THE MET CLOISTERS

A VERY FASHIONABLE JOURNEY

By Clint Brownfield

The Met Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of those iconic New York institutions like the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, The Empire State Building and the Intrepid Museum we may visit once in a great while—probably when out of town friends and family come to the city. Well, you must put the Met Cloisters on your short list of places to visit or revisit. It’s the largest museum in the nation devoted to medieval art and artifacts.

In addition to seeing The Met Cloisters in all of its magnificent glory, there is another primary reason to travel uptown now. It’s a joint exhibition shared by The Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park and multiple galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Fifth Avenue. This truly spectacular show is entitled Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. So, if you didn’t receive an invitation to this year’s Met Gala, never fear, the exhibition runs through October 8th.

Virtually all of the public spaces in the Met Cloisters are used to display designs of modern masters surrounded by the permanent collection, including the room that houses the famed collection The Hunt of the Unicorn or The Unicorn Tapestries, which on their own have, for years, attracted visitors from all over the world.

Heavenly Bodies is a thematic exhibition featuring a dialogue between fashion and masterworks of medieval art in The Met collection and examines fashion’s ongoing engagement with the devotional practices and traditions of Catholicism. A magnificent group of papal robes and accessories from the Vatican, on view at The Met Fifth Avenue, serves as the cornerstone of the joint show, highlighting the enduring influence of liturgical vestments on designers. “The Catholic imagination is rooted in and sustained by artistic practice, and fashion’s embrace of sacred images, objects, and customs continues the ever-evolving relationship between art and religion,” says Daniel H. Weiss, President and CEO of The Met. “The Museum’s collection of Byzantine and Western medieval art, in combination with the architecture and galleries that house these collections at The Met, provide the perfect context for these remarkable fashions.”

AN INSIDE LOOK
The exhibition features approximately 40 ecclesiastical masterworks from the Sistine Chapel sacristy, many of which have never been seen outside the Vatican—encompassing more than 15 papacies from the 18th to early 21st century. The last time the Vatican sent a loan of this magnitude to The Met was in 1983, for The Vatican Collections exhibition, which is the Museum’s third most-visited show.

Providing an interpretative context for fashion’s engagement with Catholicism are more than 150 ensembles from the early 20th century to the present, on view in the Byzantine and Medieval galleries, part of the The Met’s Robert Lehman Wing, and at The Met Cloisters alongside medieval art. The presentation situates these designs within the broader context of religious artistic production to analyze their connection to the historiography of material Christianity and their contribution to the construction of the Catholic imagination.

Residents of the tristate area may pay as they wish upon providing proof of residency. Tickets for the day purchased will allow visitors to enter both The Cloisters and The Met Fifth Avenue and also The Met Breuer on Madison Avenue. There is no extra charge to see the clothing show.

For more information on The Metropolitan Museum of Art/The Cloisters, visit metmuseum.org.

FORT TRYON PARK & THE CLOISTERS
Fort Tryon is named after Sir William Tryon (1729-1788), the last British governor of colonial New York. The treasured 66-acre oasis is one of the highest points in New York City and is home to The Met Cloisters and its world-famous works of art from medieval Europe and celebrated gardens. The Museum’s chapel-like spaces, high ramparts, and portcullis, along with commanding views over the Hudson River, all contribute to the extraordinary ambiance. Founded in 1938, The Met Cloisters traces its roots to George Grey Barnard (1863–1938), an American sculptor who studied with Rodin. While living in France, Barnard became an impassioned, indefatigable collector of medieval sculpture, buying and selling works in private hands, especially in the south of France. He ardently believed that young American sculptors should take inspiration from what he called “the patient Gothic chisel.” Thus, on the eve of World War I, Barnard returned to New York and established his own “Cloisters museum” for the collection he had amassed. That museum, located in Washington Heights, was path-breaking and influential, the first display of medieval art of its kind in the United States.

When Barnard’s Cloisters was offered for sale in 1924, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960) financed The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s purchase of the museum and its collections. By 1927, The Met decided a larger building was needed for its new branch museum. With great foresight, Rockefeller offered to fund the conversion of land just north of Barnard’s museum into a public park—today’s Fort Tryon Park—with a new Cloisters as its centerpiece. To ensure the beauty of this setting, Rockefeller donated additional land along the Palisades, the dramatic cliffs on the New Jersey side of the Hudson.