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The Metropolitan Museum Of Art Essay

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Positioned alongside Central Park within the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museums, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within a museum. By analyzing two separate works on exhibit at the Met, I will pose the argument that museums offer a unique expression of a world view that is dictated through every element of its construction.
An object placed on display behind a glass case inside a museum would hold a vastly different meaning if it were for sale by a street vendor, such as the individuals who set up their tables only a few feet away from the Met. Brent Plate in Religion, Art, and Visual Culture argues that “objects obtain different meanings in different locations and historical settings.” The different meanings that objects are able to obtain is attributed to the relationships that are established between the object itself and the environment that it is located in. These relationships often involve the kind of audience that a museum attracts, where the work is exhibited, and how the exhibit is laid out. Museums subsequently have the ability

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