DAY TWO, pt. 1 // As a student of the arts, I am terrible at keeping up with industry news. Well, I do keep up with wedding photography news since that’s currently my main focus (see my wedding photography portfolio here!) but otherwise, I’m terrible.
Before photography came into my life, my first love was illustration and animation. I love the storytelling aspect of both medium, and the different styles and characteristics that artists would put into their work. I enjoyed going to different museums and viewing the art pieces, dissecting the composition, the lighting, the brush strokes of the paintbrushes, and admiring the amount of hours the artists must have put into just one of those art pieces.
But then life happened and ever since I began to focus most of my time on work, the amount of time I spent studying other artist’s work has diminished into nothing. And you know what sucks the most about this? Iactually enjoy doing it.
We always say we don’t have time to do this, that, or the other. But that’s not true at all. We make time for the things that is important to us. And I need to make time to study the arts, and perhaps even get inspired from the greats.
Anyway! Enough of me rambling. Let’s continue the adventure in New York!
The first time I was in New York was a year and a half ago with my boyfriend Joseph (I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before -_-“). Well, Joseph gets bored out of his mind when it comes to visiting museums and galleries so we didn’t visit any, much to my dismay.
This time around, my partner in crime actually minored in Art History in college, so we were both very much excited to visit everything New York had to offer in terms of art! The first and foremost being The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park.
Oh my gosh, this place is huge!
TIP: Although there is an ‘admissions fee’ listed by the entrance, this is just a donations guideline. If you’re traveling on a budget, you can pay however much you can afford.
We took a one-hour long tour of China’s art section, and I learned so much! Did you know that calligraphy was deemed as their highest form of art? And the way that a person handled their brush strokes supposedly says a lot about the person’s character?
If I was judged by my penmanship, oh man.. I would be in so much trouble. Messy and uncoordinated! Haha.
I know most of the photos from the China area is mostly statues, but there were a lot of other types of artifacts on display. I really enjoyed our tour guide. She was very informative, was able to answer all of our group’s questions, and made an hour go by super fast!
The rest of the time was spent wandering around as much as possible (it was definitely not possible to cover every inch of this museum in one day!!) and just admiring the architecture of the building as well as the massive amount of art the museum has in its collection!
I’ll end the post with this beautiful sarcophagus from, I believe, Ancient Greek. Sooo beautiful!! So much so, that somebody actually put this on display in their home. Now, I don’t know if a carcass was actually still in this piece of art or not though o_O. Why can’t coffins nowadays be this grand and beautiful?! And how much do you think it’ll cost to commission someone to make this for me? I still have a lifetime to get this together. Haha.
If you’re a fan of art or not, I highly suggest visiting The Met when you’re in New York. Like I mentioned, it is not expensive at all since the admission fee is totally donations-based. And you can spend all day here admiring the art. There is so much culture and history from so many parts of the world in this building with amazing architecture that it would be a true shame to skip out on it.
TIP: Wear comfy shoes! We cut our time short here because our feet were tired from all the walking. *sigh*
