The Met Project: Bridging Classroom Learning and Artistic Discovery

Stuyvesant is dedicated to offering students a holistic education, ensuring they gain valuable experience in many unique disciplines, including the sometimes overlooked arts. In order to meet this objective, Stuyvesant requires all students to participate in Art Appreciation, a one semester freshmen-focused class where students learn about the history of art, as well as basic art skills. All students in Art Appreciation experience the world of art through the well known Met Project, a final assessment that requires them to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sketch artworks, and write reports on them. 

The project begins with a mandatory visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, commonly referred to as the Met. Depending on the teacher’s requirements, students are assigned to choose and recreate different artworks offered in the museum—paintings and sculptures from specific time periods and genres in the museum’s vast collection. These assigned time periods and genres range from the European Paintings of the 1250-1800s to the Art of the Arab Lands. Based on the artwork chosen, students are then required to write a three paragraph report and decorate a cover for their project. 

The Met is one of the largest museums in the world, boasting an extensive collection of 1.5 million artworks. It is also an immensely popular tourist destination and features famous paintings by renowned artists such as Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh. Stuyvesant’s Art Appreciation teachers know many students do not often engage with such an invaluable resource right in the heart of New York City, so they make visiting the Met and appreciating its contents a core part of the class. “I always tell my students: millions of people each year travel vast distances and pay for expensive airfare and hotels to be in New York to visit the Met, but New York City students get to visit it for free! Aren’t you lucky?” Art Appreciation teacher Jane Karp stated in an email interview. 

Art Appreciation teacher William Wrigley expressed a similar point of view, noting his own childhood experiences. “The Met, along with the Museum of Modern Art, were reasons for me to take a Greyhound from the CT/RI border to New York City a few times a year when I was in high school,” Wrigley mentioned in an email interview. “And, even then, I was envious of the people who could decide on a lark to go to a museum.” New York City is home to vast collections of the arts that students are lucky to have, including the Met. Teachers use the Met Project to help connect students to one example of these completely free relics, encouraging students to appreciate the history and resources the city holds 

By requiring students to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the Met Project offers first-hand and physical immersion in art—a uniquely intimate experience that cannot be digitally replicated. “Cracks in the surface of an oil painting, a blob of paint, stray marks of the pencil that show the artist's hand at work—these are details that are mostly lost in photos,” Karp described. “Yet, when we see them in a museum, it reminds us of the act of creating these works and of the people who devoted their lives to making these beautiful and precious things that still speak to us today.” 

Karp and Wrigley both emphasize how the impact of these small features cannot be captured digitally, no matter how accurate or detailed the digital recordings are. “Sculptures require the viewer to see them from more than one angle and share the same physical space; paintings are so much more than you can see in even a high-resolution digital image,” Wrigley explained.

When students combine academic knowledge from the classroom with this real-world experience, they can develop a deeper understanding of the work. “It’s one thing to hear me say in class that the painter Caravaggio influenced a whole generation of other artists and an entirely different thing to walk through rooms and rooms of Baroque paintings that use the same dramatic lighting that he did,” Karp detailed. “Facts become real in that moment.” The bridge the Met Project builds between Art Appreciation and real artwork deepens the connection students feel to the work they see, potentially encouraging further exploration.

Though an art project may seem intimidating for inexperienced artists, the Met Project aims to widen and develop each student’s individual perspective; teachers take into account varying skill levels. “I want to make sure that success at the project is available to students who work hard and think critically about it, even if they aren’t as confident in their traditional drawing skills,” Wrigley explained. “It still requires effort, focus and understanding, and I’m happy when I see someone who’s timid about art-making push to show all the other ways they can demonstrate their thinking and understanding.” After all, the Met Project is not only beneficial for students, but it helps teachers see their students’ unique perspectives. “It’s interesting to get to know the students a bit more through their selection of artworks and how they present their own artwork, diagrams, and writing,” Wrigley added.

