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The Metropolitan Museum of Art saw its attendance increase, even after it began charging visitors out of the city. (Brett Beyer / The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
NEW YORK – Last year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was in crisis. On June 28, he announced that more people have visited the museum, through its three campuses – the Fifth Avenue main building, the Cloisters and the Met Breuer – than ever before.
In February 2017, Campbell resigned after being informed of an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. His predecessor and former mentor, Philippe de Montebello, later stated that there was "absolutely no way for administrators to predict that this man would basically become a totally different human being the day he became director." ..
Daniel Weiss, hired as president and chief operating officer in 2015, became interim director. In March, faced with budget deficits and a decline in the willingness of visitors to pay the $ 25 voluntary admission fee, the museum imposes mandatory fees on visitors from outside the city (to exclusion of students from New Jersey and Connecticut). successor has been announced. Max Hollein, director and general manager of the San Francisco Art Museums, will share with Weiss the responsibility of leading the institution.
The Washington Post told Weiss about the museum; The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: What is significant about the new attendance figures?
To: This year we have about 7.4 million visitors in three institutions. (Last year it was around 7 million.) What is satisfying about this figure is that it comes from all over the world. We are a New York institution. We are very well supported by the citizens of New York. But we are also a tourist destination for people from all over the United States and around the world.
Q: Has Michelangelo's show artificially increased the numbers for this year?
To: five to ten years, we have seen our presence continue to grow. If we did not have Michelangelo, one of the best exhibits we had, we would have had something else, and instead of 700,000, we would have had 520,000, let's say, and our number of viewers would have been a little better than the last.
Q: Does the decision to impose mandatory admission fees on visitors from outside the city discouraged people from coming?
To: We do not see any decrease in attendance. No. Our numbers, on the contrary, continue to increase. We will have a full year of experience next year. But we already have four months, and what is happening is pretty clear.
Q: Are you worried about the implications of asking New Yorkers to show identity cards to prove that they are New Yorkers? A: We are not worried. An institution of this importance in the world must get funding somewhere: 8.5% of our budget comes from the government. Once we had it out, we told New Yorkers, "We want you to feel welcome, bring your identity card for us to know, but we will not not hurry, we will not give you a hard time. Do not bring an ID card, we'll let you in anyway, and we'll let you pay what you want. "And they have … it's actually an example of something about New York culture that's not always obvious.The people here are generous, they are thoughtful. At first, there were a few people who tested us in. A guy came up with a Yankees cap and he said, "There is my ID card." And we said, "All right, next time, if you want to bring something more tangible, that's fine. "
Q: What's the latest in the modern and contemporary wing?
There's At about five years old, the museum made a full assessment and master plan for all of its facilities.The board of directors and leaders concluded that the highest priority for major projects would be to replace the wing. It is still our highest priority and it was tabled two years ago because of our other challenges. We are in a very different place. We are on the road to a balanced budget next year. We have a very thoughtful long-term financial plan. And we are thinking again about capital projects. We look at the variations of what we did two years ago, working with the same architect.
Q: Why is the modern and the contemporary your priority? New York already has many large institutions dedicated to modern and contemporary art. Why do you not do, for example, the Asian galleries, in the same spirit as the Islamic galleries, which were made so beautifully and inexpensively a few years ago?
To: We do not pursue the Guggenheim or the Modern or the Whitney and trying to be like them. But it is very important for the Met to collect, study and exhibit the art of our time, as we have always done. We collected Impressionist art when it was contemporary art. If we do not, we would look more like a mausoleum than a living museum. We do not believe that it is our duty to be a contemporary art house at the cutting edge and at risk. So, how can we participate in contemporary art in a way that is authentic to who we are? We collect the work of artists who have an established reputation and who will be of lasting importance. But the galleries in which this art is exposed are quite inadequate. The South West Wing project is, more than anything else, part of the Met's ongoing project to build facilities that are in line with the standard we have established. This is true of all our collections. It's just their turn.
Q: You are undertaking another big project before that.
A: The galleries of European paintings are about a block of cities worth light sky galleries These sky lights need to be replaced. They were built in the 1930s and had to be replaced when Lyndon Johnson was president. They were not. It's a $ 150 million project. We do not do the modern wing until it is taken care of. It's less sexy, but it's important.
Q: Why did the Met have financial trouble?
To: There were three factors. One was that we were doing too much. We had a lot of ambitious activities, including digital, and we did not prioritize as we should have done. The second was that we did not support our maintenance and our deferred infrastructure as we had to. The third was that we have all these revenue generating activities at the Met – restaurants, retail stores, admission policy, membership – which were underperforming. We thought that they could all make more money for the museum if we managed them a little differently. So you put it all together and you get a little bit of a perfect storm. We thought we had to tackle all of this head on. And we did it
Q: How are you going to make the new power-sharing agreement work with Max Hollein?
To: We will interact with each other every day. Max oversees all programmatic activity, acquisitions, collections, scholarships, conservation. I supervise all the administrative work and lead the installation. But because I am an art historian with an interest in content, and because he is a museum director with an MBA and an interest in marketing, budgets and digital technologies, we have excellent intersection points. I have someone with whom I can go and say, "I have a problem, help me understand that." Where we can get in trouble is if we consider ourselves competitors. We spend a lot of time talking about it. I would not have wanted to hire someone so strong if I was afraid of having a strong partner. Max is a strong partner. That's what we were looking for
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