THE MET:
A HISTORY OF A MUSEUM AND ITS PEOPLE
Columbia University Press, October 2024.
New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s greatest cultural institutions. Its holdings encompass a vast range—including paintings, sculptures, costume, instruments, and arms and armor—and span millennia, from ancient Egypt and Greece to Islamic art to European Old Masters and modern artists. How did the Met amass this trove, and what do the experiences of the people who bought, restored, catalogued, visited, and watched over these works tell us about the museum? To find out about launch events, click here.
MY MET
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In the summer, when I was supposed to escape the baking city for day camp, I would make sure to arrive late at the corner where the camp bus picked children up. I would then spend the day at the Met instead. Like all young visitors, I imagined what it would be like to sleep in one of the beds in the Wrightsman Galleries. I was particularly fond of the Meissen figurines in the Jack and Belle Linsky Galleries. The Met gave me a strong grounding in the history of human creativity, one I have drawn on ever since.
Writing the history of the Met has given me the chance to pay tribute, but also question some things I did not think about much during these early visits: the culture of deference towards oligarch benefactors, the role of the guards, the somewhat disjointed displays of contemporary art, and much besides.
The Met's focus on people rather than objects will puzzle some readers, who may expect something more celebratory and less critical. For those who have called for an end to the whole idea of a Universal Survey Museum, my critique will seem half a loaf. As discussions around museums become almost as starkly polarized as discussions around other matters, I felt it was important to aim for a middle course, one that provokes both the Met's most ardent admirers and its would-be gravediggers.
THE LADIES LUNCH CLUB
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At that time there were few places in the streets around the Met where one could eat. This was long before the Nectar Cafe on 82nd and Madison. The Secretary of the Met, Henry Kent, agreed to give women staff the use of several rooms on the ground floor, a space where they could prepare food and eat together.
When I asked to view the guest book of the Ladies Lunch Club I was not expecting it to become the focus of my chapter on women curators. At best, I hoped that it might provide names that I could then run through census records, capturing individuals who might not otherwise have left traces behind.
I was not prepared for the many satirical sketches that appeared alongside the names, sketches all guests were expected to contribute. At the Ladies Lunch Club the women were the hosts, not the guests. Several of the sketches commented on questions surrounding gender. Others, such as this sketch of Kent, provided an outlet for colleagues to skewer (quite literally, in this case), colleagues they viewed as out of touch.
REVIEWS
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“As well researched and illustrated as it is written, Conlin’s ‘The Met’ offers a rich, incisive, original, and highly entertaining account of the evolution of America’s most famous museum.”
Andrew McClellan, author of The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao
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“Conlin has written a remarkably wide - ranging, thought - provoking, and scholarly history of the Metropolitan Museum from a variety of intellectual perspectives, including examination of those who have visited it, paid for it, and run it — directors, staff, educators, trustees, and museum attendants.”
Charles Saumarez Smith, former director of the National Gallery, London
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“A tour de force of original research and critical insight, Jonathan Conlin’s The Met is a fascinating study, a must read for anyone interested in the multifaceted history of the United States’ premier art museum.”
Alan Wallach, author of Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on the Art Museum in the United States