Out & About
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
College Night at the Met
After last week’s festivities for donors and corporate sponsors, the frescoes and sculptures in the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art were ready for some real fun. They got it when 3,000 college students from as far away as California and Georgia came to the museum’s college night, dressed in togas, ready to, well, look at art.
Student members of the museum’s college advisory committee conducted tours. Some wandered alone studying objects and jotting notes. In the Temple of Dendur, music blared, grape leaves and bunches of grapes disappeared, and booties shook.
“We don’t serve alcohol. This is one of the most well-behaved crowds,” the museum’s college marketing assistant, Rebecca Kagan, said.
One of the museum’s goals is to attract students to the museum who are in fields other than art history. One student is Paul Kang, a biochemistry major at New York University who is an intern at the museum. “We’re researching ways to use proteins to identify art,” Mr. Kang said.
“Every time I feel depressed, I come to the Met,” a triple major in biochemistry, classics, and religious studies at Hunter College, Afroza Hossain, said.
“I come once a week to meditate in the Chinese garden,” another Hunter student, Sylvia Beltran, said.
Rebecca Stundel, who is headed to Fashion Institute of Technology next year, had more present concerns. “This is a genuine toga. There’s only one safety pin holding it up,” she said.
