Evening with the wright stuff. His new book is called the wright stuff from nbc to autism. Weve had 8,000 genom science, that 6,000 are on a scientific portal at google. Nobody has ever done this with any kind of disease or condition. People have done hundreds, theyve done a few, but never this. And were trying on take and put together, move groups that look and act similar in terms of their genetic formation together. And then we can start breaking those groups down and get into pharmaceutical companies to look at that when they see the makeup of this group, and we have all of the gino typing. Thomas campbell and the wright stuff when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Thomas Campbell is here. He became the metropolitan museum of arts ninth director in 2009. He was previously a curator in the Museums Department of european culture and decorative arts, specializing in tapestries. He made strides to expand the contemporary modern collection. The met recently sperred into an eightyear agreement with the Whitney Museum to occupy its recently advocated building on madison avenue. The new space opened to the public on march 18. I am pleased to have Thomas Campbell at this table for the first time, although we have talked at his museum. Welcome. Charlie, thank you. Rose its good to have you here at the table. So in seven years, tell me the things that you think are important that you have learned running this won place i thint as evolution. We have the Largest College of curators in the world, all working hard to different kinds of research and projects. So when i became director, i think, first and foremost, i wanted to sustain that activity the great exhibitions, the great 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. I think 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. So theres been a lot of thinking about accessibility, along with digital. And weve been thinking about what it is to be an encyclopedic museum. You know, we are the largest encyclopedic movement in the world, covering everything from the antique world to contemporary. But there are gaps, of course. So how do you go about filling in, you know. Rose and thats a huge challenge. Its a huge challenge, yeah. Rose talk about digital for a second, and accessibility. What do you offer digitally to someone who lives in alaska . In alaska. Now, you can go online. You can see we have records, 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. And weve really been putting a lot of time expaefort into creating crosscollection publications, short videos with curators talking about works of art, or the latest kind of webisoad, is called the artist project, and we have artists talking about the famous their favorite works. And its short, just two or three minutes. But its a wonderful kind of gateway drug to, you know, thinking more about the collections and seeing with freshize. Rose i mean, thats one of the things im proudest about on this particular program, people who cant get to new york, you know, because of our archive of 25 years, because weve had people like you, as well as artists and curators and all those exhibitions. We can give them a chance in our archives to see the magnificent of whats taking place. Thats exactly it. So our original mission was educational, and it used to be very much focused on the physical visitors to the museum, and thats doing fine. We had over six million last year. But online, just as with your archives, we now have Something Like 35 million visitors to our web site alone, and then through social media facebook, twitter, instagram were reaching tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands more. And i think that its a very exciting moment because were all i think everyone in the museum industry, the cultural industry, were realizing that now we have a global audience and how can we meaningfully engage them. Its an exciting moment. Rose in writing about you, Calvin Tompkins said in choosing campbell the trustees were banking on his clearheaded vision on how to balance the mets scholarly interkt its fundraising needs, and its obligations to a vast and rapidly chag audience. They were also empressed by his quiet selfconfidence. Does that ring true to you . I was a scholar, and probably other people have to say the rest. I mean, i went to i came to the met in 95 because my predecessor, philippe, had built it up into this engine of scholarship. It had the funding. It had the spaces. Critically it had the sophisticated audiences that really wanted these great exhibitions. For me as a scholar in my field, european tapestry, i saw it as this great place to go and realize that, to share my passion with other people. And when i became director, that was very much kind of ive done that. I was 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. Rose did you decide, did you say, look, philippe was who he is and had those dual roles there and, therefore, what i have to do is define my own identity as a leader of the met . I think its its evolved. Id been there as a curator for 13 years, so i saw what i thought was working really well, but i also had my own ideas about areas that might be evolved. For example, we have taken different departments and to some extent they work very independently of one another, because art history, curing the last 30 years of the 20th century was all about going deep, deep, deep into individual subjects. But i think towards the end of the simpry, we began look outside of each area, and i saw there was a potential to, if we could get the departments working more creatively together, there was a real opportunity to open up new narratives. So just to give one example, a couple of years ago, we did a show called the interwoven globe that looked at the textile trade from asia to europe, and then on to 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 the narrative, stylistic