Campbell at the table for the first time, although we have talked at his museum. Welcome. Its good to have you here. In seven years, tell me the things you think are important that you have learned. Running this wonderful and great museum. Dr. Campbell a big, complex place. Charlie and a place that has changed. Dr. Campbell i think of it as evolution. We have the Largest College of curators in the world, all working hard on different kinds of research and projects. When i became director, i think first and foremost, i wanted to sustain that activity, the great exhibitions, the publications. At the same time, there were clearly things that we needed to be aware that the world is changing around us, technology is a big issue. We need to really make the step from analog to digital, think about reaching audiences that way. It was also time to think again about audiences, you know, how we welcome people, how we address people, how we reach out to different audiences. We are the largest Encyclopedic Museum of the world, covering everything from the antique world to contemporary. But there are gaps, of course. So howd you go about filling in . Charlie that is a huge challenge. Talk about digital for a second, and accessibility. What do you offer digitally to someone who lives in alaska . Now, you can go online, you can see, we have records of Something Like 400,000 works of art, some of them are very basic, but almost everything has got something. Most of them have got images. We have been putting a lot of time and effort into creating cross collection publications, short videos, with curators talking about works of art, or we have artists talking about their favorite works. It is short, two or three minutes. But it is a wonderful kind of gateway drug to thinking more about the collections, and seeing with fresh eyes. Charlie that is one of the things i am proudest about on this program, people who cant get to new york, because of our archive of 25 years, because of people like you as well as artists and curators and all of those exhibitions, we can give them a chance, a chance to see the magnification the magnificence of what is taking place. We had over 6 million last year. But over, online, we now have Something Like 35 million visitors to our website alone, and through social media, facebook, twitter, instagram, we are reaching tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands more. I think that it is a very exciting moment, because we are all, everyone in the museum industry, the culture industry, we are realizing that now, we have a global audience, and how can we meaningfully engage them . It is an exciting moment. Charlie Calvin Tompkins said, in choosing campbell, trustees were banking on his clearheaded vision of how to balance the mets scholarly integrity, fundraising needs, and obligations to a vast and rapidly changing audience. They are impressed by his quiet selfconfidence. Does that ring true . Dr. Campbell i was a scholar. Other people have to say the rest. I went, i came to the met in 1995 because my predecessor, felipe, had built an engine of scholarship. It had the funding, it had the spaces, and critically, it had the audience, the sophisticated audience that really wanted these great exhibitions. For me, as a scholar, in my field of european tapestry, eyesight is a great place to go and realize that, to share my passion with other people. When i became director, that was very much kind of, i thought, i have done that. I am happy to go on doing it, but now, what i want to do is allow my colleagues to go on doing it, and take it out further. Charlie did you decide and say, look, philippe had dual roles. Therefore, what i have to do is define my own identity as a dr. Campbell it has evolved. I was a curator for 13 years. I saw what i thought was working well. But i also had my own ideas about areas that might be evolved. For example, we had 17 different departments, and to some extent, they worked independently of one another. Art history, during the last 30 years of the 20th century, was all about going deep, deep, deep in individual subjects. Towards the end of the century, a lot of artists began looking outside of each area, and i saw those potential, if we could get the departments working more creatively together, there was a an opportunity to open up new narratives. One example, a couple years ago, we did a show called the interwoven globe that looked at the textile trade from asia to europe, and onto america, drawing textiles from our asian department, our European Department and our american department, and telling this amazing narrative about how these precious objects were brought over land and by sea, all around the world, and the kind of narrative, stylistic influences, the cultural influences, that this trade played a role in back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Charlie is there a constant battle, as there is in most institutions, between having the requisite funds and budget, and at the same time, making sure that we are true to the acquisition and exhibition and care of art . Dr. Campbell it is a delicate balance. We are a big institution. Our operating budget is 300 million. We get about 10 of that from the city in gas, steam, electricity. The other 90 , we are raising ourselves, it comes from endowments or memberships or fundraising. So we are an ambitious organization. We are always having to balance our ambitions with our, with the possible. Dr. Campbell the big story three years ago was the promised guest of leonard lauder. Charlie a perfect example. Dr. Campbell that is a collection that wouldve been very significant in a number of different museums. Charlie he had a connection to the whitney. Many people thought it might go to the moma. Dr. Campbell i think after thinking hard about all the options, i am happy that, with the classical can collections, african collections, 19thcentury french collections, and collections of the art of the 20th century art and photography, the cubist influence, it was in incomparable and incomparable context and that is the card, that is our ace card. Charlie let me talk about the met in terms of its power. What can you do, and what arguments do you make, that we can do at least in our mind, better than anyone else . Dr. Campbell we have this Amazing College of specialists. There is a great