Ms. Luttrell and Ms. Trahan recently hosted a trip to the Met Cloisters Museum with our National Art Honors Society students, as well as those interested in our upcoming Art History course.
AP Art History is a new course available to 10th, 11th, and 12th graders starting next year, taught by Ms. Luttrell herself. Luttrell states, “I’m going to be teaching Art History next year, so I’d like to introduce some of the students who are enrolled into it to that stuff we’ll be learning next year, as well as my National Art Honors Society kids.”
The Cloisters, in Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, has been around since 1938. It was built, in part by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Charles Collens, and most of the works inside were amassed by Rockefeller and sculptor George Grey Barnard.
The museum focuses mostly on medieval art and architecture from the Romanesque and Gothic eras, like detailed sculptures and large archways, as well as paintings. There are tapestries, stained glass windows, illuminated manuscripts, and more. Some pieces can be traced back to the 12th Century!
resource.rockarch.org
To Luttrell, though, these may not be the greatest attraction the museum has to offer. She says, “If it’s springtime, you can’t beat the gardens because, well, it’s the Cloisters. The word ‘cloister’ means, like, an outdoor-indoor space with an outdoor hallway to an enclosed garden, so the cloisters have these beautiful floral spaces.”
Luttrell goes on to explain, “When you have the mix of darker paintings, or even the rooms that they make it feel is without electricity as it was once upon a time, they would have just been lit by candlelight. So a lot of the rooms are darker, and then you go outside; if it’s a nice day, it would be this beautiful garden and you kind of feel like you’re taken back in time.”
The garden itself is made up of assorted flowers and herbs that would have commonly been found in medieval gardens. The people who tend to it are historians who have studied medieval gardening techniques, and have a knowledge of the plants and their uses.
All in all, this is a great trip to take if art history is something you find very interesting. It showcases so many pieces from amazing artists, each with a unique story told by the beauty of the work.
“It’s important to broaden your horizons and not just go to the museum [to see] the pretty paintings and the cool modern art, but the stuff that took years, sometimes to build one archway. Really, it’s a thousand years of history at that museum,” she stated.
