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| Art
and eloquence: Philippe De Montebello. |
Why Art?
An
audible, collective ache rose from the audience and settled
over the Sterling and Francis Clark Art Institute’s auditorium
with the hollow silence of loss. Less than five minutes into
Philippe De Montebello’s lecture, “Museums, Why Should We
Care?” the Metropolitan Museum of Art director had
proven his point. Art matters.
As he spoke of the instinctive but difficult to articulate
sense that art and art museums are important, a slide exploded
onto the screen behind him—snapped at the instant of the 2001
bombing of the Bamiyan Buddhas. The destruction of the sacred
cliff carvings outside Kabul, Afganistan, caused a global
outcry that still resonated seven years later in a Massachusetts
auditorium. According to De Montebello, this deep and sweeping
reaction was the “most evident testimony that people should,
and in fact did, care,” and became the clarifying touchstone
in his quest to express the importance of art.
“Something
that somehow was thought to belong to us all had been lost.
. . . From mankind’s cultural family tree, a major limb had
been sawn off,” mourned Montebello. “The fact is, on the branches
of that tree, in the rooms of our museums—the ultimate cultural
family tree—what are preserved are the world’s civilizations
through works of art . . . things that embody and express,
with graphic force, the deepest aspirations of a time and
place, and are, as a result, direct and primary evidence for
the study and understanding of mankind.”
In turn, museums are the vaults that hold these precious treasures,
the places where the art and artifacts of our cultural history
are studied, preserved and displayed. “Museums in a sense
are the memory of mankind,” said Montebello. “And memory,
as we know, is very closely linked to identity, individually
and communally.”
He flipped through slides of magnificent and varied works,
these relics of memory, with easy sophistication, undeniable
passion, humor and consequence. His arguments were poignant,
particularly in the current and dangerous climate of cultural
primacy. “The art museum,” said De Montebello, “plays a great
role in teaching us, where cultural matters are concerned,
a certain degree of humility.” He explored art as the distinct
proof of our cultural “interweavedness,” across time, faith
and political boundaries. An ivory carving from medieval Spain,
depicting a Christian scene replete with classic Muslim symbols
and lined in Islamic silk, is a tangible reminder to perceive
connection, not disparity.
Slide after slide, infused with De Montebello’s wisdom and
experience, he explored the evocative, the exquisite, the
challenging, the commonalities of vision, the uniqueness of
human response. And with each slide, De Montebello proved
his message further, “Who made these things?” he asked. And
his unifying and hopeful answer was: “We did. Our species
did. Isn’t that reason enough to renew our faith in human
kind?”
“Wars,
massacres, nature’s indiscriminant destructive forces occurred
throughout recorded history, and always will. And through
it all, men and women of genius have managed to give us their
vision of the moment at the highest level of inspiration.”
Art stands, said De Montebello, as a testament to “mankind’s
awe-inspiring ability, time and again, to surpass itself.”
Listening to De Montebello, one could not resist being drawn
to his compelling passion, his final message—the world’s great
art is a record of human “excellence, inspiration, transcendence,
genius. And these are the qualities that tip the scales in
favor of man.”
The longest serving director in the history of the Met, De
Montebello recently announced his retirement. The lecture
was a rare gift for the 350-strong, art-loving audience. Was
he preaching to the choir? Perhaps. But inspire the choir,
and they’ll go out and spread the word: Art matters. Art is
the story of us all.
—Kathryn
Lange
klange@metroland.net
This lecture was the first in a series at the Clark, which
will bring well-known directors of major museums to the institute
to present free public talks.
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