Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the Ice House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
What makes a building iconic in the minds of the citizenry? Is it the historical significance, the decisions and actions taken under its roof? Maybe it's the history that unfolds inside. Here at the New York Stock Exchange our vice chairman, John Tuttle will often regale visitors with his appreciation of the four iconic buildings that define America: the White House, of course, he'll say the home of our country's chief executive designed by James Hoban; the capital, the home of our legislature originally designed by William Thornton; and the Supreme Court where justice resides from a design by Cass Gilbert; and of course our humble home here, the NYSE, which came from the drafting table of George Browne Post. But if we've checked the boxes for our iconic homes for leadership law making, constitutional interpretation and finance, have we left something that truly defines our country, our art and culture at the altar? I'd argue that in addition to that list of four buildings, we should add a fifth, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its main building engulfed by a new facade, great hall and grand staircase designed by Richard Morris hunt.
Josh King:
Like the NYSE, the Met is here in New York, the crown jewel of the Upper East Side. It's the largest art museum in the United States. And with 6.9 million visitors in 2018, it was the third most visited museum in the world surpassed only by the Louvre and the National Museum of China. It's permanent collection houses, two million works of art divided among 17 curatorial departments. It hasn't housed foreign policy discussions between dignitaries, nor is it the engine of capitalism, but it is home to some of the greatest art masterpieces in the world, and some of the oldest artifacts known to man. That alone should qualify it for the Pantheon. On an evening walk through Central Park this summer, I caught the sunset hitting the glass wall of the windows that separates the Met's Egyptian Temple of Dendur from the motley crew of bike riders, runners, dog walkers, and so many more outside.
Josh King:
As I watched museum employees heading home for the night, I couldn't help but wonder for a second what it must be like inside when the last tourist leaves, the lights go dark and all is quiet. Maybe really that's when the magic happens. In my days that the White House that's certainly how it felt. The tours had gone, the president was away and there were cooks, gardeners, butlers, secret service agents and members of the National Park Service, the stewards of the building, attending to the rituals of the executive mansion. The same maintenance of tradition and ritual is alive and well here at the New York Stock Exchange where the traders leave after the closing bell at 4:00 PM each weekday, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a building like the others I mentioned which stands without peer.
Josh King:
Joining me today is Christine Coulson who lived and breathed the Met's magic for more than 25 years. Our discussion with Christine, author of the newly released Metropolitan Stories takes us behind the scenes of this iconic building all the way down to the grim bowels beneath the basement. Right after this.
Speaker 1:
And now a word from Chaim Indig CEO of Phreesia, NYSE ticker PHR.
Chaim Indig:
We are the market leader in patient intake, which is automating the digital front door of the patient experience, helping providers improve the healthcare experience for all their patients. We chose the New York Stock Exchange because we felt like it was a great platform to list our company to the world, and it's been a great journey and one that I look forward to continue to do. Phreesia, listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Josh King:
Christine Coulson began her career at the Met in 1991 as a summer intern in the European paintings department. She returned to the museum full-time in 1994, rising through the ranks and making stops in the development office, director's office, and the department of European sculpture and decorative arts. Writing lectures and speeches on behalf of the museum's director was among her responsibilities, but in 2019, she left the Met and those written words are now in her own voice. Her first book, the newly released Metropolitan Stories is a collection of vignette's strung together inside the museum's walls. As she put it to Architectural Digest, "I thought about these stories for 23 years, but didn't draft a single word until the museum gave me a year long sabbatical in 2017 to write the novel." Christine, welcome Inside the ICE House.
Chirstine Coulson:
Thank you for having me.
Josh King:
I might be wrong when I said important diplomatic decisions don't happen under the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of art, because I heard a conversation with you talking about that time in 1994 at the UN General Assembly, when President Clinton brought the entire White House social structure up to the Met and held a state dinner there where heads of state and government from all over the world gathered.
Chirstine Coulson:
Oh, plenty of world leaders have been to the Met and we've done a fair amount of diplomacy. You've also mentioned the Temple of Dendur. Now the Temple of Dendur was a gift to the Met from the Egyptian government to the United States for their help with the Aswan Dam. So that monument was given to the United States. Jackie Kennedy herself picked it out, and we won the privilege of having it in New York City and built that whole structure around it that you referenced where you can actually see it and it feels like it's sitting right in central park. And so that is nothing but an act of diplomacy.
Chirstine Coulson:
And a lot of what is in the museum, particularly the Egyptian collections, we started excavating there in 1906. We excavated with the great support of JP Morgan for 30 years there. Completely in collaboration with the Egyptian government. In fact, split all the finds with them. They got first pick, they've got the better of stuff that we found. But if you go to Cairo today you'll see companion pieces to almost every object we've got. So, so much of what we did in building that global collection was in partnership with countries across the world.
Josh King:
Do you recall your first trip to the Met? How old were you?
Chirstine Coulson:
Oh, I spent a lot of time when I was young at the Met, and I think that it was a different time. It was creepy back then. The King Tut exhibition was probably what everyone remembers as the first thing that opened up the museum to everyone.
Josh King:
Late 70s, early 80s.
