January 2009

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There will be other great masterpieces on view in the Tisch Galleries – including Vermeer’s Study of a Young Woman (Fig. 2) and Rubens’s remarkable portrait of his family, both works donated to the Met by Mr and Mrs Charles Wrightsman - but the exhibition is not concerned exclusively with show-stopping pictures. It will also demonstrate the depth, breadth and rigour of collecting under de Montebello. Between 1977 and 2008, the Met acquired more than 84,000 objects. Entire departments, such as photography (Fig. 3), have come into being. Vast areas of the arts – and, indeed, of the globe – that were previously under-represented in the Met’s holdings have come to newfound prominence. Korean art, once seen mostly as a bridge between the arts of China and Japan, can now be understood in the Met’s East Asian galleries as the manifestation of a rich and distinct culture: the Korean Pensive Bodhisattva (Fig. 6) is among the most beautiful objects in the entire building. The Met’s increased interest in African art has led to an exponential growth in acquisitions – a Nkisi N’Kondi figurine from the Congo is an especially notable recent addition (Fig. 4). Even in an area as central to the traditional story of Western art as baroque painting – once a very weak aspect of the collection due to the historical distaste of the Met’s donors for the period – the museum has made remarkable improvements. Fully 80% of the pictures on permanent display in the baroque galleries were acquired during de Montebello’s tenure.

The show does not represent de Montebello’s personal taste so much as his professional discipline. Although he concedes that his aesthetic reaction to a work of art inevitably plays a role in his thinking, he says that he generally assesses a curator’s acquisition proposals based on three factors: whether the work has validity and importance within the context of its time and culture, whether it represents an essential addition to the collection, and whether it is the best of its kind. ‘That’s what you’re judging’, he said, ‘not whether you personally like it or not.’