Professor Richard Brettell of the University of Texas at Dallas feels your pain—specifically, your feet and back, from endless stations-of-the-cross hours of moving from one artwork to the next during a day's museum crawl. In Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the latest entries in The Teaching Company's “Great Courses” series, the amiable Brettell (who has expressive hands) shares some solid tips for prospective museum goers (scope a whole room briskly first, then return to the pieces you're interested in; split families into two or more groups; leave when you're bored) before launching into a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a.k.a., the Met), which he admits is a “huge, intimidating palace of art.” Calling the Met the most encyclopedic of American art museums (it contains some 2.5 million items), Brettell spends 22 of the 24 half-hour lectures here taking viewers through highlights of “every single part of the Met,” a monumental two-story structure that opened in 1880 in New York's Central Park (offering a grand symbiosis of art and nature, open to all). Reminding viewers that “great works of art communicate across time,” Brettell examines key works (painting, sculpture, metallurgy, screens, etc.) and personal favorites (with onscreen images and a helpful electronic pointer) from the whole of art history, including Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Asian, Middle Eastern, African, European, and American, with visits to special collections (musical instruments, arms and armor, the Robert Lehman collection, etc.). A fine introduction to the Met (course books are separately available, featuring lecture outlines, transcripts, maps, a timeline, glossary, and bibliography), this is recommended for both academic and general collections. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)
Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(2008) 4 discs. 720 min. DVD: $109.95. The Teaching Company. PPR. ISBN: 1-59803-390-8. Volume 23, Issue 3
Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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