0:00:00.714,0:00:04.831
When I was considering a career in the art world,

0:00:04.831,0:00:08.125
I took a course in London,

0:00:08.125,0:00:12.578
and one of my supervisors was this irascible Italian

0:00:12.578,0:00:16.539
called Pietro, who drank too much,

0:00:16.539,0:00:22.028
smoked too much and swore much too much.

0:00:22.028,0:00:25.204
But he was a passionate teacher,

0:00:25.204,0:00:28.246
and I remember one of our earlier classes with him,

0:00:28.246,0:00:30.594
he was projecting images on the wall,

0:00:30.594,0:00:33.487
asking us to think about them,

0:00:33.487,0:00:36.013
and he put up an image of a painting.

0:00:36.013,0:00:39.708
It was a landscape with figures, semi-dressed,

0:00:39.708,0:00:42.496
drinking wine. There was a nude woman

0:00:42.496,0:00:45.872
in the lower foreground, and on the hillside in the back,

0:00:45.872,0:00:49.886
there was a figure of the mythological god Bacchus,

0:00:49.886,0:00:52.235
and he said, "What is this?"

0:00:52.235,0:00:55.512
And I -- no one else did, so I put up my hand, and I said,

0:00:55.512,0:00:58.873
"It's a Bacchanal by Titian."

0:00:58.873,0:01:01.526
He said, "It's a what?"

0:01:01.526,0:01:03.120
I thought maybe I'd pronounced it wrong.

0:01:03.120,0:01:07.195
"It's a Bacchanal by Titian."

0:01:07.195,0:01:09.918
He said, "It's a what?"

0:01:09.918,0:01:13.002
I said, "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." (Laughter)

0:01:13.002,0:01:16.347
He said, "You boneless bookworm!

0:01:16.347,0:01:18.890
It's a fucking orgy!"

0:01:18.890,0:01:21.961
(Laughter)

0:01:21.961,0:01:24.313
As I said, he swore too much.

0:01:24.313,0:01:27.845
There was an important lesson for me in that.

0:01:27.845,0:01:31.673
Pietro was suspicious of formal art training,

0:01:31.673,0:01:35.605
art history training, because he feared

0:01:35.605,0:01:39.367
that it filled people up with jargon, and then they just

0:01:39.367,0:01:44.046
classified things rather than looking at them,

0:01:44.046,0:01:48.805
and he wanted to remind us that all art was once contemporary,

0:01:48.805,0:01:51.809
and he wanted us to use our eyes,

0:01:51.809,0:01:55.319
and he was especially evangelical about this message,

0:01:55.319,0:01:57.822
because he was losing his sight.

0:01:57.822,0:02:02.181
He wanted us to look and ask basic questions of objects.

0:02:02.181,0:02:05.727
What is it? How is it made? Why was it made?

0:02:05.727,0:02:08.494
How is it used?

0:02:08.494,0:02:10.663
And these were important lessons to me when

0:02:10.663,0:02:13.961
I subsequently became a professional art historian.

0:02:13.961,0:02:18.684
My kind of eureka moment came a few years later,

0:02:18.684,0:02:23.781
when I was studying the art of the courts of Northern Europe,

0:02:23.781,0:02:27.429
and of course it was very much discussed in terms of

0:02:27.429,0:02:29.813
the paintings and the sculptures

0:02:29.813,0:02:33.121
and the architecture of the day.

0:02:33.121,0:02:36.958
But as I began to read historical documents

0:02:36.958,0:02:40.073
and contemporary descriptions,

0:02:40.073,0:02:43.235
I found there was a kind of a missing component,

0:02:43.235,0:02:48.321
for everywhere I came across descriptions of tapestries.

0:02:48.321,0:02:52.217
Tapestries were ubiquitous between the Middle Ages

0:02:52.217,0:02:55.149
and, really, well into the 18th century,

0:02:55.149,0:02:57.643
and it was pretty apparent why.

