WEBVTT 00:00:00.714 --> 00:00:04.831 When I was considering a career in the art world, 00:00:04.831 --> 00:00:08.125 I took a course in London, 00:00:08.125 --> 00:00:12.578 and one of my supervisors was this irascible Italian 00:00:12.578 --> 00:00:16.539 called Pietro, who drank too much, 00:00:16.539 --> 00:00:22.028 smoked too much and swore much too much. 00:00:22.028 --> 00:00:25.204 But he was a passionate teacher, 00:00:25.204 --> 00:00:28.246 and I remember one of our earlier classes with him, 00:00:28.246 --> 00:00:30.594 he was projecting images on the wall, 00:00:30.594 --> 00:00:33.487 asking us to think about them, 00:00:33.487 --> 00:00:36.013 and he put up an image of a painting. 00:00:36.013 --> 00:00:39.708 It was a landscape with figures, semi-dressed, 00:00:39.708 --> 00:00:42.496 drinking wine. There was a nude woman 00:00:42.496 --> 00:00:45.872 in the lower foreground, and on the hillside in the back, 00:00:45.872 --> 00:00:49.886 there was a figure of the mythological god Bacchus, 00:00:49.886 --> 00:00:52.235 and he said, "What is this?" NOTE Paragraph 00:00:52.235 --> 00:00:55.512 And I -- no one else did, so I put up my hand, and I said, 00:00:55.512 --> 00:00:58.873 "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." NOTE Paragraph 00:00:58.873 --> 00:01:01.526 He said, "It's a what?" NOTE Paragraph 00:01:01.526 --> 00:01:03.120 I thought maybe I'd pronounced it wrong. 00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:07.195 "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." NOTE Paragraph 00:01:07.195 --> 00:01:09.918 He said, "It's a what?" NOTE Paragraph 00:01:09.918 --> 00:01:13.002 I said, "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:13.002 --> 00:01:16.347 He said, "You boneless bookworm! 00:01:16.347 --> 00:01:18.890 It's a fucking orgy!" 00:01:18.890 --> 00:01:21.961 (Laughter) 00:01:21.961 --> 00:01:24.313 As I said, he swore too much. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:24.313 --> 00:01:27.845 There was an important lesson for me in that. 00:01:27.845 --> 00:01:31.673 Pietro was suspicious of formal art training, 00:01:31.673 --> 00:01:35.605 art history training, because he feared 00:01:35.605 --> 00:01:39.367 that it filled people up with jargon, and then they just 00:01:39.367 --> 00:01:44.046 classified things rather than looking at them, 00:01:44.046 --> 00:01:48.805 and he wanted to remind us that all art was once contemporary, 00:01:48.805 --> 00:01:51.809 and he wanted us to use our eyes, 00:01:51.809 --> 00:01:55.319 and he was especially evangelical about this message, 00:01:55.319 --> 00:01:57.822 because he was losing his sight. 00:01:57.822 --> 00:02:02.181 He wanted us to look and ask basic questions of objects. 00:02:02.181 --> 00:02:05.727 What is it? How is it made? Why was it made? 00:02:05.727 --> 00:02:08.494 How is it used? 00:02:08.494 --> 00:02:10.663 And these were important lessons to me when 00:02:10.663 --> 00:02:13.961 I subsequently became a professional art historian. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:13.961 --> 00:02:18.684 My kind of eureka moment came a few years later, 00:02:18.684 --> 00:02:23.781 when I was studying the art of the courts of Northern Europe, 00:02:23.781 --> 00:02:27.429 and of course it was very much discussed in terms of 00:02:27.429 --> 00:02:29.813 the paintings and the sculptures 00:02:29.813 --> 00:02:33.121 and the architecture of the day. 00:02:33.121 --> 00:02:36.958 But as I began to read historical documents 00:02:36.958 --> 00:02:40.073 and contemporary descriptions, 00:02:40.073 --> 00:02:43.235 I found there was a kind of a missing component, 00:02:43.235 --> 00:02:48.321 for everywhere I came across descriptions of tapestries. 00:02:48.321 --> 00:02:52.217 Tapestries were ubiquitous between the Middle Ages 00:02:52.217 --> 00:02:55.149 and, really, well into the 18th century, 00:02:55.149 --> 00:02:57.643 and it was pretty apparent why. 00:02:57.643 --> 00:03:00.638 Tapestries were portable. You could roll them up, 00:03:00.638 --> 00:03:03.283 send them ahead of you, and in the time 00:03:03.283 --> 00:03:06.801 it took to hang them up, you could transform a cold, 00:03:06.801 --> 00:03:10.923 dank interior into a richly colored setting. 