I first visited the Met about 20 years ago and I returned today for the first time since last summer. The Met is still my favorite single art museum in the US. It was great reacquainting myself with works by Vermeer, Rubens, Ingres, David, Courbet, Manet, and Rothko.
There were two works that struck me, independent of all the famous art I had previously learned about in art history class or through general cultural osmosis. The first is Joan of Arc (1879) by Jules Bastien-LePage.
The second is a set of chromaprints from the current exhibit “Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklański Photographs” In particular, I am drawn to one large sky-blue piece (2001) which is right next to a mirrored orange and purple piece (2005). They look like updated versions of Rothko’s color field paintings from mid-century.