0:02:57.643,0:03:00.638
Tapestries were portable. You could roll them up,

0:03:00.638,0:03:03.283
send them ahead of you, and in the time

0:03:03.283,0:03:06.801
it took to hang them up, you could transform a cold,

0:03:06.801,0:03:10.923
dank interior into a richly colored setting.

0:03:10.923,0:03:15.850
Tapestries effectively provided a vast canvas

0:03:15.850,0:03:19.507
on which the patrons of the day could depict the heroes

0:03:19.507,0:03:22.209
with whom they wanted to be associated,

0:03:22.209,0:03:24.267
or even themselves,

0:03:24.267,0:03:29.665
and in addition to that, tapestries were hugely expensive.

0:03:29.665,0:03:33.334
They required scores of highly skilled weavers

0:03:33.334,0:03:36.170
working over extended periods of time

0:03:36.170,0:03:39.971
with very expensive materials -- the wools, the silks,

0:03:39.971,0:03:42.808
even gold and silver thread.

0:03:42.808,0:03:47.546
So, all in all, in an age when the visual image

0:03:47.546,0:03:52.898
of any kind was rare, tapestries were an incredibly potent

0:03:52.898,0:03:56.543
form of propaganda.

0:03:56.543,0:04:00.571
Well, I became a tapestry historian.

0:04:00.571,0:04:03.575
In due course, I ended up as a curator

0:04:03.575,0:04:07.131
at the Metropolitan Museum, because I saw the Met

0:04:07.131,0:04:10.843
as one of the few places where I could organize

0:04:10.843,0:04:14.398
really big exhibitions about the subject

0:04:14.398,0:04:17.739
I cared so passionately about.

0:04:17.739,0:04:22.125
And in about 1997, the then-director Philippe de Montebello

0:04:22.125,0:04:25.468
gave me the go-ahead to organize an exhibition

0:04:25.468,0:04:31.048
for 2002. We normally have these very long lead-in times.

0:04:31.048,0:04:34.539
It wasn't straightforward. It's no longer a question

0:04:34.539,0:04:37.944
of chucking a tapestry in the back of a car.

0:04:37.944,0:04:41.408
They have to be wound on huge rollers,

0:04:41.408,0:04:45.370
shipped in oversized freighters.

0:04:45.370,0:04:47.997
Some of them are so big we had, to get them into the museum,

0:04:47.997,0:04:52.693
we had to take them up the great steps at the front.

0:04:52.693,0:04:57.378
We thought very hard about how to present this

0:04:57.378,0:05:00.986
unknown subject to a modern audience:

0:05:00.986,0:05:03.956
the dark colors to set off the colors that remained

0:05:03.956,0:05:06.757
in objects that were often faded;

0:05:06.757,0:05:10.976
the placing of lights to bring out the silk and the gold thread;

0:05:10.976,0:05:12.440
the labeling.

0:05:12.440,0:05:15.244
You know, we live in an age where we are so used

0:05:15.244,0:05:18.256
to television images and photographs,

0:05:18.256,0:05:23.303
a one-hit image. These were big, complex things,

0:05:23.303,0:05:27.768
almost like cartoons with multiple narratives.

0:05:27.768,0:05:30.998
We had to draw our audience in, get them to slow down,

0:05:30.998,0:05:33.923
to explore the objects.

0:05:33.923,0:05:38.073
There was a lot of skepticism. On the opening night,

0:05:38.073,0:05:41.461
I overheard one of the senior members of staff saying,

0:05:41.461,0:05:44.576
"This is going to be a bomb."

0:05:44.576,0:05:48.846
But in reality, in the course of the coming weeks and months,

0:05:48.846,0:05:54.433
hundreds of thousands of people came to see the show.

0:05:54.433,0:05:59.078
The exhibition was designed to be an experience,

0:05:59.078,0:06:02.236
and tapestries are hard to reproduce in photographs.

0:06:02.236,0:06:05.235
So I want you to use your imaginations,

0:06:05.235,0:06:08.781
thinking of these wall-high objects,

0:06:08.781,0:06:10.896
some of them 10 meters wide,

0:06:10.896,0:06:15.915
depicting lavish court scenes with courtiers and dandies

0:06:15.915,0:06:20.484
who would look quite at home in the pages of the fashion press today,

0:06:20.484,0:06:24.690
thick woods with hunters crashing through the undergrowth

0:06:24.690,0:06:27.830
in pursuit of wild boars and deer,

0:06:27.830,0:06:33.680
violent battles with scenes of fear and heroism.