00:03:10.923 --> 00:03:15.850 Tapestries effectively provided a vast canvas 00:03:15.850 --> 00:03:19.507 on which the patrons of the day could depict the heroes 00:03:19.507 --> 00:03:22.209 with whom they wanted to be associated, 00:03:22.209 --> 00:03:24.267 or even themselves, 00:03:24.267 --> 00:03:29.665 and in addition to that, tapestries were hugely expensive. 00:03:29.665 --> 00:03:33.334 They required scores of highly skilled weavers 00:03:33.334 --> 00:03:36.170 working over extended periods of time 00:03:36.170 --> 00:03:39.971 with very expensive materials -- the wools, the silks, 00:03:39.971 --> 00:03:42.808 even gold and silver thread. 00:03:42.808 --> 00:03:47.546 So, all in all, in an age when the visual image 00:03:47.546 --> 00:03:52.898 of any kind was rare, tapestries were an incredibly potent 00:03:52.898 --> 00:03:56.543 form of propaganda. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:56.543 --> 00:04:00.571 Well, I became a tapestry historian. 00:04:00.571 --> 00:04:03.575 In due course, I ended up as a curator 00:04:03.575 --> 00:04:07.131 at the Metropolitan Museum, because I saw the Met 00:04:07.131 --> 00:04:10.843 as one of the few places where I could organize 00:04:10.843 --> 00:04:14.398 really big exhibitions about the subject 00:04:14.398 --> 00:04:17.739 I cared so passionately about. 00:04:17.739 --> 00:04:22.125 And in about 1997, the then-director Philippe de Montebello 00:04:22.125 --> 00:04:25.468 gave me the go-ahead to organize an exhibition 00:04:25.468 --> 00:04:31.048 for 2002. We normally have these very long lead-in times. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:31.048 --> 00:04:34.539 It wasn't straightforward. It's no longer a question 00:04:34.539 --> 00:04:37.944 of chucking a tapestry in the back of a car. 00:04:37.944 --> 00:04:41.408 They have to be wound on huge rollers, 00:04:41.408 --> 00:04:45.370 shipped in oversized freighters. 00:04:45.370 --> 00:04:47.997 Some of them are so big we had, to get them into the museum, 00:04:47.997 --> 00:04:52.693 we had to take them up the great steps at the front. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:52.693 --> 00:04:57.378 We thought very hard about how to present this 00:04:57.378 --> 00:05:00.986 unknown subject to a modern audience: 00:05:00.986 --> 00:05:03.956 the dark colors to set off the colors that remained 00:05:03.956 --> 00:05:06.757 in objects that were often faded; 00:05:06.757 --> 00:05:10.976 the placing of lights to bring out the silk and the gold thread; 00:05:10.976 --> 00:05:12.440 the labeling. 00:05:12.440 --> 00:05:15.244 You know, we live in an age where we are so used 00:05:15.244 --> 00:05:18.256 to television images and photographs, 00:05:18.256 --> 00:05:23.303 a one-hit image. These were big, complex things, 00:05:23.303 --> 00:05:27.768 almost like cartoons with multiple narratives. 00:05:27.768 --> 00:05:30.998 We had to draw our audience in, get them to slow down, 00:05:30.998 --> 00:05:33.923 to explore the objects. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:33.923 --> 00:05:38.073 There was a lot of skepticism. On the opening night, 00:05:38.073 --> 00:05:41.461 I overheard one of the senior members of staff saying, 00:05:41.461 --> 00:05:44.576 "This is going to be a bomb." 00:05:44.576 --> 00:05:48.846 But in reality, in the course of the coming weeks and months, 00:05:48.846 --> 00:05:54.433 hundreds of thousands of people came to see the show. 00:05:54.433 --> 00:05:59.078 The exhibition was designed to be an experience, 00:05:59.078 --> 00:06:02.236 and tapestries are hard to reproduce in photographs. 