Sex and the Metropolitan: Linda Wolk-Simon Reveals All

Linda Wolk-Simon, curator of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum

At Metropolitan Museum press lunches, I always manage to find someone at my table who's interesting to talk to. That's because everyone who works at the Met is, by definition, interesting. On Monday, I had the good fortune to enjoy an animated conversation with a feisty provocateur whom I'd never previously met at the Met, although she's worked there for 22 years---Linda Wolk-Simon (above), curator of drawings and prints.

Hers was the salacious sensibility behind the most unMet-like section of a very unMet-like upcoming show: Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, Nov. 18-Feb. 16. The museum's press release (not yet online) calls Linda's contribution the "profane" part of the exhibition. The curator, who prefers "erotic" to "profane," proceeded to describe her project to me in unsparingly graphic (but always scholarly) detail.

I now eagerly anticipate a five-foot long rendering of a disembodied penis on a chariot, based on a drawing by Francesco Salviati (whose somewhat more decorous works I had admired at the recent Uffizi show at the Morgan Library and Museum), not to mention depictions of homoeroticism and a Pietro Bertelli "flap print" (below), which flips up to reveal what's underneath a woman's skirt. The Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, flashed us that one during his press-lunch presentation, likening it to Marilyn Monroe's famous billowing-skirt moment in "The Seven Year Itch":



"This shows that Renaissance culture wasn't only about neoplatonism," Wolk-Simon told me. "They had sex and they laughed about it."

But the director, while assuring Wolk-Simon that he was "not a prude," had drawn the line, she said, at a work depicting a woman using a dildo by Marcantonio Raimondi, "one of the greatest printmakers in the history of Western art." Nevertheless, Raimondi's "I Modi" (described by the curator as depicting "people having sex in every pose"), engraved from drawings by Giulio Romano, will be gazed upon by Met visitors this fall. Raimondi was briefly jailed for perpetrating these works and the plates were confiscated and destroyed.

To prove he's REALLY not a prude, Philippe, along with actress Isabella Rossellini, will be reading Italian, French and English Renaissance poetry and dialogue at the Met on the evening of Dec. 9. "It will definitely be X-rated," he assured the squeamish scribes.

I assume that Wolk-Simon's "profane" display may be accompanied by a "Parental Discretion" sign, like that at Sabine Rewald's Glitter and Doom at the Met a year and a half ago. (It's notable that women are the ones going farthest out on a limb to break former Met taboos.) Linda already made the mistake of showing some of her selections to her 13- and 16-year-old, who were scandalized that mom was involved in such a project.

Some credit for the less up-tight Met must also go to curator Gary Tinterow's recent Courbet show, which helped set the stage for impropriety by displaying not only the highly explicit "The Origin of the World" (which I reproduced at the bottom of this post), but also the pornographic photo on which it was likely based. Linda declared that her show is "very much in that spirit."

Andrea Bayer, lead curator for the entire Renaissance show (which also includes sections on "Celebrating Betrothal," "Marriage" and (gulp) "Childbirth"), told me that the first three words of its working title had originally been "Love and Marriage," not "Art and Love." But a marketing survey of Met visitors pegged the Frank Sinatra song title as a turn-off. Who knew that they pretested exhibition titles? Maybe they should just abandon all parental discretion and really go for big box office---"Love, Sex and Porn in Renaissance Italy." THAT would get lots of Google hits and maybe even lure a new audience for the art of the Renaissance!

But enough of this dirty talk: For a more responsible rundown of upcoming Met exhibitions that were discussed at this week's press lunch, I commend you to Patrick Cole's account in Bloomberg.