This diary and photos are dedicated to my dear friend R, who will now go to and explore the MET with fresh eyes!

A New York Diary and photos by Bircan ÜNVER, LMGlobal.Org | July 29, 2022

Since I returned from Istanbul in the early hours of December 30, 2021, I’ve been thinking of going to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts.

During January, February, and March, harsh cold weather conditions did not encourage the Covid-19 pandemic’s ongoing effects.

I asked my niece S.Ü. who migrated to New York in February, then we couldn’t match with her day-school class schedules.

Recently, I was checking out the New Exhibitions at the MET Museum so that I could plan accordingly. I had even chosen one exhibit about 2 weeks ago. Yet, I couldn’t make it a special day to go to the museum.

Going to the MET Museum for me as if to revisit my old friends, to remind me of some of the others, and meet new ones, which was and has been my first love with New York in February 1990!

At the time, I was living in Los Angeles. Came to see the city for the first time for a brief time. 

The day in February 1990, I decided to go to the museum, it was a cold and snowy day. Regardless, I was determined to see the Museum for the first time, which I did. But time was too short to see everything within a couple of hours. I thought that then even a full week of seeing everything may not be enough.

Then, I promised myself to come back to New York again.

In the Fall of 1990, eventually, I moved to New York City.

I’ve never felt that I was a foreigner in New York City. Even though my English speaking was just at an early stage with my heavy Turkish accent some people even did not understand me well. In those cases, I was communicating in writing, which worked for me well. 

My interest in arts goes back to my education at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, along with being a freelance art journalist for several years in Istanbul. 

My first major art exhibit documentary project was from the MET for local cable channels.
It was also the first major retrospective exhibition in 25 years of the paintings of René Magritte (Belgian, 1898–1967) in 1992. French painter, sculptor, and printmaker Honoré-Victorin Daumier‘s (1808-1979), and the “Dawn of the 5th Century B.C. The Greek Sculpture” exhibits (1993) followed. Producing and making these available during each exhibit period as commercial-free television programs through local channels opened another door for me to produce based on other major exhibitions from the Modern Art Museum such as Max Ernst, Matisse & Picasso…

In the later years and the same line, I shot and produced “Francis Bacon: Humans are Violent” (2009) and “Islamic Arts Galleries” (2012) opening from the MET.

Initially, I had seen Francis Bacon’s major retrospective exhibit for the first time in Los Angeles in February 1990. 

At the time, I had written about it to Turkish “Hürriyet-Gösteri” art magazine. So this was also making my personal history in the U.S., which followed in a similar fashion that when MoMA had the “Magritte: The Mystery of Ordinary” in 2013, I was so excited to produce a new program based on that as well after which I shot and produced it for the Light Millennium TV Series (#LightMillenniumTV launched at QPTV.Org on January 13, 2000), which was shown through QPTV local channels that also made a unique personnel connection with my initial 1992 program at the MET. Then it was 21 years after the MET Exhibit, New York had a second major exhibit on Magritte’s paintings.

With this personal background, whenever I have a guest from Türkiye, I’ve been taking them to the museum, and/or meeting with them at the MET. It is the best place for me… Because it also represents one of the richest art and artifacts collections in the arts of the world, which is also, a rich and diverse spectrum of the highest accomplishments of humankind. 

Going back to yesterday, I met with a dear friend for a launch near the MET. Then I decided to go to the museum since I was a few blocks away from it.

It was hot and humid outside and the lobby at MET was crowded as usual and the line was extremely long.

Although I had to wear my mask throughout the time until it closed at 5 pm, many people did not have it.

Since it was not primarily planned to go there, I did not plan to see a specific exhibit. At first, I thought that I could pick up a program in the lobby, and decide accordingly.

However, once I got my ticket, I went first to the Roof Garden. 

As usual, the scenery was beautiful but there was not an exhibit on display. Spent a couple of minutes there then took the stairs to the second floor, and walked through the main large European Gallery whereas I mainly looked through Rodin and Degas’s sculptures…

Then I continued walking through the galleries without any specific target, then I found myself at the Cyprus Galleries. 

