The Philippe de Montebello Years at the Met

To send off their boss, who’s retiring after 31 years as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, several curators put together this exhibit of 300 works, selected from the 84,000 works acquired under Philippe de Montebello’s tenure. The photos, paintings, furniture, sculptures, and other objects are grouped by date of acquisition, which practically guarantees exciting juxtapositions, such as the correspondence between the steel-and-diamond curves of a Russian table and the fleshy curves of Avedon’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe or the contrast between the rigid pins of an African statue and the fluid drips of a Pollock.



Museums tend to segregate work by medium, by artist, or by date of composition; this exhibit shows just how fascinating it is to contemplate work that is connected only by happenstance, the date it happened to come to the Met. Tethered by chance, the art as it has been placed here reminds us of all the thematic, formal, social, cultural, etc., etc. connections that we can't always see due to the museum's necessary but nevertheless limiting organization. The exhibit thus lauds PdM's contributions while subtly critiquing its ordinary modes of display.



And if you'll pardon the cheese factor, we'll take this opportunity to say goodbye to PdM and to 2008. Happy New Year, everyone!