Clare Armistad interviews Max Hollein of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art about dealing with accusations of hoarding while managing an annual budget of $320m without subsidy.
Max Hollein is sitting in his airy fifth-floor office in New York. Through one window is a view of Central Park, through another the rolling roofscape of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which he has led for the past five and a half years. On his office walls are paintings by Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler, Philip Guston and Jackson Pollock. There is also a Chola sculpture from India and the stone head of an Egyptian goddess.
In other circumstances, it might seem trite to open an interview with a tour of interior decor, but this is not any old office: it is a statement of taste and philosophy on behalf of one of America’s grandest cultural institutions. “Obviously, it’s not possible to capture the entire diversity of the collection,” says the museum’s 54-year-old director. “And of course, my own background is a little bit stronger in modern contemporary work. But I wanted to make sure I had a proper reflection of the art in the Met’s holdings.”
The facade of cool confidence that this control hub projects is at odds with the turbulence that many of the world’s great museums have been facing, as their dependence on arguably tainted money is challenged, their holdings scrutinised for any history of criminality, and questions raised about their very existence in the 21st century as self-appointed guardians of world culture...Keep reading on The Guardian.
Max Hollein is sitting in his airy fifth-floor office in New York. Through one window is a view of Central Park, through another the rolling roofscape of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which he has led for the past five and a half years. On his office walls are paintings by Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler, Philip Guston and Jackson Pollock. There is also a Chola sculpture from India and the stone head of an Egyptian goddess.
In other circumstances, it might seem trite to open an interview with a tour of interior decor, but this is not any old office: it is a statement of taste and philosophy on behalf of one of America’s grandest cultural institutions. “Obviously, it’s not possible to capture the entire diversity of the collection,” says the museum’s 54-year-old director. “And of course, my own background is a little bit stronger in modern contemporary work. But I wanted to make sure I had a proper reflection of the art in the Met’s holdings.”
The facade of cool confidence that this control hub projects is at odds with the turbulence that many of the world’s great museums have been facing, as their dependence on arguably tainted money is challenged, their holdings scrutinised for any history of criminality, and questions raised about their very existence in the 21st century as self-appointed guardians of world culture...Keep reading on The Guardian.