Creel’s Reel: Travelin’ Like Gavin in the Met’s Reinstalled European Paintings Galleries (& my take on that rehang)

Sometimes it can be fun to wander around an unfamiliar art museum with no clear plan, relying on aimless serendipity to lead you to unexpected visual delights. But more often, if you’re an art aficionado and regular visitor, you crave some structure for your visual encounters, and you’d like to know that your can still find your favorites where you had previously savored them.

Wandering through the sweeping “Look Again” reinstallation of the Metropolitan Museum’s superlative permanent collection of European paintings, 1300-1800, I found myself experiencing the unaccustomed disorientation described by actor/composer/singer Gavin Creel in Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice—his bemused musical tour of the Met (to Jan. 7) at the MCC Theater Space in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen.

Creel’s spiel got this thumbs-down from Laura Collins-Hughes in the Dec. 4 NY Times online:

Superficiality is a bane of this uncertain show, for which Creel wrote the book, lyrics and soft-pop music. Commissioned by the Met’s LiveArts Department, and performed at the museum in 2021, it has the dispiriting feel of an advertisement for the Met’s collections—and despite the dozens of artworks projected upstage, not a persuasive one.

Christopher Isherwood had a somewhat more favorable take in his Wall Street Journal review:

One may raise an eyebrow at the concept of using the Met’s vast treasures as the world’s largest self-help resource. But the museum, which commissioned the show [through its LiveArts program] and presented it in 2021, apparently found no fault. And when they are not snapping pictures—maybe when they are?—many patrons surely do look to these artworks as mirrors reflecting their lives, dreams, fears.

Included in the diverse array of 38 Met-owned works that make cameo appearances on the show’s video screen are: Ugolino and His Sons, 1865-67, by Carpeaux; Judith and the Head of Holofernes, ca. 1530, by Lucas Cranach the Elder; and (on a lighter note): Thomas Hart Benton‘s America Today, 1930-1931, and Jackson Pollock‘s Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950.

The “superficiality” of Creel’s concept, which Collins-Hughes referred to in her review, irked me too, as a lifelong Met habitué since I was a preteen hopping onto the downtown D train at the subway stop on the corner of Echo Place and the Grand Concourse (where I grew up)—the aspirational Bronx’s version of the Champs-Élysées. Until recently, Creel, an actor who frequented Broadway and Hell’s Kitchen, didn’t feel moved to hop a bus, train or taxi to the premier art attraction on the Upper East Side. I found it hard to empathize with such cultural cluelessness.

More disturbing was my realization that I was getting lost trying to find my old favorites (“touchstones,” as I’ve called them) in the Met’s reconfigured installation, which had its origins in the desire of European paintings chairman Keith Christiansen (now retired from the Met) to replace the soiled, aging skylights with a new glass and louver system designed to “disperse and diffuse the light” (in Keith’s words). Given the long list of acknowledgements cited at the press preview, I thought that Keith’s seminal role should at least have been credited:

Apparently I wasn’t the only lost soul feeling disoriented in the rearranged galleries: In his largely favorable review of “Look Again,” Eric Gibson, editor of the WSJ’s “Arts in Review” page (where his review appeared), observed:

One quibble: More informative signage than just the gallery numbers would improve navigation. I saw a number of swiveling heads and quizzical expressions on visitors when I was there.

That said, there’s one signage innovation that helpfully focuses visitors’ attention on the paintings that matter most (in the curators’ judgment): Each gallery includes one or two works distinguished by a larger, differently colored wall label, designating (at the upper left corner, in small type): “COLLECTION HIGHLIGHT”:

Here’s the renowned painting that’s elucidated in the above label:

I had a hard time understanding why that philosophically rich Rembrandt (which we knew as “Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer,” back in the day) was designated as a “Collection Highlight,” while this psychologically profound portrait wasn’t:

On the plus side, I did feel that I was seeing some of my favorite works anew (once I managed to find them). They looked crisper and more vibrant (partly because many works were cleaned and conserved while they were off view). Michael Gallagher, who in 2005 became conservator in charge of the department of paintings conservation, was identified at the press preview as “the outgoing chair of paintings conservation,” but was not (to my knowledge) in attendance at the press preview to take a deserved bow for his accomplishments in overseeing the restorations.

One other welcome change: Thanks to the redesigned lighting and skylight system, the paintings were (for the most part) less obscured by the glare of reflections.

That said, there were a few “glaring” exceptions—most disappointingly, this one:

Since we were told that the new installation for pre-19th-century European paintings included notable recent acquisitions, I had been hoping to see label notations highlighting those new additions, such as those appearing in the lower right corners of the labels for the earlier installation of later European paintings:

Here’s the painting referred to in the above label. Calling it a “compelling likeness” doesn’t begin to do justice to its physical and emotional impact, both now and at the time it was created—the year when “slavery was abolished definitively in France’s overseas colonies”:

The audio guide for the Met’s new installation is peppered with contributions by non-experts—everyone from a food authority to a psychoanalyst to a horse photographer, as well as the usual (less colorful) cast of characters—art scholars. Also eccentric were certain eyebrow-raising juxtapositions, intended to “encourage consideration of European paintings within the greater arc of history and artistic production,” in the words of the press release for “Look Again.”

