The Met and Me

   Reading about the change of leadership at New York’s Metropolitan Museum reminded me of my own brief encounter with the head of that institution. I had resigned from my Northwestern deanship—that’s another story—and had some thoughts of moving into the world of art museums. And then there was an ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education for persons interested to be vice president (the title as I recall it) for education of the Met. To say that the ad in that paper, not being for a job in an institution of higher education, was unusual is an understatement.
   But it offered a position in the world of art that very much fit with my post NU-dean ambitions. I thought that I was a relevant candidate, given that I had spent years building up two art departments, a standard “theoretical” one and an art practice group doing their thing.

  So I was asked to come to be interviewed by the Met’s big boss, Philippe de Montebello. A free trip to New York: I had nothing to lose. Our conversation took place late in the afternoon, just de Montebello plus a mostly silent lawyer side-kick and I. It became clear very soon that I was in the wrong place.

   The questions were about my ideas about educating elementary students visiting the museum, while my thoughts were about involving young adults. We did not hit it off: their one-time desire to recruit from a higher education population did not mean that they were interested in the expertise of that class. I got nowhere with my talk about internships and aids to publication. What were my ideas about sixth graders visiting the Met, for which I had a bumbling few responses.

   The interview ended in a friendly way and de Montebello soon afterwards appointed the education vice president at the Art Institute, ending the experiment to go outside their normal category of candidates.

   I have no idea about what the Met has done in the intervening years about its education mission. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 1987 when our conversation took place.