Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (c. 1658), courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Was it serendipity or a coordinated bid to attract art lovers to New York that caused the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art to open exhibitions of sure-fire hits on almost the same day? Whatever the reason for the overlap, local and visiting enthusiasts can indulge their appetites for celebrated works more or less simultaneously by visiting the temporarily concurrent “Vermeer’s Masterpiece: The Milkmaid” at the Met and “Monet’s Water Lilies” at MOMA.[1]

Conceptually, the two exhibits are very similar, despite more than two and half centuries separating the works on view. Both are “mini-blockbusters”: rigorous studies that set a few iconic paintings among a small number of related works largely drawn from the organizing institut ...

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