A Visit to the Magnificent Metropolitan Museum of Art (with the Xiaomi 13 Ultra)
Before my trip to Puerto Rico earlier this month, I spent a couple of weeks in New York City early last month hanging with ladyfriend Serena and visiting family and friends. On my last day before heading back home, Serena and I decided to pay a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The city was in the middle of a heatwave (not up to South Florida standards but hot enough to not want to spend too much time outdoors) and it had been almost 10 years since I last visited The Met – so off we went.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which opened on March 30, 1880 at its current site on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, is home to tens of thousands of objects that are on view at any given time in the Museum’s approximately 2-million-square-foot(!) building.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million visitors in 2023, it is the most-visited museum in the United States and the fourth-most visited art museum in the world. It currently lists a total of 1.5 million works with the collection divided into 17 curatorial departments.
Now being a total art nerd, I love to visit art museums. What I don’t love is humping a camera around inside a museum (I mean, if you don’t take photographs, you were never really there, right?). However, I’ve only gotten mixed results whenever I’ve found myself inside a museum with only my iPhone 13 Pro. But late last year, I purchased a camera phone for a 29 day December trip to Europe with my daughter (still working on those photographs but coming soon!). That camera? The one-inch sensor Xiaomi 13 Ultra.
Xiaomi is a Chinese designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics and related software, home appliances, automobiles and household hardware, with headquarters in Beijing, China. It is the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world (surprise!), behind Samsung. It also produces a remarkable smartphone – the Xiaomi 13 Ultra.
“Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)” (1950) by Jackson Pollock
Now I’m not gonna bore you with all the specs (you can view them HERE) but I will tell you that the phone features a 50-megapixel, 1-inch Sony IMX989 sensor, which only a few other Chinese camera phone brands also feature (Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo) but the Xiaomi 13 Ultra features a grand total of four cameras honed through a partnership with none other than Leica(!), who worked with Xiaomi to create various filters, styles, and effects.
Now, I didn’t replace my iPhone (although my current service provider T-Mobile covers the Xiaomi) just wanted something I could stick in my pocket to take quality photographs with in a pinch. I used it a lot in Europe and on a recent trip to Ecuador and have been very impressed with its capabilities – not to mention how robust the images are when edited in Photoshop.
“Joan of Arc” (1879) by French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage
Indoor museums can be tricky to photograph, shadows and highlights can pose a problem for even pro cameras, not to mention lighting color temperatures. That said, it was with only my Xiaomi 13 Ultra that I ventured into one of the most magnificent art museums in the world in the greatest city in the world. Was I nervous? No. Is the Xiaomi better, or even on par, with my Sony A7RV or A7IV? Hell, no. But I think the photographs will speak for themselves.
What do you think?
Oh, and if you like your content in video form, scroll down to the end of the photographs to check it out. Enjoy!
“The Daughters of Catulle Mendès, Huguette (1871–1964), Claudine (1876–1937), and Helyonne (1879–1955)” (1888) by French artist Auguste Renoir
Up close, Salvador Dali’s “Madonna” (1958) appears to be an abstract artwork composed of countless particles. When seen from a distance, however, a rendition of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna is situated within a giant ear – a reference to Christ healing the ear of a Roman guard before Crucifixion.
“An Eruption of Vesuvius” (1824) by Norwegian artist Johan Christian Dahl
“Blue Panel II” (1977) by American artist Ellsworth Kelly
“The Birth of Venus” (1875) by French artist Alexandre Cabanel
L-R: “La Coiffure” (1906) by Pablo Picasso and “Nine Jackies” (1964) by Andy Warhol
“Breton Brother and Sister” (1871) by French artist William Bouguereau
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism
We were lucky to catch the tail end of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s groundbreaking exhibition “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism”, which explores the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life in New York City’s Harlem and nationwide in the 1920s–40s.
A monumental portrait of acclaimed opera singer Marian Anderson performing on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, made possible by the intervention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt after Anderson was denied the opportunity to perform at the nearby Daughters of the American Revolution concert hall because she was Black. By artist Laura Wheeler Waring (1944)
“Street Life, Harlem” (1939) by William H. Johnson
“Blues” (1929) by Archibald J. Motley, Jr.
