The voice you hear on this poster about the Raphael exhibit is my student Colin Frederickson who just recently completed my Voice and Speech for Actors program. A few weeks after classes ended, he booked his first voice over! All of that work on vocal variety, clarity of speech and the vocal techniques we covered were instrumental in getting him this job. This class is not a “voice-over” class but the exercises we cover in the program add to the actors’ tool box so that he or she can do any kind of text from voice overs, to film scripts, to heightened language like Shakespeare.

The Raphael exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is the first comprehensive exhibition of his works in the United States. The information about the exhibit says it is “bringing together 170 of the artist’s greatest masterpieces and rarely seen treasures to illuminate the brilliance of Raphael’s extraordinary creativity.” He was born in Urbino, Italy but much of his life was spent in Florence where he was a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

This display includes drawings, paintings and tapestries from public and private collections across Europe and the United States. Some of these works have never been seen together. His works are admired for the composition and visual achievements of the “Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur”.

The Met (as it is known) is the fourth largest museum in the world. It was established in 1870 by a group of Americans who wanted to create a national institution that would inspire and educate people. The permanent collection includes art from the ancient Near East and ancient Egypt to classical antiquity and contemporary artists. The museum collections extend to musical instruments, costumes, decorative arts and textiles and weapons and armor. In addition to the main building on Fifth Avenue, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park houses a comprehensive collection of art, architecture and artifacts from medieval Europe.