Marcus Yam/The New York Times Medieval treasures are to be found around every corner at the Cloisters, thanks to the ingenuity and bank accounts of some enterprising Americans.Jan Benzel is an editor at The Times who is being reassigned to Paris. Before she leaves, she is attempting to do all the things in the city that every New Yorker should do at least once.
Go for the unicorn, but be sure to give yourself plenty of time to poke around and see the many marvels of the Cloisters, that medieval chapel on the hill built and stocked at the turn of the 20th century by some enterprising Americans with a passion for art and plenty of money. I won’t go into the history of the Cloisters here; you can read all about it on its Web site, or in a handsome book published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Cloisters is a branch of the Met) and Yale University Press. And I won’t describe the actual cloisters, the walkways that would have been in the center of a monastery, open to the sky, letting nature in, but private, protected from the hubbub of the world. Go. See them for yourself.
I’d been to the Cloisters to see the famous unicorn tapestries once, several years ago, when as a Mother’s Day offering, my family let me choose the plan for the day. We went, loved the unicorns and the cloister gardens, but our girls were small then, so I didn’t linger. And so many readers suggested the Cloisters as an unmissable New York experience that I decided I had to go back.
For me, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a quick walk across Central Park. To get to the Cloisters, I took the A Train. My companions on this adventure were the ones with the quick walks. Marcus Yam, a photographer who has been an intern at The Times this summer and who has been shooting photographs for Send-Off posts, and his wife, Jenny, popped over, and my friend Holland Cotter, an art critic for The Times who dwells in the Cloisters every chance he gets, strolled down from Inwood.
Marcus is from Malaysia, Jenny from a small village in China, Holland from Boston. The treasures in the Cloisters are from all over Europe: France, Spain, Germany, Austria. Large fragments of medieval cloisters were installed on the hilltop, and inspired the design of the current structure. (Charles Collens, who designed Riverside Church, another unmissable New York sight, was the architect.)
We wandered from one intricately sculptured marvel, or beautifully painted Madonna, or fabulously arched chapel, or illuminated manuscript, or reliquary, to the next. “Look at this!” we each kept enthusing as we came upon yet another surprise, tiny or giant. There was plenty of Islamic imagery side by side with Christian symbology. “Wow,” Holland said, upon examining a 10th-century pyx, with birds, lions and gazelles. “This is the real Islamic McCoy.” (Let’s pause here for a commercial: Read Holland’s own eloquent tour of the Cloisters.)
Holland and Marcus put their heads together over some 9th- and 10th-century treasures from Spain, deciphering the stew of religious symbols they bore.
“Spain! Now that was truly a melting pot,” Holland said. There were Muslims, Christians, Jews, all living side by side.”
Likewise, it’s the mix of artifacts that makes the Cloisters special, he said. “In French museums, you get French art. In Spain, Spanish art. Here, you get this thing that’s so American, really, putting all these things together.”
Jenny moved to New York when she was 7; Marcus, who is 22, has just moved here, to be with her. He, like my young French friend Diane, is seeing the city for the first time. He’s seen quite a bit of it already on assignments and through the lens of his camera.
What do you like best about New York so far? I asked him after Holland had peeled off to go home, and Marcus and Jenny and I were strolling in the growing dusk through gardens along the Hudson.
“I like everything,” he said. “ I like it that the whole world is here.”
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