1 00:00:00,714 --> 00:00:04,831 When I was considering a career in the art world, 2 00:00:04,831 --> 00:00:08,125 I took a course in London, 3 00:00:08,125 --> 00:00:12,578 and one of my supervisors was this irascible Italian 4 00:00:12,578 --> 00:00:16,539 called Pietro, who drank too much, 5 00:00:16,539 --> 00:00:22,028 smoked too much and swore much too much. 6 00:00:22,028 --> 00:00:25,204 But he was a passionate teacher, 7 00:00:25,204 --> 00:00:28,246 and I remember one of our earlier classes with him, 8 00:00:28,246 --> 00:00:30,594 he was projecting images on the wall, 9 00:00:30,594 --> 00:00:33,487 asking us to think about them, 10 00:00:33,487 --> 00:00:36,013 and he put up an image of a painting. 11 00:00:36,013 --> 00:00:39,708 It was a landscape with figures, semi-dressed, 12 00:00:39,708 --> 00:00:42,496 drinking wine. There was a nude woman 13 00:00:42,496 --> 00:00:45,872 in the lower foreground, and on the hillside in the back, 14 00:00:45,872 --> 00:00:49,886 there was a figure of the mythological god Bacchus, 15 00:00:49,886 --> 00:00:52,235 and he said, "What is this?" 16 00:00:52,235 --> 00:00:55,512 And I -- no one else did, so I put up my hand, and I said, 17 00:00:55,512 --> 00:00:58,873 "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." 18 00:00:58,873 --> 00:01:01,526 He said, "It's a what?" 19 00:01:01,526 --> 00:01:03,120 I thought maybe I'd pronounced it wrong. 20 00:01:03,120 --> 00:01:07,195 "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." 21 00:01:07,195 --> 00:01:09,918 He said, "It's a what?" 22 00:01:09,918 --> 00:01:13,002 I said, "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." (Laughter) 23 00:01:13,002 --> 00:01:16,347 He said, "You boneless bookworm! 24 00:01:16,347 --> 00:01:18,890 It's a fucking orgy!" 25 00:01:18,890 --> 00:01:21,961 (Laughter) 26 00:01:21,961 --> 00:01:24,313 As I said, he swore too much. 27 00:01:24,313 --> 00:01:27,845 There was an important lesson for me in that. 28 00:01:27,845 --> 00:01:31,673 Pietro was suspicious of formal art training, 29 00:01:31,673 --> 00:01:35,605 art history training, because he feared 30 00:01:35,605 --> 00:01:39,367 that it filled people up with jargon, and then they just 31 00:01:39,367 --> 00:01:44,046 classified things rather than looking at them, 32 00:01:44,046 --> 00:01:48,805 and he wanted to remind us that all art was once contemporary, 33 00:01:48,805 --> 00:01:51,809 and he wanted us to use our eyes, 34 00:01:51,809 --> 00:01:55,319 and he was especially evangelical about this message, 35 00:01:55,319 --> 00:01:57,822 because he was losing his sight. 36 00:01:57,822 --> 00:02:02,181 He wanted us to look and ask basic questions of objects. 37 00:02:02,181 --> 00:02:05,727 What is it? How is it made? Why was it made? 38 00:02:05,727 --> 00:02:08,494 How is it used? 39 00:02:08,494 --> 00:02:10,663 And these were important lessons to me when 40 00:02:10,663 --> 00:02:13,961 I subsequently became a professional art historian. 41 00:02:13,961 --> 00:02:18,684 My kind of eureka moment came a few years later, 42 00:02:18,684 --> 00:02:23,781 when I was studying the art of the courts of Northern Europe, 43 00:02:23,781 --> 00:02:27,429 and of course it was very much discussed in terms of 44 00:02:27,429 --> 00:02:29,813 the paintings and the sculptures 45 00:02:29,813 --> 00:02:33,121 and the architecture of the day. 46 00:02:33,121 --> 00:02:36,958 But as I began to read historical documents 47 00:02:36,958 --> 00:02:40,073 and contemporary descriptions, 48 00:02:40,073 --> 00:02:43,235 I found there was a kind of a missing component, 49 00:02:43,235 --> 00:02:48,321 for everywhere I came across descriptions of tapestries. 