Addressing the press on Tuesday, the Metropolitan Museum’s director, Tom Campbell, had reacted to the Paris massacre forcefully but formally, detailing how his institution had mentored colleagues from countries in crisis.
Yesterday, the Whitney Museum’s director, Adam Weinberg, showed how to make it personal and heartfelt.
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
At a press preview of an exhibition co-organized with Paris’ Centre Pompidou of promised gifts from the extensive contemporary art collection (1980s to the present) of Thea Westreich Wagner and her husband, Ethan Wagner, Adam recounted his conversations with French colleagues who told him that “the attacks were “right at the center of the artistic community, where a number of the artists, even in this exhibition, have their studios. Many of the people who died were critics, architects, dancers, writers, poets.”
The exhibition, opening tomorrow, includes examples of the collectors’ promised gifts to both the Whitney (nearly 550 American works) and the Pompidou (more than 300 European works).
This room focuses on some of the works destined for Paris:
In my CultureGrrl Video, below, you’ll hear Adam’s moving remarks on the Paris tragedy. At the end of this clip, he provides an object lesson on how to bestow warm thanks for the labors of curators: