Metropolitan Musings
Plus ca change. The art world was rocked by a staggering $450,000,000 price scored at auction in November for the “last Leonardo,” and there are increasing news stories about museums being challenged over issues of political correctness and management diversity. These are, to some degree, old stories and both have interesting precedents at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Newyork.
I caught a glimpse of the Leonardo at Christie’s, but the view was obscured by dozens of spectators snapping pictures with their phones before exiting through a side door without direct access to the hundreds of works of art on view in the adjacent galleries. (In this day of the internet, they could surely have gotten a much better image of the painting online, but there would be little proof that they had been there.)
I was reminded of the excitement in 1961 when the Metropolitan Museum broke the silence ordinarily associated with museum acquisitions by proudly placing their newly purchased Rembrandt of Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer on view in the center of the Great Hall.the price of $2.3 million was an extraordinary amount at the time and became headline news. Visitors wishing to glimpse the painting waited in a four-hour line that stretched down the steps and along the Fifth Avenue sidewalk. Once inside, they had a few minutes to contemplate the painting before exiting. Few of them ventured any further into the sacred precincts of the still-hushed environment
of a seemingly forbidden treasure house. Had they been bold enough to penetrate the galleries they might have seen other works by Rembrandt amongst the thousands of other masterworks on view throughout the galleries.art had become a more visible spectacle, something to look at but little more. But all of that was about to change.
The sudden death of the Met’s director James Rorimer five years later catapulted his protégé Thomas Hoving into the spotlight and the transformative role of museum populist. Hoving was a surprising choice in the staid atmosphere of a traditionbound institution. Despite his art historical and curatorial background, his appointment was considered controversial both inside and outside the museum. Having worked at the Cloisters, the Met’s branch devoted to medieval art, he had traded his curatorial credentials for a role as New York City Parks Commissioner under the mayoralty of John Lindsay whose administration was popularly considered the city’s equivalent to the youthful energy of the Kennedy administration in Washington. Hoving was credited with enlivening Central Park with events and encouraging New Yorkers to return to what had become a somewhat desolate and dangerous part of the city.
At the Metropolitan, he reached out to a new generation of tourists and residents, bringing a feeling of accessibility and excitement to the museum. At the same time, he pursued a series of headlinegrabbing acquisitions and exhibitions that introduced the era of the blockbuster. There was a lot on his plate in the early years. Not only was the museum gearing up to celebrate its centennial in 1970, it was undertaking a vast architectural revision and expansion that was planned to unify various wings constructed over the long course of the museum’s history and to flesh out what was described as a citadel of 5,000 years of art. Not surprisingly, in these early years of the youth movement, political protest and drug culture, the museum became something of a target. The museum’s expansion was viewed as both empire-building and an unwanted expansion into Central Park. In fact, there were even proposals to break up the museum and create satellite centers in the five boroughs. Although the Metropolitan was a public institution, it was privately owned and financed.the building had been constructed with private monies but through its placement in the park, its ownership and maintenance resided with the city. Until the renovations of the 1970s, Newyork had only contributed to the maintenance of the structure while providing utilities and the guard’s salaries. In response to criticism of inaccessibility, the museum created an art mobile: an inflatable structure that would bring art engagement to the city’s outlying neighborhoods.the first exhibition, exploring visual language, focused on images of spirals. Amongst other representations, the spirals included a series of fingerprints of celebrities. My own small part in that was the opportunity to go to Shea Stadium to fingerprint the football legend Joe Namath. I had a fellowship at the museum at the time and became a witness to the early years of Hoving’s administration.
The honeymoon was brief and Hoving quickly ran afoul of both the critical community and the citizenry with Harlem on My Mind, the exhibition the Met mounted about the culture and political life of the racially diverse and troubled precinct immediately to the north of New York’s upscale Upper East Side neighborhood. “Politicalizing the Metropolitan Museum” was the banner heading of the column by New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer, which lambasted the exhibition and the future intentions of Tom Hoving. Kramer wrote on January 26, 1969: “Mr. Hoving will learn to improve upon the kind of audiovisual entertainment he has currently mounted in the name of ‘relevance.’ Who knows? In the future he may even learn to refrain from seeking-in, of all places, a catalogue introduction public absolution for his guilt over his privileged childhood, replete with black servants and chauffeured rides to school. In other words, he may become a little less of an amateur and a little more of a professional in his role as a social evangelist. But this will only intensify the question that he has now made paramount for anyone concerned with the politicalization of our museums and the eventual politicalization of our art.we have a right to know, I think, exactly how far Mr. Hoving intends to carry this process, and how large a part of the museum-and of our artistic heritage-he intends to sweep in the path of historical ‘relevance.’” Harlem on My Mind was a photographic testament to the artistic and creative energies that had grown up in the area. It included both creative and documentary images and showcased photography of some under-recognized artists such as Gordon Parks and James Van Der Zee. Its chronological sweep ranged from 1900 to 1968, conveying both the social and cultural dynamism as well as