Chirstine Coulson:
76, 77. That was the result of a brilliant but complicated director called Tom Hoving big showman. Decided this place is too dusty, too quiet, and we're going to sort of blow it up and create spectacle. And he sure did. And in fact, the museums we know today as kind of destinations and the culture around museums that we know today really can date back to Hoving's ambition for what the Met could be. And so I think the experiences we have and the way we think about culture and museums as places to kind of connect with not just objects, but one another, real touchstone, that comes from his tenure. He was only there for 10 years, but his impact on museums was profound. And he was very ahead of his time. Again, a complicated guy, but he wanted to set up a television station at the Met to make videos about the works of art. I mean, he wanted to make YouTube in the 70s. So I think he's got a tremendous legacy that we feel today.
Josh King:
What was the defining moment for Christine when she first went into a museum and saw what they could do?
Chirstine Coulson:
I think the greatest object that stuck with me is medieval reliquary. So, in middle ages, people collected all kinds of bones and stuff, and they put them in these big things, they look like trophies. And these were supposed to be pieces of saints and they were adored and revered as part of that faith. We have a reliquary that also comes from JP Morgan. It is like a giant molar embedded in rock crystal. It looks like a dental trophy, and that thing just fascinated me. This just tooth and that sense of connection of time and history and something kind of-
Josh King:
How old were you at that point?
Chirstine Coulson:
... icky but alluring, I mean, I was probably seven. But I go back and see that constantly as a sort of touchstone and talisman.
Josh King:
You say that your first foray into the Met behind the velvet ropes and behind the scenes came when you were that summer intern, I guess in 1991. You wrote, "These were my people and I wanted in." Curious why, what led you to the Met for that summer internship?
Chirstine Coulson:
I think I was an art history major. I was doing all the things that everybody does. I worked at galleries and auction houses, and I did a summer internship at the Met and I had probably the greatest job I'll ever have, which was, I was given the task of sorting through the correspondence between the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, and the amazing American woman, suffragette and collector Louisine Havemeyer. So they had this correspondence and we were given this box of letters and I had to go through them one by one with the little, the handwriting and these folded pieces of paper with their ceiling wax and read each one and kind of catalog what they were talking about, often they were talking about exhibitions or things they'd seen, so that the curator could then write his essay.
Chirstine Coulson:
I needed space to do this so I was given this gorgeous office of a very senior curator, and it was a good gig. So I, in that summer thought, this is it. This is where I want to be. And that was probably the first time I'd ever gotten beyond the walls of the galleries. And so you get a different kind of ownership of the place once you have that access. And I think if this book is about anything, it is about the ability to own that museum in a way that just makes you relax around the objects, the galleries, the people. People go to the Met once in a lifetime or once in a while. But to be there every day, and like you described to be there by yourself in those galleries, to just hear your own footsteps on those marble floors and experience the works of art in the dark or in shifting light, it changes your perception of the place. It really became home for me, but that started in those early days just being given access behind those walls.
Chirstine Coulson:
And then when I came back, ironically, when I came back to get my first job there, I was an assistant in the development office and it was the exact opposite. I sat on a stool and I answered the phone. It was most unglamorous-
Josh King:
You moved cheese back and forth from the building.
Chirstine Coulson:
... I moved cheeses. Cheeses at the Met are very important and they're the same yellow interoffice envelopes that everybody else in the world has. But for some reason at the Met, we're visual people, we call them cheeses. It's a noun, it's a verb. You can cheese someone, a cheese. This is 1994, it's a completely analog world, so my job was often to deliver a cheese to someone across that four block long, two block deep building, get their signature on it, museums are all about approvals, and then bring it back in an efficient way. And that meant often avoiding the public who was in the gallery, so going up and down and around and over that building. And that gave me something that I think most junior people now don't get, which is proximity to the larger than life characters who ran that place then.
Josh King:
Proximity to the larger than life characters, you had this opportunity going through that correspondence, working in the office of one of these curators. And you've spoken about curators and conservators as sort of the superstars of the art world, these important characters who have their own way of life, their own way of thinking and operating and doing that need to be nurtured and allowed to flourish. Bring us into this sort of creation of a curator or a conservator, and what makes them so special. Where do they come from? How do they get their training? What separates them from people like myself, you, the accounting guy at the Met?
Chirstine Coulson:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's, I often compare the conservators and curators at the Met to the dancers at the ballet. They're the talent. I was infinitely replaceable. The guy in accounting is absolutely replaceable, but those people, they have an eye, they have a kind of experience. They have the scholarship and the understanding, the conservators themselves have the talent of understanding and having an intimacy with the paintings and works of art. And we have eight conservation labs, but the kind of work that they do you don't just walk in the door and suddenly you're able to distinguish a Michelangelo drawing from a school of Michelangelo drawing. And while that sounds really esoteric and tedious that comes from decades of looking and understanding what the quality of line is. And that just comes from aggregated knowledge. It's expertise with a capital E.
Chirstine Coulson:
And same as a conservator, when they're going to go and address damage to a work of art, you have to know everything about it before you decide what you're going to do to address that. So at the Met like a lot of cultures, a lot of traditional cultures, it is incredibly hierarchical and rightly so. Everything we did was to support the curatorial mission of that museum, and everything the public experiences is because of the curatorial mission of the museum.
