Youth, culture.

Though the Islamic Wing of the Met (or more specifically, the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia—say that three times fast) opened in October, there's no reason for young people not to fête the new galleries five months hence.

The event, dubbed “An Oasis at the Met,” was staged by the institution's College Group, to draw in students with a promise of respite from studies and the travails of college life. Unlike the college oases of binge drinking and raucous parties, students could enjoy the magnificent treasures of Arabia. (And isn't it better to OD on art rather than be hungover from cheap vodka?)

Onlookers spied from the balcony, which became an increasingly crammed fire hazard, while hundreds of undergrads milled about the Great Hall (though many were waiting in the serpentine coat check lines). The party attracted more than 3,000 guests.

Even for neophytes, uninterested in art, the visual delights of delicate folios, gigantic tapestries, mosaic alcoves and a room imported all the way from Damascus were arresting.

Despite the grandeur of the Great Hall and the glorious art, the guests of the event were far more fascinating and painfully entertaining. And from these most distinguished guests came a variety of reactions to the wing.

“What the hell, yo,” said a young woman to her companion as they looked at an Indian folio page. Needless to say, the discussion between party guests wasn't always high criticism.

If there is one thing that college girls like to do, it is to take pictures of themselves and others, preferably both in one shot. And by our informal count, more photos were taken at the 3 hour event than an entire day of Fashion Week.

Some party-goers were more artistically astute than others, of course. One young woman pointed to the floor of the Moroccan room to her friends, explaining the design, something she learned in an art history class.

Even if many of the guests were behaving as if the event was a cross between a party and a field-trip, they were still talking about the art. And isn't that what really matters?

After the ensemble Zikrayat played traditional Middle Eastern tunes, DJ Louie XIV hammed it up for the audience with generic club music. It was when The Observer heard Ke$ha echoing through the hall, that we knew it was our cue to leave. Young people these days.

Mr. Koch is donating $60 million to the museum to renovate the space out front, the Met announced today.

While Met officials expressed the plaza’s need for some serious nip and tuck, up until recently there was neither enough funding nor enough resources to execute any changes. If the project passes public approval, renovations to the area extending along Fifth Avenue from 80th to 84th Street would begin by the fall 2012 and slated for completion by the summer of 2014.

OLIN, a Philadelphia architecture and design firm, will be leading the project.  It plans to make improvements to the space by providing additional seating, planting more greenery, installing LED lighting at night, and upgrading the fountains (think:  Vegas-style more than school playground).

While it’s obvious that the Met knows that, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” now it’s finally able to acknowledge that there comes a point where one’s outer image becomes important, as well.  Hopefully, its project proposal will be Met with a seal of approval.

Perhaps we should start calling Mr. Koch "Mr. Met?" After all, he's been a big booster for the opera on the other side of the park.

realestate@observer.com

The new site.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art launched a new website late last night that allows for bigger photos and an overall cleaner look altogether.

The features of the site seem to be largely as they were before, with minor tweaks like the addition of itineraries for new visitors. “Since becoming Director, I have stressed two priorities: scholarship and accessibility,” wrote Director and CEO Thomas Campbell in a note welcoming users to the new site. “Our new website, which launched today, certainly embodies both of these aims.”

The greatest improvement, of course, is the unified color scheme. Here’s what the website looked like just this past July.

Paul Cezanne, Portrait of Madame Cezanne, 1891, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the rightful owner of Paul Cezanne’s 1891 Portrait of Madame Cezanne and does not have to turn the painting over to the heir of its original owner, the District Court in Manhattan found late last week.

Thursday’s decision granted the Met’s motion to dismiss the suit brought by Pierre Konowaloff, who had alleged that the Cezanne was taken “by force and without compensation” by the Bolsheviks in 1918 from his great-grandfather, Ivan Morozov, and that the Soviet Union had then illegally and secretly sold it in 1933 to art collector Stephen C. Clark.  Clark, a trustee of the Met, bequeathed the painting to the museum in 1960.

The Court found that Mr. Konowaloff’s claim would require it to question the validity of the Soviet Union’s taking Cezanne’s portrait of his wife as part of its nationalization of private property after the Russian Revolution, which the Court, under longstanding precedent of the “act of state” doctrine, refused to do.  Under that doctrine, the acts of a sovereign government are legitimate, official acts.

