February 7, 2023 • 41 mins
Daniel Weiss is President and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the largest museum in North America. An accomplished scholar and author who holds a PhD in art history and an MBA, Weiss was recruited to lead The Met in 2015 after serving as a college president, university dean, and professor of art history. He has steered the Museum through a series of historic challenges—including the covid crisis, a budget deficit and the removal of the controversial Sackler name from the building. Weiss is also the author of several books, ranging from art history to a soldier’s experience in the Vietnam War. Alec speaks with Daniel Weiss about navigating the Met through the pandemic, his role as a steward of priceless works of art, and his favorite museum to visit in the world.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. Imagine wandering through a priceless
collection of artwork, Greek sculptures, ancient Egyptian artifacts, primitive pottery,
and of course some of the most famous paintings by
masters throughout human history. Mone Dega, Rothko and Pollock. Now
(00:27):
imagine you are the steward for their future preservation. For
my guest today, that's just another day at the office.
Daniel Weiss has been President and CEO of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art since two thousand fifteen. He has navigated
the MET through a series of challenges, including a budget deficit,
(00:48):
the COVID crisis, and the removal of the controversial Sackler
name from the building. Prior to running the MET, Weiss
had his feet firmly planted in academia. He was dean
of the Creakers School of Arts and Sciences at Johns
Hopkins University and served as president of both Lafayette and
(01:10):
Haverford Colleges. He has also published several books on art history.
The MET is the largest museum in North America for
an internationally renowned institution of such stature. I was curious
what percentage of the METS visitors are native to the
United States. We actually do a lot of tracking of visitors,
(01:33):
and let's use numbers prior to COVID, when there is
a more representative international audience, about a third of our visitors.
And prior to COVID, we had about seven million people
come through our doors every year, making us one of
the busiest art museums in the world. About a third
of them came from all over the world, and the
other two thirds would when I think of it as thirds,
(01:53):
one third from New York and the New York metropolitan area,
the next third from the rest of the country, and
then the world, and so really nice balance and lots
of different countries represented. Because I was always curious about that,
and there was one assumes that the MET is on
in equal footing in the world of the museums with
those other museums. But I always wonder if they occupy
(02:15):
a different space because they're in Europe and the history
that's there, and the way, you know Franless old line
about New York, whenever they tear down a building, they
always put up an uglier building, and New York sometimes
seems to have its cultural priorities fixed in the right places.
Sometimes they don't. Yeah, it's an interesting point. If we
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think about the competitive landscape for museums, the busiest art museum,
the most well attended in the world is the Louver.
At that time they would see about nine million visitors
a year, and that's because everybody who's anywhere near Paris
is going to go make a visit to the Louver.
New York is a cultural center, and I think a
slightly different way, maybe more like London. People come here
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for theater, they come from museums, they come from shopping
and restaur unts. And within that framework, the met is
the largest tourist attraction in New York City, indoor tourist attraction.
So many people who would come for any number of
reasons would make a pilgrimage to the mat, which is
why our numbers are so large. So in many ways
we're like London or Paris with regard to visitors. Now
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you have mentioned and material that I read that you
were breaking records prior to COVID, that the museum was
doing fantastically well right before the floor fell out. What
would that like for you to have achieved to where
you were winning the World Series. Then all of a sudden,
you break your leg. What was that like? It was
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very discouraging. Exactly right. We had over the last probably decade,
we had been working to build increasingly diverse programming, to
bring in larger audiences, to reconnect with people who might
not come to the museum regularly. So our numbers were
climbing in remarkably good ways because we were connecting with
larger audiences. And then with the advent of COVID, of course,
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we went from having terrific audiences to being closed. And we,
like the rest of us everyone, we just closed and
overnight the museum was shut to the public entirely. When
when made the decision to close, it was a very
obviously a big deal. We were the first cultural institution
in New York City to do it, and by the
end of the day they all had closed, including Broadway,
And I thought when we made the decision, this was
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a momentous one, and we're probably going to be closed
for I don't know, maybe three weeks because how long
does it take COVID to run through people and we're done?
What did I know? What did any of us know?
We were closed for five and a half months, and
prior to that the record was maybe two days three days.
So it was a remarkable experience to be closed entirely
for almost half a year. An organization like this, you
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have a very very substantial endowment, and when you reach
that COVID period or do you sort of have to
drain down obviously that endowment to pay the bills. Well,
we wanted to exercise discipline not to diminish resources that
really we are holding in part in stewardship for the future.
So we made an emergency financial plan once we closed
we wanted to, and we did keep all of our
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staff on payroll throughout the period of our closure, and
that meant that we had a lot of cost and
not a lot of revenue. Of our operating expenses are
covered by our endowment. So we were luckier than most
places who didn't have that kind of savings account to
draw on. And I'm talking about just the proceeds each year,
the return on endowment, so we weren't spending principle, we
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were spending the proceeds and we had We actually restructured
our organization very quickly to try to cut costs in
order not to drain the endowment, and we didn't. We
never touched any principle in the endowment to get through.
It wasn't easy, but it was we thought important. Is
there a percentage I'm assuming there's some percentage of the
staff of the museum there people with disparate tasks and
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so forth. Are they union? Yes, we have about prior
to COVID about two thousand staff. We now have about
sevent prior to COVID at the time COVID arrived, and
of that about union and the rest were non union.
But as you can imagine, the met as a place
with hundreds of different jobs, and half of them had
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to be fulfilled. Even if we were closed. The collections
have to still be taken care of, the building still
has to be guarded. We have to do all of
those things. So we had hundreds and hundreds of people
coming to the museum every day when the museum was
entirely closed, but everybody was on payroll throughout that period.
I'm wondering, like other people I know who are hired,
(06:30):
who have intense creative backgrounds. And Chasson, who is the
executive director of the Hampton's Film Festival, is a very
good example of someone who arrived on the job and
was one of the only, I think, if not the only,
person to serve as as executive director who had actually
been a filmmaker. She was a film producer prior to that,
everybody else had been an administration only. And she arrived
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and she accomplished, but her predecessors couldn't. Which She balanced
the books, She pulled the sword out of the stone
in terms of the finances of the festival, and you
could tell that it was something that was a tremendous
accomplishment for her. When you arrived, you didn't think that
you were going to be too heavily involved in accounting work,
and then you then succeeded. Describe what you found and
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what path that set you on career was. Yeah, So
when I got to the AT, my background is I'm
an art historian by training. I spent most of my
career doing scholarship and teaching and then as a college president.
But this was my first museum job. It happens I
have an MBA and I had a business career early on,
so I know both of those worlds and I've spent
my career doing both. But when I arrived at the
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mat I won't say that I anticipated it would be
a sinecure that I would expect it was going to
be easy. But I thought things were stable financially. The
place is big and wealthy, and everything seems to work well.
And there was a very modest deficit that I could
discern on the financial statements. But I also had a
hard time figuring out what was in the financial statements,
which was a warning sign to me. They should be
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easier to read, and I knew how to read them,
but I couldn't. So as we dug into it fairly quickly,
it became clear to me that there was a much
bigger problem and the met actually had very substantial deficits
that have been accruing over the last few years. Did
someone expose that to you? Where you found it yourself?
Were both? Mostly I found it by asking the right
questions of financial people. I can't understand this number, where
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does it come from? And how does it relate to
this number? And as the answer started to come to me,
it was clear there was a more complicated story that
adjustments in financial statements had been made in the ways
they were presented in order to solve problems in the
near term balance little like you spend too much on
your credit card and before you know it, you've got
too much. Your balance is really big. So what do
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you do? You get another credit card and shift the balances.
It was like that, and I became very uncomfortable. I
think what we really needed to do is take apart
the big problem and figure out what the magnitude was.
And it was very substantial. So I ended up spending
many much of my first couple of years of the
MET not being an art guy, but being a numbers guy,
(09:04):
because that was the problem on the ground. And did
you find that solving that problem the Rubik's cube if
you will, of the finances of the net like other
people I know, did you become addicted to that? Did
you be where you? Like? God? This is really because
if you don't solve with the institutions, this is my
opinion and my experience from other boards have been on
that you need to solve that problem first. Everything you
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don't have the money for programming, if you don't have
your books right, You're exactly right. Institutions like the met universities, theaters,
if they don't have strong stable finances, it's very hard
to do difficult work and take chances and make investments
and ideas that are a little bit speculative, because any
failure is going to cripple the organization. So at the MET,
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just as you say, we got caught up in figuring
out how to solve that problem because the Met deserve
to have strong and stable finances, and by their way,
we were pretty rich place. So's it would have been
a harder job to be doing this sort of ice.