One of my “what-were-they-thinking?” moments as I roamed through the suite of 45 newly configured galleries occurred when I came upon Kerry James Marshall‘s “Untitled (Studio),” a discordant contemporary interloper in the room devoted to earlier, more sedate takes on “the Artist’s Studio” (the theme of that gallery):

As explained by the Met (which had exhibited the above painting as part of its 2016 Kerry James Marshall retrospective, housed in its then temporary outpost at the former Met Breuer):

Works from the Department of European Paintings are juxtaposed with works from other curatorial areas, including sculptures, metalwork, decorative arts, musical instruments, arms and armor and modern art.

Another jarring juxtaposition:

The pairing below made more sense to me. Although the labels don’t say this, it almost seems as if Picasso, when he painted his self portrait (below, right), could have had in mind the El Greco on the left (thought by some to be a self-portrait, “though this is impossible to affirm definitively,” as the label states):

I particularly enjoyed ricocheting back and forth between these dark, complicated landscapes:

As a longtime MetMuseum-ologist, I saw this new installation as a sequel (or more properly, given the paintings’ dates, a “prequel”) to the reinstallation of the Met’s “Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800-1920”—the title of that rehang’s voluminous, scholarly 2007 catalogue (out-of-print, but available online), with a foreword by then director Philippe de Montebello and an essay about the history of the galleries by Gary Tinterow, then curator in charge of the Met’s Department of 19th Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art. That tome was occasioned by the expansion (with nine new galleries) of display space for the Met’s superlative European paintings collection.

The catalogue featured texts by Tinterow and the curators, succinctly explicating each work. Also included was an index listing each work’s provenance and exhibition history:

No comparable publication accompanies the newly reopened galleries, as I confirmed when I queried the Met’s outstanding (and now, alas, departing) chief communications officer, Kenneth Weine. That may have been our last interaction at the Met. He was always a pleasure to work with: promptly, patiently and comprehensively answering all my pesky questions.

As Ken recently announced on his LinkedIn page:

It’s a wrap. Closed out a wonderful seven-year Met tenure last night. Somehow my series of 5- to 7-year jobs added up to 25 years plus leading comms and more at nonprofits. Will change it up this time and move to consulting, with The Met as a first client.

Having bid a fond farewell to Ken, let’s circle back to the Met’s European paintings displays: The above-mentioned earlier renovation and reinstallation of the post-1800 European paintings galleries, which had opened on Dec. 4, 2007 (35,000 square feet, including 8,000 square feet of new exhibition space, according to its press release), had been ably overseen by Tinterow and by Rebecca Rabinow, then an associate curator in that department. (Both later decamped to Houston, to direct the Museum of Fine Arts and the Menil Collection, respectively.)

And in breaking news: the Met last week announced that it was receiving a “transformative holiday gift of over 200 superlative paintings, drawings, sculptures and more” from Emmy-winning television producer Dick Wolf (of “Law & Order” fame). Will this necessitate an eventual reinstallation of the reinstallation, to accommodate the new acquisitions? As part of this “holiday gift,” Wolf will endow two galleries in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, to be named for him. As reported by Zachary Small in the NY Times: “A museum spokeswoman declined to provide a specific number for the endowment…but said it was in the tens of millions of dollars.”

According to the above-linked press release, the Met “plans to present an installation of selected works from the Wolf gift, with an emphasis on a group of drawings, in the coming years.” But at first, only one (Christmas-appropriate) work from Wolf’s trove was put on display—Orazio Gentileschi‘s “Madonna and Child” (ca. 1620). An image of that work is not included in the press release (nor is it, at this writing, on the Met’s Collection Website for that artist), but you can find it here, in Christie’s catalogue entry for its sale to the Met on June 6, 2022, when it brought $4.4 million:

I did a doubletake when I saw the name of Wolf’s art advisor, identified on the Met’s press release announcing the gift. It’s none other than Don Bacigalupi.

Now where have we seen that name before, art-lings?

Don (who has since left the Lucas Museum, which is still in-construction) does seem to be the hard-hatted director-of-choice for megabucks collectors donating their pricey private troves to museums. As demonstrated by his quoted comments in the above-linked Met press release, he knows how to flatter those egos:

“Dick Wolf is the ideal collector and philanthropist. He has assembled—with intelligence and a great eye [and with Bacigalupi’s advice]—a superb collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, furniture, and decorative arts that speaks eloquently of the times and places in which they were made. [That remains to be seen, when his holdings are publicly unveiled.] His exemplary commitment to sharing his collection publicly speaks to his generosity and understanding of the power of art to inspire, educate, and enlighten.”

Time (and the collection’s eventual display in the Met’s galleries) will tell.

In the meantime:

BEST WISHES FOR A HAPPY, ART-FILLED 2024!

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