You’ve always wanted to live in New York City — but after your first semester of 40-minute commutes and grind culture, you have since been longing for a place where you can be surrounded by nature, where the demands and stress of the modern world are irrelevant.
Luckily, the Met Cloisters – a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art – offers this rare type of space for New Yorkers. Located in the Bronx, the Met Cloisters is devoted to Medieval Art, thus its architecture and name.
According to the museum’s website, ”a cloister consists of a covered walkway surrounding a large open courtyard that provides access to other monastic buildings.”
While the MET Cloisters offers visitors access to different galleries instead of the traditional monastic buildings, it keeps one of the medieval traits: it is a place for rest and contemplation.
Before you even arrive at the museum, the visit is already astonishing. Since it is situated inside Fort Tryon Park, visitors need to walk a few minutes up the slopes. Along the walk, runners and families pass by in silence. The sounds are only those of birds and insects. You also stumble on overlooking points for the Hudson River and the Palisades, an interstate park of uplands and cliffs in New Jersey.
Syed Alam, a junior studying Psychology at NYU’s pre-health track, thinks Fort Tryon Park is part of the reason the MET Cloisters give the getaway vibes. ”Even though we have Central Park, it doesn’t feel like we’re outside of the city,” he said. “But Fort Tryon does give that feeling.”
When you arrive at the museum, you can immerse yourself intellectually in analyzing the art. Or, you can just enjoy the silence in the space and check out the diversity of flowers growing in the cloisters’ small gardens.
You don’t feel like you are in a big city like New York, so all you can do is contemplate your surroundings. You rest, taking a break from the fast-paced life of the city.
”I’m honestly happy that the park isn’t that well known,” added Alam. ”I wouldn’t want too many people coming in from the city and taking away its rural charm.”
In other words, you don’t need to be interested in medieval art to enjoy the visit. The cloisters might first be a place of contemplation, and a museum second.
As an added bonus, this getaway is pay-as-you wish for New York State residents and New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut students. So, NYU students can pay whatever they want no matter where they come from – just make sure to have your ZIP code in hand.
If you live near campus, it might take you half an hour to get to the museum. If you live even farther away, it might take you about an hour to get there. But you could think of this visit as an 1-hour trip to a different town. In this way, it’s closer and cheaper than Washington D.C., Boston, and other nearby cities.