Chirstine Coulson:
What I loved about the Met and still love about the Met is the ambition of it. You talk about the three great places in New York or in America, the Met is an amazing American story. When the museum is founded in 1870, it's nothing. There's an idea. A bunch of guys are sitting in Paris on July 4th in the shadow of the Louvre and they decide we should have an art museum. I mean the Civil War has just ended. And so an art museum can't be tops on the list, but it is. And they come to the Met and four years later, they found the Met. They come back to New York, they found the Met. There's no art, there's no money, there's no building. It's just an idea.
Chirstine Coulson:
That building in Central Park is built in 1880. There's a little poky building on 14th street in 1874, but over 150 years through American philanthropy and generosity, not a royal, distinctly, not a royal collection, it's the greatest museum in the world. So if that's not American, I mean, that whole endeavor, the ambition of it, I don't know what is. But that whole setup was built around a curatorial mission. And so that never goes away. And so today the hierarchy that's in place in that institution is still based on those works of art as the primary thing, and getting the public in front of them.
Josh King:
The ultimate curator may be the person that you dedicate the book to Philippe de Montebello, the Met's longtime director, 30 years in office, let's hear from the renowned Mr. Montebello, in his own words.
Phillippe de Montebello:
In noting the gradual change in a museum from repository to activities center, what is really meant is a shift in emphasis from the experience of art, to the experience of the museum itself, to a holistic approach that embraces first the amenities, many of which in themselves are a good thing. The programs, the ancillary offerings from shops to cafeterias, music, poetry, dance in the galleries and so forth. How far we have come or slipped from the ideals expressed at the birth of the museum in the age of enlightenment was well expressed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the architect of the Altes Museum in Berlin around 1830, when he proclaimed that his grand facades and interiors were meant as places whereas he put it, this is shingle speaking, "The individual could recollect himself and prepare himself for the mysteries that awaited him." It was not to be a social place, but rather a place where the individual divorced himself from society.
Josh King:
Philippe de Montebello, the ultimate curator?
Chirstine Coulson:
Absolutely. I mean, and my hero. The time in this book and the reason the book is dedicated to Phillippe it's very much Phillippe's museum. And what was extraordinary about working there then is that I was about as far away from that great man as you could be on the org chart, but I had, again, proximity, I delivered a few cheeses to him, but I knew exactly what he wanted from me. I knew exactly what he wanted from that museum. And I worked every day in my very small way to live up to the standard that he wanted for that institution. And to me, that's just an incredible example of leadership. There was no strategic plan, no mission statement. I mean, we have one, but we didn't need one. There was no kind of vision that we had to write down. It was so clear what Phillippe aspired to for the museum and for that staff. And so every day was working in service of his ambition for the museum, because we all believed in it.
Josh King:
In Metropolitan Stories, you describe working for him and the Met as, and I'm going to quote, "You got your chance. You took your shot. You committed yourself to your minor role within the masterpiece." So Christine, by the time you left the Met your role was far from this minor role of delivering cheeses. Tell us about the different roles you held during your tenure at the Met and how they intertwined with the positions held by these 2,200 other employees who work at the museum daily.
Chirstine Coulson:
Yeah, I think interestingly, I started as an assistant and that was a way of kind of understanding the museum that really informed every other role I had, and frankly gave me a lot of credibility within the museum. I think there's a lot of people who come and stay and so that culture in which you all kind of grow up together and there's that kind of sibling relationship. As I worked and became more senior there, ultimately I was chief advisor to the director. I mainly had a... I was a speech writer for eight years, mostly I became a kind of go-to writer about the Met and a more senior person there. But I would say that most of my ability to do that job came from the trust I had from the curatorial staff and the conservation staff, because I had been there, because they knew me from the beginning and they understood that I was making whatever decisions I was making because I was backing them up. I was behind them.
Chirstine Coulson:
It's very hard, it's probably hard in any culture, but it's particularly hard at the Met to come in from outside into a senior role and make those hard choices without people understanding that you know, A, what it takes to do what curators do and B, that bigger thing is always in place. It's always in the room. I learned that from Phillippe somehow, that idea that you've just got to look beyond that small, that either petty politics or the little details, or I never dealt with budgets and stuff, but my cred came from being there for a long time. And I was sort of bilingual. I was an organized creative person. And so I was someone who could take the ideas of a curator and get them to a place where they looked organized enough for everyone to buy into them. And it worked the other way. I also could really represent the creative ideas of other people in a way that had a kind of structure to it.
Josh King:
In this day and age working for the same place for over 25 years is nearly unheard of. What made you keep coming back and staying? I heard you in one interview talk about, well, you were there for 10, 15 years, but you were sitting there among people who had been there for 40 and 50.
Chirstine Coulson:
Yeah. I mean, you don't even, cred there until you've been there at least 10 years. And it's an addictive place. No one's working at that scale. No where else do you work with 17 curatorial departments? So it's the kind of environment where you don't even consider leaving. I mean, it's, you could go be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, but nobody else is... No one in the world is working at the level of the Met. So, I wanted in when I was 20 years old as an intern and I never looked back. I always wanted to stay there.
