“Andromache and Astyanax”, by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, “Monsieur de Lavoisier and his wife, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze”, by Jacques-Louis David and “Portrait of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes”, by Marie-Denise Villers, among the European collections (from 1300 to 1800) exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in November 2023. MET MUSEUM
Finally, it is possible to admire the European collections at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The rooms concerned were closed for six years, officially to redo the lighting for 150 million dollars (around 140 million euros), but also to exhibit European art in a new light.
By mixing works from different origins and eras, the director of the museum, the Austrian Max Hollein, 54, seeks to bring Europe out of its ethnocentrism to better ask the question: “What is Europe? »
The visit to the forty-five rooms begins with the collection of paintings by El Greco (1541-1614), the most important outside of Spain, surrounded by Picasso and Cézanne painted three centuries later. There is a room on British art facing America, or another devoted to Spanish art in the empire of Mexico and Peru: born in Europe, made in the New World. Through the galleries, the passages from one culture to another, from one era to the next, become more blurred, overlapping. “The idea that there are strong dividing lines between different cultures and different countries is clearly not true”explains Hollein.
Works by Picasso and El Greco exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in November 2023. BRYAN R. SMITH / AFP
A renewal for the museum, less visited in recent years. Covid-19 has done its work, causing attendance to drop from its record 7.3 million in 2018 to 1.2 million in 2020 – it rebounded to 5.8 million in 2023. If Americans returned to 90% , international tourists, particularly Chinese, are still waiting and grumbling since entry became obligatory (30 dollars).
“Universal relevance”
At least the museum, by force of circumstances, has solved the problem of overtourism. “The Met has always had a philosophy of not promoting these works that require a trip, the “three-must-see-must-see works”. As a Frenchman, you could tell me, it’s because you don’t have them! – even if our five Vermeers can be equivalent to the Mona Lisa, jokes Hollein. But it helps. There are people at the Met, but it’s not crowded. We have always made sure to treat different cultures in the same way. »
Except that in addition to Covid-19 the museum, even if it has not closed its doors for renovation like the neighboring Frick Collection, has been a major construction site for several years. Two billion dollars must have been invested over two decades. After the European galleries, it will be the turn of the Rockefeller wing, which has exhibited primitive arts since 1982, to reopen its doors in 2025 with contemporary African art, and it will be necessary to wait until 2029 for the new wing to be inaugurated with modern works, notably the cubist art collection of billionaire Leonard Lauder. A donation of $125 million from Oscar Tang, an American billionaire born in Shanghai, and his wife, Agnes Hsu-Tang, finally unlocked the project in 2021.
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2024-02-16 05:00:21
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