The Eye of Philippe de Montebello: Let's Go to the Audio Tape

Philippe de Montebello, addressing the press at his eponymous exhibition.

There's no point quarreling with the organizing principle behind the Metropolitan Museum's The Philippe de Montebello Years, the tribute exhibition honoring its long-time director.

Arranging by order of acquisition some 300 objects acquired on Philippe's watch by the museum's 17 curatorial departments may leave some careening visitors with a sense of art-historical whiplash. But for staffers and Met Museumologists like me, who have lived through this history, it's a nostalgic trip, with memories triggered as much by the names of illustrious donors---Linsky, Wrightsman, Annenberg, to name a few---as by the array of many familiar (and sometimes unfamiliar) objects.

What was missing, for me, was a more rounded sense of de Montebello's major accomplishments and lasting contributions, including the vast expansion of gallery space and the unerring focus on quality and scholarship, in exhibitions as well as acquisitions.

Taking the show on its own terms, I would have liked it to have provided a greater sense of the interaction between the director and curators in vetting potential acquisitions. There's a hint of that on a few of the object labels (particularly the one for an American quilt in the show---not an easy "yes" for Philippe). But there's a lot more personal flavor on the audio tour, which features director-curator conversations. Particularly interesting are Philippe's earnest struggles to be fair towards some types of art that he instinctively finds off-putting, if not repellent.

We learn, for example, that he generally dislikes Tibetan painting ("rigid pictures with very set iconographic programs") and some German Expressionist art ("very gross" and "almost caricatural" depictions of prostitution), but he did endorse acquisitions of somewhat atypical works in each field: a very early (12th or 13th century) Tibetan painting, which Philippe felt showed more delicacy than later works (which, to his mind, are the "repetitive last exhalations of a dying style"); and a German Expressionist portrait that curator Sabine Rewald called, "one of the more benign pictures of Otto Dix":


Otto Dix, "The Businessman Max Roesberg, Dresden," 1922

As for the aforementioned American quilt, Philippe told American decorative arts curator Amelia Peck:

I haven't changed that much of my mind on quilts, but you are persuasive and I recognize as a professional that it is very important, if you have under your charge a huge museum in which 5,000 years of art from all continents are represented, that not everything can appeal to one's own taste.

But the conversation I particularly appreciated involved Joan Aruz, head of the ancient Near East department. She said:

I was confronted with an extraordinary opportunity last year, and that was the shocking decision [emphasis added] made by the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo to divest itself of the art of the ancient world. And among the treasures in that collection was one piece that I had had my eye on for quite some time. And I wondered how could I convince the director that this would be a work that we should purchase?

Philippe's rejoinder:

It took a little bit of convincing because, after all, it's really not an endearing object....So I went to the auction house and I stood in front of the object. And must say that its hardly suppressed energy was such that I felt it was going to break itself out of the vitrine. I knew that [given] its rarity and the uniqueness, the ability to acquire it would simply not recur in an age in which the purchase of antiquities is [because of heightened sensitivity about provenance issues] something that is almost relegated to the past.

My photo, below, of the installation of that vitrine-buster, "Striding Horned Demon," Mesopotamia or Iran, ca. 3000 B.C., gives a good sense of the eclecticism of this installation. Behind it is an Egyptian ritual figure, 4th century B.C. Further back, on the right, is the famed Duccio "Madonna and Child," ca. 1295-1300:
 


The irony of this acquisitions-centric tribute is that the ability of museums to acquire major masterpieces has, in fact, greatly diminished during the Philippe de Montebello years. He had publicly acknowledged that fact some time ago, when the museum's annual acquisitions bulletin significantly changed its title from "Notable Acquisitions" to "Recent Acquisitions."

But even this year, some major pieces have enriched the collection, including Domenichino's "The Lamentation," whose arrival went unheralded by the NY Times, but was reported in May by James Gardner in the late, lamented NY Sun. Unlike most of the museum's stellar acquisitions, this old master was acquired by purchase. Money from some 18 different acquisition funds had to be pooled to snare this:


Domenichino, "The Lamentation," 1603, acquired this year

Speaking of which, the website for the Philippe Show not only includes an online catalogue (there will be no hardcopy) of all the objects, but also a chance to help jumpstart the Tom Campbell Years, by making a gift to the Philippe de Montebello Acquisitions Fund.

In these financially troubled times, no fundraising opportunity can be left unexplored.