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Curator of European paintings Andrea Bayer traces her process of mourning after her parents' recent deaths.
My name is Andrea Bayer. I'm a curator in the department of European paintings. My topic is "Grief."
About two years ago, my lovely parents, Jackie and Nat, started to go into decline and over the course of the last year, both of them died. I think of them as youngsters
but in fact they were both quite aged. As you've lived longer and longer it's less and less
easy to escape from grief because the people that surround us
are going through troubles and trials and tribulations, and we experience that with them.
How many of us have been huddled around hospital beds, sitting side by side with someone in palliative care, and the doctors have said, "This is a matter of time, there is no more that we can do."
All of these things are positions of grief that you can witness any day in a hospital: head
in hands, slumped over, some are introspective, some are out there throwing their arms up. The premonition of death and the grief to come.
Almost all of us have loved someone the way Venus loves Adonis. And when you think of all the young military wives, whose husbands have to leave them to fight. They don't know whether they will be able to see them again and bring them back to their side.
Titian was one of those artists who I think could bring together life, love, lust, and just around the corner, death.
Rembrandt depicts a woman lying on her bed with her head in a pillow. It's obviously someone that he's very attached to. She's very ill, and he sees her lying there at the end of life, thinking about her disappearing. And then
he surrounds her with all of these vignettes of other figures, young, old. It's as if life encircles her, but she is at the moment of death.
Funerals are a moment of closure. Although I had to contribute to the funerals of
both of my parents, I don't remember anyone else who was there. It was a completely
inner experience for me, as if I had been enclosed in one of those great hoods, completely wrapped in my own grief, concentrated on my own sense of the meaning of the moment.
Romare Bearden's view of a funeral is much more about the
community and people getting together and this soul going up to heaven in a burst of color. There's something vibrant
and life affirming about this funeral. In fact, the only thing that strikes me as being sad is
the young boy, a figure with a lot of gravity and tenderness. It brings the flip side into this community in which life continues.
This has been a gloomy period for me, personally, and I hope that I'm at the end of it.
I know that my parents would want me to be at the end of it. Because my parents spent a lot of time in the Museum themselves, right after they died the place that was most wretched
for me was the Great Hall, where I always met them and always saw them. Once I got over that immediate sensation, I
started this other process, in which as I walked through the Museum, things called out to me, as a daughter
or as a mother, as someone who had deeply loved people
and then lost them.
Works of art in order of appearanceLast Updated: June 22, 2015. Not all works of art in the Museum's collection may be on view on a particular day. For the most accurate location information, please check this page on the day of your visit. |
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The Artist's Parents 1932 Raphael Soyer (American, born Russia) Oil on canvas Gift of the artist, 1979 (1979.550) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Modern and Contemporary ArtSecond Floor | |
The Crucifixion 1340s Pietro Lorenzetti (Italian, Sienese) Tempera on wood, gold ground, with original engaged frame Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift and Gwynne Andrews Fund, 2002 (2002.436) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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European PaintingsSecond Floor | |
The Death of Socrates 1787 Jacques-Louis David (French) Oil on canvas Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1931 (31.45) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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European PaintingsSecond Floor | |
Venus and Adonis Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (Italian, Venetian) Oil on canvas The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.16) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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European PaintingsSecond Floor | |
Sheet of Studies with a Woman Lying Ill in Bed, etc. ca. 1641/42 Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch) Etching Harris Brisbane Dick Fund and Bequest of Clifford A. Furst, by exchange (1972.523) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Drawings and PrintsSecond Floor | |
Isfandiyar's Funeral Procession: From the Great Mongol Shahnama (Book of Kings) 1330s Iran, probably Tabriz Ink, colors, and gold on paper Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1933 (33.70) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Islamic ArtSecond Floor | |
Mourners ca. 1453 Paul de Mosselman (Franco-Netherlandish, active in Bourges) Alabaster Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.386, .389) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Medieval Art and The CloistersFirst Floor | |
The Block 1971 Romare Bearden (American) Cut and pasted printed, colored and metallic papers, photostats, pencil, ink marker, gouache, watercolor, and pen and ink on Masonite Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Shore, 1978 (1978.61.1–6) © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Modern and Contemporary ArtSecond Floor | |
Island of the Dead 1880 Arnold Böcklin (Swiss) Oil on wood Signed (lower right, on rock): A B Reisinger Fund, 1926 (26.90) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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European PaintingsSecond Floor | |
Funerary plaque ca. 520–510 b.c.; Archaic, black-figure Greek, Attic Terracotta Rogers Fund, 1954 (54.11.5) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Greek and Roman ArtSecond Floor | |
Grave stele of a little girl ca. 450–440 b.c. Greek Parian marble Fletcher Fund, 1927 (27.45) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Greek and Roman ArtFirst Floor and Mezzanine | |
© 2011 The Metropolitan Museum of Art |