It didn't have an endowment like we do. So when
the art history guy has to go and dig into
the get into the coal mine of finances, there does
(10:09):
the art history I have to find another guy to
cover the artistic side, to cover his back, just to
hire people to do a job that you ordinarily would
have been doing well. The way they met structured a
little bit like a university. My job as the president
was to oversee the operations of the institution, and there
was a director who's a little bit like in a
university the provost who oversees all the academic stuff. So
(10:29):
we have and had a director who oversaw the exhibitions,
the collection who was at the time I arrived, it
was Tom Campbell. When he left. We brought in a
new director, and so I never had to worry for
I was doing both jobs for about a year and
a half, and to your point, I did have to
get help. I could not do all those things. So
(10:49):
I relied on some of the staff that was already there,
the administrative staff, to take on a larger role, and
they stepped right up and it was great. But I
was still focused, primarily, as you say, on the finances,
because if you don't get that right, then you really can't.
You can't tell people their employment is security. You can't
tell them we can fund that exhibition, we can't buy
that work of art. Everything shuts down if you don't
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have stable operating For the person that's there now is Max.
How do you pronounce the name Homeline. He's been there
now for about four and a half years. You've written
seven books. And people asked about Sackler and the Sackler
d n A is in a lot of institutions in
this country and around the world, and they, of course
had their problems. And I'm wondering, is that something that
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is in your field, and in any field that's that's
having to raise massive amounts of money. I mean millions,
about millions and eventually billions of dollars of crew in
your in your reserves. The Sacklers, it's an obvious one.
They wind up having this horrible litigation problems and public
relations debacle. But are there other people who it's it's
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not in the paper? Are you like on guard constantly
vetting sore is of money and having to deal with people?
Is there a constant managing of people what they want
to attach to their gifts. Yeah. I think there's two
issues here that are both interesting to think about. One is,
are their individuals who their connection to their money is
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such that we might not want to accept a gift
because they have questionable background or they're involved in things. Yes.
In fact, I'll speak openly about this. The Saudi government
approached us about a partnership right after show Get was killed.
We were not interested in partnering with the leadership of
the Saudi government at that time because we didn't feel
that it was the proper association for us. There wasn't
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all of the evidence at the time available to determine
who was really responsible. But the response of the Saudi
government was not forthcoming enough to give us satisfaction that
we should invest are the integrity of our brand in
that partnership, we didn't work with them. I would say
this with regard to the issue of who we work with.
The primary goal for us is to fund our mission,
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and it is almost entirely funded philanthropically, so we don't
collect the resources, we can't do the work, and therefore
our job is not to vet donors so much as
to advance our mission. But there are people who cross
the line, and we have over the years been approached
by people that we think they're not really appropriate for
us to be working with because of the way they
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raise the money or their stature positions in the world.
But I do that on an exceptional basis because my
job is not to determine who's MET worthy as a
club member, but how do we fund the mission? And
so there are times we won't do it. The other issue,
which you raise quite rightly, is how do you deal
with donors who have ideas, And there's two kinds that
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are problematic, where they say, I know what you're doing
at the MET that's all great, but I don't want
to do that. I want you to do this and this,
and I have an idea for a different kind of thing,
and you have to have enough strength and integrity. Is
an institution to say, Alex, thanks so much for your
offer of a hundred million, it's great, but we're not
going to do that. We're not interested in that. We
have a strategic and these are the things we'd love
to do, and if you want to help us with those,
we'd really be delighted. But we're not going to build
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a new art museum in St. Louis right now just
because you think that would be great. And that happens.
And then sometimes people say they want their name to
be represented in ways that is challenging. For example, there's
a long history in New York people making capital gifts
that are in perpetuity. So Alec Baldwin's name is going
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to be on that wing forever forever. But a hundred
years from now you ain't around and I ain't around,
and who's going to pay to fix it? And I'm
pretty sure the average person on the street might want
to not pay to have that name live forever. So
there needs to be fiscal responsibility about the long term.
If the institution is supposed to last forever, who's going
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to carry that obligation long after you're not able in
the way that they had to buy out the Fisher
family for Giffen, they had to pay the Fisher family
an amount of money to reverse the perpetuity gift. Exactly right.
That's a perfect example, and that was a thoughtful way
to solve that problem. But each time, so we don't
really do perpetuity gifts anymore because you know, fifty years,
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a hundred years, how about that? Is that going to
be okay? Your grandchildren will have a chance to see it,
and after that, all bets are off. And most donors
appreciate that, but some don't. Some are more interested in
some other way to make sure their their name lasts
longer than that. But our job is to be really
thoughtful about the well being of the institution long after
we're gone. So they're all kinds of issues associated with
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dealing with donors that are interesting. They're usually positive, even
if their challenges to work through. Most people, they lay
out their agenda and you solve it with them, and
it's entirely positive. One thing that occurred to me is
that all the art that hangs on the walls, all
of it that occupies a space in your facility and
in your counterparts, the artists are dead, and at the
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Museum of Modern Art they're not all dead. And there
seems to be a sense in my mind, especially living
in New York, that there is a world of people
who are working awfully hard to expand and augment their
status in the art world to get their art to
hang on that wall. There's a drama there if you want.
I find that kind of interesting. What do you think
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are the things that people have to deal with at
MoMA that you're happy you don't have to deal with? Yeah,
So moment's job is to be far more leading edge
and engaged in the contemporary art world than ours is.
So they're willing to quite appropriately take risks. They may
do an exhibition of an artist that may not actually
prove to be of long standing importance in the world
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of history of art. We think of ourselves and this
isn't at all in a pedantic way, but as a
where the cannon. So if something comes into the met,
it's arrived in a way that is, in this sense,
establishing the place of that artist in history. That's at
least how we think about ourselves, and a lot of
people think about us. So there's no question that living
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artists like Jasper John's or David Hackney belong in the MET,
and they are in the MET, and there are other
living artists where it's not clear yet whether or not
time will tell, yeah, exactly. But that said, we actually
do a fair amount of contemporary art nowadays, more than
we used to. And we don't compete directly with MoMA.
They have an extraordinary program that leads the world, but
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ours is excellent too, and we just are, i think
a little bit more focused on the long term importance
of that artist, because that's sort of what we do,
and because our collections are so diverse across time and history,
we look for artists that connect in new ways to
the other art we have in our place. So we
might have a contemporary artist come who actually is basing
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their work on traditions in our Egyptian department or other areas,
because then we can show those connections in different ways.
Daniel Weiss. If you enjoy conversations about world famous works
of art, check out my episode with Eric Shiner, former
director of the Andy Warhol Museum. The Dollar as Sign
(17:58):
Paintings to hundred one dollar bills was his very exactly.
So that's in early nineteen sixties work nine two. So
he was being dismissed for that. He was and um,
you know a lot of people said that it was
too tacky to paint money. It was too ghosh. And
when we look at those paintings today, what's more indicative
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of the early nineteen eighties in New York than the
almighty Dollar? He hit it square on the head. To
hear more of my conversation with Eric Schiner, go to
Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Daniel Weiss
shares why he made the jump from academia to running
one of the largest art institutions in the world. I'm
(18:52):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. In
addition to being President and CEO of the metropol Alton
Museum of Art, Daniel Weiss is also the author of
several books on art history, including France and the Holy
Land and Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis.
Yet one of Weiss's books stands out from the others.
(19:15):
It's entitled In That Time, Michael O'Donnell and the Tragic
Era of Vietnam. I wanted to know how he came
to write a book so divergent from the rest of
his catalog. It came about, probably about fifteen years ago.
I came across the book by Harold Evans, the great publisher.
He had produced a book called The American Century, which
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is really a beautiful book on the political history of
American the twentieth century. And in that book there was
a small section on the Vietnam War. Within that section
there was a photograph of this very nice, shilking young man,
and below at a poem he had written while he
was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. And I was so
moved by that poem, the last stanza of which says,
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and in that time, when men decide and feel safe
to call this war insane, don't forget those gentle heroes
you left behind. And right after he wrote it, he
was shot down while rescuing other soldiers in Vietnam in
March of n When I read Evans' book, it said
he's still missing in action. This was in the nineties.
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I got interested in just learning more about who this
guy was, why he wrote that poem, and somehow I
felt like he was calling upon us to pay attention
to what happened to these guys. I'm young enough to
have not been drafted, but I'm old enough to remember
the Vietnam War really well. I was in high school.
It was on TV every day. Neighbors of ours went
to war, Yes, exactly, we all know people who did
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of our generation. And so as I learned more about
this guy, I discovered a story that was extraordinarily powerful.
