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Lost in the Met

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This is my entry for the March 2026 IndieWeb Carnival, on “museum meories”, hosted by James.

Somewhere in this house, probably stashed away in a shoebox of other trinkets and doodads, is my first admission button to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met stopped using these iconic buttons in 2013 and they’ve since gone the way of the subway token. My button is dark green, bearing the old ‘M’ logo in white.

The year was 2000, I was a seventh grader, and the visit to the museum was with my middle school’s Art Club. This trip was funded through hours of making stuff to sell and appearing at (seemingly) every craft fair in Central New York the fall and winter of 1999. We managed to charter a bus to make the 4 hour journey through Utica, Albany, and down the Hudson Valley all the way to Central Park. It was my first time in New York City.

My parents did encourage my interest in art and enrolled me in lessons at a local community center starting around age ten. By seventh grade I had rudimentary instruction in the color wheel and perspective, and exposure to paint, charcoal, and clay. I had a handful of art books on the shelf in my room, mostly collections of paintings, acquired at various flea markets and yard sales. I never thought I was a brilliant student: just a thirteen year old who loved to draw, and was learning mostly by copying other artworks. Art Club was a lifeline in middle school for me and other awkward shy adolescents with an interest in drawing. Looking back at all that now, I realize how dedicated our teacher Ms. Markle was, pouring so much time and energy into our club after school and on weekends.

To help revive my memory to write this post, I found a listing of exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the years 1999 and 2000. Funny enough, the only exhibit I can definitely recall was ‘Rock Style’ featuring fashions worn by Elton John, Madonna, and the Beatles. I do vaguely remember a handful of iconic paintings, mostly ones I’d seen in textbooks at school or my art books at home: the Rembrandt and van Gogh self-potraits; Madame X; Washington Crossing the Delaware.

What I can recall most vividly is the feeling of wandering through this enormous museum on my own. Stepping into the grand entrances of the Met is akin to visiting the world’s great cathedrals. High ceilings, marble floors, brilliant lighting. I was still naive in my art education at this point, but these art works felt so important, so elevated in that remarkable space. I did not actually get lost in the Met, but I did lose track of time. I have no idea how many hours we were given, but I spent my hours wandering through the Egyptian collection, the Greek and Roman statues, the European paintings. The clock was ticking by the time I managed to find the Paul Klee works in the modern and contemporary wing. And yes, I did check out the rock and roll fashions in the Rock Style exhibit, too.

I met up with the rest of my group at the appointed time, and remember us going inside the FAO Schwarz toy shop on Fifth Avenue before we getting back on the bus to see ‘Beauty and the Beast’ on Broadway that evening. Brown bag lunches were consumed in Central Park. All typical turn-of-the-millennium-middle-school-trip-to-NYC stuff. This first visit to the Met was before I learned what a Trustee was, became familiar with words like repatriation, or grasped how money and power works in the world of fine art and cultural institutions.

Touring the Met on on a chaperoned school trip was good training for taking in blockbuster exhibits at smaller museums. I recall going to see the paintings in a ‘Masterworks from El Greco to Picasso’ exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum a few years later, shortly after my dad started living and working in Arizona. When Eleanor and I started dating, we realized we had both been to that exhibit as high schoolers. Art was something we had in common early on, and we still enjoy going to museums together.

On some later trips to NYC as an adult I’ve been able to visit some of the Met’s neighbors in Central Park: The Guggenheim, the Jewish Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. Eleanor and I were in the city for a group show at the Drawing Center years ago and decided to ride the Subway uptown to dash into the Met an hour before close. We experienced that similar cathedral feeling of awe and reverance as we breezed through the exhibits looking for the Sargent paintings. There were no tin visitor badges on this trip unfortunately. They had already been discontinued.

That first trip to the Met left a huge impression on me as a youngster. I’m glad I got to see it, and I look forward to taking my own child to see the museum on a future trip. I’d love to visit the Cloisters as well. Landmark museums can show you how vast the world is (especially in my case, the world outside your small town) and invite a sense of exploration. I may have gotten a little lost in the Met, but I found a part of myself too. If you are reading this, Ms. Markle, thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity.