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Visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Viewing the Asian Art Collections

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Visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Viewing the Asian Art Collections

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one of the finest Asian art collections that has enlightened and strengthened my understanding in my personal art experience. The Museum itself is an artistic architectural structure that graces the entire block on 82nd Street in Manhattan. Entering inside, I sensed myself going back into an era, into a past where people traded ideas and learned from each other. It is a past, where I still find their works of yesteryears vividly within my grasp, to be remembered and shared as if their reflections of works were cast for the modern devoted learner.

Walking into the Hall of the Buddhas, there was a sense of peace and …show more content…

As I left, I felt a sense of piety, a piety that I must visit again and again. The Hall of Buddhas gave me a sense of peace: a thought of quietness to gather myself, a peace that I have long forgotten or not shared.

The next corridor was an exhibit of ceramics of everyday life in the Neolithic period of the Majlayao culture (Machong phase, CA 2300-2000BC Metropolitan Museum plaque). The pottery of this period expresses similarities in the color and shapes to the art found amongst the indigenous cultures elsewhere in the world. On the side was another room with two guardian lions (6th dynasty 220-589). Lion statues were status symbols for great dwellings that were placed outside of main entranceways to promote good and to stop evil from entering in (Feng Shui, Lam 38). In the room at the Museum they guard lacquer images and woodcarvings of Buddhas. Buddha images executed in dry lacquer were highly valued by the Chinese because of the costly time-consuming process required to produce them (Metropolitan Museum wall-plaque). Possibly the lions do serve a purpose here: to prevent any evil beings from entering a room filled with prized lacquer Buddhas.

The Han dynasty (25-220 CE) exhibit outside in the corridor demonstrated remarkable uniformity. Common pottery such as models of houses and farm structures, were created as funerary objects for burials. The Han period has deeply shaped and cast its roots in contemporary burial rituals. Today,

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