I love New York City. I lived in Manhattan and later in New Jersey. These days I only go there to visit the art museums. My oldest son and I visited this spring to see the Raphael exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. It was one of the best exhibits I’ve ever seen, second only to the Titian show at the National Gallery.

My fondest museum experiences occurred during my first visit to Paris. I made a pilgrimage to the Balzac museum on the Rue Raynouar, and another pilgrimage to the Louvre expressly to see the Davids.

If you claim to be a literature lover but are unfamiliar with Balzac’s La Comédie humaine, you are a poseur. When my son, the same one who accompanied me to the Met this spring, rebelled from going to college, I assigned him La Comédie humaine instead, and he dutifully read the books that summer. I consider La Comédie humaine the equivalent of a college education. But I digress.

I learned my defensive driving skills as a cabbie in New York, but I was dismayed to discover how much worse the traffic is. The dedicated bike and bus lanes turn Midtown into a gridlocked morass. Seeing the edge-to-edge traffic jam, I was glad we took the train and left the car at the Princeton Junction station.

On this perfect spring day, the area in front of the museum was filled with visitors enjoying the beautiful weather, as you can see in my photograph.

The Cleveland Museum, my hometown museum, so to speak, is free, but I buy a membership level that provides reciprocity with other museums. My membership card serves me well on my travels across the country, but unfortunately the Met does not honor it. Surprisingly, the Met does honor membership to the Toledo, Ohio museum. Whenever I visit the Met, I am reminded of my nineteen-year-old self who could not afford the admission fee.

The Raphael exhibit was really tremendous, filled with many Raphael paintings and drawings. Many “blockbuster” exhibits contain few works by the featured artist and instead pad out with works by the artist’s contemporaries. That was not the case here, as most of the works were by Raphael. Among the paintings by Raphael’s contemporaries, I was glad to see paintings by Raphael’s master, Perugino. I like Perugino; his color sense is satisfying.

I had to cut my tour of the exhibit somewhat short because my mild claustrophobia was triggered by the crush of bodies. I dislike being surrounded by the “art-loving,” virtue-disfigured type, the type that gives the art world its well-deserved bad reputation.

I am very much glad I visited the exhibit.

After leaving the museum, we walked through Central Park down to 60th Street. The park was filled with people and families enjoying the brilliant spring weather, as you can see from my photo.

All photographs copyright Thomas Hudson.