brain trust. An amazing resources to conserve and study works of art, really go deep in understanding them. Then, we are fortunate to be, we can tap into income screens, if we work hard at it, that allow us to do very ambitious project. So particularly the scale of the Exhibition Program and the Publication Program is really incomparable. There is no other museum in the world doing as much programming as we are doing. But i think there is also something very special about new york. We have got this educated, rambunctious, edgy, critical community. Very critical. You cant get it with anything. They are always pushing. The good thing about that is, it keeps us on our toes all the time. New york is this international city, so we are a part of this global dialogue. I think there is something very special about all of these actors. Charlie tell me about the push to modern and contemporary art. Dr. Campbell what, the met was set up to be an Encyclopedic Museum, but famously, it pulled back from collecting modern in the early 20th century. Charlie how did it pullback . Dr. Campbell for the first 3540 years, it had artists on the board, and it collected the art of the day, the river school, sergeant, old masters. Around 1905, 1910, the art that was coming out of france, particularly, cubism, fauvism, it was too radical. The leadership of the day, and it was a much Smaller Institution at the time, just felt it wasnt for them. They famously pulled back. They didnt like it, didnt appreciate it. All of the things are being said, it was too wild, untamed. So we pulled back, we stopped collecting for 20 or 30 years. That is the time in which moma, whitney and the guggenheim are created. The met gets back into collecting modern art during the second world war. While the galleries were cleared because of war, we had in a submission of contemporary artists. That got the museum thinking again, and in the years after the second world war, we actually really got back in there. We bought jackson pollocks, paintings in the 60s, a whole program going. Famously, we did and exhibition in 1969. We had been building up a collection. It is patchy. There are areas of strength and weakness. The moment has come when it is clear that our audience wants to see modern and contemporary art at the met in the context of historical collections. We are not competing with the whitney or the guggenheim, we are doing something different. Charlie in the context of dr. Campbell bigger context. When i was appointed director, it was clear that this was one of the areas that we really wanted to focus on. And i have been taking steps to do exactly that of the last few years. Building up the program, building up the staff who can develop a meaningful program. Now, occupying, taking over the old Whitney Building and programming it, and further down the line, planning to remodel or rebuild the wing in which we show our modern collections. Charlie one person said about you, campbells catalog studied the auction market, talked with artists, dealers, curators, and concluded there there was something extraordinary happening. Dr. Campbell something is happening. There is this amazing, you know, there is an amazing interest and focus on contemporary art. Some of that is being driven by the market. There is a huge capitalization of the market going on, with money flowing in from latin america, from eastern europe, from russia, asia. There is a lot of marketing and investment going on. But the good side of that is, it it is allowing more artists than ever before to undertake really ambitious project. I am sure that history will judge some of this is rubbish, but i think a lot of it is really interesting. There is an audience for it. It is almost a sort of, you know, a new renaissance. Charlie you described it as a neorenaissance. In beijing or korea has an audience and a resonance on the other side of the world in a way that it never wouldve done in the past. Charlie you demolished the lala acheson wing . Dr. Campbell we are looking at how we might remodel it. Charlie remodel is a better word. Dr. Campbell we are looking at all the options. It depends on the cost and expense. The current charlie what question brings you to that consideration . Dr. Campbell over the years, and the met has been under construction almost continually since it was first put in central park in 1880. One 20th the size of the building. It more or less doubled in size between 1970 and 1992. Since then, we have been kind of rebuilding from within, and we have rebuilt our american wing, our greek and roman galleries, our islamic galleries, the european painting galleries, and our costume institute. With the completion of those projects, we really came to the tail end up a master plan that had been in evolution over the 35 years. Five years ago, we stepped back and did a feasibility study. We looked at all of the infrastructure needs, and we looked at all of the, kind of the moon shots, and really thought, what could this building become for the next 100 years . And we identified a number of transformative projects, and the one that rose as being the one that, the greatest need, the one we had to do next, was this looking at the modern wing, looking at the way it connects to the areas around it, and thinking how we can, what we can do with that area. At the moment, it is hard to find, the galleries are not very congenial. You are sitting out there in central park, you wouldnt know it. Every year, 500,000 people somehow fight their way up that horrible back staircase to get to the roof garden. There is incredible potential to reexplore the relationship of the museum in the park. This is what we are looking at, working with charlie how did this exhibition happen . The whitney decided to move downtown, there had been some preliminary discussion between philippe and others. He was retiring, i was becoming director. The minute i became director, we have the financial crisis. Everything else was put on hold. There were little discussions, they kept going. In november 2010, leonard called me and said, can we talk . And i said, sure. He said, what about now . I said, ok. I got in a taxi, went to his apartment, and he said, i really, i want to keep the lights on in the breuer building. So we talked about the challenges for us, what would be involved. That got the discussion going. We