September at the Met: Oases and Special Exhibitions

When you think of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—New York City's most popular tourist site—you probably envision crowds, especially on weekends. And you might be right.

Purple Robe and Anemones, 1937, by Henri Matisse. Oil on canvas. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland. © 2005 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

However, before you allow this to deter you, remember that only certain featured, attention-getting exhibitions draw large numbers of people. Although visitors flock to these blockbusters, many uncrowded and relaxing parts of the Met remain virtually unknown; indeed, the Met is so vast most viewers have only visited a small part of the museum. With this in mind, here are a few of my favorite spaces.

The Astor Court in the Asian art galleries contains an entire Chinese garden. Resulting from the first permanent cultural exchange between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China, it was built here in 1981, almost entirely by Chinese craftsmen. Peaceful and meditative, this replica of a 17th-century scholar's court comes from the courtyard of the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets in Soochow. It typifies the microcosm envisioned by Chinese scholars: combining the natural world, the wildness of water and rocks, with plantings and architecture, it is at once complex and simple. The garden makes use of darkness and light, hardness and softness, curves and straight lines. Intended to evoke the experience of traveling through nature, it features varied windows, doors, and other openings that frame changing views of the garden. In fact, different latticed designs in each window keep altering the illusions.

From another tranquil spot, the Sackler Japanese wing, I will concentrate on one item: a small sculptural fountain, titled Water Stone, by the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988). Commissioned in 1986, this basalt sculpture, one of Noguchi's final works, resembles stone basins situated within Japanese gardens, setting a contemplative tone at the start of the museum galleries. Combining contrasting elements, both familiar and unexpected, this work brings together the natural and human-made, the ancient and modern. In some respects, it echoes the notion of the Chinese scholar's garden. The materials embrace contrasts found in nature: the transient flow and sound of water stand out against the solidity, stillness, and permanence of stone; the hues and textures of rock balance the water's transparency and smoothness.

A third spot to which I often gravitate is the great glass-enclosed space of the American collection courtyard. There, surrounded by Tiffany glass, Frank Lloyd Wright designs, and assorted sculptures from the American tradition, one can also look out at Central Park. You can watch the seasons change, observing joggers, strollers, dog-walkers, and lovers, while drinking cappuccino in the courtyard café. Inside the American collection itself, there is everything from a complete room of a Frank Lloyd Wright house (The Little House, Wayzata, Minn., 1912-14) to paintings by Winslow Homer and Mary Cassatt, to vintage furniture and Tiffany glass. The Luce Center invites us into its vast storage spaces.

Porpoise-Tooth Ear Ornaments (uuhe), 19th century. Porpoise teeth, turtleshell, glass trade beads, fiber. The Field Museum, Chicago.

All three areas, although different from each other, promote peaceful reflection and stillness. Unspoiled and underpopulated, they share an admixture of culture and nature, inside and outside. While these form an integral part of the Met's permanent collection, I would also like to recommend three temporary exhibitions. The first one, "Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams—His Art and His Textiles," runs until September 25. It concentrates on 75 paintings, drawings, prints, and painted paper cutouts by Henri Matisse, related specifically to his fascination with textiles. There also are examples from the artist's personal textile collection, many of which had been kept in storage since his death in 1954. Matisse painted a number of canvases inspired by a fragment of blue-and-white printed cotton that he purchased from a secondhand shop in Paris. Works from the 1910s and 1920s demonstrate the influence of North African fabrics and screens; some paintings feature Romanian blouses and couture gowns, and Matisse's late paper cutouts are juxtaposed with his African and Polynesian textiles. The exhibition concludes with the artist's designs for the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence.

Some examples of paintings in the show are Still Life With Blue Tablecloth (1909, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), Seated Odalisque (1926, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Woman in Blue (1937, Philadelphia Museum of Art), Purple Robe and Anemones (1937, Baltimore Museum of Art), and The Dream (1940, private collection). The approximately 35 textiles on view range from a fragment of resist-dyed cotton purchased at a flea market to Parisian couture gowns, African wall hangings, and Turkish robes.

A very different show, "Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands," continues until January 15, 2006, in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing on the first floor (itself a repository of less frequently visited, extraordinary art).

(Front to back) Splotch #8, 2002; Splotch #5, 2002; Wall Drawing #1152 Whirls and Twirls, 2005. LeWitt Collection, Chester, Conn. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden © 2005 Sol LeWitt/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Although the celebrated painter Paul Gauguin made these islands northeast of Tahiti his final home, the show does not include his work, or subordinate Marquesan art to the western tradition. The splendid sculpture and decorative art here was created to honor gods and ancestors, adorn the bodies of its people, and ornament the objects they used. This exhibition includes complex stylization, highly decorated surfaces, and among the most elaborate body tattooing in the world. The intent of this exhibit is to demonstrate how art has been used in both the religious and secular life of the Marquesan people.

To conclude with "Sol LeWitt on the Roof: Splotches, Whirls and Twirls" seems only appropriate. This particular exhibit in this special space very strongly continues and extends the concept I started out with: oases in the Met that combine culture and nature. Five painted fiberglass sculptures and one wall drawing by the celebrated American artist Sol LeWitt (born 1928) will be on view in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden until October 30 (weather permitting). Full of whimsy, these pieces fit in beautifully in the 10,000-square-foot, open-air space. Here you can get light snacks and drinks to enjoy while you take in the spectacular views of Central Park and the New York City skyline. The installation will mark the eighth single-artist installation in the Cantor Roof Garden.

Of New York City's numerous museums, the Met is unquestionably the largest and most varied. It is good to know that one can peacefully spend many hours there without ever repeating an experience.

The Met, located on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, is open Sunday and Tuesday-Thursday from 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 9:30 a.m.-9 p.m. It is closed Mondays, except for major holidays.

Art historian Greta Berman has been on the liberal arts faculty since 1979.