Weaving narratives in museum galleries
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0:01 - 0:05When I was considering a career in the art world,
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0:05 - 0:08I took a course in London,
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0:08 - 0:13and one of my supervisors was this irascible Italian
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0:13 - 0:17called Pietro, who drank too much,
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0:17 - 0:22smoked too much and swore much too much.
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0:22 - 0:25But he was a passionate teacher,
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0:25 - 0:28and I remember one of our earlier classes with him,
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0:28 - 0:31he was projecting images on the wall,
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0:31 - 0:33asking us to think about them,
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0:33 - 0:36and he put up an image of a painting.
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0:36 - 0:40It was a landscape with figures, semi-dressed,
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0:40 - 0:42drinking wine. There was a nude woman
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0:42 - 0:46in the lower foreground, and on the hillside in the back,
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0:46 - 0:50there was a figure of the mythological god Bacchus,
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0:50 - 0:52and he said, "What is this?"
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0:52 - 0:56And I -- no one else did, so I put up my hand, and I said,
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0:56 - 0:59"It's a Bacchanal by Titian."
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0:59 - 1:02He said, "It's a what?"
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1:02 - 1:03I thought maybe I'd pronounced it wrong.
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1:03 - 1:07"It's a Bacchanal by Titian."
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1:07 - 1:10He said, "It's a what?"
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1:10 - 1:13I said, "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." (Laughter)
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1:13 - 1:16He said, "You boneless bookworm!
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1:16 - 1:19It's a fucking orgy!"
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1:19 - 1:22(Laughter)
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1:22 - 1:24As I said, he swore too much.
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1:24 - 1:28There was an important lesson for me in that.
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1:28 - 1:32Pietro was suspicious of formal art training,
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1:32 - 1:36art history training, because he feared
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1:36 - 1:39that it filled people up with jargon, and then they just
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1:39 - 1:44classified things rather than looking at them,
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1:44 - 1:49and he wanted to remind us that all art was once contemporary,
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1:49 - 1:52and he wanted us to use our eyes,
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1:52 - 1:55and he was especially evangelical about this message,
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1:55 - 1:58because he was losing his sight.
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1:58 - 2:02He wanted us to look and ask basic questions of objects.
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2:02 - 2:06What is it? How is it made? Why was it made?
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2:06 - 2:08How is it used?
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2:08 - 2:11And these were important lessons to me when
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2:11 - 2:14I subsequently became a professional art historian.
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2:14 - 2:19My kind of eureka moment came a few years later,
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2:19 - 2:24when I was studying the art of the courts of Northern Europe,
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2:24 - 2:27and of course it was very much discussed in terms of
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2:27 - 2:30the paintings and the sculptures
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2:30 - 2:33and the architecture of the day.
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2:33 - 2:37But as I began to read historical documents
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2:37 - 2:40and contemporary descriptions,
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2:40 - 2:43I found there was a kind of a missing component,
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2:43 - 2:48for everywhere I came across descriptions of tapestries.
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2:48 - 2:52Tapestries were ubiquitous between the Middle Ages
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2:52 - 2:55and, really, well into the 18th century,
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2:55 - 2:58and it was pretty apparent why.
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2:58 - 3:01Tapestries were portable. You could roll them up,
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3:01 - 3:03send them ahead of you, and in the time
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3:03 - 3:07it took to hang them up, you could transform a cold,
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3:07 - 3:11dank interior into a richly colored setting.
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3:11 - 3:16Tapestries effectively provided a vast canvas
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3:16 - 3:20on which the patrons of the day could depict the heroes
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3:20 - 3:22with whom they wanted to be associated,
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3:22 - 3:24or even themselves,
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3:24 - 3:30and in addition to that, tapestries were hugely expensive.
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3:30 - 3:33They required scores of highly skilled weavers
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3:33 - 3:36working over extended periods of time
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3:36 - 3:40with very expensive materials -- the wools, the silks,
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3:40 - 3:43even gold and silver thread.
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3:43 - 3:48So, all in all, in an age when the visual image
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3:48 - 3:53of any kind was rare, tapestries were an incredibly potent
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3:53 - 3:57form of propaganda.
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3:57 - 4:01Well, I became a tapestry historian.
