I wish my brain was catalogued the way the collection at the Met is. A simple keyword search permits access to all the known information regarding any object within their collection, which amounts to over 2 million objects. As I was planning for a two-day trip to New York to see William Kentridge’s The Head and the Load, I searched for any interesting shows online. One exhibition caught my eye. Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy was up at the Met Breuer. Everyone loves a conspiracy, and I am no different. Plus, I’ve never been to the Breuer and everyone loves brutalism—right?
New York is enormous. And expensive. And too crowded. This was only my third time, but this visit confirmed a feeling I had during my previous two. I did not like New York City. That is not to say that there aren’t amazing things to see, an endless number of experiences to be had. In fact, I’m not ruling out changing my mind. At the moment, though, it was too much for me, an overwhelmingly overwhelming place, especially at night. Especially when you’re in a rush.
The morning after the Kentridge show I strolled out of my hostel heading west before turning right up Madison Avenue. I enjoyed this morning stroll. Maybe New York was alright when you didn’t have to be somewhere in thirty minutes. I eventually made my way to the Breuer and bought a ticket. To my delight, the ticket also allowed me entrance to the Met on Fifth Avenue, a.k.a. The Met. After the redactionful conspiracy show—everyone loves redactions—I went downstairs to the cafe for a caffeine boost while planning my way to the Met. The one on Fifth Avenue. I had been to the Met once before, and it did not disappoint. I remember it being a wannabe archaeologist’s playground. And guess who’s a wannabe archaeologist? This guy. A quick glance at their website told me there were exhibits on Armenia, Delacroix, and some Dutch Masters. I was departing for the Netherlands in a couple of days, so no thanks, I’m gonna wait for the good stuff. More on that later. But this list of exhibitions got me thinking. Why was there never an exhibition on anything from the Arabian Gulf? From Bahrain? I know they probably didn’t loot as many objects from us as they did the Egyptians, but come on. You could loan things right? Why was it always the big boys who got their time in the spotlight? Conspiracy! Conspiracy, I say!
Well at this point I was just curious to know if there were any artifacts from Bahrain in the Met’s vast collection. I tapped on the magnifying glass at the top of the page and typed: “Bahrain”.
One. One result. One artifact. One tiny little thing on display. The significance of the number, its singularity, meant that I had to see it. Everything is connected, remember. What if the museum transformed every day based on the origins of their visitors? After all, I was probably the only person from Bahrain at the museum that day. Everything. Is. Connected.
I pointed my index finger to the sticker on my left shoulder as I entered the hall of Greek and Roman art. The Art of the Ancient Near East was on the second floor, adjacent to the cluster of “Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia”. It’s all the same, right. I scanned the immense display cases for my miniscule piece of home. I saw many that looked similar, from Iraq and Syria, our Mesopotamian cousins. I forgot to look at my map, or I consciously avoided it to allow myself to find it on my own. Room after room I searched, passing some school children drawing golden bracelets and earrings in the shape of goats and lions. I stopped to watch them draw and decided to join them. Then they began watching me. I was rusty and my drawings were really sloppy. They thought they were good though. One kid even took out their phone to take a photo. Kids these days. My drawing is probably on their Instagram amassing more likes than I would had I posted it. I like to think they traced it for their homework and got a B+.
Sorry, back to the artifact. I resumed my search and after a few minutes grew frustrated. I reexamined the location on the website’s mobile catalogue entry and found that I was too far ahead once I confirmed my location on my map. Backtracking, I returned to the room with the goat’s head bracelet. It was here somewhere. My movement through the space slowed so as to not miss it this time. Cylinder seal after cylinder seal, give me my stamp seal alrea—and there it was. Like seeing an old friend, I smiled, unsure if the “hello there” in my head made it from brainwave to soundwave.
I’ve seen so many of these seals. You can find hundreds of them in the museums I visited as a child, much like the school children I came across on their field trip. It wasn’t the most intricately carved, nor composed of the most beautiful stone, but it was here far from home, just like me. These seals are the most emblematic historical representation of Bahrain every Bahraini child knows well. More than well, in my case. Its slightly larger cousin is inked on my left arm. I know this because I have a reference scale tattooed underneath it. It was time to leave. I must have looked at several hundred artifacts in my short stroll through the Met, but I only saw one on this trip. And I was satisfied.