One aspect of the project includes students selecting artworks to their own liking, which can be particularly personal, inspiring teachers to understand their students beyond the classroom setting. “I actually find this section of the report the most fun to read because students choose so many different works from all over the world,” Karp admitted. “I like to read their personal reasons for choosing these works.”

Though the Met Project is a great opportunity for both teachers and students, completing the project can lead to a lot of stress if students procrastinate. Depending on the student, the project can take hours, days, or even weeks to complete, which is why the due date is typically three to four weeks after the project is announced. Many students agree that this is a fair amount of time. “I had about a month to do the project, so there was enough time,” freshmen Layan Nteifeh said in an email interview. However, when asked what advice she would give to future Art Appreciation students, she said, “Don’t leave the project to the last minute because it’s going to take a while to complete and will make it stressful and unenjoyable.”

 For many students, like freshman Gunjori Saha, the project is an overall enjoyable experience. “I learned about the history of the pieces I worked on, and it was interesting,” Saha explained in an email interview. In addition to learning the history behind the art pieces, Saha also developed new art techniques. “If this was given to me as a project again, I’d be excited to do it because it was a fun and easy experience overall,” she said. 

Though many have positive experiences with the Met, other students encounter unavoidable struggles. In contrast with Saha’s experience with the project, freshman Rosemel Vilchez described various obstacles, including her commute. In an email interview, Vilchez said, “The traffic was really heavy, and there was barely any parking. Getting there was really stressful because of that.” Students who live far from the Met can experience hardships when traveling there because of problems such as public transportation delays, traffic, congestion pricing, and more. 

Additionally, the time the Met Project requires can vary widely depending on the student, so its unpredictability can be a hassle. “Honestly, this felt like a huge waste of time because of the hours it took out that I could’ve used for something more productive,” Vilchez said. “It took me around 24 hours of work.” She also stated, “I felt like I didn’t learn anything new since it was just recreating and explaining why we chose certain artworks. I didn't gain any educational knowledge, and my classmates thought that as well. I probably wouldn’t voluntarily do this project again.” To Vilchez, the Met Project was just another assignment and another grade. When questioned on what would've made the experience better, she explained, “What would’ve made this more enjoyable would have been class trips to the museum or doing part of the work in class to share and discuss with others.”

Though students who have already completed the Met Project have differing opinions, freshmen who have yet to take Art Appreciation find the project to be an alluring element of the class, one that they look forward to. Freshman Nudrath Sowkat, who hasn’t taken Art Appreciation yet, revealed that she views the Met Project as enjoyable and advantageous. “I feel that the Met Museum project would be really enjoyable, although it takes time to do. I feel like it’s an effective way to learn about different pieces of art and the stories behind them, including the reasons they were drawn and their different interpretations,” Sowkat revealed in an email interview. 

Ultimately, the Met Project aims to prevent students from taking the arts—which they can access so much of for free—for granted. The focus is also to foster a greater respect towards and admiration of the arts and for the people with a passion for them. “My hope with the Met Project is that my students gain an understanding of just how many decisions go into each artwork on display and that their own artistic and creative decisions matter,” Wrigley concluded. 

Karp echoed a similar message, saying, “The aspect of art that I hope they can better appreciate is the truly astonishing amount of care, thought, devotion, skill, craftsmanship, effort, and love that people of all eras and places have brought to making art.”

The rigor of Stuyvesant’s course load and growing competition can create a tense environment that stunts students’ abilities to explore subjects outside of their academic careers. As a result, the arts can oftentimes be overlooked at Stuyvesant. The Met Project attempts to solve this issue by giving students the opportunity to appreciate art first-hand, regardless of their relationship with it. Though the Met Project may seem annoying at times, Art Appreciation teachers hope that this project will inspire students to value and find a connection with the arts. Despite different experiences from each student, the Met Project is ultimately what each student makes out of it. In order to reap the most benefits from this project, it is imperative to approach the arts with an open mind and willingness to learn.