Day 9: Concert, and Day 10: The Met

This is Sahar, the fearless leader of this institute, introducing the performers at last night's concert of Persian and Turkish music. The event was held at Poet's House, the largest poetry library in the world (or at least Sahar said with some conviction).

Here are some of the other teachers at the concert, on the rocks. The performers read Sufi poetry by Rumi and Hafez, and then played the musical versions of those poems. I felt nostalgic for Palestine listening to the oud. 

This is the parlor at the Penington Friends House
where guests and residents are free to hang. I've
been writing there each humid morning.

The humidity here is kind of out of control. I feel at every moment as though I've just climbed out of a steamy shower. 

Most of the artwork I saw today knows nothing of humidity, existing as it does in the Met's highly climate controlled rooms. Many of the rooms I entered today I have never been to in the visits I've had there; mostly the arts of the medieval period from lands of the Middle East and Central Asia. 

It was an incredible day. I loved seeing especially the small pieces that were in daily use by the people who practiced the kind of Islam, and read the kind of poetry, we are reading. Here are a few things I have comments about, from the Islamic galleries and others: 

Qur'an on a stand

Fantastic throne leg with some terrifying monster coming out of it. Reminded me of the "Medieval Monsters" exhibit I saw last week at the Morgan, which explored how monsters are oft invoked by religious or royal folks to show their power. "Don't mess with me," the message seems to be, "I've got this guy only a phone call away."

The daily use (though surely for the elite) objects were unbelievably beautiful.

This was all different kinds of inlaid stone, wood, and other colored materials.

I asked a docent where I could get away from the crowds, and she sent me to the East Asian galleries. She was right!

This little cabinet in the "Art of Tibet" gallery bespeaks a different attitude toward death in this particular Buddhist society: it is decorated with skulls and skeletons,
and along the iron hinges and reinforcements are "heads at different stages of decomposition." 

Just loved this little guy, begging joyfully?

Small icons of the sort that would live in homes are of interest to me. 

A temporary exhibit on Japanese painting. These screens were huge and magnificent.