00:06:02.236 --> 00:06:05.235 So I want you to use your imaginations, 00:06:05.235 --> 00:06:08.781 thinking of these wall-high objects, 00:06:08.781 --> 00:06:10.896 some of them 10 meters wide, 00:06:10.896 --> 00:06:15.915 depicting lavish court scenes with courtiers and dandies 00:06:15.915 --> 00:06:20.484 who would look quite at home in the pages of the fashion press today, 00:06:20.484 --> 00:06:24.690 thick woods with hunters crashing through the undergrowth 00:06:24.690 --> 00:06:27.830 in pursuit of wild boars and deer, 00:06:27.830 --> 00:06:33.680 violent battles with scenes of fear and heroism. 00:06:33.680 --> 00:06:37.842 I remember taking my son's school class. He was eight at the time, 00:06:37.842 --> 00:06:41.679 and all the little boys, they kind of -- you know, they were little boys, 00:06:41.679 --> 00:06:44.500 and then the thing that caught their attention 00:06:44.500 --> 00:06:47.609 was in one of the hunting scenes there was a dog 00:06:47.609 --> 00:06:50.274 pooping in the foreground — (Laughter) — 00:06:50.274 --> 00:06:53.956 kind of an in-your-face joke by the artist. 00:06:53.956 --> 00:06:56.430 And you can just imagine them. 00:06:56.430 --> 00:06:59.803 But it brought it alive to them. I think they suddenly saw 00:06:59.803 --> 00:07:02.883 that these weren't just old faded tapestries. 00:07:02.883 --> 00:07:07.374 These were images of the world in the past, 00:07:07.374 --> 00:07:10.290 and that it was the same for our audience. 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. 00:07:15.847 --> 00:07:18.997 Through this experience that could only be created 00:07:18.997 --> 00:07:23.080 in a museum, I'd opened up the eyes of my audience -- 00:07:23.080 --> 00:07:27.221 historians, artists, press, the general public -- 00:07:27.221 --> 00:07:31.897 to the beauty of this lost medium. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:31.897 --> 00:07:35.471 A few years later, I was invited to be the director 00:07:35.471 --> 00:07:38.586 of the museum, and after I got over that -- 00:07:38.586 --> 00:07:44.097 "Who, me? The tapestry geek? I don't wear a tie!" -- 00:07:44.097 --> 00:07:49.477 I realized the fact: I believe passionately in that 00:07:49.477 --> 00:07:52.756 curated museum experience. 00:07:52.756 --> 00:07:56.363 We live in an age of ubiquitous information, 00:07:56.363 --> 00:08:00.422 and sort of "just add water" expertise, 00:08:00.422 --> 00:08:04.464 but there's nothing that compares with the presentation 00:08:04.464 --> 00:08:08.348 of significant objects in a well-told narrative, 00:08:08.348 --> 00:08:13.408 what the curator does, the interpretation of a complex, 00:08:13.408 --> 00:08:17.919 esoteric subject, in a way that retains the integrity 00:08:17.919 --> 00:08:21.002 of the subject, that makes it -- unpacks it 00:08:21.002 --> 00:08:23.169 for a general audience. 00:08:23.169 --> 00:08:26.696 And that, to me, today, is now the challenge and the fun 00:08:26.696 --> 00:08:31.679 of my job, supporting the vision of my curators, 00:08:31.679 --> 00:08:35.032 whether it's an exhibition of Samurai swords, 00:08:35.032 --> 00:08:40.116 early Byzantine artifacts, Renaissance portraits, 00:08:40.116 --> 00:08:43.190 or the show we heard mentioned earlier, 00:08:43.190 --> 00:08:46.205 the McQueen show, with which we enjoyed 00:08:46.205 --> 00:08:49.016 so much success last summer. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:49.016 --> 00:08:51.517 That was an interesting case. 00:08:51.517 --> 00:08:56.691 In the late spring, early summer of 2010, shortly after 00:08:56.691 --> 00:08:59.603 McQueen's suicide, 00:08:59.603 --> 00:09:03.859 our curator of costume, Andrew Bolton, came to see me, 00:09:03.859 --> 00:09:07.094 and said, "I've been thinking of doing a show on McQueen, 00:09:07.094 --> 00:09:11.652 and now is the moment. We have to, we have to do it fast." NOTE Paragraph 00:09:11.652 --> 00:09:16.389 It wasn't easy. McQueen had worked throughout his career 00:09:16.389 --> 00:09:19.843 with a small team of designers and managers 00:09:19.843 --> 00:09:23.985 who were very protective of his legacy, 00:09:23.985 --> 00:09:25.819 but Andrew went to London and worked with them 00:09:25.819 --> 00:09:29.549 over the summer and won their confidence, and that of 00:09:29.549 --> 00:09:33.644 the designers who created his amazing fashion shows, 00:09:33.644 --> 00:09:38.258 which were works of performance art in their own right, 00:09:38.258 --> 00:09:40.757 and we proceeded to do something at the museum, 00:09:40.757 --> 00:09:42.977 I think, we've never done before. 