influences, the cultural influences that this this trade, you know, played a role in back in the 18th and 19th centuries. And i think theres weve got a whole lot of projects like that now going on. I think theres Great Potential that were unlocking. Rose 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 . Yup. Its a delegate balance. Were a big institution. Our operating budget, net operating budget is about capitol hill 300 million. And we get about 10 of what from the city, gas, steam, electricity. The other 90 , were raising ourselves. It either comes from our endowment or missions or membership or fundraising. So were an ambitious organization, and were always having to balance our ambitions with our with our you know, with the possible. Rose does it affect you in terms of the acquisition of some priceless piece of art that belongs at the met . Yeah, acquisitions are always a challenge. The prices are crazy. Especially in the contemporary market. And we cant possibly go in and compete. But in fact, what weve always depended on is the generosity of benefactors. So Something Like 85 of the mets collection came as gift, and thats you know 85 . 85 . And id say the chemistry that makes us so successful is the interface between passionate and knowledgeable curators and conserve tors, and passionate and knowledgeable collectors. Because they get such pleasure from working together. And those longterm relationships very often result in, you know, generous benefaction. Rose a friend of mine once said to me that his great friend, a collector, who was deciding where his collection should go decided on the met. So my friend said to him, why the met . And he said, because strength goes to strength. Yup. Hard to argue with that. Rose thats basically and people want to make sure that its going to be protected, handled well, exhibited well, you know, and be a power to bring in other things. Exactly. And resonate. Rose yes. Of course, the big story three years ago was the promised gift of leonard lauderd. Rose i wasnt thinking about him but thats a perfect example. Thats a collection that would have been very significant in a number of museums. Rose he had a connection with the whitney and many thought it might go to moma. Whitney, moma, boston, or the national gallery. But i think after thinking hard about all the options, i happy that boy, are you happy. With his classical collections, his african collections, his 19th century french collections and his collection of the art, 20th century art and photography, the cubism influence, it was an incomparable it was an incomparable context. And, of course, thats yeah, thats the card. Thats our ace card. Rose let me talk about the met in terms of its power and an institution. What can you do and what arguments do you make that we can do, at least in our mind, better than anyone else can do . Well, we have this Amazing College of specialists. So theres a great brain trust there, an amaidsing resources to conserve and study works of art, and really go deep in understanding them. Then we are fortunate to be we can tap into income streams. We work hard at it, that allow us to do very ambitious projects. So the particularly the scale of the Exhibition Program and the pub i hadication program is really incomparable. Theres no other museum in the world doing as much programming as were doing. But i think theres also something very special about new york. You know, weve got this educated, ambungous, edgy, critical community. Theyre critical. Theyre always pushing, always pushing. I think the good thing about that is they keep us on our toes all the time. And new york is this international city. Were part of this global dialogue. Ung theres something very special about all these factors. Rose tell me about the push to modern and contemporary art. What were trying the met was set up to be an encyclopedic museum, but famously, it pulled back from collecting modern in the early 20th century. Rose how did it pull back . Well, for the first 35, 40 years it had artists on the board, and it collected the art of the day, the hudson river school, whistler sergeant, of course, mao, old masters. But around 1905, 1910, the art that was coming out of france, particularly, cubism it was just too radical. And the leadership of the day and, of course, it was a much, much Smaller Institution at the time just felt it wasnt for them. And so they famously pulled back. Rose didnt like it . Didnt appreciate it . Didnt like it. Didnt appreciate it. All the things that were being said it was too wild, it was untamed. Y we pulled back. We stopped collecting for a period of 20 or 30 years and thats the period that moma and the whitney and guggenheim are created. The met gets back into collecting modern art during the second world war. We had an exhibition of d that got the museum thinking again. And in the years after the second world war, we actually really got back in, jackson pollack and a couple of years after it was painted. Henry geldzaller in the 60s got a whole program going, did an exhibition in 1969. And so weve been building up the collection. But it its pretty its patchy. There are areas of strength and areas of weakness. And i think that the moment has come when, you know, our its clear that our audience is they really want to see modern and contemporary art at the met in the context of historical collections. So were not competing with moma or the whitney or the guggenheim. Were doing something different. Rose youre offering in context this bigger context, yeah. And so when i was appointed director, it was clear that this is one of the areas we you know, we really wanted to focus on. And ive bn taking steps to do exactly that over the last few years. Building up a program, building up the staff who can develop a meaningful program. Now occupying the taking over the old Whitney Building and further down the line, planning to