INTIMATE PROJECTS DEPT. THE GOLDFISH BOWL

There are roughly eight hundred galleries that hold the permanent collection of the Met, and as of a recent Tuesday morning the married writers Dan and Becky Okrent had examined every piece in all but two.

- -Ben McGrath

"We tried to be largely chronological, which is to say, we began in ancient Sumer, and then we did Egypt, and then we did Greece and Rome, and then we went through the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance," Dan said, as the couple arrived at Gallery 910, in the back left corner of the first floor, home to Cubism, Futurism, and Synchronism.