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4:01 - 4:04In due course, I ended up as a curator
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4:04 - 4:07at the Metropolitan Museum, because I saw the Met
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4:07 - 4:11as one of the few places where I could organize
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4:11 - 4:14really big exhibitions about the subject
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4:14 - 4:18I cared so passionately about.
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4:18 - 4:22And in about 1997, the then-director Philippe de Montebello
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4:22 - 4:25gave me the go-ahead to organize an exhibition
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4:25 - 4:31for 2002. We normally have these very long lead-in times.
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4:31 - 4:35It wasn't straightforward. It's no longer a question
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4:35 - 4:38of chucking a tapestry in the back of a car.
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4:38 - 4:41They have to be wound on huge rollers,
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4:41 - 4:45shipped in oversized freighters.
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4:45 - 4:48Some of them are so big we had, to get them into the museum,
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4:48 - 4:53we had to take them up the great steps at the front.
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4:53 - 4:57We thought very hard about how to present this
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4:57 - 5:01unknown subject to a modern audience:
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5:01 - 5:04the dark colors to set off the colors that remained
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5:04 - 5:07in objects that were often faded;
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5:07 - 5:11the placing of lights to bring out the silk and the gold thread;
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5:11 - 5:12the labeling.
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5:12 - 5:15You know, we live in an age where we are so used
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5:15 - 5:18to television images and photographs,
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5:18 - 5:23a one-hit image. These were big, complex things,
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5:23 - 5:28almost like cartoons with multiple narratives.
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5:28 - 5:31We had to draw our audience in, get them to slow down,
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5:31 - 5:34to explore the objects.
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5:34 - 5:38There was a lot of skepticism. On the opening night,
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5:38 - 5:41I overheard one of the senior members of staff saying,
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5:41 - 5:45"This is going to be a bomb."
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5:45 - 5:49But in reality, in the course of the coming weeks and months,
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5:49 - 5:54hundreds of thousands of people came to see the show.
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5:54 - 5:59The exhibition was designed to be an experience,
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5:59 - 6:02and tapestries are hard to reproduce in photographs.
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6:02 - 6:05So I want you to use your imaginations,
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6:05 - 6:09thinking of these wall-high objects,
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6:09 - 6:11some of them 10 meters wide,
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6:11 - 6:16depicting lavish court scenes with courtiers and dandies
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6:16 - 6:20who would look quite at home in the pages of the fashion press today,
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6:20 - 6:25thick woods with hunters crashing through the undergrowth
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6:25 - 6:28in pursuit of wild boars and deer,
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6:28 - 6:34violent battles with scenes of fear and heroism.
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6:34 - 6:38I remember taking my son's school class. He was eight at the time,
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6:38 - 6:42and all the little boys, they kind of -- you know, they were little boys,
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6:42 - 6:44and then the thing that caught their attention
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6:44 - 6:48was in one of the hunting scenes there was a dog
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6:48 - 6:50pooping in the foreground — (Laughter) —
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6:50 - 6:54kind of an in-your-face joke by the artist.
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6:54 - 6:56And you can just imagine them.
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6:56 - 7:00But it brought it alive to them. I think they suddenly saw
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7:00 - 7:03that these weren't just old faded tapestries.
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7:03 - 7:07These were images of the world in the past,
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7:07 - 7:10and that it was the same for our audience.
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7:10 - 7:16And for me as a curator, I felt proud. I felt I'd shifted the needle a little.
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7:16 - 7:19Through this experience that could only be created
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7:19 - 7:23in a museum, I'd opened up the eyes of my audience --
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7:23 - 7:27historians, artists, press, the general public --
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7:27 - 7:32to the beauty of this lost medium.
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7:32 - 7:35A few years later, I was invited to be the director
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7:35 - 7:39of the museum, and after I got over that --
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7:39 - 7:44"Who, me? The tapestry geek? I don't wear a tie!" --
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7:44 - 7:49I realized the fact: I believe passionately in that
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7:49 - 7:53curated museum experience.
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7:53 - 7:56We live in an age of ubiquitous information,
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7:56 - 8:00and sort of "just add water" expertise,
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8:00 - 8:04but there's nothing that compares with the presentation
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8:04 - 8:08of significant objects in a well-told narrative,
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8:08 - 8:13what the curator does, the interpretation of a complex,
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8:13 - 8:18esoteric subject, in a way that retains the integrity
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8:18 - 8:21of the subject, that makes it -- unpacks it
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8:21 - 8:23for a general audience.
