Beating the Heat at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

On the roof at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

On Tuesday, New York City temperatures hit an all-time record of 103 degrees. Yowzers.

Lucky for us that Charlie started a class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that morning, because our window air conditioner units in our prewar apartment don’t have a hot-enough-to-fry-a-friggin’-egg-on-the-New-York-City-sidewalk setting. Charlie and I spent most of our day in the cool recesses of the over two million square foot Granddaddy of All Art Museums, which is the kind of place you could visit every day every week for the rest of your life and not get bored.

If you can believe it, we actually got so thoroughly and blissfully chilled by the high-power A/C inside that we decided to brave the museum’s roof to thaw out and see Big Bambu—a site-specific installation of 5,000 bamboo poles lashed together with 50 miles of nylon climbing rope fashioned by American artists and twin brothers, Doug & Mike Starn.

Welcome to the jungle

We lasted all of ten minutes in the rooftop sauna before retreating to the museum to see what Charlie dreamily dubbed “probably the beautifulest guns I’ve seen in my whole life” in the Arms & Armor Court. Charlie, much to his dismay, is not allowed to have any toy guns at home, but he has my blessing in satisfying his weaponry fetish here amongst all of the pistols inlaid with engraved staghorn and silver and the elaborately carved hunting swords.

The Emma and Georgina Arms and Armor Court

Sir Charles in his knightly garb, although records are unclear as to whether knights actually sported water shoes

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue (@ 82^nd Street), New York, New York 10028; (212) 535-7710, www.metmuseum.org; Hours: Closed Mondays; Tue/Thu/Sun: 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM; Friday and Saturday: 9:30 AM to 9:00 AM; Admission: the suggested donation for adults is $20; Children under 12 are free (**Best value is a $70 Met Net Membership).