Christopher Gallego, 1959, oil on canvas

Robert Henri (1865-1929), "Spanish Girl of Segovia" 1912, oil on canvas

"Yellow #2" George Chaplin 1921, oil on canvas

"The White Cloud" George Caitlin (1796-1872), oil on canvas

Ernest Lawson (1873-1939) "Spring Tapestry", oil on canvas

The Metropolitan Museum was founded in 1870 and opened its doors to the public in 1872. Wealthy businessmen, northern financiers, and artisans combined their talent and resources in order to develop and shed light upon the growing and very popular fine arts culture. The building that houses the musuem is quite large boasting over two million square feet. Located within the world's most expensive and sought after real estate in the heart of Manhattan, the Metropolitan stands out on Fifth Avenue as most formidable, and well-built in its Greco-Roman design. On the first floor and straightacross from the entrance are the Dynastic Egyptian collections. The mummies and the hieroglyphics are a must see. The museum is built around its beautifully designed atrium also known as the "great room" which segways into the Greco-Roman sculptures and artifacts which make up the remainder of the first floor. On the second floor is an unopened exhibit on Islamic art and a wealth of artifacts and thousands of cunieform tablets from ancient Sumerian, Hittite, and Assyrian/Babylonian cultures. Among these objects are armor and weapons from antiquity as well as a chariot dating from the near Eastern bronze age. Located on the third floor are over 12,000 American paintings including hundreds of famous paintings such as Emmanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware". This floor also houses the ancient exhibits of the near East that includes over 7,000 artifacts in itself. Overall the musuem is host to over two million artifacts, sculptures, and paintings broken up into 19 different curator departments. These departments extensively cover the timeline of art history and culture and are definitive of Ancient Egyptian, African, American, Asian, Islamic/Byzantine, European, and Modern art.

Hey!! I just got back from NYC and I will try to post to my blog sometime this weekend. The Metropolitan was great, but I wish I had more time because there is so much to see.

The Yale Art Gallery is considered one of the top university museums for American painting collections. The gallery also boasts thousands of artifacts from the near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The gallery was started to house some of John Trumbell paintings. This building was later renovated and finally moved to the location it now occupies on Chapel Street. The Yale Art Gallery could not have achieved its world famous collection if it were not for some very generous donors and school alumni. Theresa Heinz donated hundreds of landscape genre paintings from her late husbands estate in 1992. Francis Garvin donated the Whitney Collection of Sporting Art in 1897. Stephen Carlton Clark (1903) has donated some of the most recognized and reknowned artwork in the gallery. In 1930, excavations in Syria and Jordan unearthed 7500 artifacts that found rest in the Yale Art Gallery.

This is a close-up, no frame shot of Monet's "Artist's Garden at Giverny". The wide brush strokes eccentuate the vivid color scheme. This painting was finished in 1900 and is also oil on canvas.

"Camille on the Beach at Trouville" 1870. This is one of Claude Monet's famous paintings. It is oil on canvas (15x18). Monet painted nine portraits while on his honeymoon with his new wife Camille. This particular painting is off the coast of Normandy, France. Monet's use of loose, broad strokes was excellent at creating form and light.

Gentile Fabriano's "Virgin and a Child" 1424-25 C.E.