F**king Matt Damon

I'm embarrassed (but also slightly proud because I know this will make anyone, or at least any girl, jealous) to admit that the highlight of our visit to New York was spotting a celebrity. But not any kind of celebrity; as we were crossing Central Park on our way to the Metropolitan Museum, Matt Damon jogged around the big pond on the same path. I missed him as he passed us the first time (I was busy taking the photo above), so we waited for his second round to see him again (naturally, he was fast!).

Matt Damon, oh, Matt Damon. I thought I was above this kind of Hollywood euphoria but no, seeing Matt Damon made my day and during the rest of our trip I just hoped to see more famous people (I understand how sad this is as I write it down). While the huge posters of Matt Damon, advertising his new film Green Zone, hunted us all over the city, the only glimpses of celebrities we got were those of the Oscar ceremony. Matt – I think it is appropriate to call him by his first name by now – was there as well showing his big white smile (we couldn't stop singing the Sarah Silverman & Matt Damon duetto during the rest of the day, the video is below).

You could think that visiting a museum after seeing Matt Damon couldn’t possibly be interesting. For a moment I was hesitant as well (“couldn’t we just go hang around near the Hollywood actors’ places?”) but visiting the Metropolitan Museum proved to be an excellent occasion to remember that there’s more in life than Matt (yeah right, I still prefer having Matt in my living room than a Rembrandt…). Honestly speaking, the MET is probably one of the greatest museums I’ve ever been to. It has an unbelievable collection of European 19^th and 20^th century art – actually, you almost feel annoyed that an American museum should have such a huge collection of the painters that you are happy to see every now and then in the European museums. It is overwhelming and the four hours we spent in the museum were certainly not enough to explore even some of the collection’s masterpieces. I have to say that I enjoy discovering art in smaller quantities; like the Louvre, the MET just exhausts you and you feel frustrated that you cannot contemplate each painting with the concentration it deserves.

Later, we also visited the Frick collection, an interesting private collection of Mr. Frick in a beautiful house next to the Central Park. While the size isn’t as impressive as in the MET, you can carefully go through the collection with the help of an audioguide and without an immediate museum fatigue.

Instead the Guggenheim museum was (again) a disappointment. The architecture of the museum in itself is exciting (above) but there’s hardly anything on the walls. There were no Kandinsky’s or Miro’s works on display (and that is obviously the reason why visitors go there), instead we saw a boring performance of a young couple doing some kind of a sexual interaction dance on the main lobby. So 15 dollars for seeing Frank Lloyd Wright’s white walls… I missed Matt.

Added 13 March: Reading today's New York Times, I realised what we actually paid for in Guggenheim. When we entered the museum, a young boy of around 8 years old came to talk to us: "Do you want a guide?" he asked us in his slightly shy way. We refused his sweet offer and continued the spiral way upwards thinking how courageous he was to ask us. However, it wasn't just some kind of a school exercise but the most talked-about artwork of the season (according to the NYT). After reading the article this morning I understood that we had missed Tino Seghal's artwork where visitors are supposed to discuss the idea of progress with child, teenager and adult guides in the museum. The show has apparently been extremely popular, gathering more than 100 000 paying visitors: I just wonder how many actually understood that they were part of an artwork. We weren't the only ones to turn down the unexpected offer, as one of the guides put it in the article, many visitors replied: "I think we’re here for the art". Unfortunately, the walls were emptied for this particular interactive artwork. Instead of Kandinsky, you got a philosophic discussion with an 8-year-old (I'm sure all the parents were excited about this exchange...).