Hope & Dread Extra: Max Hollein
Hope & Dread Extra: Max Hollein brings you some highlights from our interview with the Marina Kellen French Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who talks about his vision for the museum.
Hope & Dread Extra is a series of short, sharp bonus episodes featuring your season favorites from Hope & Dread. Our guests were brimming with additional ideas and extra insights that we just didn’t have room for within the documentary series. But we didn’t want to leave them on the cutting room floor. Join hosts Charlotte Burns and Allan Schwartzman for new Hope & Dread Extra every Tuesday and Thursday.
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Transcript:
Charlotte Burns:
This is Hope & Dread Extra. I’m Charlotte Burns.
Allan Schwartzman:
And I’m Allan Schwartzman.
Charlotte Burns:
Hope & Dread was a program about the tectonic shifts in power in art. We’ve heard from people who are making change and from people who are resisting change.
Our guests were brimming with ideas and off-topic thoughts that we just didn’t have room for within the documentary series. But we didn’t want to leave them on the cutting-room floor. So now, we’re bringing you a set of short, sharp bonus episodes featuring some of your season favorites, which we’ll be dropping twice a week.
In this episode, we’re bringing you more from Max Hollein, the [Marina Kellen French] Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Museums are on the frontline of democracy–so we asked Max about the role of the institution today.
Max Hollein:
It's clear that the institution means different things to different people.
We do so many things that are not directly connected to a museum visit. We are, of course, an archive and a repository for the cultural heritage of the world. We are basically a university with probably the biggest faculty of art historians in the country in one place.
And to a certain extent, we also act as some kind of foreign cultural ministry with all the different activities that we do around the world, given not only our expertise, but our involvement to collections that we house. Many people don't know that we still run excavation sites in other countries. Many people don't know that we run a fellowship program for Indian conservatives in India. We are doing rescue missions in areas like Syria and others for endangered cultural heritage.
Charlotte Burns:
A few years ago, actually, I was in Hong Kong and I bumped into a museum director and he said, "Charlotte, nobody wants to be a museum director anymore. It's like politics, we're only attracting the worst people who are coming into it for the worst reasons, or who just can do it because they already have the money not to bother." How true do you think that is of your job?
Max Hollein:
Well, let me first say that I'm very happy to be a museum director and I'm very happy to be the director of the Met. But it is indeed, of course, challenging, and it's complex, but there comes also with the importance of that institution and the role that it plays.
The whole conversation about values, about our society, about how we come together, how we convene, how we show our culture, how we respect and represent various cultures, is being negotiated and expressed in institutions like ours. And that's a really interesting and exciting way of doing it, but it is, for sure, very complex.
I would be very nervous if we are living in this kind of time and nobody cares what museums are doing and you drop it so easy because nobody anyway cares. That would be a real problem, actually.
Charlotte Burns:
Do you think that that's difficult for museums because they are rooted in the past; their structure comes from everything that they've always been, that's what you build upon if you're an institution. And obviously leadership and the boards are of certain generations. Do you think that is part of the problem with the clashes and the misunderstandings?
Max Hollein:
First of all, museums are, by definition, conservative institutions. And in a sense, the idea that basically you have to continue to not only evolve but actually to question yourself is important for an institution—but it sometimes is a complex and sometimes even cumbersome process. And I think many of the things that you just mentioned, of course they're not just about museums, it's just where we are in society. And it's also not unique just for our moment in time. You see that happening in different incarnations, of course, throughout the 20th-century and maybe also the 19th-century. It has to do with technological innovation; it has to do with changes in society.
I think a lot of what we're experiencing now is, rightly so, is basically the result of capitalism and the spread of wealth going farther and farther away. And all of these factors play a role in that. People often ask me right now: "So what is the biggest impact the pandemic had on the institution?" And I answer to that, because of the pandemic and everything that happened during that time, some of it is of course connected to the pandemic, some of it basically the pandemic has been an accelerator of things we already were already relevant, it basically means the institution became a bit more insecure.
And that level of insecurity in the sense that we had a refreshed tendency to question ourselves and to question not only what we are doing but how… that allowed us a flexibility and an openness that probably wasn't there before on that level.
So honestly also for me, coming in, I feel we've been able to do and implement a lot more of the plans that we had when I came in the last year and a half than I was able to do at the beginning. Basically the institution became a bit more flexible, more open, more receptive, for sometimes it's kind of a renovation, sometimes it's kind of completely reconfiguration, sometimes it's just an evolution. More importantly, often sometimes it's also a reckoning; an acceptance that we not only, we did not only not do the right thing there but we actually failed. And that's important, as well.
Institutions like ours have a tendency to feel that everything that we do is excellent and that basically is a protective shield. But once you question that idea of excellence and what it really means, and you want to be excellent but actually who defines that and what is being defined? Then the conversation becomes more challenging and interesting.
Charlotte Burns:
So you mentioned there capitalism, and that brings us to funding structures, and obviously American institutions have always been majority private funded. But the massive inequality that we’ve seen in wealth distribution over the past generation, the kind of pay-to-play model becomes a bit more fraught. And so there are lots of calls for more diversity on boards, for different thinking. How do you sit with that and how do you also think about, as an institution, taking that onboard? The idea that maybe the connective tissue between the wealth of the board and the broader society that it's sort of aiming to represent could be a bit better, a little more meaty?