Chirstine Coulson:
I think that I was lucky enough that my jobs changed and I was always given more and more challenges. And so it felt like my skills were being used to the best of their ability. I mean, in the end I was writing for the new installation of British decorative arts that were opening in 2020. That was probably one of the best things I've ever done because I had a curator who really wanted to work with basically a ghost writer and do something radically different. The idea that I could go from delivering the cheeses to kind of defining a new set of galleries with a whole new language, I mean, that's a dream trajectory. So I was very privileged to be given those opportunities that really fed into my skills.
Josh King:
So talking about curation a little bit, 2017, you sit down to write Metropolitan Stories. You've said that the pieces of art described and on certain occasions brought to life in the book are all pieces that stood out to you. You said that if you were following strict, Met dictum you would've written or curated one story for each of the 17 curatorial departments, but you have to be discerning. You've only got 365 days in your sabbatical to complete this manuscript, get it in. And at some point you have to make some tough decisions about the kind of stories that are going to be resonant and have a staying power on that page that is going to make this piece and any future things that you write relevant to people who'd buy it from the Met book shop five years from now. How did you go about narrowing down-
Chirstine Coulson:
I think that's the trick of it.
Josh King:
... the things that you were going to leave on the cutting room floor?
Chirstine Coulson:
You don't write it for them. I think 23 years of thinking about this book, when I sat down to write it, I didn't write a book about the Met. I wrote a book about the place that I love. So what I write about is from me. I mean, it is. And I think that for me, that was a big shift to go from being... You're right, if I did write this for the Met, I am so well trained, I would have an object from every single curatorial department, evenly spaced and given equal treatment. The idea of shifting that gear and being the artist and writing from your own passion, writing what speaks to you, the works of art in this book are not anyone's greatest hits list, but mine. So I didn't curate it that way. I just sat down knowing I had a year and wrote, and this is what came out. And so there was no plan. There was no sense of I'm going to do it this way.
Chirstine Coulson:
I wound up writing 16 vignettes from 16 different points of view. And then about nine months into it realized I had a real puzzle on my hands because it's not a book of short stories, it's a novel. And so all the structure of it, which you shouldn't feel as a reader, you should under... You should enjoy it because people recur and places recur and objects come back and all that looping around and intertwining, which should feel seamless, it should be like watching a television series. That takes a lot of infrastructure. And so working on the structure of it was harder than working on the writing of it. The writing of it was finally putting words to what I see in that place, capturing the magic that I see in those objects. But finally, in my own voice. I was a ghost writer. I can write in anyone's voice. But the idea of writing of voice, which made it was so liberating. And so the reason there's a chapter from the point of view of a chair is because that's what I see.
Chirstine Coulson:
So I think it was really important to me, or even unconsciously to not think about, who's going to read this, what does the public want from a book about the Met. That is nonfiction. If you're going to write fiction, you've got to commit to letting it unfold. And these characters, while they have traits of real people, and they start with a set of characteristics that are often based in reality, they have a life of their own. I mean, they make decisions on their own and that sounds kind of hokey about writing, but it happens. And so you've got to go with that. You have to wear that hat and ride that wild ride. And it's fantastic, but it's not a book you're writing for anyone. A big part of me taking that sabbatical was getting out of that building so I wasn't writing it for my colleagues. I wasn't thinking about what are they going to think if I use this or what are they going to think if I get... change this person. I had to just detach myself and actually do the hard work of writing a novel.
Josh King:
And novelizing it versus making it memoir or a piece of nonfiction, was that the original intent going into it? Did you pitch to your publishers at the other press to say, "This is the way I'm going to do it. I'm going to allow some of the vignettes to be from the perspective of the chair"? Because this is a device that is either going to protect the innocent, make it timeless or bring us new perspectives that we've never seen before.
Chirstine Coulson:
Well, I think the difference is too, I mean the publishing world absolutely wanted me to write either a memoir or like The Devil Wears Prada Museum Edition because that's commercial and great. But I was never going to do that. I always wanted to write fiction because I knew I needed, I don't love the word magic, but I knew I needed that. I knew I needed that surreal element to capture what I wanted to write about the Met.
Chirstine Coulson:
The difference in fiction is you write it and then you sell it. You don't do a book proposal and go off and... Your agent takes that leap with you and you're just going to write it and they need to see the whole thing, because you could really screw up the ending of a great book and then nobody wants it. So you have to, you're going out into the world with this thing that you made and you're selling that. So there is no negotiation at that point. It'll go through vast editing. I loved my editor at Other Press and it changed a lot of the book for the better, but the thing itself was done by the time it was getting shopped around.
Josh King:
So thinking across your 23 years, I'm curious about out the unique calls and requests that stood out to you. In one of your vignette's musings you write about Karl Lagerfeld bringing his muse to a meeting at the Met and suddenly the art director decides he too should bring a muse.
Chirstine Coulson:
Yes. So that opening, the opening lines of that story are based on a real memo. It was a briefing memo about a meeting with Karl Lagerfeld, probably in about 1996, and it literally said, "Mr. Lagerfeld will bring his muse. The muse will not speak. Do not address the muse." And so I'm 24 years delivering this memo in a cheese and you don't forget that. And a lot of people have asked, did you keep a journal, how did you take notes on that? You don't forget a memo like that. And my immediate thought was, well, what if the director brought his own muse and there was a muse show down? Which you know-
Josh King:
Is muse still a growth industry? Are people still taking on the role of muses?
