George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "The Met’s Director Looks Ahead" @nytimes by By ROBIN POGREBIN
IN the five years since Thomas P. Campbell became director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the museum world has had to grapple with declining philanthropic dollars, mushrooming entertainment options and a rapidly developing digital world. But in an interview, Mr. Campbell said he was optimistic about the public’s appetite for museums in general and the Met’s prospects in particular. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Q. What is the biggest issue facing museums today?
A. Impacting all of us is technology. We’ve made a huge investment in transitioning from being an analog museum to a digital museum and there are great opportunities in that to see the collections on the whole, to deliver the information to our audiences in new ways. Still, at the end of the day, the core values remain the same: It’s about bringing people face to face with works of art and stimulating their curiosity.
Q. Can museums really hope to compete with computers for people’s attention and leisure time?
Thomas Campbell and Xu Bing’s “Book From the Sky.” Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times
A. We’re all bombarded. Museums are like the quiet car of the world. It’s a place you can come to escape, where there’s authenticity, there’s uniqueness, there’s calm, there’s physicality. I feel it’s so refreshing. But at the same time, the exciting thing is that because of technology we’re reaching out to new audiences. Our attendance has increased from 4.5 million to 6 million over five years. But online last year we had 44 to 45 million visitors to the website.
Q. What in particular are you looking forward to at the Met right now?
A. Over the last five years, we’ve completed a number of major capital projects — the American Wing, the Islamic galleries and the re-presentation of the European paintings collection. Next up is the reopening of the Costume Institute in May. This has been a project that has long been planned but has been undertaken in the last two years. We’ve expanded the exhibition space and we’ve put in place state-of-the-art storage and conservation facilities. The opening exhibition is on the great but little-known American couturier Charles James, an amazing designer of both everyday wear and couture to whom many contemporary designers look back as the inspiring genius for their own work. And then in the fall we’ll have the reopening of the plaza, which of course has been under construction outside the museum.
Q. What are you looking to accomplish with that?
A. The plaza is the entry point for the museum. For many it’s the gateway to a great institution that many visitors feel very comfortable with. But for others, our great Beaux Arts facade is intimidating. And it certainly wasn’t helped by the deplorable state of disrepair that the fountains had fallen into. We started with a plan first to replace the fountains, and then one thing led to another, and we’ve totally reconceived the plaza so it will be a much more friendly, attractive, welcoming area for people visiting the museum or who, after a visit, want to sit outside and enjoy being in one of the great New York spaces. It’s a beautification project that will make the plaza worthy of our great facade, but it’s also an external manifestation of the emphasis on accessibility that we’ve really been making over the last five years. The Met is a museum for everybody.
Q. Given the goals you set when you became director, how are you doing so far?
Q. Talk a little about the Met’s technological advances.
A. We’ve wired the whole museum — there is wireless access everywhere in the museum for free. The catalog collection is now online and we’ve also put a lot of investment into creating cross-museum applications. The scholarly backbone is the Timeline of Art History set up about 12 years ago, which we continue to invest in very heavily. And we have a number of publications like “Connections” and “82nd and Fifth” that are aimed at being entry points for audiences who want — not such in-depth scholarly information — but to get an understanding of why certain works of art are important.
Q. What is the place of contemporary art at the Met and how are you planning to use the Breuer building when the Whitney moves downtown?
A. It’s clear from all of our surveys that our audience is very interested in seeing modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan. That was an explicit part of the job description when I was hired as director — to make sure the museum was engaging in a meaningful way with modern and contemporary art. The challenge we have is that our modern and contemporary galleries are not very well laid out and they’re also quite constrictive. So to operate the Breuer building is a great opportunity. It’s space that’s going to be especially well suited to the display of modern and contemporary art. We can provide an element of context that will differentiate our programs from those of MoMA and the Guggenheim and the Whitney. In a way, the Breuer building — because it’s not constrained — is a new space for us. We can perhaps be more experimental there, we can break away from the departmental restraints that often characterize the programs we run here at the main museum and we can really respond to the way contemporary artists are using multiple media. We can look very closely, not just at the European and American schools, but also think more internationally.
Q. Given these innovations, has there been any pushback from the old guard, saying, “This is too much change for us”?
A. By and large this is evolution, not revolution. The financial crisis of 2008 to 2009 was a sobering moment but the silver lining is, it forced all of us to think very hard about what our core priorities were about scholarship, education and accessibility, and out of that moment came a huge wave of creativity. The greatest asset along with the building and the collections is this extraordinary staff of curators and conservators at the core. I want to sustain the culture in which those scholars have flourished, so I’m not out to force any of those faster than they want to go. Most of my colleagues are as sensitive to the changes that are going on in the world as I am.
Q. How much of a hurdle do you think price is for a museum like the Met?
A. We’ve had a lot of negative press over the year about our admissions policy that really ticks me off. Five years ago, we had people telling us we should go to a compulsory charge. I felt, and the board felt, that making admission a voluntary donation was central to the integrity of an institution that was trying to make itself as accessible as possible. We’ve sustained that process in the face of financial pressure and I’m really proud of that. The average visitor costs us about $45 and we ask for a donation of $25. Of course, the reality is many visitors give much less, but that’s great. I don’t want to start charging for exhibitions. Here we have this amazing cornucopia of exhibitions and whatever you’ve donated — it’s all accessible.
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