50 00:02:48,321 --> 00:02:52,217 Tapestries were ubiquitous between the Middle Ages 51 00:02:52,217 --> 00:02:55,149 and, really, well into the 18th century, 52 00:02:55,149 --> 00:02:57,643 and it was pretty apparent why. 53 00:02:57,643 --> 00:03:00,638 Tapestries were portable. You could roll them up, 54 00:03:00,638 --> 00:03:03,283 send them ahead of you, and in the time 55 00:03:03,283 --> 00:03:06,801 it took to hang them up, you could transform a cold, 56 00:03:06,801 --> 00:03:10,923 dank interior into a richly colored setting. 57 00:03:10,923 --> 00:03:15,850 Tapestries effectively provided a vast canvas 58 00:03:15,850 --> 00:03:19,507 on which the patrons of the day could depict the heroes 59 00:03:19,507 --> 00:03:22,209 with whom they wanted to be associated, 60 00:03:22,209 --> 00:03:24,267 or even themselves, 61 00:03:24,267 --> 00:03:29,665 and in addition to that, tapestries were hugely expensive. 62 00:03:29,665 --> 00:03:33,334 They required scores of highly skilled weavers 63 00:03:33,334 --> 00:03:36,170 working over extended periods of time 64 00:03:36,170 --> 00:03:39,971 with very expensive materials -- the wools, the silks, 65 00:03:39,971 --> 00:03:42,808 even gold and silver thread. 66 00:03:42,808 --> 00:03:47,546 So, all in all, in an age when the visual image 67 00:03:47,546 --> 00:03:52,898 of any kind was rare, tapestries were an incredibly potent 68 00:03:52,898 --> 00:03:56,543 form of propaganda. 69 00:03:56,543 --> 00:04:00,571 Well, I became a tapestry historian. 70 00:04:00,571 --> 00:04:03,575 In due course, I ended up as a curator 71 00:04:03,575 --> 00:04:07,131 at the Metropolitan Museum, because I saw the Met 72 00:04:07,131 --> 00:04:10,843 as one of the few places where I could organize 73 00:04:10,843 --> 00:04:14,398 really big exhibitions about the subject 74 00:04:14,398 --> 00:04:17,739 I cared so passionately about. 75 00:04:17,739 --> 00:04:22,125 And in about 1997, the then-director Philippe de Montebello 76 00:04:22,125 --> 00:04:25,468 gave me the go-ahead to organize an exhibition 77 00:04:25,468 --> 00:04:31,048 for 2002. We normally have these very long lead-in times. 78 00:04:31,048 --> 00:04:34,539 It wasn't straightforward. It's no longer a question 79 00:04:34,539 --> 00:04:37,944 of chucking a tapestry in the back of a car. 80 00:04:37,944 --> 00:04:41,408 They have to be wound on huge rollers, 81 00:04:41,408 --> 00:04:45,370 shipped in oversized freighters. 82 00:04:45,370 --> 00:04:47,997 Some of them are so big we had, to get them into the museum, 83 00:04:47,997 --> 00:04:52,693 we had to take them up the great steps at the front. 84 00:04:52,693 --> 00:04:57,378 We thought very hard about how to present this 85 00:04:57,378 --> 00:05:00,986 unknown subject to a modern audience: 86 00:05:00,986 --> 00:05:03,956 the dark colors to set off the colors that remained 87 00:05:03,956 --> 00:05:06,757 in objects that were often faded; 88 00:05:06,757 --> 00:05:10,976 the placing of lights to bring out the silk and the gold thread; 89 00:05:10,976 --> 00:05:12,440 the labeling. 