“The act of state that I decline to question here is the act of expropriating the painting from Morozov,” the Court wrote, and therefore “I accept that the Soviet government took ownership of the painting in 1918 through an official act of state . . .  Konowaloff lacks any ownership stake in the painting.”

On the same grounds, Mr. Konowaloff also claims to be the rightful owner of Vincent Van Gogh’s well-known 1888 painting Night Café, which Clark gave to Yale.  The university has moved for summary judgment, also invoking the act of state doctrine, in the District Court in Connecticut.

Before the Met decision came down, this reporter spoke to Phil Brown, one of the attorneys representing Mr. Konowaloff in both cases.  Mr. Brown, who is with the firm Adler, Pollock & Sheehan, acknowledged that, given the legal precedent, his client might be perceived as “tilting at windmills.”

“No judge is going to award Konowaloff judgment lightly,” he said.

"We have been in discussion with a number of major venues in London for some time now however nothing has been finalised," a spokesperson for the label wrote in an e-mail.

The show at the Met brought 661,509 attendees between when it opened in May and when it closed earlier this month. The museum extended its hours as the closure loomed, and packed the museum with midnight showings in the last two days of the exhibit. In the end, 17,000 visitors purchased $50 tickets for after-hour viewings.

Quite well! According to the museum's press office, the 2003 exhibit garnered an impressive 84,605 visitors from September through January. We'd always known that it was popular, anecdotally, but this number fairly confirms that. To put this in perspective, the Met's Leonardo da Vinci exhibit from that year was one of the top attended shows at 401,004, according to The Art Newspaper.

One can only imagine the kind of numbers the Met will garner from paring her with a popular contemporary designer like Ms. Prada. The McQueen exhibit was one-of-a-kind but don't count this dynamic duo out of the running when it comes to attendance figures. The Costume Institute exhibit opens in Spring 2012.

Update 8/30, An earlier version of this post said that the next exhibit had been announced. Citing sources, WWD reported that the Costume Institute's next exhibit would feature Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli, but the next exhibit has not been officially announced.

Miuccia Prada

"Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" stunned the city, broke records and went out with unending lines that spun around the block until late in the night. Now, a few weeks after its close, the Costume Institute has announced the focus of next year's exhibit: Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli.

And that's all we know right now! WWD reached out to the Met and representatives declined to comment. But it's a good bet that these two iconic female designers, of two entirely different eras, will bring out crowds come Spring 2012.

'Savage Beauty' late at night.

"BUT HOW DID HE DIE?" said a young man to the girl standing next to him in an outsize dress.

The couple was looking at a blossoming, red-feathered, evening-wear creation, the first taste of the Met’s hit exhibition “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.” The deceased in question, of course, was the designer.

“You don’t know?” she said.

He shook his head.

The two had come to the exhibit at a time that would seem appropriate but, given the mammoth crowd now populating the hall of Rodin, saving their visit for the last night turned out to be folly. “Savage Beauty” was closing at midnight, the latest the museum had ever stayed open. At 11 o’ clock, many line-standers had been waiting to bid McQueen adieu since early that afternoon.

“Really,” came a whisper. “How did Alexander McQueen die?”

She leaned in and told him.

“That’s pretty serious,” the young man said.

The Observer ducked into the compound’s side entrance, on 81st Street, at 10:00 p.m. Sunday night, and upstairs we witnessed the feared line that snaked through the halls, engulfing statues on display into the theme park-caliber queue.

We had bypassed it all, though, and so we witnessed the collection before many, and we found it an aggressively brilliant fever dream played out in silk, all the frocks cut with daring.

It was one of the most successful exhibits in the museum’s history. Hence, the line on that final night was very, very long. We had heard horror stories: six-hour waits, irate groups turned away feet away from the entrance, not to mention the claustrophobic hell once you do get inside. At one point during the week, a young child was rumored to have wet himself while on line. The parents did not want to risk losing their place.

“What did we do all that time?” said Simon Barros, a 21-year-old student, of the afternoon-to-night stretch. “I tried to download the app, but, I dunno, talking to people in line, talking to my friends, I’m thinking it’s definitely going to be worth it.”

Her voice trailed off.

“I’ll see when I come out.”

“Well, I thought this would actually be an event,” said Cole. He’s 26 and works for the United Nations. It’s not so often that a exhibition of this scale and importance has its last hurrah at the going-out hour, and it seemed many had joined The Observer in having a few cocktails beforehand.