Chirstine Coulson:
... You're in a museum, we've got a lot more muses than Karl Lagerfeld. So to me that happens in 1996 and I don't get to write it down until I take that sabbatical in 2017, but it's right there. I mean, it just comes pouring out of me. So I think a lot of those stories, and again, this is like any old institutional culture, those are also stories that we repeat over and over again as a kind of community. So, I write about one chapter is about the staff cafeteria as this like vortex of all knowledge and misinformation is kept in the staff cafeteria, because it's like a daily Thanksgiving where we all sit down and repeat the same old tired stories over and over again with very dubious accuracy. But that's the shared oral history and so a lot of the details and texture of these stories come from that lore. Truth is debatable in any of them, but things like the Lagerfeld memo, I mean, we told that story over and over again.
Josh King:
In one of your other stories, object lessons, you veer from your other style to tell a story surrounding an object or Met employee and instead offer some thoughts on the art as a whole and the power that it holds you as a piece of history. So easy to forget that we humans will come and go, but it's the art and the hieroglyphs and the other artifacts that live on as you put it and I'm going to quote, "We are the proof, sticky but silent hanging on that wall, standing on that pedestal. The proof that anyone was ever there at all." So do you think that 200 years from now, people walk through a museum displaying iPhones and Instagram photos like you're starting your own account in order to understand this age we're in today?
Chirstine Coulson:
Well, I think history is proven that we're constantly collecting the artifacts of our own time. What survives, what persists in 200 years, who knows whether it's the iPhone or I would argue that doesn't belong in a museum, but maybe it will be, in a design collection. I think what I really wanted to do and the through line through the book is this idea that we, as the staff of the Met, and the opening chapter is called We, to define who they are, but that we think we're protecting and saving these works of art and in fact, those objects are really protecting and saving us. We talk about how long we stayed there, well, I think the reason we stay there is because we need that place. There's a kind of dependency that develops on those objects and they give to me a kind of solace.
Chirstine Coulson:
And I was there during 9/11 and I saw the public come clamoring through those doors the day after that, because they needed some sense of something bigger than the moment they were living in. And I think survival is a really potent force for a kind of perspective that we need in the world, as is beauty. And as long as the Met is there to provide that, I think the public will keep coming and whatever we decide to show them, whatever those curators decide warrants being there in 200 years, I hope it delivers the same thing. That sense of connectedness between this moment we're living in now and a moment of an Egyptian statue 4,000 years ago. I mean the museum has a way of just kind of crushing time and collapsing it that I find very comforting.
Chirstine Coulson:
And so I think the sort of misfits who wind up spending a career, there are the people who actually really feel that in a very potent way. There's a story and it's very exaggerated in the book, but about a guard on the night shift who is sort of hypersensitive to the works of art. And I think he represents more than anyone, that connection that we have to those objects and what they can do for us. And I think the public, if they would relax in that place, that's available to them. And I hope the book achieves that, that it shows that it's a pretty intimidating place and there's a sort of feeling like everyone else knows what they're doing but you. And I think there can be a lot gained from just getting rid of all that. You don't need to know anything. And just looking at those things and feeling that history, feeling that sense of connectedness and that collapse of time. And it's pretty powerful stuff. And I think that in 200 years they'll feel the same way.
Josh King:
Art and commerce were getting ready for the holiday season. You write in metropolitan stories about the way the store operates, the person who sort of sorts the metropolitan museum of art bags by color and size. You talked about the philanthropy of people like JP Morgan and the people who continue to come together for the Met gala and the donations that the museum continues to attract. And yet the ability to take a bit of the museum home, whether you're in the shop or shopping online and be able to have reproductions of parts of the collection spanning thousands of years, how has that changed? Both the finances and public accessibility and embrace of the collection?
Chirstine Coulson:
Well, I think there is that instinct, it's sort of hardwired people want to take something home. They want a memory that whether used to be a postcard and you know, now it's a water bottle or whatever. I think that's a great thing if it's a persistent reminder to think about the Met, go back to the Met. And, I remember when everybody was worried that the whole digital world was going to replace the museum experience. And it's wonderful to me that the digital world is only enhanced the power of the real thing. And so that whole idea of making the pilgrimage, the same way they did for that tooth in the middle ages, the idea of seeing something digitally or seeing something through commerce, through something someone gave you from the shop, and then wanting to go see the real thing, I love that. And so to me, it's all good because it tends to bring people into the museum. And once they're there, I think the real thing never gets old. And so that starts a relationship that we happily can maintain
Josh King:
After the break Christine Coulson and I discuss the future of art and the art world and how museums are adapting to the 21st century. That's right after this.
Speaker 1:
And now a word from Andre Durand, CEO of ping identity, NYSE ticker PING.
Andre Durand:
Ping Identity is an identity security company. We help large enterprises ensure that people are who they say they are. We give the flexibility for these large enterprises to deploy identity where and how they need. We keep their identity safe. The security environment is changing. We serve over 50% of the fortune 100 here in the U.S. as well as many companies around the globe. It feels like the end of the marathon and the beginning of a marathon all at the same time. Ping Identity is listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Josh King:
Back now with Christine Coulson, author of Metropolitan Stories. Before the break, we were discussing Christine's book out now and her over 25 years, working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2020 will be a very big year for the Met as the museum prepares to celebrate its 150th anniversary. You think the institution is showing its age at all, or is it in a place of constant reinvention?