In the book I ended up writing is about the
life of one innocent American kid, but it's placed within
the context of what happened to our country. So I
trace what happened to Michael O'Donnell as I'm just gribbing
what Lyndon Johnson is doing, Richard Nixon is doing, and
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how their decisions affected him on the ground. And then
I talked about his poetry, which was very powerful. And
he was missing in action for twenty eight years, and
during that period he was dead. His family didn't know that,
and for twenty eight years, about three times a year
they got a letter from the army saying, we're writing
to update you on the status of your son. A
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Caucasian male was noticed on the streets of Saigon resembling
your son they were doing this meticulous job of accounting
for the whereabouts of their son. It was excruciating for
them because in fact, they believed he was dead. So
I chronicle in the book what it means to be
missing in action to the people who are left around.
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And then there's a chapter in the book they actually
found the remains in Cambodia, and I write about, how
do you find the remains of a soldier soldiers that
were killed thirty years ago in a tropical jungle in
a helicopter went down in flames, and we're talking about
tooth fragments and bone fragments embedded in the ground. How
did they find them? Some Cambodian farmers who knew that landscape.
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This was thirty miles away from a teeny little town
in the middle of nowhere. And the American government spends
hundreds of millions of dollars a year looking for and
restituting the remains of American soldiers around the world. So
Cambodian farmers said, I saw remains looks like a helicopter,
and he told them where. He actually lead this team
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in on the raft and they had to float down
the river for days on this raft. To get into
the jungle to find this helicopter. When they did, the
American team mobilized, they cleared the landing zone, they brought
in helicopters, and they set up an excavation team to
the rusty hall of the helicopter, and their pictures in
the book of what that helicopter looked like. But if
you were thirty feet away from it, you wouldn't see it.
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And so it's a miracle that it was found. And
I wanted to give some color to the story of
how do you find these people? And then Michael was
buried with full honors at Arlington Cemetery two weeks before
nine eleven. So the arc of the book is about
one mistake, which we would call Vietnam and how for
this family. That story endured for thirty years, right up
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until the nine eleven and then we embarked on a
whole new chapter of policies that were controversial and questionable
and lead to the result of dead Americans for not
necessarily a good reason. In Afghanistan and Iraq, war is
a terrible thing, but it also generates incredible stories that
we are drawn to that we're curious about. That means
something to us. Well, I mean, obviously there was a
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deep emotional connection you had to this story. Only one
such book in your quiver? Where did you were there
other books you wanted to write? There were not about
your profession. Now there are. For whatever reason, I have
always been drawn to stories like that one about people
who have done something larger than themselves. I wrote a
series of articles about a young woman who was the
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first civilian publicly executed in the Soviet Union and Second
World War, and her identity was not known until I
published her identity in nineties. I was drawn to that story. Remarkable.
We have photographs of this event, and she was a
great heroine. And so I'm drawn to these stories that
that I think are are related to what it means
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to be human and understanding the nature of sacrifice and
people at their best, people at their best, at their best. No, no,
no greater story than that. Now. In your career, which
prior to coming to run the met it was pretty
much exclusively academia, And you were at Lafayette for eight years,
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and then you went to Haverford and you're at Haverford
for two years. Did you just have enough of academia
at that point? What was the in the Godfather parlance,
what was the offer they made you that you couldn't
refuse that you exited academia. Yeah, well, I did have
a brief business career. I went to business school and
I was a management consultant in New York for four
years before I went to do art history, so I
(25:00):
always had a little bit of both. Haverford's a great place,
as you know, and I really enjoyed being there. It
has a very special community and intellectual culture that I loved,
and I was very happy there. But I got a
call about coming to the MET, which is a singular
institution in the world. And without speaking about my own
qualifications compared to others, I have a rather unique background
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because I have the business background as well as a
very deep art history background, and that's what the museum
was looking for for the reasons that we've discussed. So
I felt drawn to that opportunity and the role and
the leadership at Haverford understood that this was a once
in a lifetime opportunity and there was a need at
the MET for a new kind of leadership. So I
(25:43):
felt compelled to do that kind of leadership, to combine
a serious commitment to scholarly work and fiscal discipline to
fix the budgets. But at the same time, as you know,
generating scholarship, like creative work, is really inefficient. It's expensive,
you make mistakes, their failures, and if you become too
fiscally focused, then you don't waste time on on scholarly
(26:04):
projects that might take a long time, and that would
have been a mistake. So what I brought was the
ability to understand the value of both of those things,
and I was I felt called to do that. So
I was sorry to leave. Haverford was a great place,
and I still have close relations there, but it was
the right moment for me to make that change. Now,
some of the institutions I've worked with over the years
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where I've served on the boards, I was developing my
sensibilities about this stuff, and I realized I was somewhat
uncomfortable with people that were raising huge amounts of money
for rent for a building. And eventually I said to myself,
I don't know how I feel that you're handing this
guy who is the landlord three fifty thousand dollars a
year in rent. And I went up leaving that institution
(26:46):
and leaving that board to go join another one where
they owned the building. There was always friction and there
was always resistance to asking for money, but they didn't
even blink at spending all this money on renovating the building.
Do you find that in terms of as a percentage
of the money that's available to you, that you are
constantly struggling to get the money you need for programming
(27:09):
and research and so forth. Well, you're raising, by the way,
I think, exactly the right issue for all cultural institutions,
because programming is why we're here, and it is connecting
people to the ideas that are behind the program. But
all of us want to have better facilities, bigger facilities,
nicer dressing rooms, better more bathrooms, more bats rooms, all
(27:30):
of that, and you can lose your way, you can
become And there's certainly ego involved. If during my tenure
as president we build this great way, I'll you know,
my grand children will see that no I built it.
Finding the balance is the key. And you and I
talked last night about the risk of creeping commercialism in
culture and in the arts. When you walk in an
art museum, you want to have a pure experience with
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the objects and you don't need to see brought to
you by nobody, beats the whiz or whatever. You want
to just see the objects. The greatest challenge in being
leaders in this sector is finding a way for that
stuff to be invisible. The programming is being presented, the
institution looks good, the facilities are right, they're properly funded,
and sometimes that means saying no to big projects that
(28:14):
eat resources, even though they may look great. But what
are you doing to successive generations when those people have
to take care of it? They don't have enough money
to put on programming they need to there. You need
a strong board as you are as a trustee in
that organization, You need to ask those questions and hold
people accountable. Why are you doing that? Do you really
need that? What happens to the resources for the program?
(28:35):
And if you don't ask those questions, then bad things
can happen. So in my experience, that's exactly how shared
government should work. Everybody with a vested interests in the
well being of the place should ask the hard questions
and then you do the things you can afford. Daniel Weiss,
if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
(28:57):
sure to follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart
radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When
we come back. Daniel Weiss weighs in are the actions
of climate activists who intentionally deface priceless works of art
in an attempt to draw attention to their cause. I'm
(29:28):
Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Daniel Weiss has a master's and PhD in medieval and
modern art and has been a professor of art history
at Johns Hopkins University and Lafayette College. I wanted to
know how he was first drawn to this career. I
(29:48):
grew up on Long Island. I was not interested in art. Art.
I didn't know anything about it. Would your dad do?
My father was a businessman, and he actually had been
an artist a little, an amateur artist, and I ta
his own stuff on the walls, which I liked. I
knew nothing about art. I had never been to an
art museum. On the walls of your home, yeah, just
a little, and it was his and that was it.
(30:09):
It was nice, but I didn't there was no real
artistic family. Who did he paint in the style of
your father? Impressionists. He got divorced from my mother and
he was a bachelor for a while and he painted
and decorated his walls with stuff he had painted, and
so I remember visiting him as a kid. He lived
in these exotic places like Puerto Rico and Brazil, and
it was a great time for me. I was with
(30:31):
him and I and those those pictures were on the wall.
So I had a positive association with art, but I
had no real interest in it. And then I went
to George Washington University and I was studying political science,
which lasted for me for maybe six weeks, and I
realized that's not for me, and I wasn't sure what
to do, and I was interested. I met this young
woman who was a student there, and I wanted to
(30:51):
get to know her. And she told me she was
taking this art history class and I needed a fifth class.
So I took this class and it was a revelatory
sperience for me. The professor was this young, charismatic, brilliant
guy who was talking about something that interested me immediately.
I was not a very serious student up until that moment.
I was trundling along in college, just sort of hanging
(31:13):
out and this subject was really interesting to me and
the way he brought it to life. He knew how
to perform teaching in a way that was compelling. Every
sentence came together, his paragraphs were complete, His intellectual presentation
was accessible but inspiring, and I wanted to know more.
And to make a long story short, I took one
(31:35):
class after another with him, and I became a serious student.
By the last end of college, I was a serious
academic and I ended up pursuing that study. He's still
a very dear friend and I actually married that woman.
It all worked out very well for me, but that
was a life day. I walked into this class and
I found myself as a serious person, and my relationship
(31:56):
with Sandra began to grow. And I've felt lucky for
the rest of my life that every day I have
this passion about something that's larger than me, that matters
to me. And prior to that day, I didn't have that.
I was just a kid in the world. And I
think having a passion for something that animates you, engages you,
brings out your best effort, gives you the motivation to
(32:19):
do hard things in order to be an artist. Story
and I had to learn a lot of languages. I
wasn't even a good language student, but I did. You
were from Long Island, so you barely spoke English. I
spoke Long Island, which you and I could speak. The
record speak. Well, that's it's very true. So I feel
very lucky about all of that. And as I said,
I've never looked back. It's been a good ride. So
(32:41):
obviously in the headlines that the people throwing soup and
so forth at these paintings, we find out that the
artwork is protected. It's got some veneer over it to
protect the actual artwork itself. That's probably true of every
piece of art of any real value around the world
for that very reason. And in case this issue of
people decolonize this place, d c t just stop oil
(33:04):
these different people that are doing this. What do you
think about this phenomenon, Well, I think it's very misplaced
effort to try to mobilize change around a real problem.
Most thoughtful people would acknowledge that climate change is a
disaster and that we have an obligation to do more
than we do. I agree with that, but I don't
think it helps their case to vandalize works of art
(33:25):
that are priceless and celebrate at treasured by all of humanity.
That that just alienates people. And by the way, it
isn't harmless. It's like saying, I'm going to shoot at
the president's car and he's gonna an armored car and
nobody's gonna get hurt and it's no problem. It's actually
is a problem. It First of all, it demonstrates that
vandalizing works of art is a practice that can be used,
(33:45):
can be mobilized for reasonable rationale, which I think is
not a good idea inspires people, that's the word. It
inspires people, and it undermines the quality of the experience
for everybody in a museum, knowing that at any moment
that these objects are going to be desecrated or might be.
And so I think in the end, it doesn't generate
the goodwill they're hoping to. It generates visibility and the
(34:07):
way terrorist acts often do, and it doesn't win friends.
And then finally, even throwing ink or soup on a
covered work of art is not neutral to the work
of art. It actually seeps behind the glass, it damages
the frame. Some of those frames are worth millions of dollars,
and so it's it's utterly eris no, you can't do that,
(34:30):
and they're damaged. So I think anything that undermines the
quality of the experienced people have is a bad thing.
I remember when I was in college at George Washington
in the in the late nineties seventies. You could walk
right into the Capital, walk right in. You could go
into the Senate reception chamber and invite a senator to
(34:53):
come out and meet them. You could walk right around
the White House. You could drive past it. None of
those things are possible anymore because we live in a
fortifi universe, because of the incremental damage that terrorism has done.
I don't wish to see the museum become another front
line in that. One of your counterparts in the article
Every in the Time said, well, the real answer is
to shut the museum. If you want to protect the artwork,
(35:15):
if you want to guarantee that we can protect the artwork,
the only way to do that is to shut the museum,
which we have no intention of doing. Exactly that is
the only way to do it. To be sure, we
take risks every day. One thing that I've thought about,
and again I'm blue skying here, So I hope you
don't think I'm insane, And that is that the men
invite these people to come and have a forum. You
invite the protesters that are throwing the paint and say,
(35:37):
why don't you come on into the museum with us,
and we will live stream a forum with you, and
you tell us exactly what your goals are and how
you believe you achieve your goals this way and have
them come and see if they make any sense or
if they don't make any sense, and we're going to
(35:58):
live stream this. I want you to know that I'm
volunteering to moderate this program for you. I will be
your moderator free of charge. That's great, it's a wonderful idea,
and it's disarmingly candid to engage them in that way.
I think the idea of taking them seriously around the
issues that are concerned with while helping them to understand
that what they're doing is very dangerous to the objects.
(36:18):
So let's talk in a substantive way rather than just
to take them seriously. Yes, so three of them and
three of you. When you're gonna sit there and say, well,
here's why we think there's perhaps other options you should
be examining and let them make the case for why
it is. This is a good venue for them to
make a complicated case about climate change. I use a
great idea, and I'll take you up on your offer.
I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. Yeah, Well that's that's
(36:39):
very interesting. Well, well let's keep talking about what art
hangs on the wall of your home. So I'm not
a serious collector, but my wife and I have have
acquired things that are meaningful to us, and perhaps the
most meaningful things are those paintings my father did as
a young man that he gave to me and he
has since died, and they remind me not only of
(37:00):
him in a really special time in my life, but
really my first engagement with art, and I still love them.
I see a lot of great art, but I still
think what he produced at that time, is he similar
to his artist, similar to what impression is. It's it's
sort of like maybe Ceasely or any of the He
did city scenes that look like Alfred Ceasily, maybe your money.
And he wasn't, as I say, a great artist, but
(37:22):
he had a distinctive style that connects with me, and
in my home that's what I have a lot of
other things, but those are the things if I if
the house was on fire, They're the ones I'd run
out with. In the world where people are being sued,
there are government policies exhorting nations to return artwork to
(37:43):
what is perceived as their rightful place. What's that been
like for you when your work at the Met. Well,
there have always been legal issues that we deal with
when a legal claim is made for a work of
art and art collection. We're always happy to honor the law,
and if it means, for example, Holocaust claims, Holocaust era
losses of art that we didn't know about and they're
(38:03):
hanging on our walls and a family member comes forward
and said that was my grandfather's. In the event there
is evidence to prove that we're act we do it
all the time. We give them back, so the law
must always be followed. But the increasing story in the
news is the ethical issues around works of art that
it's pretty clear belongs somewhere else, but they're in museums
in the Met or the British Museum or the Louver anywhere,
(38:24):
and we're all trying to figure out how best do
we preserve our fiduciary responsibility to our institution. We're supposed
to be preserving the objects in our care, but also
serving the world in a more effective way and being
ethical about that. And there are all kinds of new
creative ways to do that, including restitution. We have given
works back to Nigeria, Benine works. We restituted some objects recently.
(38:44):
Other museums have done that. We've just made a major
agreement with the Greek government around psyclastic art that will
be owned by the Greek government but on display at
the met on loan from them as a way of
honoring who should hold title, which is not the same
thing is who should have it on the wall. And
if you begin to separate those issues out, we can
imagine a future where there's shared ownership agreements their partnerships
(39:08):
with around the world. I think that's the future and
it's the right direction. Do people ever say to you,
let's say you have objects that belong to some country,
just for an example, regardless of it's related to the
Holocaust or whatever you you it's been determined legally that
you need to return this stuff and they don't have
the proper facility to care for that. Is there ever
(39:28):
a conversation where you sit there and say, well, when
you guys are ready to take it, we'll give it
to you, like you're not just going to stick it
in a warehouse down by the seaside. What happens, then
that's a real issue that happens. If there there's a
legitimate legal claim, then we have no choice but what
we might say to the country or to whoever it is,
it's yours. We'll give it to you whenever you want,
but we're happy to take care of it for you
(39:49):
until you're ready, and it's yours whatever you say, but
at least it's going to be safe here at the mat.
If there is not a legal issue, but it's more
about our decision that we think these people should have it,
then the odds are we would say, we want to
figure out the right way for you to get this,
but we're happy to help figure out how do you
make sure this object is going to be safe and secure?
(40:10):
And usually that's a collegial discussion because they want that too,
and it might mean helping them build a facility or
creating better security or whatever. Both of those things happen.
Where do you like to go and spend a day
at a museum, what's one that never lets you down? Well,
I would say it's it's perhaps a surprising answer, the
Louver and the reason I say that has been going
(40:31):
there all my life, ever since I became an art person,
when I was in college. It's an institution that's full
of treasures. Everywhere you go, there's something in the room
that's the best example of its kind in the world,
and it's so vast. It's it's the same size as
the Mat, but I know the Mat better that I
always love to visit, and it, by the way, it's
in Paris, which is also nice. So I love many
(40:53):
different museums, but I get to the Loop several times
a year, several times a year. Now, I'm told it's
been made public. Your stepping down. Yes, the end of
the summer, summer. Eight years of service and I'm declaring
victory and moving on. It's been a great experience. Thank you,
Thank you so much. My thanks to the author and
(41:14):
outgoing president and CEO of the Met, Daniel Weisse. This
episode was recorded at c DM Studios in New York City.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban.
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
(41:36):
to you by iHeart Radio
This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. Imagine wandering through a priceless
collection of artwork, Greek sculptures, ancient Egyptian artifacts, primitive pottery,
and of course some of the most famous paintings by
masters throughout human history. Mone Dega, Rothko and Pollock. Now
(00:27):
imagine you are the steward for their future preservation. For
my guest today, that's just another day at the office.
Daniel Weiss has been President and CEO of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art since two thousand fifteen. He has navigated
the MET through a series of challenges, including a budget deficit,
(00:48):
the COVID crisis, and the removal of the controversial Sackler
name from the building. Prior to running the MET, Weiss
had his feet firmly planted in academia. He was dean
of the Creakers School of Arts and Sciences at Johns
Hopkins University and served as president of both Lafayette and
(01:10):
Haverford Colleges. He has also published several books on art history.
The MET is the largest museum in North America for
an internationally renowned institution of such stature. I was curious
what percentage of the METS visitors are native to the
United States. We actually do a lot of tracking of visitors,
(01:33):
and let's use numbers prior to COVID, when there is
a more representative international audience, about a third of our visitors.
And prior to COVID, we had about seven million people
come through our doors every year, making us one of
the busiest art museums in the world. About a third
of them came from all over the world, and the
other two thirds would when I think of it as thirds,
(01:53):
one third from New York and the New York metropolitan area,
the next third from the rest of the country, and
then the world, and so really nice balance and lots
of different countries represented. Because I was always curious about that,
and there was one assumes that the MET is on
in equal footing in the world of the museums with
those other museums. But I always wonder if they occupy
(02:15):
a different space because they're in Europe and the history
that's there, and the way, you know Franless old line
about New York, whenever they tear down a building, they
always put up an uglier building, and New York sometimes
seems to have its cultural priorities fixed in the right places.
Sometimes they don't. Yeah, it's an interesting point. If we
(02:36):
think about the competitive landscape for museums, the busiest art museum,
the most well attended in the world is the Louver.
At that time they would see about nine million visitors
a year, and that's because everybody who's anywhere near Paris
is going to go make a visit to the Louver.
New York is a cultural center, and I think a
slightly different way, maybe more like London. People come here
(02:56):
for theater, they come from museums, they come from shopping
and restaur unts. And within that framework, the met is
the largest tourist attraction in New York City, indoor tourist attraction.
So many people who would come for any number of
reasons would make a pilgrimage to the mat, which is
why our numbers are so large. So in many ways
we're like London or Paris with regard to visitors. Now
(03:17):
you have mentioned and material that I read that you
were breaking records prior to COVID, that the museum was
doing fantastically well right before the floor fell out. What
would that like for you to have achieved to where
you were winning the World Series. Then all of a sudden,
you break your leg. What was that like? It was
(03:38):
very discouraging. Exactly right. We had over the last probably decade,
we had been working to build increasingly diverse programming, to
bring in larger audiences, to reconnect with people who might
not come to the museum regularly. So our numbers were
climbing in remarkably good ways because we were connecting with
larger audiences. And then with the advent of COVID, of course,
(03:59):
we went from having terrific audiences to being closed. And we,
like the rest of us everyone, we just closed and
overnight the museum was shut to the public entirely. When
when made the decision to close, it was a very
obviously a big deal. We were the first cultural institution
in New York City to do it, and by the
end of the day they all had closed, including Broadway,
And I thought when we made the decision, this was
(04:21):
a momentous one, and we're probably going to be closed
for I don't know, maybe three weeks because how long
does it take COVID to run through people and we're done?
What did I know? What did any of us know?
We were closed for five and a half months, and
prior to that the record was maybe two days three days.
So it was a remarkable experience to be closed entirely
for almost half a year. An organization like this, you
(04:44):
have a very very substantial endowment, and when you reach
that COVID period or do you sort of have to
drain down obviously that endowment to pay the bills. Well,
we wanted to exercise discipline not to diminish resources that
really we are holding in part in stewardship for the future.
So we made an emergency financial plan once we closed
we wanted to, and we did keep all of our
(05:05):
staff on payroll throughout the period of our closure, and
that meant that we had a lot of cost and
not a lot of revenue. Of our operating expenses are
covered by our endowment. So we were luckier than most
places who didn't have that kind of savings account to
draw on. And I'm talking about just the proceeds each year,
the return on endowment, so we weren't spending principle, we
(05:27):
were spending the proceeds and we had We actually restructured
our organization very quickly to try to cut costs in
order not to drain the endowment, and we didn't. We
never touched any principle in the endowment to get through.
It wasn't easy, but it was we thought important. Is
there a percentage I'm assuming there's some percentage of the
staff of the museum there people with disparate tasks and
(05:48):
so forth. Are they union? Yes, we have about prior
to COVID about two thousand staff. We now have about
sevent prior to COVID at the time COVID arrived, and
of that about union and the rest were non union.
But as you can imagine, the met as a place
with hundreds of different jobs, and half of them had
(06:08):
to be fulfilled. Even if we were closed. The collections
have to still be taken care of, the building still
has to be guarded. We have to do all of
those things. So we had hundreds and hundreds of people
coming to the museum every day when the museum was
entirely closed, but everybody was on payroll throughout that period.
I'm wondering, like other people I know who are hired,
(06:30):
who have intense creative backgrounds. And Chasson, who is the
executive director of the Hampton's Film Festival, is a very
good example of someone who arrived on the job and
was one of the only, I think, if not the only,
person to serve as as executive director who had actually
been a filmmaker. She was a film producer prior to that,
everybody else had been an administration only. And she arrived
(06:52):
and she accomplished, but her predecessors couldn't. Which She balanced
the books, She pulled the sword out of the stone
in terms of the finances of the festival, and you
could tell that it was something that was a tremendous
accomplishment for her. When you arrived, you didn't think that
you were going to be too heavily involved in accounting work,
and then you then succeeded. Describe what you found and
(07:15):
what path that set you on career was. Yeah, So
when I got to the AT, my background is I'm
an art historian by training. I spent most of my
career doing scholarship and teaching and then as a college president.
But this was my first museum job. It happens I
have an MBA and I had a business career early on,
so I know both of those worlds and I've spent
my career doing both. But when I arrived at the
(07:37):
mat I won't say that I anticipated it would be
a sinecure that I would expect it was going to
be easy. But I thought things were stable financially. The
place is big and wealthy, and everything seems to work well.
And there was a very modest deficit that I could
discern on the financial statements. But I also had a
hard time figuring out what was in the financial statements,
which was a warning sign to me. They should be
(07:59):
easier to read, and I knew how to read them,
but I couldn't. So as we dug into it fairly quickly,
it became clear to me that there was a much
bigger problem and the met actually had very substantial deficits
that have been accruing over the last few years. Did
someone expose that to you? Where you found it yourself?
Were both? Mostly I found it by asking the right
questions of financial people. I can't understand this number, where
(08:22):
does it come from? And how does it relate to
this number? And as the answer started to come to me,
it was clear there was a more complicated story that
adjustments in financial statements had been made in the ways
they were presented in order to solve problems in the
near term balance little like you spend too much on
your credit card and before you know it, you've got
too much. Your balance is really big. So what do
(08:43):
you do? You get another credit card and shift the balances.
It was like that, and I became very uncomfortable. I
think what we really needed to do is take apart
the big problem and figure out what the magnitude was.
And it was very substantial. So I ended up spending
many much of my first couple of years of the
MET not being an art guy, but being a numbers guy,
(09:04):
because that was the problem on the ground. And did
you find that solving that problem the Rubik's cube if
you will, of the finances of the net like other
people I know, did you become addicted to that? Did
you be where you? Like? God? This is really because
if you don't solve with the institutions, this is my
opinion and my experience from other boards have been on
that you need to solve that problem first. Everything you
(09:25):
don't have the money for programming, if you don't have
your books right, You're exactly right. Institutions like the met universities, theaters,
if they don't have strong stable finances, it's very hard
to do difficult work and take chances and make investments
and ideas that are a little bit speculative, because any
failure is going to cripple the organization. So at the MET,
(09:47):
just as you say, we got caught up in figuring
out how to solve that problem because the Met deserve
to have strong and stable finances, and by their way,
we were pretty rich place. So's it would have been
a harder job to be doing this sort of ice.
