CBS 2 At The Met

CBS 2 At The Met: Modern Art

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Step back into the 20th Century and into the Met's permanent collection of 4,0000 works of Modern Art. Associate Curator Jane Adlin explained how she put the exhibition together to CBS 2's Dana Tyler.

Adlin said, "The theme is actually just to show the masterpieces and to show what occurred from 1900 to the contemporary in terms of international design and decorative art. We wanted to show the different types of design from Art Nouveau and Art Deco to Modernism to Contemporary Art to craft industrial design."

Museum visitors can imagine their favorite bestsellers on a fanciful Italian bookshelf from 1981.

Or they may be tempted to do a time-out on this Eames chair designed by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Eames in 1949.

Then Adlin showed off a super-sleek piece of furniture. "This is a lounge chair by the award-winning architect Zaha Hadid, and it's one of our newest acquisitions. We acquired it in 2007, she's best known for her very beautiful sculptural buildings, and has done extremely few pieces of furniture. Mostly those pieces that were commissioned to go with her buildings so we were very lucky in acquiring one of these chairs which is a limited edition of twelve."

Commanding attention along one wall is Jean Dupas' "The History of Navigation" from 1934. The huge, glass mural from the first class salon of the French ocean liner "Normandie" is over twenty feet high. Adlin said, "It was meant to be an expression of France as the great proponent of Art Deco style, and to show that they were still on the forefront of design. So what this is is reverse painting on glass, fifty-five panels that tell the story of, the purported story of the history of navigation, but if you look at it you'll see that there's some very unreal animals and, unhumanlike figures in them!"

Next, some modern designs that come in small sizes, from the 1980's.

Adlin showed off a couple of favorites. "The brooch on the top is by William Harper, and what he's done is resurrected the medieval technique of cloisonné enamel, and it's a very complicated technique that's been overlooked by contemporary jewelers. He has taken it to its max in terms of the color and the sparkle he gets out of, out of the enamel. And below we have a fabulous necklace by Mary Lee Hu, and what she does is takes craftsmanlike textile techniques of weaving and twisting and braiding, and she uses her hands only, there's nothing mechanical about what she does."

"Masterpieces of Modern Design" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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