WERE SPHINX SCULPTURES JUST AN IMAGINATION, OR IMAGES OF THE ANCIENT ALIENS?

I am always very impressed by the sphinx sculpture and relief, which represents a mythical creature as half human and half animal (we may call it a “hybrid” figurative sculpture or relief as well) whether it is a bird-face man or woman figure or a lion with a king face… 

I cannot help thinking whether the imagination of artists and people of the ancient times was much higher than our times and human imagination at large, or indeed, they were real living figures of those times from other civilizations such as “Ancient Aliens”!

I am more inclined to think and believe that those figures were not simply an imagination but might have been ancient aliens… considering the creativity and the craft of the time with very primitive tools and no art schools etc., especially the Cyprus and Syrian Art Galleries reminded me of these thoughts… 

It also reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s visions from other civilizations that we may not meet people who are not necessarily similar to us but maybe with the wings, in which Clarke portrayed those mystical creatures as “Alien Overlords” in his “Childhood’s End” (1953). The book was also adapted into a mini television series in 2015. In particular, the Cyprus and Syrian Galleries have excellent reliefs in connection with those visions such as bird-headed huge sculpture(s) with a bear king face-and-head despite a huge animal body along with the huge wings!

While I was lost in these thoughts and taking some pictures in that effect, I could not remember that I had seen the Syrian Gallery before with major reliefs including 2 major sphinx sculptures. This gallery also made me feel somewhat as if I was at the Archeology Museum of Istanbul. 

Later on, I looked at the MetMuseum.Org website to find out when the Syrian Gallery was opened for the first time! However, I couldn’t locate the year. (The question I had in mind was, is it opened before the Syrian war or after?) 

A basic walk-through without any specific idea also reminded me that art, culture, and civilizations are universal values. I consider that the highest values and inheritance of humanity are arts in general whether ancient, classic, modern, and/or abstract regardless of from which century or millennia, or from the last century or the last decade, and/or from the present times that those will convey the humanity’s highest achievements from one millennium to another…

After European, Cyprus, Islamic Arts, Syrian and Chinese Galleries, then circled and walked through the Ancient Greek Galleries… Then, I’ve seen colored “Ancient Greek Sculptures” there, which was something new to me…

My first impression was if those ancient values have lost value, popularized, or had become “kitsch art”? 

Not sure yet but I still like the original ones better over vividly colored ones as if a black-and-white movie in a colored version lost its historical reference and value!

In this context, with the unique rich interior and each gallery’s designs along with the remarkable external classic architecture of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York (also reminds me if I am at Istanbul Archeology Museum whenever I am there), just being in there is alone being in a different and wonderful world to me! 

Whether at a gallery to see an exhibit or a specific art piece there or sitting outside on the stairs and watching performers, or listening to musicians, a combination of these helps me to think beyond the daily concerns, politics, and issues. 

More importantly, I consider that arts and culture, whether ancient or modern, are the sole channels to convey us and humanity at large from one generation to another from the ancient to present times as well as to many centuries and millennia to come.

In conclusion, while I was walking through, took some arbitrary photos based on what caught my eyes.

In this page, I have shared a few of these photos without any specific information except a reference to each related gallery.

I had a wonderful time there.

I hope you will enjoy seeing these photos as a reflection of a “walk-through at the MET”.

A Walk-Through at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts
A New York Diary and Photos by Bircan Ünver, LMGlobal.Org

LMTV 2013: “Magritte: The Mystery of Ordinary” https://vimeo.com/730666619

LMTV 2012: “The Art of Arab Lands, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia, and Late South Asia” New Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts https://vimeo.com/38751096.

LMTV 2009: “Francis Bacon: Humans are Violent” https://vimeo.com/37045854

www.vimeo.com/channels/LightMillenniumTV

www.metmuseum.org