The Cloisters in New York — a part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — is one the most important museums of medieval art in the world — yet it could only have been created in 1930s America, as Jeremy Musson discovers.
The Cloisters is an outpost of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (‘the Met’) that sits in Fort Tryon Park, on the northern end of Manhattan Island in the US. There is nothing quite like the building, which was begun in 1935 and is still…