Chirstine Coulson:
I think it has to be in a place of constant reinvention. I think those core values and those objects remain the same. The collection is an extraordinary thing that should be built on and explored further in lots of different ways. But it can't be a warehouse. These places have to be invigorated with ideas and not just scholarship, but experience. And so I think the best thing that can happen in any museum is a really strong in vigorous dialogue around what's in it. Some of it you'll agree with some of it you won't. And I get thrilled when people get upset about museums these days. Isn't that fantastic that people still care so much about these institutions, that they get angry about a decision that they make about admissions or about any policy of the museum? That's because they're deeply invested in that place and to me that just shows a level of engagement that should always be maintained and fostered and encouraged.
Josh King:
In the book you describe the development offices having one telephone line connected to 35 phones and how you would take down on messages on these small sheets of blue paper. By the time you left technology must have made these day to day functions somewhat less tedious.
Chirstine Coulson:
Yeah. I mean, I started at the Met when we were still using onion, skin carbons. And it was, as I said, a completely analog world. But I think I was very privileged to have that experience because it did, it put me in rooms I wouldn't have been in otherwise. And so while it's followed the same technical trajectory as every other business, at the same time, we're such a kind of slow moving ship that a lot of what we still do is pretty stunningly anachronistic to the outside world. But we're dealing with physical things. I mean, you don't just email them around.
Josh King:
I mean, this may sound sacrilege, but I visited the museum with my daughter recently. We went to the exhibit about life in Versailles and yet in another part of the museum, we saw one of probably the early displays of video at the museum. Looking ahead to the next 150 years, do you think technology were, is going to continue to play a role in curation? Are we going to start to see CGI holograms of life and Versailles and sort of more interactive aspects?
Chirstine Coulson:
You know what's interesting is the video you probably saw was collected by a guy who started at the Met the same year I did, so 1994, who was quietly collecting really cutting edge video for 20 years, and before it was a thing. And he was just sort of doing it, because it was inexpensive and he can do it off the radar. And we have one of the most important video collections, his name's Doug Eklund, and because of him. So institutions are also defined by the people who are there and who have those kind of quiet interests and it's such a substantive place. So we do that when we do it right.
Chirstine Coulson:
Whether you'll see videos in the galleries that are not the artistic vision of someone creating them, but instead there to evoke a bigger thing, I think the Met is pretty slow to adapt to those kinds of techniques. I don't think we need them in the way that a smaller museum with a lesser collection probably does. I'm consistently stunned by the public's appetite for whatever we show them and their ability to imagine what they need to see rather than having us provide that kind of support for them. When we did those landmark tapestry exhibitions of Renaissance tapestry and Baroque tapestries, I mean, it had never been done before. You think of tapestries as these dusty old things, nobody would be interested in them.
Chirstine Coulson:
And Tom Campbell, who was the curator then and later became director created these knockout exhibitions. And it was like television in the Renaissance. These narratives where these big, booming, crazy things and wild boars were coming at you. And if you took time to look at them and the scale of them was so enormous, they were all consuming. You didn't need projections to show you the castle that they would hang in. You understood that and these things are woven with gold so imagine them with candle light. And they are these glittering things. If you just let your mind do that, it's so much more satisfying than us showing you medieval times.
Josh King:
So on March 1st, 2018, a new policy went into effect stating that non New York state residents must pay admission of $25 to visit the Met. It had been a pay what you wish prior to that, with the suggested price being 25 bucks. Other art museums in the city, such as the Whitney, the MoMA, the Guggenheim all charge an admission fee, which the Met had long distinguished itself from instead relying on the charity and philanthropy and private donations and public dollars. What do you make of the new admissions policy?
Chirstine Coulson:
I think, I was not in the room to make those financial decisions. That was never my role. I think in the end, it's what we needed to do. I don't love it because I would like the idea... I like the idea of people giving a penny and coming on in. But the truth is the people who would give a penny and come in all the time are New Yorkers. And so now they get to go in for free. So it probably works out. The tourist paid full freight usually anyway. So I think they did a lot of work on that to figure it out so that the most people would benefit and the museum would get what it needed. So I think in the end it's fine. It certainly hasn't compromised attendance.
Chirstine Coulson:
I also think though what we were just talking about, the museum, is an always changing place. Someone in 10 years could just throw those doors open and make it free again and that'll be their moment. So I think one of the things you learn about a place that's been around for 150 years, and when you've written its history over and over again, for lots of different reasons, you start to understand that there is no one character, no one decision, no one moment that defines a place, that it is a constantly evolving thing as it should be. So, that's its moment and we do what we have to do to take care of it.
Josh King:
Do what you have to do to take care of it. The glass enclosed wing that we talked about earlier that encases the Temple of Dendur, one of the most iconic parts of the Met is named the Sackler wing on behalf of the Sackler family, one of the biggest philanthropic heavy hitters in the United States. It's also the family behind Purdue Pharma maker of Oxycontin. So in may, Christine, the Met announced that it would stop accepting gifts from members of the Sackler family closely connected with Purdue Pharma, and yet the gravity of the Met's decision remains. We're living in a time where customers or in this case visitors want to know where their money is going. If they're now paying this $25 admission fee, perhaps they don't want to support and visit a place financed by a family that was benefiting from a drug that has caused a health crisis.
