In addition to its Stradivarius collection, its Caravaggios, and the Sphinx of Hatshepsut, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has the best sky in town. Its rooftop café, which becomes the Martini Bar on Friday and Saturday evenings, overlooks Central Park; the view is of leafy treetops, a mostly prewar skyline, and an unobstructed celestial display worthy of Bierstadt. “Giant cumulonimbus clouds,” a woman drinking a dirty Martini said on a recent evening, gazing up at what looked like a benevolent H-bomb. The sky, between rainstorms, was a dusky gray, its clouds backlit by sun. A merry, international group—a young boy and his dad, both with blond dreadlocks and crisp white shirts; Italian-speaking women in scarves; a tiny French bulldog in a service vest—hung out on the man-made lawn that’s part of this summer’s installation, by Dan Graham and Günther Vogt. The piece, which also features ivy and curved two-way mirrored glass walls, reflects hedges and skyscrapers while evoking suburbs and the countryside. People drank Martinis or a chlorophyll-colored, basil-infused gin specialty called the Greens. After a while, the sky darkened. A rumble of thunder, a satisfying blast of lightning. “Whoo!” everyone yelled. “It’s like ‘Ghostbusters,’ ” the woman said, approvingly. Then it was back into the museum, a tipsy spin through Arms and Armor, and out into the warm and stormy night. ♦
