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A week or two back while reading the Financial Times I stumbled upon a piece about The Metropolitan Museum of Art having added Alberto Giacommetti sculptures to the Temple of Dendur room - Giacometti’s fragile figures mingle with the gods at the Met.

I have a strong appreciation for The Temple of Dendur in The Metropolitan Museum of Art room. I think nearly every trip I’ve made to New York City / Manhattan and stayed, I have made a stop to visit this room. My first trip to The City in 1991 I stopped in to see The Met and gave myself around 45 minutes to an hour (yeh, I know) and I wondered through the galleries on a speed run looking for something that would match my (then) art appreciation. After about 15 minutes I went down and wandered into the Temple of Dendur room and was instantly amazed.

There are a few galleries and museums that bring the outside world and inside world into the same space. The Uffizi in Florence has a spot leaving the upper level of the gallery to exit where you look out a window and the Duomo is perfectly framed by the window. My thought was, of course this is included in the gallery, but yet it isn’t. The Temple of Dendur room to me is much the same, but at a much grander scale.

The temple room not only has the temple assembled in it with a water feature around the temple as an echo to the Nile, but the room with its floor to ceiling angled glass wall not only bring in natural light, but provide an amazing view of Central Park. I’ve been in the summer, but the fall and winter views out are amazing. In fall the changing colors come in and are a background blanket of colors and textures that add a wonderful glow to the pace. In winter, when the trees are barren the site is more stunning as the room pulls in the stark nature sketched remnants of trees as a backdrop and part of the exhibit with a bit more of a view of the architecture of The City and its artful glory.

From my first trip to each that followed, I’ve entered the room and been absorbed and it takes a while to get out. The room brings focus and often calm. But, it takes me in different directions with bring drawn in by the inside out gallery view, where the park and The City are fittingly part of the exhibit (as they should be). But other times it is the interplay of now and then across history and time, were I to blink (maybe really hard) would I open my eyes to an other time?

Now with More Elongated Forms

I have long been a fan of Giacometti’s works as the elongated forms seem fragile yet elegant, as well as whimsical as a giraffe. I’ve never sorted the how nor why they pull me in. They feel a little like alien form, but comfortably familiar like your long shadow from a low sun has taken more than a flat form and you can see it from many sides as you walk around it.

But the addition of Giacometti’s sculptures to the temple room seem like a magical fit - Giacometti in the Temple of Dendur - The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The pairing of the elongated forms and the tall elongated passage entrances to the temple and the gates seems like it would add to the magic of the room and space as a natural fit.

I’m really hoping to get to New York to catch the exhibit before it is gone. The bringing the now, to the nearly now, to the ancient versions of now into one magical space.