“Moon Over Harlem” (1943) by William H. Johnson
“The Block” (1971) by Romare Bearden is a tribute to Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City that nurtured both the life and work of the artist.
The collection of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum is one of the largest and is the most comprehensive in the West.
I wasn’t the only one taking photographs; Serena brought along her Sony A7III
Now just because I was shooting with my Xiaomi, didn’t mean that Serena couldn’t pull out her iPhone and catch me in a moment of “hair envy” looking at “Don Andrés de Andrade y la Cal” (ca. 1665–72) by Spanish artist Bartolomé Estebán Murillo
“The Three Sisters” (1896) by Belgian artist Léon Frederic and “La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle; Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin, 1851–1930)” (1889) by Vincent van Gogh
“Lady with the Rose (Charlotte Louise Burckhardt)” (1882) by the “leading portrait painter of his generation”, American artist John Singer Sargent
German-born American history painter Emanuel Leutze’s lifesize “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851) commemorates the critical moment in the American Revolution when George Washington led a surprise attack against troops supporting the British forces in Trenton.
American artist John Steuart Curry’s “John Brown” (1939) depicts one of the most compelling and controversial figures in nineteenth-century American history, John Brown, in a dramatic landscape besieged by a tornado, with an ambiguous African American figure by his side. Brown devoted his life to opposing the extension of slavery in the 1850s into the Kansas Territory in battles that presaged the Civil War.
“Kansas”, the debut studio album released by American rock band Kansas in 1974, depicts abolitionist John Brown in a scene from “Tragic Prelude”, a mural by Kansas native Curry. The original mural is painted on a wall at the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka.
American painter Thomas Waterman Wood’s “A Bit of War History: The Contraband; The Recruit; The Veteran” (1865) is an empathetic triptych of African American military service at the close of the Civil War.
L-R: “Study in Black and Green” (1906) by John White Alexander and “The Old Acress” (1926) by German artist Max Beckmann
“Tables for Ladies” (1930) by American artist Edward Hopper
“America Today” (1930-31) by American artist Thomas Hart Benton offers a room-sized panorama of American life throughout the 1920s comprised of ten canvas panels.
Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani’s “Jeanne Hébuterne” (1919) was a young aspiring artist when she met Modigliani in March 1917. They fell in love and moved to the Côte d’Azur, where Jeanne gave birth to their daughter. After returning to Paris in May 1919, Modigliani’s health deteriorated, the result of alcohol and drug abuse, poverty, and childhood afflictions. The artist died on January 24, 1920; Jeanne, pregnant with their second child, died by suicide two days later.
L-R: British artist James Jebusa Shannon’s “Magnolia” (1899) and “Elizabeth Farren (born about 1759, died 1829), Later Countess of Derby Sir Thomas” (1790) by British artist Thomas Lawrence
“Perseus with the Head of Medusa” (1804-6) by Italian sculptor Antonio Canova
“Ugolino and His Sons”, ca. 1860–61 by French sculptor Jean–Baptiste Carpeaux:
Taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy, this marble sculpture derives from the passage in which Dante describes the imprisonment in 1288 and subsequent death by starvation of the Pisan count Ugolino della Gherardesca and his offspring. Carpeaux depicts the moment when Ugolino, condemned to die of starvation, yields to the temptation to devour his children and grandchildren. OY!
Again, Serena captured me with her iPhone in a desperate and shameful attempt to make her jealous…
“The Burghers of Calais” (modeled 1884–95, cast 1985) by French sculptor Auguste Rodin commemorates the heroism of six leading citizens (burghers) of the French city of Calais. At the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, they offered their lives to the English king in exchange for the lifting of his siege of the city. By portraying their despair and haunted courage in the face of death, Rodin challenged contemporary heroic ideals and made an event from the past seem immediate and real.
Back outside, we encountered another piece of “living art” in the form of the “living statue” Johan Figueroa
After several hours of art-loving, I pulled out my iPhone 13 Pro to snap a wrap-up selfie. You already know it, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a must-see attraction in The Big Apple. Nuff said.
