THE MET CLOISTERS: THE USA'S ONLY MUSEUM EXCLUSIVELY DEVOTED TO THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES©

 

The Cloisters, a branch of the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art fondly called "The Met", overlooks the picturesque Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park located in Upper Manhattan. The Museum derives its name from the portions of five Medieval cloisters incorporated into a modern museum structure.

The Cloisters' story begins with George Grey Barnard (1863-1938), a rather colourful character. A student of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Barnard himself was a prominent American sculptor.

HISTORY OF THE MET CLOISTERS MUSEUM

While working in rural France, Barnard supplemented his income by locating and selling medieval sculpture and architectural fragments that had made their way into the hands of local landowners over several centuries of political and religious upheaval. Barnard also served as a middleman between major Paris dealers and American clients; however, he kept many these confiscated pieces for himself -- a practice that today might cause issues of stolen art and its repatriation to arise.

Upon moving back to the United States just prior to World War I, Barnard opened to the public a church-like brick structure located in Upper Manhattan on Fort Washington Avenue filled with his Collection—the first installation of Medieval art and architectural artifacts in America, which he named George Grey Barnard's Cloisters. Although Barnard proudly displayed his own personal collection of Medieval art and architectural artifacts, the Collection was not properly curated so that it could be presented in a historically accurate context.

Vintage photo of the Interior of 
Barnard's Cloisters, circa 1925

This lack of historical continuity and perspective was counterproductive to his fervent goal of enabling Americans to see and learn about art from the Middle Ages, and especially young American sculptors whom he hoped would be inspired by what he called "the patient Gothic chisel." Instead, it expressed Barnard's poetic and very personal interpretation of the Middle Ages, but nevertheless, was a ground-breaking and influential installation because it was the first ever display of its type of Medieval art in America.

Enter John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

When Barnard's Cloisters was offered for sale in 1924, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960) provided funds that enabled The Metropolitan Museum of Art to purchase the Museum and its Collections. The expert artistry of Medieval art, as well as its innate spirituality, strongly appealed to the philanthropist Rockefeller, who, like many of his contemporaries, possessed a fascination with the past. Consequently, Rockefeller concurrently presented the Museum with more than 40 pieces from his own collection of Medieval works of art -- a gift which enhanced Barnard's original very eclectic, albeit disorganized, Collection which had previously been on display.

By 1927, the Metropolitan Museum of Art decided a larger building was needed for its branch museum – one that would exhibit its Collection in a more scholarly fashion. "With visionary foresight, Rockefeller offered to finance the conversion of 66.5 acres of land just north of Barnard's [original] museum into a public park, known as Fort Tryon Park, with a new Cloisters as its centerpiece". (SIDE NOTE: Fort Tryon Park was designed by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm between 1931-1933.)

In order to retain the pastoral setting surrounding the new Cloisters Museum and grounds, and to keep the view from the new Museum pristine, Rockefeller also donated additional parkland to the State of New Jersey along the New Jersey Palisades on the opposite bank of the Hudson River.

Construction began in 1935. Photos documenting the site and construction were taken by Irving Underhill between May 6, 1935 and January 5, 1938, such as the one herein above.

The three men who, together with Rockefeller, gave shape to the present museum were Charles Collens (1873-1956), Joseph Breck (1885-1933), and James Rorimer (1905-1966) -- with Collens being the primary architect. Breck, a curator of decorative arts as well as assistant director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was primarily responsible for the Cloisters' interior design until his untimely death in 1933, after which time Rorimer replaced him.

When The Cloisters finally opened to the public in 1938 in the middle of the Great Depression, the finished Museum resembled a French Romanesque abbey, while not replicating any one particular Medieval building or setting, but instead designed to evoke the general architecture of the later Middle Ages. The Cloisters creates an integrated and harmonious context in which visitors can experience the rich tradition of medieval artistic production, including metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles.

THE THREE CLOISTER GARDENS

The Cloisters is also renowned for its three Cloister Gardens – Cuxa, Bonnefont, and Trie. Designed as an integral feature when the Museum opened in 1938, the Gardens enhance the setting in which the Museum's collection of medieval art is displayed and create an understanding of medieval life.

Planted in the reconstructed Romanesque and Gothic cloisters, each of the three Gardens re-creates those that provided sustenance and spiritual refreshment within a traditional Medieval monastery. The Judy Black Garden in the Cuxa Cloister is designed in the typically Medieval plan with a fountain set at the center of crossed paths which divide this Garden into quadrants, each with a grass plot and a pollarded crab apple tree.

The "Medieval pleasure garden", with its borders of plants chosen for beauty and fragrance, is the ancestor of present day ornamental gardens.  In winter, the arcades are glassed in, and the interior walkway becomes a conservatory filled with tender plants such as date palm, orange, rosemary, and bay. 

The raised beds of the Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden hold one of the most specialized plant collections in the world. The foundation of its plant list is a 9th Century edict of the Emperor Charlemagne designating 89 species to be grown on his estates. This list has been supplemented by herbals and monastic records, as well as archaeological evidence. The Cloisters' collection is based on the more than 400 species of plants known and used in the Middle Ages, some of which were grown in gardens, while various herbs were gathered from the wild, and exotic spices such as black pepper and ginger were imported in dried form.  Plants in this Garden are also grouped and labeled according to their Medieval use, whether in cooking, medicine, art, industry, housekeeping, or magic.  Near the south wall of Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden, is an orchard of lady apples and other medieval fruits such as medlar, quince, currants, and elderberries. Orchards were associated with monasteries, manor houses, and parks, and were often enclosed to keep out thieves.   The third of the three Met Cloister Gardens, Trie Cloister Garden, evokes the idealized gardens and landscapes of the Middle Ages. The joy the Medieval world felt upon the return of the Spring season each year was expressed in their verdant, millefleur tapestries, allegorical poems, and paintings. The plantings in this "Medieval fantasy garden" are inspired by that much-loved Medieval setting, the enameled mead or flowering meadow. Much more reflective of the wildness of nature, the Medieval world's exuberant vision of nature is evident in this Garden as well as in the famous Unicorn Tapestries' myriad of flowers and fruits which is part of The Met's Collection. 

In 1974, The Met Cloisters received City Landmark Designation from the City of New York. The most recent renovation of the Museum, completed in 2009, has been of the Late Gothic Hall, which included the conservation of windows from the Dominican monastery in Sens and the return to public view of a monumental tapestry from Burgos Cathedral.

Primary Sources: metmuseum.org/The Cloisters; nylandmarks.org; Cloisters Archives Collection

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