If You Haven't Had a Drink on the Roof of the Met You're Missing Out

The view from the rooftop garden at the MET

Chloe spent a wonderful four weeks attending camp at Harlem School of the Arts, but with a month of Summer left before school starts we are having fun playing tourists in our city.  The highlight of this week was definitely visiting the rooftop installation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We skipped paying the recommended donation of twenty-five dollars, and instead paid the student rate of $12.00.  Of course Chloe called me out at the cash-register loudly asking, "Mommy, you're a student?? How are you a student?? I thought that I was a student!!" I calmly explained that I was a student of life, pasted a smile on my face, and kept right on moving.

Our first stop was the Ancient Egyptian Collection; Chloe was excited but claimed that she knew all that she needed to know about Egypt because she had seen Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" music video.  Who taught this 6 year old child how to use Google??  (As an aside, Chloe insisted on going to the pool this week.  I told her that her father would have to take her, so she called and asked him.  He told her that he didn't know if he could go because he didn't have water shoes to wear in the pool.  This child went to her grandmother's laptop and typed  "where do they sell swim shoos?" into Google and found a store that was selling them.  Needless to say, she got herself to the pool that day).

This poor child has to take so many pictures!

After visiting The Temple of Dendur we took a crowded elevator up to the fifth floor and exited into another, equally fabulous world.  The first thing that I noticed was that the ground of the entire space was covered in squishy artificial grass (that and the line for cocktails was long).   It was as if the rooftop had transformed itself into a garden, but wanted to make it clear that it was not a park.  Note to parents: don't let your kids run around screaming at The Met, even if you are on the roof.

The Rooftop Commission entitled "Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout" is much more beautiful and impressive than it looks online.  The glass structure reflects the images of the skyline and the diverse group of people visiting it.  Visitors can see their image reflecting back at them, as well as the images of those on the other side of the glass.  See below:

As I watched people take selfies I thought about how the exhibit can be seen as a reflection on our camera phone culture.  The selfie is an effort to control your own image: you are taking a picture of yourself while watching yourself take a picture of yourself.  With a selfie, you don't have to worry about amateur photographers who don't know better than holding your iPhone at chest level, or snapping the picture before the image has focused leaving you a blurry mess. Interestingly, photographs taken in parts of the exhibit yield distorted, but interesting images.  Unfortunately, I didn't get far enough in my thought process to uncover the larger significance of this fact.  I was too busy drinking my overpriced (but yummy) lemonade/tequila cocktail and enjoying the view.  The exhibit runs through November 2; visit before this beautiful weather ends!

Obviously, not a selfie but we got lucky with this photographer!