Meet the Mets, part one

Here's the first of two posts on those other Mets — The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Metropolitan Opera.

At The Met Museum, you'll find a number of new exhibits that reveal the museum to be a great teaching institution as well as a repository of art.

The enlightening "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915" (through Jan. 24), for example, contains George Cochran Lambdin's "The Consecration, 1861" (1865), which captures the Civil War ritual of a wife kissing her soldier-hubby's sword. It was her pledge of fealty not only to him but to the Union cause — no small commitment four weary years into the war. I had never heard of the ceremony — until I saw Lambdin's painting.

This survey of genre paintings also demonstrates the shift in the American attitude from viewing art as a utilitarian craft — as portraitist John Singleton Copley grumbled — to appreciating it for its own sake. (My own view is that we Americans still think of art as something that must be useful and thus devalue it, because we can't quantify it.)

The appreciation of art for its own sake took off in the late-19th century with the rise of the leisure class and such American Impressionists works as William Merritt Chase's "Idle Hours" (circa 1894, pictured above). Not surprisingly, this is where the exhibit takes off, too, becoming lighter and airier in the rarefied company of paintings by Chase, Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent.

While the American Impressionists were busy painting, Augustus Saint-Gaudens was making iconic works like "Standing Lincoln," the "Adams Memorial," "Diana" and the "Shaw Memorial." "Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art" (through Nov. 15) is a moving tribute to the man who imbued stone and metal with such feeling and individualism. The exhibit is located off the newly renovated Charles Engelhard Court, which has been raised and filled with rapturous but cool marbles. Me? I prefer the old sunken courtyard with its warm wooden benches dominated by Saint-Gaudens' commanding, burnished "Diana" (1893-94, pictured left).

Saint-Gaudens may have found inspiration in Diana, goddess of the hunt. But the early-18t-century French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau preferred her half-sister, Venus. His "The Island of Cythera (L'Isle de Cythère)" (circa 1709-10, pictured here) is the ultimate "fete galante" painting, with smartly swathed revelers departing for the misty classicism of the love goddess' abode — a fantasy island that is not without a sense of forbodding.

It's all part of the elegant "Watteau, Music and Theater" (through Nov. 29), which juxtaposes the power of public art — much of it created for the Sun King himself, Louis XIV — with the intimacy of private entertainment. Both are a long way from our time, in which people expect to be entertained by TV and the Web instead of creating entertainment for themselves.

Claudius Innocentius du Paquier was one of Watteau's contemporaries. In 1718, he founded a porcelain factory in Vienna — only the second European factory to make porcelain in the manner of the Chinese, turning out exquisite tulip vases, like the one seen here, little oil and vinegar pitchers and fanciful architectural candelabra. "Imperial Privilege: Vienna Porcelain of Du Paquier, 1718-44" (through March 21) fills the gallery right before you enter The Lehman Wing. It's a confined space, but it always has something interesting from The Met's European decorative arts collection, proving the museum's commitment to exhibits big and small.

For more on these and other shows, call 212-535-7710 or log on to metmuseum.org. Advance tickets are available at 800-965-4827.

Photos courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.