Chirstine Coulson:
Well, and this isn't just a reckoning about philanthropy in the Met or just in museums. I mean, this is a major conversation that's going to go on in this country about where this money comes from and what kind of decisions institutions have to make around that. I love that people care about that and I recognize the complexity of it. In my time at the Met, I never worked with a donor or collector who wasn't deeply invested in the mission of the institution. This idea that the people who give to the museum are white washing their names, that was certainly not my experience.
Chirstine Coulson:
I mean, when you look at someone like Leonard Lauder, giving us $2 billion worth of Cubist paintings that he could easily sell in the marketplace, building that collection over time, distinctly to give it to an institution, giving that to the public. I would like to see more conversation about the range of people involved in museums and the great contributions that they've made over those 150 years to create the place that everyone now is so invested in and now questioning. I think that it's a conversation that should be represented in a more complicated way.
Josh King:
Talking about the range of people that are involved in museums, I want to touch on the importance of art and culture to our society, because you talk about Leonard Lauder, you talk about some of the people who will come to the Met gala. Very different from those types of people who show up on a scooter or skateboard, park it outside and come in and appreciate what's inside. How's the Met working to attract younger audiences to the museum and also spark their interest in art, art history and design.
Chirstine Coulson:
Well, and I think that's a really important point because alongside those huge names, there's 130,000 members at the Met. I mean, there's a kind of Kickstarter campaign that's going on all the time about the Met too. And again, that original public campaign, when you walk into the Met immediately to your right there's this giant sarcophagus, which was the original thing that they used to collect change from people to start the Met. So that fundamental idea of everybody contributing what they can to this bigger endeavor, I think is also very much part of its foundation. And so the idea of young people getting in, it's not that big of a challenge. Yeah, some of them relate to the museum because of the Costume Institute gala and the stars that come up those steps once a year. But I find there's a constant engagement with the museum just because they're interested in the stuff of it.
Chirstine Coulson:
So I don't see it as a big generational leap. Like when you're in the great hall, it's not like a bunch of old people and you think, "God, what's going to happen when they die? Who's going to be here next?" There's an entire range of people and there's lots of ways of exploring that place that they seem to either come up with on their own, or they're encouraged by us. Probably Instagram has done more for the Metropolitan Museum than we'd like to admit. There's a kind of bigger visual conversation going on. And so if you're a place that's selling a kind of visual juice, well then we've got a lot to thank them for.
Josh King:
Visual juice. The Met is closed on Thanksgiving Day on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. It's also closed on the first Monday in May for this enormous event that we've touched on the Met Gala, the Met ball, which is the fundraising gala for the Mets Costume Institute. Let's take a quick listen to the extravagance that is that event.
Speaker 8:
This is the queen of the night.
Speaker 9:
Sense of mystery and danger.
Speaker 10:
This room is a dream.
Speaker 11:
I think fashion should be recognized-
Speaker 12:
What's up level?
Speaker 11:
... when it touches people and moves people. I mean, what more can you ask from art?
Josh King:
New Yorkers love fashion. The Costume Institute exhibit, which typically runs from May to August is our often one of the most popular most visited exhibits each year. The 2018 exhibit Heavenly Bodies, Fashion and the Catholic Imagination was made possible by Christine and Steven Schwarzman. Mr. Schwarzman was a guest on this show just a couple weeks ago. Do events such as this and the exhibits they kick off breathe new life into the Met?
Chirstine Coulson:
I don't think it's about reading new life into the Met. I think one of the people who hasn't been mentioned in all this is Andrew Bolton, the curator of the Costume Institute who creates those exhibitions. I mean, talk about a curatorial mind. I mean, he is an extraordinary visionary thinker. And so what he creates every year and the idea of creating it every year is also extraordinary. I mean, most of the exhibitions of that caliber would take five years to organize, 10 years to organize. So the fact that he can do it in a year, that he has that many ideas and that he has the ambition and the talent to pull that off is exceptional.
Chirstine Coulson:
And so the Costume Institute gala, while it's an extraordinary thing, it is the thing that allows him to do that work. In one night, we raise all the money that the Costume Institute, well, every salary, everything they need in one night. So whether you love it or you hate it, it's one night and we're done. And what's amazing about it are all the people who are involved in that, who you don't see, who make it disappear by the next morning. So to me, one of the great things and what I really do talk about in the book are the people who do mundane tasks in a magnificent place, the people who change the light bulbs, all that kind of stuff. And so that gets so accelerated for the Costume Institute gala in a way that you've got to commit to once those stars leave that red carpet, there's a whole team of people that come behind them and make it-
Josh King:
Yeah. So bring us through that night.
Chirstine Coulson:
... disappear.
Josh King:
I mean, because we've had a couple drinks, we've had a little bit to eat, we walk out the Uber is waiting, the limos are waiting. People clear out, then the real work begins.
Chirstine Coulson:
Exactly. And it is-
Josh King:
What happens?
