Connections/Everyday

My name is Lucy Redoglia, and I'm the imaging coordinator for the website. My topic is "Everyday."

Even before I worked here, I lived on the Upper West Side and so I was able to walk across the park to visit the Museum on a regular basis.

I wrote a blog called "The Met Everyday," and it was based on the premise that I could come to the Museum every day and learn something new.

One of my favorite spaces in the Museum holds the artifacts that were found in the ancient tomb of Meketre in Egypt. In a secret chamber they found different models of everyday life

from Egyptian culture, created for Meketre for his funeral, so that he could have everything from everyday life in his afterlife. So there's a granary, there's a bakery

there's a garden, there's a stable with cattle, and a slaughterhouse.

I just find it fascinating that these objects from 2000 B.C. survived and they're such accurate descriptions

of what everyday life might have been like in Egypt. If my tomb was like Meketre's, I guess I would have the

cross-town bus and the subway system, and the corner market with the fruits and vegetables, and the flower stand.

I sometimes am reminded of the trials of everyday life as a New Yorker by certain works like The Flatiron by Edward Steichen. It's a dark, twilight, dusky picture with lights reflecting in the wet, cement ground. I look at it and think, "God, when is winter going to end?" And the same

goes for the Dust Storm. It's another depiction of the Flatiron, but this time it's covered by a cloud of dust and children scrambling about with their hats blowing off. The Dust Storm really reminds me of those hot summer days where you just feel like New York can kick you when you're down sometimes.

There's supposed to be something lonely and sad about this painting, but I work at a restaurant, so to me it's more of those dreary times preparing and setting up the restaurant, just waiting for the rush. When that restaurant fills up and the street lights go on outside, it's a more bustling, different scene, and I look at it as anticipation for the evening to come.

Sometimes I can imagine what it would be like to actually live inside the Museum. I could sit in any chair I wanted and

dine in the Wisteria Dining Room with my

Art Nouveau decorated mug for tea. I would sleep in the

Boiserie. It's an eighteenth century French bedroom with a beautiful, blue draped bed that has a dome overhead.

I would meditate in the Shoin Room. It's such a calming space. It's so barren and the Japanese mats on the floor would be so comfortable to do some yoga or sit in lotus pose and just think quietly to myself.

The Frank Lloyd Wright room would be my choice for a place to read a book. The room is enormous in terms of New York standards. It's definitely bigger than my apartment, but the low ceilings, the oak paneling, there's a nice low fireplace in there to snuggle by.

It's a living room, it's a place for living, it's a place to relax and to unwind.

Coming to the Museum, there are ideas that I could take home and use in my

contemporary, New Yorker life every day.