90 00:05:12,440 --> 00:05:15,244 You know, we live in an age where we are so used 91 00:05:15,244 --> 00:05:18,256 to television images and photographs, 92 00:05:18,256 --> 00:05:23,303 a one-hit image. These were big, complex things, 93 00:05:23,303 --> 00:05:27,768 almost like cartoons with multiple narratives. 94 00:05:27,768 --> 00:05:30,998 We had to draw our audience in, get them to slow down, 95 00:05:30,998 --> 00:05:33,923 to explore the objects. 96 00:05:33,923 --> 00:05:38,073 There was a lot of skepticism. On the opening night, 97 00:05:38,073 --> 00:05:41,461 I overheard one of the senior members of staff saying, 98 00:05:41,461 --> 00:05:44,576 "This is going to be a bomb." 99 00:05:44,576 --> 00:05:48,846 But in reality, in the course of the coming weeks and months, 100 00:05:48,846 --> 00:05:54,433 hundreds of thousands of people came to see the show. 101 00:05:54,433 --> 00:05:59,078 The exhibition was designed to be an experience, 102 00:05:59,078 --> 00:06:02,236 and tapestries are hard to reproduce in photographs. 103 00:06:02,236 --> 00:06:05,235 So I want you to use your imaginations, 104 00:06:05,235 --> 00:06:08,781 thinking of these wall-high objects, 105 00:06:08,781 --> 00:06:10,896 some of them 10 meters wide, 106 00:06:10,896 --> 00:06:15,915 depicting lavish court scenes with courtiers and dandies 107 00:06:15,915 --> 00:06:20,484 who would look quite at home in the pages of the fashion press today, 108 00:06:20,484 --> 00:06:24,690 thick woods with hunters crashing through the undergrowth 109 00:06:24,690 --> 00:06:27,830 in pursuit of wild boars and deer, 110 00:06:27,830 --> 00:06:33,680 violent battles with scenes of fear and heroism. 111 00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:37,842 I remember taking my son's school class. He was eight at the time, 112 00:06:37,842 --> 00:06:41,679 and all the little boys, they kind of -- you know, they were little boys, 113 00:06:41,679 --> 00:06:44,500 and then the thing that caught their attention 114 00:06:44,500 --> 00:06:47,609 was in one of the hunting scenes there was a dog 115 00:06:47,609 --> 00:06:50,274 pooping in the foreground — (Laughter) — 116 00:06:50,274 --> 00:06:53,956 kind of an in-your-face joke by the artist. 117 00:06:53,956 --> 00:06:56,430 And you can just imagine them. 118 00:06:56,430 --> 00:06:59,803 But it brought it alive to them. I think they suddenly saw 119 00:06:59,803 --> 00:07:02,883 that these weren't just old faded tapestries. 120 00:07:02,883 --> 00:07:07,374 These were images of the world in the past, 121 00:07:07,374 --> 00:07:10,290 and that it was the same for our audience. 122 00:07:10,290 --> 00:07:15,847 And for me as a curator, I felt proud. I felt I'd shifted the needle a little. 123 00:07:15,847 --> 00:07:18,997 Through this experience that could only be created 124 00:07:18,997 --> 00:07:23,080 in a museum, I'd opened up the eyes of my audience -- 125 00:07:23,080 --> 00:07:27,221 historians, artists, press, the general public -- 126 00:07:27,221 --> 00:07:31,897 to the beauty of this lost medium. 127 00:07:31,897 --> 00:07:35,471 A few years later, I was invited to be the director 128 00:07:35,471 --> 00:07:38,586 of the museum, and after I got over that -- 129 00:07:38,586 --> 00:07:44,097 "Who, me? The tapestry geek? I don't wear a tie!" -- 130 00:07:44,097 --> 00:07:49,477 I realized the fact: I believe passionately in that 131 00:07:49,477 --> 00:07:52,756 curated museum experience. 