had intense discussions within the met about what we would be doing there, how we would use it, what the financial implications would be. And then, intense discussions with the whitney about how we would manage a joint operation. It has all worked out. We have an initial occupation of eight years. We could potentially renew that. It gives us time to really explore the space. Charlie what is its mission . Dr. Campbell we thought very hard about it. We dont want to duplicate what the whitney was doing. We dont want to duplicate what the guggenheim is doing. What we do differently . Modern and contemporary in the context of the historic traditions that modern artists are embracing or rejecting. So that is one very clear thing that our peers are not doing. The other thing we can do is, we are an Encyclopedic Museum. Our collections come from all over the world. So there is, of course, other museums are doing this, too, but we have logical connections to modern artists beyond the familiar western canon. That is what is important with the first two shows. One show, look set modern and contemporary art and a broader historical context. The other, monographic, a show with an indian abstract artist of the 1970s and 1980s, looks at an unfamiliar but significant artist from outside the familiar western canon. Charlie tell us about her. Dr. Campbell she is very delicate. It is a wonderful counterpoint to the sound of the glory of other art. It is a quiet, meditative show. She trained in london, and after experimenting with painting and photography, her work became increasingly focused on pen and ink abstract designs that, in some ways, look back to russian futurism, in some ways a kind of, you look at artists like agnes martin working in the states, but they are meditations, they are thoughtful, spiritual. She has not had them on show in america. It seemed like a great choice to start this. Charlie some have said it is timeless and futuristic. Dr. Campbell that is a perfect way of describing it, yes. Charlie the exhibition, i have some images here. The exhibition spans more than 500 years. Dr. Campbell so does the mat. We have to show it somehow. Charlie exactly. These are works that have been left in complete. What do you mean by that . Dr. Campbell so much modern art, you are conscious of the raw material. The artist sort of toying with the tension between the raw material and whatever is presented and the finished work. What we are doing in the show is showing how this is not just a 20th century trope. In fact, artists, in doing this artists have been doing this a long time. We push the show of the way back to the renaissance. When you get off the third floor and the elevator doors open, there in front of you is this great painting by titian painted late in his life, called the slaying of marcius. It is a rollicking painting. Here is an artist to spend his life making almost pictureperfect renditions of the great rulers of the day, beautiful velvets and silks. Here, in the last years of his life, he turns to these very dark, mythological subjects, and the finish looks, it is very wrong, but it is intentionally, you know, there is some discussion of, was it unfinished, or was it intentional . I think that the agreement is that this is, what he is doing is concentrating on the emotional intensity of this vision, and that is the power of this rawness. Charlie is this part of the met collection . Dr. Campbell no. We borrowed this from the czech republic. Charlie iris murdoch said it is one of the greatest paintings of the western canon. Dr. Campbell yes. There are elements of autobiography. Marcius had a musical competition with apollo, he has lost, and apollo is punishing him for his hubris by skinning him alive. It is a horrible, an image of torture, suffering for art. It is thought that the figure to the right holding his hand in front of his face may even be a selfportrait by titian looking back. Charlie he kept coming back to it. Dr. Campbell at his studio, at his desk. Charlie so it was finished, but not finished. Dr. Campbell the rawness, the non finito some style was a conscious decision. There are some works that are unfinished by accident, but there are others that work on this intentionally raw the. Theme. The exhibition explores these two poles. It is about making. In some cases, you are seeing the artists thoughts below the oil service, and in other cases, it is working on the canvas in oil. Charlie this is turner, 1840, rough sea. Between 1840, 1850. He had a fascination with the sea. Dr. Campbell he rented a house, he traveled back and forth. Many of his masterpieces depict stormy, tumultuous waves. Charlie it is said he tied himself to dr. Campbell the sea, the storm. When he died, in his lifetime, he pushed the boundaries again of what was considered to be an appropriate finish for a painting. He famously was in the Royal Academy on the day it opened the show, brushing in, and these works were left in his studio at his desk. Charlie what is the darkness at the center . Dr. Campbell you can project into it. Is it a steamship . Is it a promontory of land . A lighthouse . These are so abstract, but they are, again, they capture the emotions, the tunnel the tumult of the storm. These become the works that influence impressionists and artists all the way through to richter. Charlie the next one is alice neel. 1965. This is extraordinary. Of all the stories, this is a powerful story. Dr. Campbell this is a talismanic piece. Alice neel famously painted people who lived near her, people who she didnt know, she would invite them in off the street. This young man caught her i come a i. He was going off to the vietnam war and he never came back. We dont know why. Maybe you never came back from the war. Maybe he never came back from the war. Charlie his name was james hunter . Dr. Campbell yes. She signed it and presented it as a finished work. It becomes a metaphor of a life cut off. Charlie one sitting . Dr. Campbell one sitting. So many of the works in the show have this, everyone has a story. It is not a show you blow through in two minutes. Every work has a story. It is very moving. Charlie this is andy warhol, 1962. Do it yourself. Dr. Campbell paint by numbers. In the modern area, we have some works that are, again, on this theme of rawness, unfinished. But we also go into a more co