Back to Now at the Met

Philippe de Montebello, director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Over the years, special exhibitions have often taken center stage in this publication. However, the permanent collection, spanning five thousand years of creative endeavor across the globe, is the soul of the Metropolitan Museum. As director of this institution for the past three decades, my foremost aim has been to build and enhance the permanent collection—the objects as well as the galleries that house them—for the benefit of the public, to enrich knowledge and appreciation of civilization's highest artistic achievements. That, I hope, will be my legacy to the museum that I have had the privilege to serve for so much of my life.

So I was immensely touched and pleased to learn that the Metropolitan Museum's Forum of Curators, Conservators, and Scientists proposed organizing "The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions," an exhibition that will open to the public on October 24. There can be no greater accolade to a director than that of his professional staff. Despite the title, this exhibition is not about one, or even several, individuals. Rather, it is about an institutional commitment at every level to collect and present to the public the finest works of their kind, from every historical era and part of the world. Such a Herculean feat could not possibly be accomplished by any one man. Indeed, it has frequently been the curators themselves who have spearheaded the Museum's efforts to maintain excellence, seeking out and facilitating opportunities for the Met to obtain works that fill a niche in the collection, add to the scholarship, or awe with their rare beauty. Some of the acquisitions, such as Duccio's Madonna and Child, were instantaneously recognized as potential cornerstones of the Met's collection; their importance in the context of both the Museum and the art world at large needed no explanation. Others, while vital to the development of the Met's holdings, were perhaps less obvious choices. But ultimately, all the works on view in this exhibition, as diverse as they may be, share the distinction of having been deemed best in kind and are now united in an extraordinary visual feast.

As one can imagine, it was no easy task to winnow down three decades of acquisitions, gifts, and bequests for display in a single set of galleries. Toward that end, each of seventeen curatorial departments within the Museum proposed approximately one dozen objects for inclusion in the exhibition. Together, we arrived at more than 250 objects in all—a mere fraction of those that have joined, even transformed, the Metropolitan Museum over the past thirty years. Included are works ranging from a red sandstone Buddha from fifth-century India to Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Cypresses, from an ancient Egyptian royal ritual figure to Segovia's principal concert guitar, from a medieval manuscript leaf by the Asturian monk Beatus of Lièbana, now at The Cloisters, to a large nail-embedded Kongo power figure. Also on view is one of the centerpieces and best-loved works in the collection, Peter Paul Rubens's magnificent lifesize portrait of himself with his wife Helena Fourment and their son Peter Paul.

This exhibition could not be a true celebration, however, without a deeply felt toast to our remarkable donors, whose gifts of their own, fabled collections have made the Museum the ever-evolving, world-class institution that it is today.