132 00:07:52,756 --> 00:07:56,363 We live in an age of ubiquitous information, 133 00:07:56,363 --> 00:08:00,422 and sort of "just add water" expertise, 134 00:08:00,422 --> 00:08:04,464 but there's nothing that compares with the presentation 135 00:08:04,464 --> 00:08:08,348 of significant objects in a well-told narrative, 136 00:08:08,348 --> 00:08:13,408 what the curator does, the interpretation of a complex, 137 00:08:13,408 --> 00:08:17,919 esoteric subject, in a way that retains the integrity 138 00:08:17,919 --> 00:08:21,002 of the subject, that makes it -- unpacks it 139 00:08:21,002 --> 00:08:23,169 for a general audience. 140 00:08:23,169 --> 00:08:26,696 And that, to me, today, is now the challenge and the fun 141 00:08:26,696 --> 00:08:31,679 of my job, supporting the vision of my curators, 142 00:08:31,679 --> 00:08:35,032 whether it's an exhibition of Samurai swords, 143 00:08:35,032 --> 00:08:40,116 early Byzantine artifacts, Renaissance portraits, 144 00:08:40,116 --> 00:08:43,190 or the show we heard mentioned earlier, 145 00:08:43,190 --> 00:08:46,205 the McQueen show, with which we enjoyed 146 00:08:46,205 --> 00:08:49,016 so much success last summer. 147 00:08:49,016 --> 00:08:51,517 That was an interesting case. 148 00:08:51,517 --> 00:08:56,691 In the late spring, early summer of 2010, shortly after 149 00:08:56,691 --> 00:08:59,603 McQueen's suicide, 150 00:08:59,603 --> 00:09:03,859 our curator of costume, Andrew Bolton, came to see me, 151 00:09:03,859 --> 00:09:07,094 and said, "I've been thinking of doing a show on McQueen, 152 00:09:07,094 --> 00:09:11,652 and now is the moment. We have to, we have to do it fast." 153 00:09:11,652 --> 00:09:16,389 It wasn't easy. McQueen had worked throughout his career 154 00:09:16,389 --> 00:09:19,843 with a small team of designers and managers 155 00:09:19,843 --> 00:09:23,985 who were very protective of his legacy, 156 00:09:23,985 --> 00:09:25,819 but Andrew went to London and worked with them 157 00:09:25,819 --> 00:09:29,549 over the summer and won their confidence, and that of 158 00:09:29,549 --> 00:09:33,644 the designers who created his amazing fashion shows, 159 00:09:33,644 --> 00:09:38,258 which were works of performance art in their own right, 160 00:09:38,258 --> 00:09:40,757 and we proceeded to do something at the museum, 161 00:09:40,757 --> 00:09:42,977 I think, we've never done before. 162 00:09:42,977 --> 00:09:45,994 It wasn't just your standard installation. 163 00:09:45,994 --> 00:09:50,184 In fact, we ripped down the galleries to recreate 164 00:09:50,184 --> 00:09:55,596 entirely different settings, a recreation of his first studio, 165 00:09:55,596 --> 00:09:58,469 a hall of mirrors, 166 00:09:58,469 --> 00:10:00,997 a curiosity box, 167 00:10:00,997 --> 00:10:04,357 a sunken ship, a burned-out interior, 168 00:10:04,357 --> 00:10:07,649 with videos and soundtracks that ranged from 169 00:10:07,649 --> 00:10:11,382 operatic arias to pigs fornicating. 170 00:10:11,382 --> 00:10:16,343 And in this extraordinary setting, the costumes 171 00:10:16,343 --> 00:10:21,777 were like actors and actresses, or living sculptures. 172 00:10:21,777 --> 00:10:23,956 It could have been a train wreck. 