Double Met Day

Last Friday the Edwards Collective did a double Met day in New York! First we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we visited the Age of Empires exhibit, featuring Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties, including some of the famous the Terracotta warriors. What’s great about going to exhibits or really any artistic event with the Collective is that you get to share the experience with people who may have very different perspectives from you. I don’t know very much about the visual arts, so for me it was really great visiting this exhibit with Maggie, our RGS from the Art and Archeology department, because I got to see these works through the eyes of someone trained to look at them. My experience was so much richer because she knew how to ask the right questions that got me to notice details I would have otherwise completely overlooked.

After dinner, we went to the Metropolitan Opera to see Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, starring Renée Fleming and Elīna Garanča. For a first-time opera-goer, this was an amazing experience. It really was an embarrassment of riches – the singers’ voices were absolutely exquisite, the costumes out of this world, and the set design, well, I’m a Classics major, and I may or may not have squealed when the second act curtain went up to reveal a set that included a frieze in the style of Greek vase painting – indeed, some of the designs on the shields were exact replicas of the ones I had seen in the Berlin painter exhibit at the Art Museum! After the show was over, even though we were all rather loopy with tiredness by the time we boarded the train some time past midnight, we had a lively conversation about the performance, the art of opera, and, as cheesy as this sounds, our love for the arts and humanities. Truly a wonderful night that was all the better for sharing it with a group of wonderful people.