Feb. 13, 2026
By Izzy Cruz
Staff Writer
From ancient sculptures to classical paintings, 31 students from the International Culture Club and Italian-IV Honors class explored global culture up close during a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on Jan. 16.
Italian teacher Signor Raguseo said he selected this destination because his course includes a unit on the Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance.
“Some of the artists that my students cover for their quarterly have artwork at that museum, so it’s nice for them to see work done by an artist that they actually studied in this class,” Raguseo said.
He said one of the most beautiful exhibits at the Met is the Divine Egypt collection, which features a temple rescued from a flood in Egypt.
“To see my students’ [faces] when they saw this Egyptian temple inside the museum, with their own eyes — that was a nice thing to observe,” Raguseo said.
He said he hopes the field trip helped the students realize how special the Met is.
“Not far from where we live in Lyndhurst, they could get to experience a whole other world [and] other cultures,” Raguseo said. “Just by traveling into New York, they could travel back in history.”
Senior Evan Vitale, who is in Raguseo’s Italian IV-Honors class and was visiting the Met for the first time, said he was especially impressed by the museum’s collection of musical instruments.
“I like looking at all the instruments because they have [some] from different time periods [and] different areas of the world,” Vitale said.
He said the field trip broadened his knowledge.
“We walked through the South Asian area, so Bhutan, Nepal [and] India — art forms that aren’t shown too much in school,” Vitale said.
Like Vitale, sophomore Pamela Nakamura, who is a first-year member of the International Culture Club as well as a student in Señora Veiga’s Spanish IV-Honors class, was visiting the Met for the first time.
Nakamura said she enjoyed seeing the artwork of painters, including Francisco Goya, El Greco and Pablo Picasso.
“To see my students’ [faces] when they saw this Egyptian temple inside the museum, with their own eyes — that was a nice thing to observe.”
“I learned a lot about the painters in class. [Now,] I got to see their artwork in person and learn more about [their] backstories,” Nakamura said.
She said she also appreciated seeing art that connects to her heritage.
“I’m half Japanese, so it was super cool [to be] able to see the Japanese art. I’m half Brazilian, and I’m more exposed to my Brazilian side, so I got to learn a lot about Japanese culture,” Nakamura said.
She said the museum’s collections are impressive and informative.
“It was so cool to see all the different exhibits, and there were so many different types of art,” Nakamura said. “I [especially] like sculptures and seeing interactive [art].”