0:06:33.680,0:06:37.842
I remember taking my son's school class. He was eight at the time,

0:06:37.842,0:06:41.679
and all the little boys, they kind of -- you know, they were little boys,

0:06:41.679,0:06:44.500
and then the thing that caught their attention

0:06:44.500,0:06:47.609
was in one of the hunting scenes there was a dog

0:06:47.609,0:06:50.274
pooping in the foreground — (Laughter) —

0:06:50.274,0:06:53.956
kind of an in-your-face joke by the artist.

0:06:53.956,0:06:56.430
And you can just imagine them.

0:06:56.430,0:06:59.803
But it brought it alive to them. I think they suddenly saw

0:06:59.803,0:07:02.883
that these weren't just old faded tapestries.

0:07:02.883,0:07:07.374
These were images of the world in the past,

0:07:07.374,0:07:10.290
and that it was the same for our audience.

0:07:10.290,0:07:15.847
And for me as a curator, I felt proud. I felt I'd shifted the needle a little.

0:07:15.847,0:07:18.997
Through this experience that could only be created

0:07:18.997,0:07:23.080
in a museum, I'd opened up the eyes of my audience --

0:07:23.080,0:07:27.221
historians, artists, press, the general public --

0:07:27.221,0:07:31.897
to the beauty of this lost medium.

0:07:31.897,0:07:35.471
A few years later, I was invited to be the director

0:07:35.471,0:07:38.586
of the museum, and after I got over that --

0:07:38.586,0:07:44.097
"Who, me? The tapestry geek? I don't wear a tie!" --

0:07:44.097,0:07:49.477
I realized the fact: I believe passionately in that

0:07:49.477,0:07:52.756
curated museum experience.

0:07:52.756,0:07:56.363
We live in an age of ubiquitous information,

0:07:56.363,0:08:00.422
and sort of "just add water" expertise,

0:08:00.422,0:08:04.464
but there's nothing that compares with the presentation

0:08:04.464,0:08:08.348
of significant objects in a well-told narrative,

0:08:08.348,0:08:13.408
what the curator does, the interpretation of a complex,

0:08:13.408,0:08:17.919
esoteric subject, in a way that retains the integrity

0:08:17.919,0:08:21.002
of the subject, that makes it -- unpacks it

0:08:21.002,0:08:23.169
for a general audience.

0:08:23.169,0:08:26.696
And that, to me, today, is now the challenge and the fun

0:08:26.696,0:08:31.679
of my job, supporting the vision of my curators,

0:08:31.679,0:08:35.032
whether it's an exhibition of Samurai swords,

0:08:35.032,0:08:40.116
early Byzantine artifacts, Renaissance portraits,

0:08:40.116,0:08:43.190
or the show we heard mentioned earlier,

0:08:43.190,0:08:46.205
the McQueen show, with which we enjoyed

0:08:46.205,0:08:49.016
so much success last summer.

0:08:49.016,0:08:51.517
That was an interesting case.

0:08:51.517,0:08:56.691
In the late spring, early summer of 2010, shortly after

0:08:56.691,0:08:59.603
McQueen's suicide,

0:08:59.603,0:09:03.859
our curator of costume, Andrew Bolton, came to see me,

0:09:03.859,0:09:07.094
and said, "I've been thinking of doing a show on McQueen,

0:09:07.094,0:09:11.652
and now is the moment. We have to, we have to do it fast."

0:09:11.652,0:09:16.389
It wasn't easy. McQueen had worked throughout his career

0:09:16.389,0:09:19.843
with a small team of designers and managers

0:09:19.843,0:09:23.985
who were very protective of his legacy,

0:09:23.985,0:09:25.819
but Andrew went to London and worked with them

0:09:25.819,0:09:29.549
over the summer and won their confidence, and that of

0:09:29.549,0:09:33.644
the designers who created his amazing fashion shows,

0:09:33.644,0:09:38.258
which were works of performance art in their own right,

0:09:38.258,0:09:40.757
and we proceeded to do something at the museum,

0:09:40.757,0:09:42.977
I think, we've never done before.

