A Knight at the Museum

Featured on vanityfair.com

In October 1912, the Metropolitan Museum of Art established its beloved Arms and Armor Department. Three weeks earlier, the Ottoman Empire had lurched into the First Balkan War. Poignantly, the Met chose to acknowledge the elegance of antiquated weaponry against the prelapsarian backdrop of warhorses and bayonets.

While the ensuing century has seen two World Wars, regional conflicts large and small, and the introduction of “deterrent” weapons of previously unthinkable range and scope, the museum’s collection remains fixed in the comfortably distant past, free from 20th-century combat’s less human associations.

From now until December 2015, the Met is presenting “The Art of Collecting Arms and Armor: Notable Acquisitions, 2003–2014,” showcasing its most important recent gains from around the world.

Significant works include a 17th-century surcoat (jinhaori), from Japan, an intricate 17th-to-18th-century ivory dagger and sheath from Nepal, and an 18th-century French drawing, Design for a Small-Sword Hilt. The diverse range underscores the department’s interdisciplinary purpose.

If the collection has changed, its perennial appeal to children has not. Dr. Bashford Dean, the department’s first curator, recognized the attraction as well as anyone: he bought his first 16th-century dagger (two of them, in fact) when he was 10 years old. Dr. Dean’s childhood enthusiasms, zoology and armor, resulted in careers enviable to all but the hardest-hearted youth. Before his pioneering tenure at the Met, he served as the curator of fishes (fishes!) at the American Museum of Natural History.