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8:23 - 8:27And that, to me, today, is now the challenge and the fun
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8:27 - 8:32of my job, supporting the vision of my curators,
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8:32 - 8:35whether it's an exhibition of Samurai swords,
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8:35 - 8:40early Byzantine artifacts, Renaissance portraits,
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8:40 - 8:43or the show we heard mentioned earlier,
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8:43 - 8:46the McQueen show, with which we enjoyed
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8:46 - 8:49so much success last summer.
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8:49 - 8:52That was an interesting case.
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8:52 - 8:57In the late spring, early summer of 2010, shortly after
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8:57 - 9:00McQueen's suicide,
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9:00 - 9:04our curator of costume, Andrew Bolton, came to see me,
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9:04 - 9:07and said, "I've been thinking of doing a show on McQueen,
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9:07 - 9:12and now is the moment. We have to, we have to do it fast."
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9:12 - 9:16It wasn't easy. McQueen had worked throughout his career
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9:16 - 9:20with a small team of designers and managers
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9:20 - 9:24who were very protective of his legacy,
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9:24 - 9:26but Andrew went to London and worked with them
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9:26 - 9:30over the summer and won their confidence, and that of
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9:30 - 9:34the designers who created his amazing fashion shows,
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9:34 - 9:38which were works of performance art in their own right,
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9:38 - 9:41and we proceeded to do something at the museum,
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9:41 - 9:43I think, we've never done before.
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9:43 - 9:46It wasn't just your standard installation.
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9:46 - 9:50In fact, we ripped down the galleries to recreate
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9:50 - 9:56entirely different settings, a recreation of his first studio,
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9:56 - 9:58a hall of mirrors,
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9:58 - 10:01a curiosity box,
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10:01 - 10:04a sunken ship, a burned-out interior,
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10:04 - 10:08with videos and soundtracks that ranged from
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10:08 - 10:11operatic arias to pigs fornicating.
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10:11 - 10:16And in this extraordinary setting, the costumes
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10:16 - 10:22were like actors and actresses, or living sculptures.
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10:22 - 10:24It could have been a train wreck.
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10:24 - 10:28It could have looked like shop windows on Fifth Avenue
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10:28 - 10:32at Christmas, but because of the way that Andrew
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10:32 - 10:36connected with the McQueen team, he was channeling
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10:36 - 10:39the rawness and the brilliance of McQueen,
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10:39 - 10:42and the show was quite transcendant,
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10:42 - 10:45and it became a phenomenon in its own right.
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10:45 - 10:48By the end of the show, we had people queuing
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10:48 - 10:51for four or five hours to get into the show,
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10:51 - 10:54but no one really complained.
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10:54 - 10:57I heard over and over again, "Wow, that was worth it.
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10:57 - 11:01It was a such a visceral, emotive experience."
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11:01 - 11:05Now, I've described two very immersive exhibitions,
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11:05 - 11:10but I also believe that collections, individual objects,
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11:10 - 11:13can also have that same power.
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11:13 - 11:17The Met was set up not as a museum of American art,
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11:17 - 11:20but of an encyclopedic museum,
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11:20 - 11:25and today, 140 years later, that vision
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11:25 - 11:28is as prescient as ever,
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11:28 - 11:31because, of course, we live in a world of crisis,
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11:31 - 11:34of challenge, and we're exposed to it
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11:34 - 11:37through the 24/7 newsreels.
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11:37 - 11:42It's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations,
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11:42 - 11:46the cultures, that we're seeing the current manifestation of.
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11:46 - 11:51Whether it's Libya, Egypt, Syria,
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11:51 - 11:53it's in our galleries that we can explain
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11:53 - 11:55and give greater understanding.
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11:55 - 11:59I mean, our new Islamic galleries are a case in point,
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11:59 - 12:05opened 10 years, almost to the week, after 9/11.
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12:05 - 12:09I think for most Americans, knowledge of the Islamic world
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12:09 - 12:13was pretty slight before 9/11, and then it was thrust upon us
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12:13 - 12:17in one of America's darkest hours,
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12:17 - 12:20and the perception was through the polarization
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12:20 - 12:22of that terrible event.
