Summary

At the outset of The Cloisters, in the prologue, Ann Stilwell longs to return to The Cloisters, the way the museum was the summer she moved to New York City. She tells herself that she should have known before she started working there, how the summer’s secrets would unfold, “if only [she]—like the Greeks and Romans—had known what to look for” (2). In Chapter 1, Ann finished her last shift at the restaurant in her hometown, Walla Walla, Washington. After she graduated from Whitman College, Ann applied to a myriad of graduate programs and internships but the only acceptance she received was for the Summer Associates Program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She suspected that her mentor, Richard Lingraf, who was once a prominent figure in the world of East Coast academia, had something to do with the acceptance. Ann...