Max Hollein:
Well, you see, and it's clearly also in America, I think, happening on an escalated scale than in places you've seen during the pandemic and a growth in wealth in certain areas that was extraordinary compared to the challenge and the suffering experienced somewhere else.
You have in the US, a system of capitalism that basically on the one hand supports that. On the other hand, there is a clear understanding but basically a social agreement about philanthropy being the basis for a whole number of offerings to society. And it's not only arts and culture misused but it's also of course hospitals and education and many other levels.
What we need to make sure is that not only that we show the relevance of our institution and how it needs to be supported, but actually also that that support is not preconditioned in a sense that our institution should only go in that direction or it narrows our development in a time where we actually have to expand.
I don't see that happening, I don't see that risk. Right now, I think that there is an enormous level of both support and willingness to do that. But of course we work and we operate in a somewhat privileged position as a major institution here in New York and an institution that also is carried through global support, actually, from other donors and philanthropists all around the world.
It might be very different if you are a cultural institution in a smaller city somewhere else in the US, and that might be a different conversation. But we still operate in a certain way, in a fairly privileged environment, so I could not basically pretend that we cover all realities of life in all of our different structures. And it's clearly something that even you and I, we probably don't sometimes even know about or are aware of some of the struggles that others have, even though we actually are in touch with them because we live on a different level in the context of income, or whatever. So we have empathy, we also understand some of the complexities, but if you grew up differently, or if you have this or that background.
For us to be able to not only have that diversity on staff as well as on the board, but actual to have that diversity being able to be experienced is crucial. I don’t want to delegate this to art and artists but I think they play an important role in that as well. And in a certain way we have a very important conduit there, and as well as a platform that can address some of these issues.
Charlotte Burns:
I agree with that, but I also then would have to come back to things like the data study where we see that overall, as an institutional trend, both collecting of work by women and work by African-American artists, according to the studies we did, were around a fifth of what they ought be if you look to the demographics of America. And that, with women, there'd been no progress, this peaked in 2009. So yes, we can rely on the artists for their vision, but what if the artists are also representing the problem and we're just seeing artists from a narrow walk of life being represented?
Max Hollein:
I see that and I think you on the one hand see the efforts and the priorities and the strategy. On the other hand it's clear; a museum is always kind of connected to a past. So just the sheer fact that bequests that we get now, the collections that are being gifted to us now, are more often than not, they were assembled 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, right?
The endowments that we have right now and how they've been structured and how they've been restricted for what they must only be used, basically you also bake a certain level of history into the institution that you only can gradually change. So in a certain way, we are certainly not the quickest adapter, if you look into percentage. But it's kind of a longer… you always have this delay that's baked into the whole kind of system of our institution. So you would need to see that in this broader context.
On the other hand I think you will see all the activity and the effort and also the priorities that have been set in the last year, in the last decade, and kind of how that plays out.
Percentage wise, in total, at the Met, we will never get to a satisfactory number in many areas in just the question of works by women compared to men, but in that sense we need to make that also part of our narrative and our history, why that is and where we go from there.
Charlotte Burns:
Is there a responsibility, do you think, to reconsider gifts?
Max Hollein:
Absolutely. You would be surprised how often we turn down a proposed gift. I think our priorities in regard to our acquisition policies are very clear and also very, very directed. So it's not as if we are just walking around and seeing whatever we see we like or as being awful to us makes it’s way into the museum, right? That's not how it works, of course. But there is a certain level of history, executes a certain filter. And let's take this almost to a broader context.
If a culture is extinguished by another culture, it's harder to find out the facts of that extinguished culture. The representation that you have in a museum also in a certain way represents that history, that biased history, also that flawed history, or levels of inequity, et cetera. And that's something that you can form in a different way and you can improve, but the more honest thing sometimes is to kind of, yes, you can improve that, but actually we also need to be honest why it is and where that's coming from and why it will always be that way.
Charlotte Burns:
The show's called Hope & Dread. When you look ahead, do you feel hopeful, do you feel dreadful? How do you feel about culture as you look to the future?
Max Hollein:
I'm a total optimist by nature. I think hope is part of the human condition, but I would even say it's more positive than that. I think we are right now at a moment where we just overcame a monumental global crisis and we will see the effects of it for many more years; some of them substantial and very complicated and negative.
On the other hand, it's only our own energy, positive thinking, and our empathy, and our way of working together, how we can move forward. And museums, and also in that sense the museum director, would play an important role in that.
Charlotte Burns:
For more from Max, tune into episode four of Hope & Dread, “Burning Down The House?”, episode five, “Infernal Affairs” and six “Take Me To Your Leader”.
Listen to Hope & Dread: Extra every Tuesday and Thursday and subscribe wherever it is you find your podcasts.
Hope & Dread is brought to you by Art&, the new editorial platform created by Schwartzman&.
The executive producer is Allan Schwartzman, who co-hosts the show together with me, Charlotte Burns of Studio Burns, which produces the series.
Robert Bound is our associate editor.
Holly Fisher mixes and edits the sound.
Additional research has been provided by Julia Hernandez.
And our theme music by the inimitable Philip Glass.