It didn't have an endowment like we do. So when
the art history guy has to go and dig into
the get into the coal mine of finances, there does
(10:09):
the art history I have to find another guy to
cover the artistic side, to cover his back, just to
hire people to do a job that you ordinarily would
have been doing well. The way they met structured a
little bit like a university. My job as the president
was to oversee the operations of the institution, and there
was a director who's a little bit like in a
university the provost who oversees all the academic stuff. So
(10:29):
we have and had a director who oversaw the exhibitions,
the collection who was at the time I arrived, it
was Tom Campbell. When he left. We brought in a
new director, and so I never had to worry for
I was doing both jobs for about a year and
a half, and to your point, I did have to
get help. I could not do all those things. So
(10:49):
I relied on some of the staff that was already there,
the administrative staff, to take on a larger role, and
they stepped right up and it was great. But I
was still focused, primarily, as you say, on the finances,
because if you don't get that right, then you really can't.
You can't tell people their employment is security. You can't
tell them we can fund that exhibition, we can't buy
that work of art. Everything shuts down if you don't
(11:10):
have stable operating For the person that's there now is Max.
How do you pronounce the name Homeline. He's been there
now for about four and a half years. You've written
seven books. And people asked about Sackler and the Sackler
d n A is in a lot of institutions in
this country and around the world, and they, of course
had their problems. And I'm wondering, is that something that
(11:34):
is in your field, and in any field that's that's
having to raise massive amounts of money. I mean millions,
about millions and eventually billions of dollars of crew in
your in your reserves. The Sacklers, it's an obvious one.
They wind up having this horrible litigation problems and public
relations debacle. But are there other people who it's it's
(11:54):
not in the paper? Are you like on guard constantly
vetting sore is of money and having to deal with people?
Is there a constant managing of people what they want
to attach to their gifts. Yeah. I think there's two
issues here that are both interesting to think about. One is,
are their individuals who their connection to their money is
(12:16):
such that we might not want to accept a gift
because they have questionable background or they're involved in things. Yes.
In fact, I'll speak openly about this. The Saudi government
approached us about a partnership right after show Get was killed.
We were not interested in partnering with the leadership of
the Saudi government at that time because we didn't feel
that it was the proper association for us. There wasn't
(12:39):
all of the evidence at the time available to determine
who was really responsible. But the response of the Saudi
government was not forthcoming enough to give us satisfaction that
we should invest are the integrity of our brand in
that partnership, we didn't work with them. I would say
this with regard to the issue of who we work with.
The primary goal for us is to fund our mission,
(13:01):
and it is almost entirely funded philanthropically, so we don't
collect the resources, we can't do the work, and therefore
our job is not to vet donors so much as
to advance our mission. But there are people who cross
the line, and we have over the years been approached
by people that we think they're not really appropriate for
us to be working with because of the way they
(13:21):
raise the money or their stature positions in the world.
But I do that on an exceptional basis because my
job is not to determine who's MET worthy as a
club member, but how do we fund the mission? And
so there are times we won't do it. The other issue,
which you raise quite rightly, is how do you deal
with donors who have ideas, And there's two kinds that
(13:43):
are problematic, where they say, I know what you're doing
at the MET that's all great, but I don't want
to do that. I want you to do this and this,
and I have an idea for a different kind of thing,
and you have to have enough strength and integrity. Is
an institution to say, Alex, thanks so much for your
offer of a hundred million, it's great, but we're not
going to do that. We're not interested in that. We
have a strategic and these are the things we'd love
to do, and if you want to help us with those,
we'd really be delighted. But we're not going to build
(14:05):
a new art museum in St. Louis right now just
because you think that would be great. And that happens.
And then sometimes people say they want their name to
be represented in ways that is challenging. For example, there's
a long history in New York people making capital gifts
that are in perpetuity. So Alec Baldwin's name is going
(14:26):
to be on that wing forever forever. But a hundred
years from now you ain't around and I ain't around,
and who's going to pay to fix it? And I'm
pretty sure the average person on the street might want
to not pay to have that name live forever. So
there needs to be fiscal responsibility about the long term.
If the institution is supposed to last forever, who's going
(14:46):
to carry that obligation long after you're not able in
the way that they had to buy out the Fisher
family for Giffen, they had to pay the Fisher family
an amount of money to reverse the perpetuity gift. Exactly right.
That's a perfect example, and that was a thoughtful way
to solve that problem. But each time, so we don't
really do perpetuity gifts anymore because you know, fifty years,
(15:07):
a hundred years, how about that? Is that going to
be okay? Your grandchildren will have a chance to see it,
and after that, all bets are off. And most donors
appreciate that, but some don't. Some are more interested in
some other way to make sure their their name lasts
longer than that. But our job is to be really
thoughtful about the well being of the institution long after
we're gone. So they're all kinds of issues associated with
(15:29):
dealing with donors that are interesting. They're usually positive, even
if their challenges to work through. Most people, they lay
out their agenda and you solve it with them, and
it's entirely positive. One thing that occurred to me is
that all the art that hangs on the walls, all
of it that occupies a space in your facility and
in your counterparts, the artists are dead, and at the
(15:50):
Museum of Modern Art they're not all dead. And there
seems to be a sense in my mind, especially living
in New York, that there is a world of people
who are working awfully hard to expand and augment their
status in the art world to get their art to
hang on that wall. There's a drama there if you want.
I find that kind of interesting. What do you think
(16:11):
are the things that people have to deal with at
MoMA that you're happy you don't have to deal with? Yeah,
So moment's job is to be far more leading edge
and engaged in the contemporary art world than ours is.
So they're willing to quite appropriately take risks. They may
do an exhibition of an artist that may not actually
prove to be of long standing importance in the world
(16:31):
of history of art. We think of ourselves and this
isn't at all in a pedantic way, but as a
where the cannon. So if something comes into the met,
it's arrived in a way that is, in this sense,
establishing the place of that artist in history. That's at
least how we think about ourselves, and a lot of
people think about us. So there's no question that living
(16:53):
artists like Jasper John's or David Hackney belong in the MET,
and they are in the MET, and there are other
living artists where it's not clear yet whether or not
time will tell, yeah, exactly. But that said, we actually
do a fair amount of contemporary art nowadays, more than
we used to. And we don't compete directly with MoMA.
They have an extraordinary program that leads the world, but
(17:15):
ours is excellent too, and we just are, i think
a little bit more focused on the long term importance
of that artist, because that's sort of what we do,
and because our collections are so diverse across time and history,
we look for artists that connect in new ways to
the other art we have in our place. So we
might have a contemporary artist come who actually is basing
(17:36):
their work on traditions in our Egyptian department or other areas,
because then we can show those connections in different ways.
Daniel Weiss. If you enjoy conversations about world famous works
of art, check out my episode with Eric Shiner, former
director of the Andy Warhol Museum. The Dollar as Sign
(17:58):
Paintings to hundred one dollar bills was his very exactly.
So that's in early nineteen sixties work nine two. So
he was being dismissed for that. He was and um,
you know a lot of people said that it was
too tacky to paint money. It was too ghosh. And
when we look at those paintings today, what's more indicative
(18:21):
of the early nineteen eighties in New York than the
almighty Dollar? He hit it square on the head. To
hear more of my conversation with Eric Schiner, go to
Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Daniel Weiss
shares why he made the jump from academia to running
one of the largest art institutions in the world. I'm
(18:52):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. In
addition to being President and CEO of the metropol Alton
Museum of Art, Daniel Weiss is also the author of
several books on art history, including France and the Holy
Land and Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis.
Yet one of Weiss's books stands out from the others.
(19:15):
It's entitled In That Time, Michael O'Donnell and the Tragic
Era of Vietnam. I wanted to know how he came
to write a book so divergent from the rest of
his catalog. It came about, probably about fifteen years ago.
I came across the book by Harold Evans, the great publisher.
He had produced a book called The American Century, which
(19:36):
is really a beautiful book on the political history of
American the twentieth century. And in that book there was
a small section on the Vietnam War. Within that section
there was a photograph of this very nice, shilking young man,
and below at a poem he had written while he
was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. And I was so
moved by that poem, the last stanza of which says,
(19:58):
and in that time, when men decide and feel safe
to call this war insane, don't forget those gentle heroes
you left behind. And right after he wrote it, he
was shot down while rescuing other soldiers in Vietnam in
March of n When I read Evans' book, it said
he's still missing in action. This was in the nineties.
(20:18):
I got interested in just learning more about who this
guy was, why he wrote that poem, and somehow I
felt like he was calling upon us to pay attention
to what happened to these guys. I'm young enough to
have not been drafted, but I'm old enough to remember
the Vietnam War really well. I was in high school.
It was on TV every day. Neighbors of ours went
to war, Yes, exactly, we all know people who did
(20:41):
of our generation. And so as I learned more about
this guy, I discovered a story that was extraordinarily powerful.