00:09:42.977 --> 00:09:45.994 It wasn't just your standard installation. 00:09:45.994 --> 00:09:50.184 In fact, we ripped down the galleries to recreate 00:09:50.184 --> 00:09:55.596 entirely different settings, a recreation of his first studio, 00:09:55.596 --> 00:09:58.469 a hall of mirrors, 00:09:58.469 --> 00:10:00.997 a curiosity box, 00:10:00.997 --> 00:10:04.357 a sunken ship, a burned-out interior, 00:10:04.357 --> 00:10:07.649 with videos and soundtracks that ranged from 00:10:07.649 --> 00:10:11.382 operatic arias to pigs fornicating. 00:10:11.382 --> 00:10:16.343 And in this extraordinary setting, the costumes 00:10:16.343 --> 00:10:21.777 were like actors and actresses, or living sculptures. 00:10:21.777 --> 00:10:23.956 It could have been a train wreck. 00:10:23.956 --> 00:10:28.415 It could have looked like shop windows on Fifth Avenue 00:10:28.415 --> 00:10:32.038 at Christmas, but because of the way that Andrew 00:10:32.038 --> 00:10:36.031 connected with the McQueen team, he was channeling 00:10:36.031 --> 00:10:39.455 the rawness and the brilliance of McQueen, 00:10:39.455 --> 00:10:42.262 and the show was quite transcendant, 00:10:42.262 --> 00:10:45.034 and it became a phenomenon in its own right. 00:10:45.034 --> 00:10:47.548 By the end of the show, we had people queuing 00:10:47.548 --> 00:10:51.050 for four or five hours to get into the show, 00:10:51.050 --> 00:10:53.677 but no one really complained. 00:10:53.677 --> 00:10:56.755 I heard over and over again, "Wow, that was worth it. 00:10:56.755 --> 00:11:00.834 It was a such a visceral, emotive experience." NOTE Paragraph 00:11:00.834 --> 00:11:05.091 Now, I've described two very immersive exhibitions, 00:11:05.091 --> 00:11:10.500 but I also believe that collections, individual objects, 00:11:10.500 --> 00:11:12.705 can also have that same power. 00:11:12.705 --> 00:11:16.589 The Met was set up not as a museum of American art, 00:11:16.589 --> 00:11:19.694 but of an encyclopedic museum, 00:11:19.694 --> 00:11:24.509 and today, 140 years later, that vision 00:11:24.509 --> 00:11:27.647 is as prescient as ever, 00:11:27.647 --> 00:11:31.270 because, of course, we live in a world of crisis, 00:11:31.270 --> 00:11:33.903 of challenge, and we're exposed to it 00:11:33.903 --> 00:11:37.052 through the 24/7 newsreels. 00:11:37.052 --> 00:11:41.912 It's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations, 00:11:41.912 --> 00:11:46.292 the cultures, that we're seeing the current manifestation of. 00:11:46.292 --> 00:11:50.621 Whether it's Libya, Egypt, Syria, 00:11:50.621 --> 00:11:53.331 it's in our galleries that we can explain 00:11:53.331 --> 00:11:55.403 and give greater understanding. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:55.403 --> 00:11:58.888 I mean, our new Islamic galleries are a case in point, 00:11:58.888 --> 00:12:04.568 opened 10 years, almost to the week, after 9/11. 00:12:04.568 --> 00:12:09.002 I think for most Americans, knowledge of the Islamic world 00:12:09.002 --> 00:12:12.853 was pretty slight before 9/11, and then it was thrust upon us 00:12:12.853 --> 00:12:16.946 in one of America's darkest hours, 00:12:16.946 --> 00:12:19.620 and the perception was through the polarization 00:12:19.620 --> 00:12:22.274 of that terrible event. 00:12:22.274 --> 00:12:26.494 Now, in our galleries, we show 14 centuries 00:12:26.494 --> 00:12:30.947 of the development of different Islamic cultures 00:12:30.947 --> 00:12:33.686 across a vast geographic spread, 00:12:33.686 --> 00:12:37.713 and, again, hundreds of thousands of people have come 00:12:37.713 --> 00:12:42.888 to see these galleries since they opened last October. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:42.888 --> 00:12:49.994 I'm often asked, "Is digital media replacing the museum?" 00:12:49.994 --> 00:12:53.871 and I think those numbers are a resounding rejection 00:12:53.871 --> 00:12:57.311 of that notion. I mean, don't get me wrong, 00:12:57.311 --> 00:13:00.586 I'm a huge advocate of the Web. 00:13:00.586 --> 00:13:04.005 It gives us a way of reaching out to audiences 00:13:04.005 --> 00:13:09.406 around the globe, but nothing replaces the authenticity 00:13:09.406 --> 00:13:15.993 of the object presented with passionate scholarship. 00:13:15.993 --> 00:13:20.596 Bringing people face to face with our objects 00:13:20.596 --> 00:13:24.043 is a way of bringing them face to face with people 00:13:24.043 --> 00:13:28.609 across time, across space, whose lives may have been 00:13:28.609 --> 00:13:33.177 very different to our own, but who, like us, 00:13:33.177 --> 00:13:38.207 had hopes and dreams, frustrations and achievements 00:13:38.207 --> 00:13:41.386 in their lives. And I think this is a process 00:13:41.386 --> 00:13:45.139 that helps us better understand ourselves, 00:13:45.139 --> 00:13:50.647 helps us make better decisions about where we're going. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:50.647 --> 00:13:56.049 The Great Hall at the Met is one of the great portals of the world, 00:13:56.049 --> 00:14:00.193 awe-inspiring, like a medieval cathedral. 00:14:00.193 --> 00:14:02.474 From there, you can walk in any direction 00:14:02.474 --> 00:14:05.705 to almost any culture. 00:14:05.705 --> 00:14:08.101 I frequently go out into the hall and the galleries 00:14:08.101 --> 00:14:11.176 and I watch our visitors coming in. 00:14:11.176 --> 00:14:15.268 Some of them are comfortable. They feel at home. 00:14:15.268 --> 00:14:17.878 They know what they're looking for. 00:14:17.878 --> 00:14:22.334 Others are very uneasy. It's an intimidating place. 00:14:22.334 --> 00:14:25.488 They feel that the institution is elitist. 00:14:25.488 --> 00:14:31.683 I'm working to try and break down that sense of that elitism. 00:14:31.683 --> 00:14:35.631 I want to put people in a contemplative frame of mind, 00:14:35.631 --> 00:14:41.788 where they're prepared to be a little bit lost, to explore, 00:14:41.788 --> 00:14:45.610 to see the unfamiliar in the familiar, 00:14:45.610 --> 00:14:50.079 or to try the unknown. 00:14:50.079 --> 00:14:54.420 Because for us, it's all about bringing them face to face 00:14:54.420 --> 00:14:57.345 with great works of art, 00:14:57.345 --> 00:15:01.745 capturing them at that moment of discomfort, 00:15:01.745 --> 00:15:05.241 when the inclination is kind of to reach for your iPhone, 00:15:05.241 --> 00:15:10.644 your Blackberry, but to create a zone 00:15:10.644 --> 00:15:15.750 where their curiosity can expand. 00:15:15.750 --> 00:15:19.314 And whether it's in the expression of a Greek sculpture 00:15:19.314 --> 00:15:21.304 that reminds you of a friend, 00:15:21.304 --> 00:15:25.584 or a dog pooping in the corner of a tapestry, 00:15:25.584 --> 00:15:28.994 or, to bring it back to my tutor Pietro, 00:15:28.994 --> 00:15:31.671 those dancing figures 00:15:31.671 --> 00:15:34.458 who are indeed knocking back the wine, 00:15:34.458 --> 00:15:37.948 and that nude figure in the left foreground. 00:15:37.948 --> 00:15:46.293 Wow. She is a gorgeous embodiment of youthful sexuality. 00:15:46.293 --> 00:15:51.915 In that moment, our scholarship can tell you 00:15:51.915 --> 00:15:55.229 that this is a bacchanal, 00:15:55.229 --> 00:15:58.380 but if we're doing our job right, 00:15:58.380 --> 00:16:02.116 and you've checked the jargon at the front door, 00:16:02.116 --> 00:16:04.984 trust your instinct. 00:16:04.984 --> 00:16:08.156 You know it's an orgy. 00:16:08.156 --> 00:16:11.474 Thank you. (Applause) 00:16:11.474 --> 00:16:16.381 (Applause)