Ben Stiller plays a man who has the job as the night watchman at this museum and at night all the exhibits come alive. The movie is set at this museum (with a bit of the Smithsonian from DC thrown in). Our boys love this movie!

They have a handout where you can find all the characters from the movie and so we had a very happy time, touring the four floors and finding familiar things (we also saw a show in the planetarium). I’m glad we had the tour to do as otherwise this museum would have been overwhelming, it’s huge! We managed to find Teddy (Theodore Roosevelt) on his horse, a mammoth, the life sized blue whale, African animals (all stuffed and displayed in authentic dioramas), Dum Dum the Easter Island statue, Egyptian, Aztec and Incan artifacts, Sacagawea, Dexter the monkey and Rexy the T Rex. We also saw many, many other fascinating, creepy and interesting things and were there until the museum closed. We then left, not wanting to find out if they all do come to life at night!

Finally we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If we had thought the Museum of Natural History was overwhelming, it had nothing on this! It was astounding and quite exhausting. They have there 18 different galleries which each have dozens of rooms within them, with art as diverse as Roman, Greek and Egyptian artifacts thousands of years old to armour to marble sculpture to Tiffany stained glass to furniture to instruments and of course paintings from 2000BC to today. We started out in the Egyptian section and it was awe inspiring. Rooms and rooms of more than 20 000 objects in total. As Luke and I were standing in yet another room full of mummies, sarcophagi, statues etc we decided that we might appreciate it more if we had just seem one mummy. It felt like overload. But at the same time, incredible.




After our Egyptian experience we realised that we couldn’t possibly see everything there (and actually we didn’t want to!) So we ruthlessly cut our touring down to a few galleries (and whatever else we happened to see along the way). We ended up viewing the Arms & Armour, some Tiffany glass, some sculpture, Modern & Contemporary Art and 19th & 20th century European paintings & sculpture. The boys loved the armoury (bodes well for the UK!) and the modern art.


I loved the modern art and the European art – although again, like the Egyptian art, seeing your third and fourth room full of paintings by Monet/Renoir/Cezanne/Degas is a bit numbing. But a room full of Degas bronze sculptures was beautiful – horses, bathers and dancers. The boys were excited to see his Little Dancer sculpture – they recognized her from a fridge magnet at Nana and Grandpa’s! And they loved seeing The Thinker by Rodin.



So at the end of three museums, we had seen treasures, walked for miles, been enriched, and exhausted, and yet still managed to be thankful for the chance to be here in NY and seeing these things.

Karen