Posted on 09/13/2016 6:07:04 AM PDT by C19fan
The coveted title of best museum in the world on TripAdvisor has gone to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for the second year running. The museum, which opened in 1870, beat Chicago's Art Institute and St Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace into second and third place in the 2016 Travellers' Choice Awards for Museums. The iconic institution on Manhattan's Upper East Side has strived to 'connect people to creativity, knowledge and ideas' through art.
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It is an amazing place, and even more amazing since they display some of their best items so infrequently.
The Metropolitan Museum is the crown jewel of museums in the world. I have seen the National Palace Museum in Taipei and the British Museum in London. I think the Met deserves the title.
The last few years have seen a massive redo of the Met, and it’s amazing. The Koch brothers financed a great deal of it.
I’m glad the Musee d’Orsay made the top 5. It is my absolute favorite.
That’s nice, I’m sure, but does that mean people won’t visit the Louvre or the Prado anymore? Didn’t think so. I mean, there is no real competition between the great museums of the world.
Big museums are the graveyards of art.
I really believe the Met probably is the greatest museum in the world—not that I’ve been to all the major ones, but I’ve been to a lot in the US and a few of the best in Europe and the Met is head and shoulders above all the ones I’ve seen. I’ve been there at least half a dozen times, and I keep finding new gems in their permanent collection that I hadn’t seen before. Last time I was there, I stumbled onto their “open storage” collection on some out of the way mezzanine floor that I hadn’t even realized existed.
Too many people hang out in the areas right by the lobby (Greece, Egypt, and the Byzantine Empire), and miss a lot of the best stuff there. I always make sure to go upstairs and look at the Van Goghs every time I’m there. Of the other art museums in NYC, I really liked the much smaller Frick Collection, also on Fifth Ave. After seeing the Met, I was actually a little disappointed with MoMA, a little further downtown, even though it was so popular more tourists were jammed in there than at the Statue of Liberty.
Years ago I saw an old cartoon by Charles Addams in which a man is in a museum. Down the hall is a Minotaur.
I never understood that cartoon till I was at the Met a few years ago. It IS a Labyrinth! Still worth going to see.
As for the Museum of Natural History, it was raining and on a Monday when the Met was closed, so everyone piled into the Museum of Natural History.
The lines were backed up to the subway! The entrance fee was OK, but then the worker tried to get people to pay extra to see extra things inside. The lines moved extremely slow, the clerk often took 15 minutes with each person wanting in trying to sell them admission to other things.
You go down steps to get in, and it took me almost two hours of standing in line to get in. The armed guard was a jerk as he would not let anyone sit on the steps while they waited, not old people, not even kids. My cousin who has standing problems was allowed to go into a special room and wait while I stood in line.
Once inside it was GREAT, but we had to rush as we spent so long standing in line to get in. It was the ONLY bad day in NYC.
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