remodel or rebuild the wing in which we show our modern collections. Rose heres what Calvin Tompkins said about you. Campbells slog through galleriegalleries and art fairsd biledges, studied the auction market, talked with ayersts and dealers and curators and concluded that something extraordinary was happening. I mean, i think something is happening, dont you . Rose yes. Theres this amazing you know, theres an amazing interest and focus on contemporary art. Some of that is being driven by the market because theres a huge capitalization of the market going on with money flowing in from latin america, from eastern europe, from asia. So theres a lot of marketing and investment going on. But the good side of that is its allowing more artists than ever before to undertake really ambitious projects. And im sure that history will judge some of this as rubbish. But a lot of it i think is really interesting. And theres an audience for it. Its almost a sort of a new renaissance. Rose i was going to say you describe it as a renaissance. I think its fascinating. And in a globalizing world. The art thats being produced now in beijing or seoul has an audience and a resonance on the other side of the world in a way it never would have done in the past. Rose and you demolished the lila archson wallace wing . No, were look at how we might remodel it. Rose remodel is a better word than demolish. Were looking at the options. It all depends on the cost and the expense. The current but what question brings you to that consideration . Well, over the years and the met has been under construction almost continually since it was first plunged down in 1880, what is now the medieval hall, 1 20 the size of the building it now is. And it more or less doubled in size between 1970 and 1992. Since then, weve been kind of rebuilding from within, and weve rebuilt our american wing, our greek and roman galleries, islamic galleries, our european painting galleries, and our costume institute. And with the completion of those projects, we really came to the tail end of a master plan that had been in evolution over the last 35 years. So about five years ago, we stepped back and we did a feesibility study. We looked at all the infrastructure needs, and we looked at all of the kind of moonshots,in,ing and really thot what could this building become for the next 100 years. And we identified a number of transformative projects. And the one that really rose as being the one that the the greatest need, the one we had to do next, was this looking at the modern wing, looking at the way it connects with the areas around it, and thinking how we can what we can do with that area. And at the moment, its hard to find. The galleries are not very congenial for display of art. Youre sitting out there in central park, but you wouldnt know it. I mean, every year, 500,000 people somehow fight their way up that horrible back staircase to get to the roof garden. It shows theres this incredible potential to reexplore the relationship of the museum and the park. So this is what were looking at, working with david shepperfield. Rose the met brauer, how did it happen . I think there had been when whitney decided to move downtown, there had been some preliminary discussion between leonard and philippe. Just at the time he was retiring, i was becoming director. And the minute i became director, we had the financial crisis. So Everything Else was put on hold. But discussion kept going, and in i think it was in november 2010, leonard called me and he said, can we talk . And i said, sure. When . And he said, what about now. And i said, okay. And i got in a taxi. I went down to his apartment, and he said i really i want to keep the lights on in the breyer building. We talked about the challenges for us, what would be involved. But that really got the discussion going. And we had intense discussions within the met about what we would be doing there, how we would use it, what the financial implications woo. Roob. And then intense discussion with the whitney about how we would manage a joint operation. But its all worked out. Weve got an initial occupation of eight years. We potentially could renew that. It gives us time to really explore the space. Rose and what will it be . What is its mission . Well, we thought very hard about it. We dont upon to just duplicate what the whitney was doing. We coapt want to duplicate what moma or the guggenheim is doing. What can we do differently . And what we codifferently is we can show modern and contemporary in the context of the historic traditions that modern artists are either embracing or rejecting. So thats one very clear thing that our peers are not doing. The other thing that we can do is were an encyclopedic museum. Our collections come from all over the world. So there is i mean, of course, other museums are doing this, too. But there is a we have logical connections to modern artists beyond the familiar western canon, and thats in the first two shows. One show, unfinished, looks at modern and contemporary art and the other monographic show of an indian abstract artist of the 1970s and the 1980s looks at an unfamiliar but significant artist from outside the familiar western canon. Rose tell us more about her. She is a very delicate its a sort of its a wonderful counterpoint to the sound and the glory of the unfinished show. Its a very 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 kind of russian futurism, in some ways a kind of you look at artists like agnes martin working the states. But theyre meditations. Theyre thoughtful, theyre spiritual. And shes not had a monographic show in america. So it seemed like a great choice to start this. Rose some have said it feels both timeless and futuristic. Yup, yup. I think its thats the perfect way of describing it, yeah. Rose this exhibition unfinished, through thoughts left visible, you have some images here