In the book I ended up writing is about the
life of one innocent American kid, but it's placed within
the context of what happened to our country. So I
trace what happened to Michael O'Donnell as I'm just gribbing
what Lyndon Johnson is doing, Richard Nixon is doing, and
(21:03):
how their decisions affected him on the ground. And then
I talked about his poetry, which was very powerful. And
he was missing in action for twenty eight years, and
during that period he was dead. His family didn't know that,
and for twenty eight years, about three times a year
they got a letter from the army saying, we're writing
to update you on the status of your son. A
(21:24):
Caucasian male was noticed on the streets of Saigon resembling
your son they were doing this meticulous job of accounting
for the whereabouts of their son. It was excruciating for
them because in fact, they believed he was dead. So
I chronicle in the book what it means to be
missing in action to the people who are left around.
(21:44):
And then there's a chapter in the book they actually
found the remains in Cambodia, and I write about, how
do you find the remains of a soldier soldiers that
were killed thirty years ago in a tropical jungle in
a helicopter went down in flames, and we're talking about
tooth fragments and bone fragments embedded in the ground. How
did they find them? Some Cambodian farmers who knew that landscape.
(22:06):
This was thirty miles away from a teeny little town
in the middle of nowhere. And the American government spends
hundreds of millions of dollars a year looking for and
restituting the remains of American soldiers around the world. So
Cambodian farmers said, I saw remains looks like a helicopter,
and he told them where. He actually lead this team
(22:28):
in on the raft and they had to float down
the river for days on this raft. To get into
the jungle to find this helicopter. When they did, the
American team mobilized, they cleared the landing zone, they brought
in helicopters, and they set up an excavation team to
the rusty hall of the helicopter, and their pictures in
the book of what that helicopter looked like. But if
you were thirty feet away from it, you wouldn't see it.
(22:52):
And so it's a miracle that it was found. And
I wanted to give some color to the story of
how do you find these people? And then Michael was
buried with full honors at Arlington Cemetery two weeks before
nine eleven. So the arc of the book is about
one mistake, which we would call Vietnam and how for
this family. That story endured for thirty years, right up
(23:15):
until the nine eleven and then we embarked on a
whole new chapter of policies that were controversial and questionable
and lead to the result of dead Americans for not
necessarily a good reason. In Afghanistan and Iraq, war is
a terrible thing, but it also generates incredible stories that
we are drawn to that we're curious about. That means
something to us. Well, I mean, obviously there was a
(23:36):
deep emotional connection you had to this story. Only one
such book in your quiver? Where did you were there
other books you wanted to write? There were not about
your profession. Now there are. For whatever reason, I have
always been drawn to stories like that one about people
who have done something larger than themselves. I wrote a
series of articles about a young woman who was the
(23:56):
first civilian publicly executed in the Soviet Union and Second
World War, and her identity was not known until I
published her identity in nineties. I was drawn to that story. Remarkable.
We have photographs of this event, and she was a
great heroine. And so I'm drawn to these stories that
that I think are are related to what it means
(24:19):
to be human and understanding the nature of sacrifice and
people at their best, people at their best, at their best. No, no,
no greater story than that. Now. In your career, which
prior to coming to run the met it was pretty
much exclusively academia, And you were at Lafayette for eight years,
(24:40):
and then you went to Haverford and you're at Haverford
for two years. Did you just have enough of academia
at that point? What was the in the Godfather parlance,
what was the offer they made you that you couldn't
refuse that you exited academia. Yeah, well, I did have
a brief business career. I went to business school and
I was a management consultant in New York for four
years before I went to do art history, so I
(25:00):
always had a little bit of both. Haverford's a great place,
as you know, and I really enjoyed being there. It
has a very special community and intellectual culture that I loved,
and I was very happy there. But I got a
call about coming to the MET, which is a singular
institution in the world. And without speaking about my own
qualifications compared to others, I have a rather unique background
(25:22):
because I have the business background as well as a
very deep art history background, and that's what the museum
was looking for for the reasons that we've discussed. So
I felt drawn to that opportunity and the role and
the leadership at Haverford understood that this was a once
in a lifetime opportunity and there was a need at
the MET for a new kind of leadership. So I
(25:43):
felt compelled to do that kind of leadership, to combine
a serious commitment to scholarly work and fiscal discipline to
fix the budgets. But at the same time, as you know,
generating scholarship, like creative work, is really inefficient. It's expensive,
you make mistakes, their failures, and if you become too
fiscally focused, then you don't waste time on on scholarly
(26:04):
projects that might take a long time, and that would
have been a mistake. So what I brought was the
ability to understand the value of both of those things,
and I was I felt called to do that. So
I was sorry to leave. Haverford was a great place,
and I still have close relations there, but it was
the right moment for me to make that change. Now,
some of the institutions I've worked with over the years
(26:25):
where I've served on the boards, I was developing my
sensibilities about this stuff, and I realized I was somewhat
uncomfortable with people that were raising huge amounts of money
for rent for a building. And eventually I said to myself,
I don't know how I feel that you're handing this
guy who is the landlord three fifty thousand dollars a
year in rent. And I went up leaving that institution
(26:46):
and leaving that board to go join another one where
they owned the building. There was always friction and there
was always resistance to asking for money, but they didn't
even blink at spending all this money on renovating the building.
Do you find that in terms of as a percentage
of the money that's available to you, that you are
constantly struggling to get the money you need for programming
(27:09):
and research and so forth. Well, you're raising, by the way,
I think, exactly the right issue for all cultural institutions,
because programming is why we're here, and it is connecting
people to the ideas that are behind the program. But
all of us want to have better facilities, bigger facilities,
nicer dressing rooms, better more bathrooms, more bats rooms, all
(27:30):
of that, and you can lose your way, you can
become And there's certainly ego involved. If during my tenure
as president we build this great way, I'll you know,
my grand children will see that no I built it.
Finding the balance is the key. And you and I
talked last night about the risk of creeping commercialism in
culture and in the arts. When you walk in an
art museum, you want to have a pure experience with
(27:51):
the objects and you don't need to see brought to
you by nobody, beats the whiz or whatever. You want
to just see the objects. The greatest challenge in being
leaders in this sector is finding a way for that
stuff to be invisible. The programming is being presented, the
institution looks good, the facilities are right, they're properly funded,
and sometimes that means saying no to big projects that
(28:14):
eat resources, even though they may look great. But what
are you doing to successive generations when those people have
to take care of it? They don't have enough money
to put on programming they need to there. You need
a strong board as you are as a trustee in
that organization, You need to ask those questions and hold
people accountable. Why are you doing that? Do you really
need that? What happens to the resources for the program?
(28:35):
And if you don't ask those questions, then bad things
can happen. So in my experience, that's exactly how shared
government should work. Everybody with a vested interests in the
well being of the place should ask the hard questions
and then you do the things you can afford. Daniel Weiss,
if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
(28:57):
sure to follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart
radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When
we come back. Daniel Weiss weighs in are the actions
of climate activists who intentionally deface priceless works of art
in an attempt to draw attention to their cause. I'm
(29:28):
Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Daniel Weiss has a master's and PhD in medieval and
modern art and has been a professor of art history
at Johns Hopkins University and Lafayette College. I wanted to
know how he was first drawn to this career. I
(29:48):
grew up on Long Island. I was not interested in art. Art.
I didn't know anything about it. Would your dad do?
My father was a businessman, and he actually had been
an artist a little, an amateur artist, and I ta
his own stuff on the walls, which I liked. I
knew nothing about art. I had never been to an
art museum. On the walls of your home, yeah, just
a little, and it was his and that was it.
(30:09):
It was nice, but I didn't there was no real
artistic family. Who did he paint in the style of
your father? Impressionists. He got divorced from my mother and
he was a bachelor for a while and he painted
and decorated his walls with stuff he had painted, and
so I remember visiting him as a kid. He lived
in these exotic places like Puerto Rico and Brazil, and
it was a great time for me. I was with
(30:31):
him and I and those those pictures were on the wall.
So I had a positive association with art, but I
had no real interest in it. And then I went
to George Washington University and I was studying political science,
which lasted for me for maybe six weeks, and I
realized that's not for me, and I wasn't sure what
to do, and I was interested. I met this young
woman who was a student there, and I wanted to
(30:51):
get to know her. And she told me she was
taking this art history class and I needed a fifth class.
So I took this class and it was a revelatory
sperience for me. The professor was this young, charismatic, brilliant
guy who was talking about something that interested me immediately.
I was not a very serious student up until that moment.
I was trundling along in college, just sort of hanging
(31:13):
out and this subject was really interesting to me and
the way he brought it to life. He knew how
to perform teaching in a way that was compelling. Every
sentence came together, his paragraphs were complete, His intellectual presentation
was accessible but inspiring, and I wanted to know more.
