Show and Tell

By ROBERT HUGHES

Over the past five years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the half-dozen greatest cultural institutions in the U.S., has had its share of troubles. Some came from outside: money was short and the cost of everything from ink pads to Guercinos had shot up, threatening the museum's power to collect or even administer itself on its old scale. Other problems were internal. There was friction between the scholarly and populist interests within the Met. A troublesome gap existed between the trustees and the curatorial staff. To those outside its doors, the board room looked like (and was) an in frangible Herrenklub in whose deliberations no voices but those of managerial capitalism could be heard.

And then there was the man who, in the public eye, "was" the Met: its director since 1967, Thomas Pearsall Field Hoving--a paragon of arrogance and talent who appeared to his numerous supporters as the man who saved the Met by doubling its audience (to 3.3 million in 1974-75), and to his critics as a go-go entrepreneur. Among living museum directors, Hoving had an unsurpassed flair for theatrical gesture, coupled with a Nixonian capacity for "toughing it out" in moments of crisis.

Cold Dish. Both abilities were tested to the limit three years ago in the "de-accessioning" scandals, when Hoving and the museum were plunged into controversy over works of art the Met had sold to buy others. It was feared that this practice, unbridled, would weaken the museum's encyclopedic collection.

In the background was unease about the secrecy of the Met's actions and the smokescreens spewed forth to hide them. So the New York Times, like Mozart's marmoreal Commendatore, came for Tom Giovanni, and down the trap door he nearly went, carrying some of the museum's prestige with him. But Hoving did not go down. The Met, rebuked by New York's attorney general, came out with a clear and cautionary set of guidelines for de-accessioning in 1973, and the issue died.

Revenge, the Spanish proverb goes, is a dish best eaten cold. So with Hoving's reply to his critics, which opened this month at the Metropolitan. Entitled "Patterns of Collection: Selected Acquisitions 1965-75," it sets before us a selection of 350 works of art from the 20,000 or so objects the Met has acquired in the past decade. The task of organizing it has been brilliantly performed by Olga Raggio. The aim is to show in detail how the process of acquisition works, what kinds of object it affects, and to what overriding policy it relates. In short, the Met is being relatively frank--even to the point of naming the dealers from whom it bought the pieces.

Anyone who supposes the collecting enterprise comes down to phoning Wildenstein and ordering a Monet or two will be in for some interesting revelations. Perhaps no museum show any where has ever been so explicit about the means and problems of running a collection: the rarity of material, the formal minuets danced between the enamored curator and the skeptical trustee, the checks and balances. As a view--admittedly a partial one--of the dynamics of a museum, this show makes its points tellingly.

Seen as a group of objects, "Patterns of Collection" is nothing less than superb. Some of the works in it have already been harried to the edge of cliche by publicity--the Euphronios krater, the Velasquez Juan de Pareja. But the Met is above all an encyclopedia. Its 18 departments cover virtually every kind of art ever created. So there is a great deal in the show that will be unfamiliar to even the most assiduous Metropolitan goer, and the general level is high. One would have to travel a long way east of New York to find objects comparable, in their fields, to the Met's tiny sphinx of Amenhotep III, modeled in a faience of such dazzling blue that even in a glass case it seems to vibrate in front of one's eyes; or the massive silver head, possibly of the Sassanian King Shapur II; or the exquisitely elaborated 17th century flintlock gun made by Pierre le Bourgeoys for Louis XIII; or even such small items as a 3rd century B.C. bronze of a Greek dancer, whirling on her axis like a Hellenistic Martha Graham.

Deep Encyclopedia. As a parade of institutional vigor, then, the show does its job. Whatever reservations one may have about other aspects of Thomas Hoving's stewardship, nobody can doubt that during his office the Met's curatorial departments have performed magnificently.

One is reminded that the Met is unique in America, not only in width of charter but also in breadth of collections--5,000 years of cultural history embedded in some 3 million objects. A few years ago, such figures seemed intimidating to many New Yorkers. The very idea of an encyclopedic museum went against the radical grain; and there was much talk of decentralization. Fortunately this did not happen. Just as you do not get rid of the need for the British Museum reading room by multiplying local libraries, so the necessity for the Metropolitan remains: a place where a very large deposit of cultural evidence can be inspected and compared in depth at the best possible level of aesthetic quality. The role of such a collection is to defend us against one of the great American vices--provincialism in time. And so--floreat! . Rober Hughes

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