0:09:42.977,0:09:45.994
It wasn't just your standard installation.

0:09:45.994,0:09:50.184
In fact, we ripped down the galleries to recreate

0:09:50.184,0:09:55.596
entirely different settings, a recreation of his first studio,

0:09:55.596,0:09:58.469
a hall of mirrors,

0:09:58.469,0:10:00.997
a curiosity box,

0:10:00.997,0:10:04.357
a sunken ship, a burned-out interior,

0:10:04.357,0:10:07.649
with videos and soundtracks that ranged from

0:10:07.649,0:10:11.382
operatic arias to pigs fornicating.

0:10:11.382,0:10:16.343
And in this extraordinary setting, the costumes

0:10:16.343,0:10:21.777
were like actors and actresses, or living sculptures.

0:10:21.777,0:10:23.956
It could have been a train wreck.

0:10:23.956,0:10:28.415
It could have looked like shop windows on Fifth Avenue

0:10:28.415,0:10:32.038
at Christmas, but because of the way that Andrew

0:10:32.038,0:10:36.031
connected with the McQueen team, he was channeling

0:10:36.031,0:10:39.455
the rawness and the brilliance of McQueen,

0:10:39.455,0:10:42.262
and the show was quite transcendant,

0:10:42.262,0:10:45.034
and it became a phenomenon in its own right.

0:10:45.034,0:10:47.548
By the end of the show, we had people queuing

0:10:47.548,0:10:51.050
for four or five hours to get into the show,

0:10:51.050,0:10:53.677
but no one really complained.

0:10:53.677,0:10:56.755
I heard over and over again, "Wow, that was worth it.

0:10:56.755,0:11:00.834
It was a such a visceral, emotive experience."

0:11:00.834,0:11:05.091
Now, I've described two very immersive exhibitions,

0:11:05.091,0:11:10.500
but I also believe that collections, individual objects,

0:11:10.500,0:11:12.705
can also have that same power.

0:11:12.705,0:11:16.589
The Met was set up not as a museum of American art,

0:11:16.589,0:11:19.694
but of an encyclopedic museum,

0:11:19.694,0:11:24.509
and today, 140 years later, that vision

0:11:24.509,0:11:27.647
is as prescient as ever,

0:11:27.647,0:11:31.270
because, of course, we live in a world of crisis,

0:11:31.270,0:11:33.903
of challenge, and we're exposed to it

0:11:33.903,0:11:37.052
through the 24/7 newsreels.

0:11:37.052,0:11:41.912
It's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations,

0:11:41.912,0:11:46.292
the cultures, that we're seeing the current manifestation of.

0:11:46.292,0:11:50.621
Whether it's Libya, Egypt, Syria,

0:11:50.621,0:11:53.331
it's in our galleries that we can explain

0:11:53.331,0:11:55.403
and give greater understanding.

0:11:55.403,0:11:58.888
I mean, our new Islamic galleries are a case in point,

0:11:58.888,0:12:04.568
opened 10 years, almost to the week, after 9/11.

0:12:04.568,0:12:09.002
I think for most Americans, knowledge of the Islamic world

0:12:09.002,0:12:12.853
was pretty slight before 9/11, and then it was thrust upon us

0:12:12.853,0:12:16.946
in one of America's darkest hours,

0:12:16.946,0:12:19.620
and the perception was through the polarization

0:12:19.620,0:12:22.274
of that terrible event.

0:12:22.274,0:12:26.494
Now, in our galleries, we show 14 centuries

0:12:26.494,0:12:30.947
of the development of different Islamic cultures

0:12:30.947,0:12:33.686
across a vast geographic spread,

0:12:33.686,0:12:37.713
and, again, hundreds of thousands of people have come

0:12:37.713,0:12:42.888
to see these galleries since they opened last October.

