Once again, the festival offers a daylong frolic, turning the park into a village green circa 1200, with period arts, crafts, food and entertainment.
This exquisite sampling of 20th-century design objects from the Met's own collection covers the years 1900-1925 and the three major design currents of the period: Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco.
During this period art treasures were hidden in secret family caves, while the upright ahu images were successively overthrown.
A knotty pine chair designed by Donald Judd sends out some Shakerish vibes but settles for being part plain, comfortless furniture and part homely period art.
Other images are inspired by period art from China and Persia, and excellent maps show the travelers' routes to China and back again.
For the Eliot of the Ara Vos Prec period, art, instead of being 'Beauty plus pity', was rather 'Ugliness plus contempt'.
Highlights of the collection are 10 period rooms, including a Louis XVI-style salon, a Gothic chamber and an Art Deco boudoir, all with period art and antique furniture.
Modern art historians, Chinese and Western, have long treated those collectibles with disdain, concentrating instead on another aspect of Qing period art, a scholar-artist painting tradition that continued from the Ming.
Third, in the sophisticated cultures throughout the historical period, art of all kinds was a major activity, developing high skills that penetrated to some extent even to the more isolated folk.
Blending authentic period art with more modern illustrations, however, runs the risk of diluting the aura of some of the fine pieces on loan -- including paintings by John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale -- which have come from museums, historical societies and private collections.
Through a wealth of period art, video clips of historic places and a sprinkling of blessedly understated re-enactments, we see all the familiar faces, castles and cathedrals, many perhaps only dimly remembered from Western Civ textbooks.