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12:22 - 12:26Now, in our galleries, we show 14 centuries
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12:26 - 12:31of the development of different Islamic cultures
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12:31 - 12:34across a vast geographic spread,
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12:34 - 12:38and, again, hundreds of thousands of people have come
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12:38 - 12:43to see these galleries since they opened last October.
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12:43 - 12:50I'm often asked, "Is digital media replacing the museum?"
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12:50 - 12:54and I think those numbers are a resounding rejection
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12:54 - 12:57of that notion. I mean, don't get me wrong,
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12:57 - 13:01I'm a huge advocate of the Web.
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13:01 - 13:04It gives us a way of reaching out to audiences
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13:04 - 13:09around the globe, but nothing replaces the authenticity
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13:09 - 13:16of the object presented with passionate scholarship.
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13:16 - 13:21Bringing people face to face with our objects
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13:21 - 13:24is a way of bringing them face to face with people
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13:24 - 13:29across time, across space, whose lives may have been
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13:29 - 13:33very different to our own, but who, like us,
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13:33 - 13:38had hopes and dreams, frustrations and achievements
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13:38 - 13:41in their lives. And I think this is a process
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13:41 - 13:45that helps us better understand ourselves,
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13:45 - 13:51helps us make better decisions about where we're going.
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13:51 - 13:56The Great Hall at the Met is one of the great portals of the world,
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13:56 - 14:00awe-inspiring, like a medieval cathedral.
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14:00 - 14:02From there, you can walk in any direction
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14:02 - 14:06to almost any culture.
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14:06 - 14:08I frequently go out into the hall and the galleries
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14:08 - 14:11and I watch our visitors coming in.
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14:11 - 14:15Some of them are comfortable. They feel at home.
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14:15 - 14:18They know what they're looking for.
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14:18 - 14:22Others are very uneasy. It's an intimidating place.
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14:22 - 14:25They feel that the institution is elitist.
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14:25 - 14:32I'm working to try and break down that sense of that elitism.
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14:32 - 14:36I want to put people in a contemplative frame of mind,
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14:36 - 14:42where they're prepared to be a little bit lost, to explore,
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14:42 - 14:46to see the unfamiliar in the familiar,
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14:46 - 14:50or to try the unknown.
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14:50 - 14:54Because for us, it's all about bringing them face to face
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14:54 - 14:57with great works of art,
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14:57 - 15:02capturing them at that moment of discomfort,
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15:02 - 15:05when the inclination is kind of to reach for your iPhone,
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15:05 - 15:11your Blackberry, but to create a zone
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15:11 - 15:16where their curiosity can expand.
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15:16 - 15:19And whether it's in the expression of a Greek sculpture
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15:19 - 15:21that reminds you of a friend,
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15:21 - 15:26or a dog pooping in the corner of a tapestry,
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15:26 - 15:29or, to bring it back to my tutor Pietro,
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15:29 - 15:32those dancing figures
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15:32 - 15:34who are indeed knocking back the wine,
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15:34 - 15:38and that nude figure in the left foreground.
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15:38 - 15:46Wow. She is a gorgeous embodiment of youthful sexuality.
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15:46 - 15:52In that moment, our scholarship can tell you
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15:52 - 15:55that this is a bacchanal,
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15:55 - 15:58but if we're doing our job right,
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15:58 - 16:02and you've checked the jargon at the front door,
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16:02 - 16:05trust your instinct.
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16:05 - 16:08You know it's an orgy.
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16:08 - 16:11Thank you. (Applause)
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16:11 - 16:16(Applause)
- Title:
- Weaving narratives in museum galleries
- Speaker:
- Thomas P. Campbell
- Description:
-
As the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Thomas P. Campbell thinks deeply about curating—not just selecting art objects, but placing them in a setting where the public can learn their stories. With glorious images, he shows how his curation philosophy works for displaying medieval tapestries—and for the over-the-top fashion/art of Alexander McQueen. (From The Design Studio session at TED2012, guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell.)
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 16:36
Jenny Zurawell edited English subtitles for Weaving narratives in museum galleries | ||
Jenny Zurawell edited English subtitles for Weaving narratives in museum galleries | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Weaving narratives in museum galleries | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Weaving narratives in museum galleries | ||
Klara VEER edited English subtitles for Weaving narratives in museum galleries | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Weaving narratives in museum galleries | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Weaving narratives in museum galleries | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Weaving narratives in museum galleries |