“And it is an event!” he went on. “Some people were getting angry a lot, cutting in line … ”

Speaking of cutting the line, it was time for us to take in McQueen’s final show.

“I haven’t seen it yet either!” Anthony Haden-Guest, the writer whom we walked in with, exclaimed as we approached.

Those were the last words we exchanged with him, or anyone, for the rest of the time inside. The clothes were draped on mannequins with iron skulls for heads, the bare eye sockets and deep-sunken cheeks often deprived of breath by a suffocating cloth. And blindly they peered down at the masses.

“One of the mailroom guys told me yesterday how much he enjoyed the show,” Anna Wintour told The New York Times a few days earlier.

Some share her surprise, but they shouldn’t. Yes, even those poor souls who work outside the Vogue editorial department can enjoy the video of the fragile, 17-year-old Shalom Harlow—in a pure white dress girded outward and affixed above her chest with a belt—cowering swanlike on a giant revolving lazy Susan. Then she wriggled in horror as the danger crept closer. As she spun, two robotic metal appendages darted at her, sniffing her neck, before bursting at the tip and sullying the muslin fabric with yellow and black splatter. The paint-stained dress hung below the video display.

McQueen’s vision evolved with each room. In the next, Tartan garb evoked the Scottish heroes whom McQueen worshipped. And in a glass box a fuzzy ball of pixie dust melted into a hologram of Kate Moss, a tiny ethereal vision twirling in a dress made of fog and light, fabric of milky cloud-sinew, to the theme from Schindler’s List.

“I knew he killed himself, but I didn’t know too much about him,” said Mary Adams, a nurse practitioner who was leaving the show. The elderly woman had driven from Boston that morning. She had been in line since 2:30 and the clock was edging toward midnight.

“Did he have a troubled life?” she asked The Observer.

We leaned in and told her.

As we left, a new batch of people huddled by the front of the line got nodded in. The line still flowed from one gallery space to another, but they would be among the last of the groups. With entry gained, the people raised their arms, let out a vigorous whoop of anticipation and walked under the ghostly photograph of Alexander McQueen—the fashion show, for them, about to begin.

nfreeman@observer.com @NFreeman1234

Ms. Wintour, at the Costume Institute Gala.

Just over twelve hours ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art shut the door on "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty," ending two days of staying open until midnight, waits up to six hours, and a spectacle that generated deafening word of mouth for the institution. The blockbuster show attracted 661,509 guests, putting it at number eight in the top ten exhibitions in the museum's history.

Naturally Anna Wintour was one of those many thousands. In fact, she was on hand last night. The New York Times' Eric Wilson oh-so-casually inserts a quote from the Vogue editrix -- "I happened to see her last week..." -- into an otherwise unremarkable "Savage Beauty numbers round-up.

“We knew it was going to do well, but we didn’t know how well,” Ms. Wintour said to Mr. Wilson. “One of the mailroom guys told me yesterday how much he enjoyed the show. It just shows you how fashion now reaches so many different people.”

Yes, Anna, it is just shocking that someone can both place mail into mailboxes and enjoy high fashion.

In any case, Ms. Wintour's newly discovered kindness toward the bottom rungs of Vogue staffers should comfort interns who encounter her in a Condé Nast elevator. Maybe they'll actually say something next time.

McQueen, red and white.

Last night, "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" officially surpassed the 2008 comic-themed "Superheros: Fashion and Fantasy" show in number of visitors, making it the most popular runway-related show in the history of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The late designer's buzzed-about collection has attracted 582,000 people since its opening in May, and will continue to rack up the numbers for another week. "Savage Beauty" will close at midnight on August 7 after an unprecedented extension.

The new record is hardly a surprise. The New York Times' Eric Wilson wrote a breathless appraisal of the show for yesterday's paper that treated the exhibit's attendance record -- as well as its impending inclusion in the museum's all-time top-twenty exhibitions -- as an inevitability.

Where did the phenomenal popularity come from? The Times points to Kate Middleton's wedding dress (designed by Sarah Burton for the line), the designer's roguish drug-riddled reputation that dogged him during his lifetime, and the grisly details surrounding his suicide.

Those points aside, the success probably stems from the show itself.

"In a museum," Mr. Wilson writes, "clothes that suggest romanticism, battles between darkness and light, between love and sadness, or even life and death, take on new meaning."

Now, go see the thing already!