And to make a long story short, I took one
(31:35):
class after another with him, and I became a serious student.
By the last end of college, I was a serious
academic and I ended up pursuing that study. He's still
a very dear friend and I actually married that woman.
It all worked out very well for me, but that
was a life day. I walked into this class and
I found myself as a serious person, and my relationship
(31:56):
with Sandra began to grow. And I've felt lucky for
the rest of my life that every day I have
this passion about something that's larger than me, that matters
to me. And prior to that day, I didn't have that.
I was just a kid in the world. And I
think having a passion for something that animates you, engages you,
brings out your best effort, gives you the motivation to
(32:19):
do hard things in order to be an artist. Story
and I had to learn a lot of languages. I
wasn't even a good language student, but I did. You
were from Long Island, so you barely spoke English. I
spoke Long Island, which you and I could speak. The
record speak. Well, that's it's very true. So I feel
very lucky about all of that. And as I said,
I've never looked back. It's been a good ride. So
(32:41):
obviously in the headlines that the people throwing soup and
so forth at these paintings, we find out that the
artwork is protected. It's got some veneer over it to
protect the actual artwork itself. That's probably true of every
piece of art of any real value around the world
for that very reason. And in case this issue of
people decolonize this place, d c t just stop oil
(33:04):
these different people that are doing this. What do you
think about this phenomenon, Well, I think it's very misplaced
effort to try to mobilize change around a real problem.
Most thoughtful people would acknowledge that climate change is a
disaster and that we have an obligation to do more
than we do. I agree with that, but I don't
think it helps their case to vandalize works of art
(33:25):
that are priceless and celebrate at treasured by all of humanity.
That that just alienates people. And by the way, it
isn't harmless. It's like saying, I'm going to shoot at
the president's car and he's gonna an armored car and
nobody's gonna get hurt and it's no problem. It's actually
is a problem. It First of all, it demonstrates that
vandalizing works of art is a practice that can be used,
(33:45):
can be mobilized for reasonable rationale, which I think is
not a good idea inspires people, that's the word. It
inspires people, and it undermines the quality of the experience
for everybody in a museum, knowing that at any moment
that these objects are going to be desecrated or might be.
And so I think in the end, it doesn't generate
the goodwill they're hoping to. It generates visibility and the
(34:07):
way terrorist acts often do, and it doesn't win friends.
And then finally, even throwing ink or soup on a
covered work of art is not neutral to the work
of art. It actually seeps behind the glass, it damages
the frame. Some of those frames are worth millions of dollars,
and so it's it's utterly eris no, you can't do that,
(34:30):
and they're damaged. So I think anything that undermines the
quality of the experienced people have is a bad thing.
I remember when I was in college at George Washington
in the in the late nineties seventies. You could walk
right into the Capital, walk right in. You could go
into the Senate reception chamber and invite a senator to
(34:53):
come out and meet them. You could walk right around
the White House. You could drive past it. None of
those things are possible anymore because we live in a
fortifi universe, because of the incremental damage that terrorism has done.
I don't wish to see the museum become another front
line in that. One of your counterparts in the article
Every in the Time said, well, the real answer is
to shut the museum. If you want to protect the artwork,
(35:15):
if you want to guarantee that we can protect the artwork,
the only way to do that is to shut the museum,
which we have no intention of doing. Exactly that is
the only way to do it. To be sure, we
take risks every day. One thing that I've thought about,
and again I'm blue skying here, So I hope you
don't think I'm insane, And that is that the men
invite these people to come and have a forum. You
invite the protesters that are throwing the paint and say,
(35:37):
why don't you come on into the museum with us,
and we will live stream a forum with you, and
you tell us exactly what your goals are and how
you believe you achieve your goals this way and have
them come and see if they make any sense or
if they don't make any sense, and we're going to
(35:58):
live stream this. I want you to know that I'm
volunteering to moderate this program for you. I will be
your moderator free of charge. That's great, it's a wonderful idea,
and it's disarmingly candid to engage them in that way.
I think the idea of taking them seriously around the
issues that are concerned with while helping them to understand
that what they're doing is very dangerous to the objects.
(36:18):
So let's talk in a substantive way rather than just
to take them seriously. Yes, so three of them and
three of you. When you're gonna sit there and say, well,
here's why we think there's perhaps other options you should
be examining and let them make the case for why
it is. This is a good venue for them to
make a complicated case about climate change. I use a
great idea, and I'll take you up on your offer.
I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. Yeah, Well that's that's
(36:39):
very interesting. Well, well let's keep talking about what art
hangs on the wall of your home. So I'm not
a serious collector, but my wife and I have have
acquired things that are meaningful to us, and perhaps the
most meaningful things are those paintings my father did as
a young man that he gave to me and he
has since died, and they remind me not only of
(37:00):
him in a really special time in my life, but
really my first engagement with art, and I still love them.
I see a lot of great art, but I still
think what he produced at that time, is he similar
to his artist, similar to what impression is. It's it's
sort of like maybe Ceasely or any of the He
did city scenes that look like Alfred Ceasily, maybe your money.
And he wasn't, as I say, a great artist, but
(37:22):
he had a distinctive style that connects with me, and
in my home that's what I have a lot of
other things, but those are the things if I if
the house was on fire, They're the ones I'd run
out with. In the world where people are being sued,
there are government policies exhorting nations to return artwork to
(37:43):
what is perceived as their rightful place. What's that been
like for you when your work at the Met. Well,
there have always been legal issues that we deal with
when a legal claim is made for a work of
art and art collection. We're always happy to honor the law,
and if it means, for example, Holocaust claims, Holocaust era
losses of art that we didn't know about and they're
(38:03):
hanging on our walls and a family member comes forward
and said that was my grandfather's. In the event there
is evidence to prove that we're act we do it
all the time. We give them back, so the law
must always be followed. But the increasing story in the
news is the ethical issues around works of art that
it's pretty clear belongs somewhere else, but they're in museums
in the Met or the British Museum or the Louver anywhere,
(38:24):
and we're all trying to figure out how best do
we preserve our fiduciary responsibility to our institution. We're supposed
to be preserving the objects in our care, but also
serving the world in a more effective way and being
ethical about that. And there are all kinds of new
creative ways to do that, including restitution. We have given
works back to Nigeria, Benine works. We restituted some objects recently.
(38:44):
Other museums have done that. We've just made a major
agreement with the Greek government around psyclastic art that will
be owned by the Greek government but on display at
the met on loan from them as a way of
honoring who should hold title, which is not the same
thing is who should have it on the wall. And
if you begin to separate those issues out, we can
imagine a future where there's shared ownership agreements their partnerships
(39:08):
with around the world. I think that's the future and
it's the right direction. Do people ever say to you,
let's say you have objects that belong to some country,
just for an example, regardless of it's related to the
Holocaust or whatever you you it's been determined legally that
you need to return this stuff and they don't have
the proper facility to care for that. Is there ever
(39:28):
a conversation where you sit there and say, well, when
you guys are ready to take it, we'll give it
to you, like you're not just going to stick it
in a warehouse down by the seaside. What happens, then
that's a real issue that happens. If there there's a
legitimate legal claim, then we have no choice but what
we might say to the country or to whoever it is,
it's yours. We'll give it to you whenever you want,
but we're happy to take care of it for you
(39:49):
until you're ready, and it's yours whatever you say, but
at least it's going to be safe here at the mat.
If there is not a legal issue, but it's more
about our decision that we think these people should have it,
then the odds are we would say, we want to
figure out the right way for you to get this,
but we're happy to help figure out how do you
make sure this object is going to be safe and secure?
(40:10):
And usually that's a collegial discussion because they want that too,
and it might mean helping them build a facility or
creating better security or whatever. Both of those things happen.
Where do you like to go and spend a day
at a museum, what's one that never lets you down? Well,
I would say it's it's perhaps a surprising answer, the
Louver and the reason I say that has been going
(40:31):
there all my life, ever since I became an art person,
when I was in college. It's an institution that's full
of treasures. Everywhere you go, there's something in the room
that's the best example of its kind in the world,
and it's so vast. It's it's the same size as
the Mat, but I know the Mat better that I
always love to visit, and it, by the way, it's
in Paris, which is also nice. So I love many
(40:53):
different museums, but I get to the Loop several times
a year, several times a year. Now, I'm told it's
been made public. Your stepping down. Yes, the end of
the summer, summer. Eight years of service and I'm declaring
victory and moving on. It's been a great experience. Thank you,
Thank you so much. My thanks to the author and
(41:14):
outgoing president and CEO of the Met, Daniel Weisse. This
episode was recorded at c DM Studios in New York City.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban.
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
(41:36):
to you by iHeart Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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