Chirstine Coulson:
... It is a force. I mean the same force that works all night the night before to put it up, is there again, 24 hours later to take it down so that the public can walk through the next morning. And that's a kind of dedication that doesn't exist everywhere else. But to me, and I've been to 23 Costume Institute galas and they are extraordinary spectacles. They've changed a lot. I remember in the old days, and it's just the society ladies and Pat Buckley and then it became what it is today.
Chirstine Coulson:
But at the same time, the heart of it doesn't really shift. It's kind of like that, let's put on a musical sensibility of like let's build the stage in the barn. It gets more ambitious and the star power, the wattage gets higher, but at the same time you have to roll up that red carpet. Somebody's got to do that. Someone's got to fold up all those chairs and take those tables down and take the table cloths and remove all of that. And that takes teams and teams of people and a kind of commitment that is really the connective tissue of the museum.
Josh King:
And that is one day and one night. You thought when you embarked on writing Metropolitan Stories, it would just be one year 2017 and you'd go back to your life at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hasn't worked out that way, has it?
Chirstine Coulson:
I did go back right afterward. It took me exactly a year to write this book. I went back to the museum and I worked on a great project. And I was writing for the British galleries, which was amazing because I had an incredible creative partner, Luke Syson who was working on those galleries with me. And I got to the point last spring when I had idea an idea for another novel, which I had had previously, but my writing process is obviously a lot about withholding since I didn't write anything for 23 years before I wrote this novel.
Chirstine Coulson:
So the second novel was sort of bubbling up again and persisting in my head. And I got to the point last spring when I just felt like every word I was writing for them was a word I could be writing for me. And maybe that was a little reflection of that sabbatical time and understanding the power of writing in your own voice and being given the privilege of pursuing your own art. And so I just thought, you know what, it was almost exactly my 25th anniversary, a little after that and I thought, you know what, it's time and time to leave home. And I left last April. But I'm there all the time. Second book is on its way.
Josh King:
What can you share about the second book?
Chirstine Coulson:
The second book is... I'm not sharing much about it other than that, it is a single set sentence in this book made into a novel. And if you can guess the sentence, I'll tell you, you're right. But otherwise, so I'm still spending a lot of time in the museum.
Josh King:
You wrote a couple years ago in the New York Times about this trip that you took with your son's school to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and they watched the lampers and they watched some of the other behind the scenes players and they were so trans fixed. Beside the people that we have talked about so far, what are some of the key players that people should be more appreciative of or know more about as they walk through the doors on 5th Avenue?
Chirstine Coulson:
Well, I think, you touched a little bit on the guy who organizes the Met shopping bags. I mean, one of the things who I call in the book, the Rubberband Man, because I actually don't... I didn't know his name. But I saw him every day in the basement. And he literally was standing in front of this mountain of boxes and he would organize the shopping bags, the little red ones and the medium blue ones and the big yellow ones. And that just, I never saw him outside of the building. He was always there.
Chirstine Coulson:
And to me what's remarkable about that is that the Met does, and I think it surprises people to understand this, it does function like a small town. I mean, we have our own police force in the form of the guards and we have our own shops and restaurants. But within all of that we don't outsource anything. We don't outsource the plumbing or the electricians. It's all in house. And so this little empire exists in the middle of Central Park and functions in that way that's a lot about all these little cogs in the machine.
Chirstine Coulson:
What love about, and I didn't do this intentionally, but in retrospect, someone wrote about it and I really enjoyed it, that when the Rubberband Man, and I'm not giving anything away to say that the Rubberband Man dies, when the Rubberband Man dies, who's essentially anonymous in this like tiny little piece of the pie, there's chaos. When the director is sitting around in his office, he's picking a muse and whatever, and like everything's fine. But that sense that the real work is in all of that, the tiny little pieces that we put together, I don't think people recognize that until they slow down to think about it. And to me, much of what this book is trying to do is get people to slow down in that place. Stop trying to conquer it. Stop trying to go to every gallery and find everything.
Chirstine Coulson:
Slow down, both for the art, but also for the place. And you'll start to notice those guys. I mean, they're around, I mean, they change the light bulb is when no one's there, but the guys who are just around sweeping the floors, those guards, I mean, they do a job and they have a kind of knowledge and intimacy with that place that has to be respected. And I think when you do that, when you are able to slow down, that's when your imagination can really take flight. And that's what I try and show people when I introduce those surreal elements in the book, all that texture and all that detail and all that accuracy about the place, the physical structure and the works of art and the people and the rituals and traditions, those are the foundation that should make you feel stable so that you can then let your imagination run wild.
Josh King:
To end our discussion. Christine, I want to read a brief passage from page two that I think sums up the story. I'm going to quote, "We connect like neighbors across the fence. One side, always knowing more. We like to think it's us, but it's them. Our hungry scholarship scratches for what they've already lived. Those objects were there. Saw the whole thing right in front of them." Thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Chirstine Coulson:
Thank you great to be here.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Christine Coulson, author of Metropolitan Stories. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us at ICE House podcast. Our show is produced by Theresa DeLuca and Pete Asch, with production assistance from Stephen Romanchik and Ian North. I'm Josh King, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor is affiliates, make any representation or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