173 00:10:23,956 --> 00:10:28,415 It could have looked like shop windows on Fifth Avenue 174 00:10:28,415 --> 00:10:32,038 at Christmas, but because of the way that Andrew 175 00:10:32,038 --> 00:10:36,031 connected with the McQueen team, he was channeling 176 00:10:36,031 --> 00:10:39,455 the rawness and the brilliance of McQueen, 177 00:10:39,455 --> 00:10:42,262 and the show was quite transcendant, 178 00:10:42,262 --> 00:10:45,034 and it became a phenomenon in its own right. 179 00:10:45,034 --> 00:10:47,548 By the end of the show, we had people queuing 180 00:10:47,548 --> 00:10:51,050 for four or five hours to get into the show, 181 00:10:51,050 --> 00:10:53,677 but no one really complained. 182 00:10:53,677 --> 00:10:56,755 I heard over and over again, "Wow, that was worth it. 183 00:10:56,755 --> 00:11:00,834 It was a such a visceral, emotive experience." 184 00:11:00,834 --> 00:11:05,091 Now, I've described two very immersive exhibitions, 185 00:11:05,091 --> 00:11:10,500 but I also believe that collections, individual objects, 186 00:11:10,500 --> 00:11:12,705 can also have that same power. 187 00:11:12,705 --> 00:11:16,589 The Met was set up not as a museum of American art, 188 00:11:16,589 --> 00:11:19,694 but of an encyclopedic museum, 189 00:11:19,694 --> 00:11:24,509 and today, 140 years later, that vision 190 00:11:24,509 --> 00:11:27,647 is as prescient as ever, 191 00:11:27,647 --> 00:11:31,270 because, of course, we live in a world of crisis, 192 00:11:31,270 --> 00:11:33,903 of challenge, and we're exposed to it 193 00:11:33,903 --> 00:11:37,052 through the 24/7 newsreels. 194 00:11:37,052 --> 00:11:41,912 It's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations, 195 00:11:41,912 --> 00:11:46,292 the cultures, that we're seeing the current manifestation of. 196 00:11:46,292 --> 00:11:50,621 Whether it's Libya, Egypt, Syria, 197 00:11:50,621 --> 00:11:53,331 it's in our galleries that we can explain 198 00:11:53,331 --> 00:11:55,403 and give greater understanding. 199 00:11:55,403 --> 00:11:58,888 I mean, our new Islamic galleries are a case in point, 200 00:11:58,888 --> 00:12:04,568 opened 10 years, almost to the week, after 9/11. 201 00:12:04,568 --> 00:12:09,002 I think for most Americans, knowledge of the Islamic world 202 00:12:09,002 --> 00:12:12,853 was pretty slight before 9/11, and then it was thrust upon us 203 00:12:12,853 --> 00:12:16,946 in one of America's darkest hours, 204 00:12:16,946 --> 00:12:19,620 and the perception was through the polarization 205 00:12:19,620 --> 00:12:22,274 of that terrible event. 206 00:12:22,274 --> 00:12:26,494 Now, in our galleries, we show 14 centuries 207 00:12:26,494 --> 00:12:30,947 of the development of different Islamic cultures 208 00:12:30,947 --> 00:12:33,686 across a vast geographic spread, 209 00:12:33,686 --> 00:12:37,713 and, again, hundreds of thousands of people have come 210 00:12:37,713 --> 00:12:42,888 to see these galleries since they opened last October. 211 00:12:42,888 --> 00:12:49,994 I'm often asked, "Is digital media replacing the museum?" 212 00:12:49,994 --> 00:12:53,871 and I think those numbers are a resounding rejection 213 00:12:53,871 --> 00:12:57,311 of that notion. I mean, don't get me wrong, 214 00:12:57,311 --> 00:13:00,586 I'm a huge advocate of the Web. 215 00:13:00,586 --> 00:13:04,005 It gives us a way of reaching out to audiences 216 00:13:04,005 --> 00:13:09,406 around the globe, but nothing replaces the authenticity 217 00:13:09,406 --> 00:13:15,993 of the object presented with passionate scholarship. 