My Q&A with Philippe de Montebello

Philippe.jpg
Photo by Don Pollard, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum

The following interchanges took place as part of yesterday's press conference, not in Philippe de Montebello's office, where I had conducted a far-ranging interview with him at the beginning of his tenure, for a magazine profile. In the course of the half-hour press briefing, I managed to elicit three very thoughtful answers to questions I posed.

Lee: What would you point to as your proudest accomplishments?

Philippe: After three decades, I don't wish to point to a single thing. The question is difficult to answer because, first, I suffer from a cultural reticence of self, and I find it very difficult to toot my own horn, so to speak. From my point of view, I would say it's the ability to initiate and do any number of programs based on fundamental philosophical principles that include an absolute dedication to excellence, faithfulness to integrity and the courage to maintain institutional authority, by which I do not mean authoritarianism. I think far too many institutions, in a misguided sense of democratic ideal, fail to exercise their authority and tend to do things in a muddle.

Lee: Throughout your career, you've been known as an articulator and defender of museum standards. Can you give a last appraisal of what standards you feel are most in need of defending today? Which ones are in jeopardy? On which ones will you be speaking out in the future?

Philippe: I certainly will be speaking out in the future. I hope and intend that, whatever career I embrace when I leave, it will have something to do with continuing to promulgate the principles that I've fought for in this institution. Standards, principles: I would say the first is the primacy of art. We are not a "museum art." We are an "art museum." Art is first. A great many institutions actually in many ways have reversed the terms and have embraced, as a primary part of their mission, the museum experience, in opposition to the experience of coming to look at a work of art.

Amenities are a very good thing but everything has to be in proportion. The major axis that is followed by the institition has to be its raison d'ĂȘtre, which is the work of art---its collection, its preservation and its presentation and the interpretation of it.

The museum has a very important and very delicate task and curators are people whose influence and importance far exceeds what they themselves believe, because what you select to put in the galleries is an extremely important statement. How what you select is presented and where, [how it is] lit, positioned---all this influences the response of a visitor. So we have a huge responsibility to the authenticity of the work of art, to the authenticity of its historical context---not to use and abuse art for ends that are foreign to it and that meet the needs for instant notoriety, rather than instruction and wonder.

Lee: Will you get back to art historical research and curatorship?

Philippe: No, I can't any more. The discipline of an art historian---research, the truly focused attention on any particular field---is something that's too far away. I've become a generalist. I've become an expert in something else: I've become an expert on museum issues, on museum problems, on the history of museums, on the nature and purpose of museums. I expect what I'll be doing will be more museological than art historical. It would be closer to what I would call high art appreciation than art history.

Answering another questioner, he ended by vowing never to compose his memoirs: "I will not write a book about my experiences at the Met. That I know...although a true one is necessary at this point!

Any takers to write his professional biography?

January 10, 2008 12:41 AM | | Comments (0)

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Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on the Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on January 10, 2008 12:41 AM.

My De Montebello Appraisal for New York Public Radio was the previous entry in this blog.

Slaying the MoMA Monster: Russell to the Rescue is the next entry in this blog.

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