On a Friday evening of the
summer that isn't, as storm clouds gather, where better to go than the Met? (Usually of an evening, especially in summer, it's gloriously empty.) I was there with my friend M ostensibly to catch the Francis Bacon exhibit, which did at least confirm my sense that I needn't have come for
it. But since I was at the Museum, I popped into the Chinese collection (whence these rustic dancers
of the eastern Han dynasty, 25-220 CE), and then spent a delicious hour practically alone with precious medieval books and manuscript drawings (whence this 9th
St. Paul preaching to the Jews and Gentiles of Rome from St. Gallen).