218 00:13:15,993 --> 00:13:20,596 Bringing people face to face with our objects 219 00:13:20,596 --> 00:13:24,043 is a way of bringing them face to face with people 220 00:13:24,043 --> 00:13:28,609 across time, across space, whose lives may have been 221 00:13:28,609 --> 00:13:33,177 very different to our own, but who, like us, 222 00:13:33,177 --> 00:13:38,207 had hopes and dreams, frustrations and achievements 223 00:13:38,207 --> 00:13:41,386 in their lives. And I think this is a process 224 00:13:41,386 --> 00:13:45,139 that helps us better understand ourselves, 225 00:13:45,139 --> 00:13:50,647 helps us make better decisions about where we're going. 226 00:13:50,647 --> 00:13:56,049 The Great Hall at the Met is one of the great portals of the world, 227 00:13:56,049 --> 00:14:00,193 awe-inspiring, like a medieval cathedral. 228 00:14:00,193 --> 00:14:02,474 From there, you can walk in any direction 229 00:14:02,474 --> 00:14:05,705 to almost any culture. 230 00:14:05,705 --> 00:14:08,101 I frequently go out into the hall and the galleries 231 00:14:08,101 --> 00:14:11,176 and I watch our visitors coming in. 232 00:14:11,176 --> 00:14:15,268 Some of them are comfortable. They feel at home. 233 00:14:15,268 --> 00:14:17,878 They know what they're looking for. 234 00:14:17,878 --> 00:14:22,334 Others are very uneasy. It's an intimidating place. 235 00:14:22,334 --> 00:14:25,488 They feel that the institution is elitist. 236 00:14:25,488 --> 00:14:31,683 I'm working to try and break down that sense of that elitism. 237 00:14:31,683 --> 00:14:35,631 I want to put people in a contemplative frame of mind, 238 00:14:35,631 --> 00:14:41,788 where they're prepared to be a little bit lost, to explore, 239 00:14:41,788 --> 00:14:45,610 to see the unfamiliar in the familiar, 240 00:14:45,610 --> 00:14:50,079 or to try the unknown. 241 00:14:50,079 --> 00:14:54,420 Because for us, it's all about bringing them face to face 242 00:14:54,420 --> 00:14:57,345 with great works of art, 243 00:14:57,345 --> 00:15:01,745 capturing them at that moment of discomfort, 244 00:15:01,745 --> 00:15:05,241 when the inclination is kind of to reach for your iPhone, 245 00:15:05,241 --> 00:15:10,644 your Blackberry, but to create a zone 246 00:15:10,644 --> 00:15:15,750 where their curiosity can expand. 247 00:15:15,750 --> 00:15:19,314 And whether it's in the expression of a Greek sculpture 248 00:15:19,314 --> 00:15:21,304 that reminds you of a friend, 249 00:15:21,304 --> 00:15:25,584 or a dog pooping in the corner of a tapestry, 250 00:15:25,584 --> 00:15:28,994 or, to bring it back to my tutor Pietro, 251 00:15:28,994 --> 00:15:31,671 those dancing figures 252 00:15:31,671 --> 00:15:34,458 who are indeed knocking back the wine, 253 00:15:34,458 --> 00:15:37,948 and that nude figure in the left foreground. 254 00:15:37,948 --> 00:15:46,293 Wow. She is a gorgeous embodiment of youthful sexuality. 255 00:15:46,293 --> 00:15:51,915 In that moment, our scholarship can tell you 256 00:15:51,915 --> 00:15:55,229 that this is a bacchanal, 257 00:15:55,229 --> 00:15:58,380 but if we're doing our job right, 258 00:15:58,380 --> 00:16:02,116 and you've checked the jargon at the front door, 259 00:16:02,116 --> 00:16:04,984 trust your instinct. 260 00:16:04,984 --> 00:16:08,156 You know it's an orgy. 261 00:16:08,156 --> 00:16:11,474 Thank you. (Applause) 262 00:16:11,474 --> 00:16:16,381 (Applause)