The international dimensions of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Abstract

From the first-its charter is dated 13 April 1870-the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) saw that it had a role to play in furthering international understanding. The MMA assumed that it would display a collection of art from many countries and many time periods; but the founders surely did not envisage the highly successful exhibitions which have made it a world-renowned cultural center. The era of the MMA’s participation in the mounting and traveling of large international exhibitions began with an immensely successful show, The Great Age of Fresco, in 1969, and continues to the present time. The Museum presents its programs in the spirit of the conviction that Americans-notoriously hazy in the areas of geography and foreign languages-need to take a deeper, fresher, longer look at other countries, regions and cultures. Its teaching role has been a success: the American public has shown an increasing fascination for international culture. The Metropolitan’s activities center around art, and art is, by its very nature, myriad in form and background. The Museum’s most popular shows in terms of attendance and critical attention have reflected an effort to illustrate art’s diversity in time and space. Treasures of Tutankhamun, The Vatican Collections: The Papacy and Art, The Bronze Age of China, The Splendor of Dresden, Masterpieces of Tapestry from the 14th to the 16th Centuries, From the Land qf the Scythians, Treasures of Early Irish Art, Monet’s Years at Giverny, and Treasures from the Kremlin-to name but a few of the number of international exhibitions offered in the 1970s and 1980s-demonstrate, in the words of Phillippe de Montebello, the Director, ‘an attempt, over a period of years, to present works of art from a wide range of different styles or cultures’. Directors of fine museums recognize that temporary exhibitions need to be balanced by permanent installations. Examples abound at MMA, including the Temple of Dendur, the Gubbio Study, and the Wrightsman Rooms. An exquisite example is the installation, as part of one of the largest comprehensive collections of Islamic art in the world, of a paneled room dating from 1707, from the Nur ad-Din house in Damascus. This room allows the viewer not only to see art objects, but also to glimpse the life of a people, in this case, life in a traditional Syrian home in the Ottoman period. The MMA ‘imports’ many kinds of objects beyond art and antiquities: books, catalogues, slides, photographs and films come from all over the world. It also produces and sends out catalogues-some of which are multilingual-reproductions of art works, slides and other materials. The MMA also ‘imports’ experts. When an exhibition requires the oversight of a curator, and that person is not on the staff, the Museum engages him or her on a temporary basis; often those curators are from abroad. For the exhibition entitled Constable’s England, for example, the Metropolitan needed both paintings and a curator. Graham Reynolds, the noted English art historian, was selected as the guest curator, and through his good offices the