The Metropolitan Museum of Art Islamic Galleries Mihrab History
Harold Koda remembers well, when he arrived in New York Urban center in the 1970s, the offset time he stood in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which would somewhen become his workplace. "I was amazed by the array of steps, like a ziggurat leading upwards to a building 4 blocks long," says the former curator in chief of the Costume Institute. "Walking up to the archway was, for someone interested in art, like scaling the Acropolis."
If those steps could talk they'd recount a glistening, layered social history of a urban center—of the grandes dames and Lily Barts, of the picture stars and queen bees, of the villains and heroes who have fabricated it to the summit.
Ane of the more than ambitious social mountaineers returns side by side year. That's right, Upper East Siders: Gossip Girl is back. The delicious teen soap that delighted the blogging generation gets a reboot on HBO Max for the streaming era. Just in time for the museum'south 150th anniversary, some OG gossip girls (and boys) indulge in a brief oral history of their time on the steps of the Met.
Prep School Confidential
When the architect Kevin Roche, who died earlier this year, added the majestic staircase, 154 feet broad and 13½ anxiety tall, in 1975, he could scarcely have imagined that the steps would exist immediately colonized by the pupils of the nearby private schools.
Olivia Palermo , graduate of the Nightingale-Bamford Schoolhouse: They were like Mount Everest to me as a niggling girl—a claiming meant to exist conquered.
Nicky Hilton Rothschild , graduate of Convent of the Sacred Heart school: All the Spence girls, the Hewitt girls, and the St. David's boys would besiege there afterwards schoolhouse on a Fri and talk about our weekend plans and hang out. People loved getting a tan on those steps.
David Netto , interior designer, graduate of the Buckley School: In the '80s kids from private schools used to gather on the steps to smoke in their Unique Bazaar topcoats, and I would have them come up in shifts to my parents' apartment. We'd watch from the windows on the 8th floor to see who was cute and ask them to come up, similar a teenage Studio 54 doorman state of affairs. This is how I met my married woman Elizabeth. She and another Brearley girls came upstairs soaking wet from the fountains, and I gave her a dry out bluish shirt to put on. Perry Ellis, I notwithstanding call back.
Elizabeth Angell , Town & Country'southward digital manager and Brearley Schoolhouse graduate: My high schoolhouse course took its senior moving picture on the steps. We walked over en masse, and lined up, half on ane side of a banister and half on the other, the brass railing lining upward perfectly with the gutter of our yearbook page. It must have been the terminal time we were all together in ane place that wasn't school, before some of us left New York for practiced and the remainder of u.s.a. decided that New York is the only place we could ever live.
On the Steps of the Palace
By 2003 some of the world's biggest movie stars were invading the steps every first Monday in May.
Lauren Santo Domingo , co-founder of Moda Operandi: I'm so old I remember the Met gala before the red carpet. There was only a urban center sidewalk and stone steps for the procession.
Harold Koda: Now, on the night of the Costume Institute gala, the challenge on the Met stairs is no longer to be photographed—it'south to become a meme.
Anna Wintour: I remember all the unforgettable arrivals: Rihanna'due south Guo Pei cape in 2015; Beyoncé practically naked in Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy; Caroline Kennedy, who had just served as United states of america administrator to Japan, in that extraordinary Comme des Garçons cosmos in 2017. I e'er loved Stella McCartney and Liv Tyler coming in "Rock Royalty" T-shirts for 1999's "Rock Mode." Stella told me that she didn't have whatever idea what she was coming to. She hadn't actually washed her hair or makeup, which was perfect.
Selby Drummond , caput of fashion and dazzler at Snapchat and Spence graduate: My husband was my date this yr to the Met gala, and he looked upwardly those stairs and was like, "Look, I don't want to exercise this. Can I get around?" "No, dear, there's no way around. You have to just go upwardly the stairs."
Uptown's Washington Square
Beyond When Harry Met Sally and The Thomas Crown Matter, it was a teen soap in 2007 that permanently etched the steps in the cultural empyrean.
Stephanie Barbarous , co-creator of the Gossip Girl television serial: In the pilot, the first scene is Blair on the steps with her minions telling Serena that she's not invited to the "buss on the lips" party. When nosotros saw that scene come together, we had a adept sense of the bear witness we were making. You had this controlled space that literally had levels to it, a visual ladder that you could encounter people climbing. There was definitely the sense that the higher the step, the more powerful the daughter.
Cecily von Ziegesar , author of the Gossip Girl volume series, and Nightingale-Bamford alum: The steps have become iconic for the fans of the bear witness and the fans of the books. For us the steps were very much a place in the neighborhood where you could just sit downwards. For me it wasn't iconic; information technology was just there. Serena'due south house is based on where my friend lived, across the street from the Met. We would hang out there because it was a place to look for her to come outside. All of Fifth Artery was kind of laid out before you.
Paul Goldberger , architecture critic: Somehow the steps have get a kind of piazza with its own existence, non separate from the Met, and yet, on the other hand, sort of dissever from the Met. People seem to hang out there whether or not they're going into the museum. It's certainly a lot more than just a way in and a way out.
This story appears in the Dec 2019/January 2020 effect of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE Now
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Source: https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a29892425/steps-of-the-met-gossip-girl-social-history/
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