0:12:42.888,0:12:49.994
I'm often asked, "Is digital media replacing the museum?"

0:12:49.994,0:12:53.871
and I think those numbers are a resounding rejection

0:12:53.871,0:12:57.311
of that notion. I mean, don't get me wrong,

0:12:57.311,0:13:00.586
I'm a huge advocate of the Web.

0:13:00.586,0:13:04.005
It gives us a way of reaching out to audiences

0:13:04.005,0:13:09.406
around the globe, but nothing replaces the authenticity

0:13:09.406,0:13:15.993
of the object presented with passionate scholarship.

0:13:15.993,0:13:20.596
Bringing people face to face with our objects

0:13:20.596,0:13:24.043
is a way of bringing them face to face with people

0:13:24.043,0:13:28.609
across time, across space, whose lives may have been

0:13:28.609,0:13:33.177
very different to our own, but who, like us,

0:13:33.177,0:13:38.207
had hopes and dreams, frustrations and achievements

0:13:38.207,0:13:41.386
in their lives. And I think this is a process

0:13:41.386,0:13:45.139
that helps us better understand ourselves,

0:13:45.139,0:13:50.647
helps us make better decisions about where we're going.

0:13:50.647,0:13:56.049
The Great Hall at the Met is one of the great portals of the world,

0:13:56.049,0:14:00.193
awe-inspiring, like a medieval cathedral.

0:14:00.193,0:14:02.474
From there, you can walk in any direction

0:14:02.474,0:14:05.705
to almost any culture.

0:14:05.705,0:14:08.101
I frequently go out into the hall and the galleries

0:14:08.101,0:14:11.176
and I watch our visitors coming in.

0:14:11.176,0:14:15.268
Some of them are comfortable. They feel at home.

0:14:15.268,0:14:17.878
They know what they're looking for.

0:14:17.878,0:14:22.334
Others are very uneasy. It's an intimidating place.

0:14:22.334,0:14:25.488
They feel that the institution is elitist.

0:14:25.488,0:14:31.683
I'm working to try and break down that sense of that elitism.

0:14:31.683,0:14:35.631
I want to put people in a contemplative frame of mind,

0:14:35.631,0:14:41.788
where they're prepared to be a little bit lost, to explore,

0:14:41.788,0:14:45.610
to see the unfamiliar in the familiar,

0:14:45.610,0:14:50.079
or to try the unknown.

0:14:50.079,0:14:54.420
Because for us, it's all about bringing them face to face

0:14:54.420,0:14:57.345
with great works of art,

0:14:57.345,0:15:01.745
capturing them at that moment of discomfort,

0:15:01.745,0:15:05.241
when the inclination is kind of to reach for your iPhone,

0:15:05.241,0:15:10.644
your Blackberry, but to create a zone

0:15:10.644,0:15:15.750
where their curiosity can expand.

0:15:15.750,0:15:19.314
And whether it's in the expression of a Greek sculpture

0:15:19.314,0:15:21.304
that reminds you of a friend,

0:15:21.304,0:15:25.584
or a dog pooping in the corner of a tapestry,

0:15:25.584,0:15:28.994
or, to bring it back to my tutor Pietro,

0:15:28.994,0:15:31.671
those dancing figures

0:15:31.671,0:15:34.458
who are indeed knocking back the wine,

0:15:34.458,0:15:37.948
and that nude figure in the left foreground.

0:15:37.948,0:15:46.293
Wow. She is a gorgeous embodiment of youthful sexuality.

0:15:46.293,0:15:51.915
In that moment, our scholarship can tell you

0:15:51.915,0:15:55.229
that this is a bacchanal,

0:15:55.229,0:15:58.380
but if we're doing our job right,

0:15:58.380,0:16:02.116
and you've checked the jargon at the front door,

0:16:02.116,0:16:04.984
trust your instinct.

0:16:04.984,0:16:08.156
You know it's an orgy.

0:16:08.156,0:16:11.474
Thank you. (Applause)

0:16:11.474,0:16:16.381
(Applause)