Just imagine. This image depicts the busiest hub in the world. Seriously. This is Penn Station, NYC at Madison Square Garden. We were there picking up our house guest. Lana, my editor’s daughter from South Africa, came to get the best tour ever of New York City, after four weeks with her daughter and new baby in Virginia. Tom manned the MDX, and I paced the sidewalk. We had never met and she had never been to the States. We had skyped briefly once or twice, so we knew what each of us looked like. She didn’t have to wear a red rose and neither did I, but just imagine finding each other in this people maze. We did it. She recognized me first, and a moment hence, I recognized her. She arrived mid-afternoon, Thursday, the 4th. The plan was not to waste a moment. The timing was perfect to visit the Cloisters on the way home. The first of many sights. We had every minute of each day planned until she had to leave on Monday, the 8th. So, here goes. I will share what we experienced on this day. I hadn’t been to the Cloisters since the days of historic investigations while in interior design school, long, long ago.
The tower at the Cloisters
The Cloisters is a museum located on a hill overlooking the Hudson River, in Fort Tryon Park in the Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, used to exhibit the museum’s extensive collection of art, architecture and artifacts from Medieval Europe.
Lana in the cloistered gardens
The area around the buildings was landscaped with gardens planted according to horticultural information obtained from medieval manuscripts and artifacts, and the structure includes multiple medieval-style cloistered herb gardens.
The cloistered columns
The Cloisters was designated a New York City landmark in 1974, and Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters were listed together as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
History
One of the many tapestries
The 66.5-acre Fort Tryon Park was created by the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. beginning in 1917, when he purchased the Billings Estate and other properties in the Fort Washington area and hired Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., son of one of the designers of Central Park, and the Olmsted Brothers firm to create a park, which he then donated to New York City in 1935. As part of the overall project, Rockefeller also bought the extensive medieval art collection of George Grey Barnard, an American sculptor and collector, who had already established a medieval-art museum near his home in Fort Washington, and gave it to the Metropolitan along with a number of pieces from Rockefeller’s own collection, including the Unicorn Tapestries. These became the core of the collection now housed at the Cloisters.
Vaulted ceiliings
The museum was designed by Charles Collens who incorporated parts from five cloistered abbeys of Catalan, Occitan and French origins. Buildings from Sant Miquel de Cuixà, Sant Guilhèm dau Desèrt, Bonnefont-en-Comminges, Trie-en-Bigòrra, and Froville were disassembled stone-by-stone and shipped to New York City, where they were reconstructed and integrated by Collens into a cohesive whole by simplifying and merging the various medieval styles in his new buildings.
Collection
Medieval depiction of Christ on the cross.
The Cloisters collection contains approximately five thousand European medieval works of art, with a particular emphasis on pieces dating from the 12th through the 15th centuries. The Cloisters also holds many medieval manuscripts and illuminated books.
Library and Archives
The Cloisters Library is one of the Metropolitan Museum’s thirteen libraries. It contains 15,000 volumes of books. The Library and Archives contains Museum Administration papers, the personal papers of George Grey Barnard, early glass lantern slides of museum materials, curatorial papers, museum dealer records, scholars records, recordings of musical performances at the museum, and maps.
Italian Savonarola chair 15th-16th century. Back splat is embossed leather
Although the Cloisters was established specifically to house Medieval Art, we noticed that over the years the collection grew, encompassing the art of later centuries up to and including the seventeenth century.
Friendly birds looking for handouts. We were seated right beside them.
We enjoyed a rest and cool bottled water. Lana was shocked that the two waters, one carbonated, cost $8.00. So did we, in fact.
Come back for more of what we did during the days of Lana’s visit. It was amazing.
Did you find anything here inspiring you to visit the Cloisters? Be sure to take the tour. Fascinating.
Another wonderful place for me to pass along to my step son and his lovely wife…new residents of Brooklyn. I’ll have no end of fabulous things to see when I go visit them:-)
Thank you Paula. Brooklyn? Oh how fantastic. That’s where I grew up. Is he in Williamsburg, Red Hook, where in Brooklyn is he? I grew up in Boro Park, and my ex grew up in Bensonhurst, I had family in the Midwood section. My doctor was in Park Slope. There are lots of different sections in Brooklyn. Some wonderful, some getting worderful, some not so wonderful, but working on getting wonderful. And, Coney Island, that my painting project is about, is also in Brooklyn. Guess I could do a blog about Brooklyn. Maybe I will. But first I want to finish my New York adventure.
What an amazing place. Thank you for sharing.
Hey there Charl. Thank you. We loved having you daughter to share our amazing city with. She was like a kid in a candy shop. In fact, so were we. We had so much fun and were amazed at how much everything cost. Even the membership fees have gone up since last I joined. I really enjoy the membership b/c they email me about exhibitions, what’s new, who, what, where, you know. The Cloisters, a Medieval Museum, has spread its wings into the 17th century. Some even later, like 19th century Victorian. People donate things that look like they fit, but are much later, and anyone knowledgeable can spot a fake.