让大都会艺术博物馆重焕生机的人

    随便哪一天，从大都会艺术博物馆（Metropolitan Museum of Art）展出的数十万件展品中仅仅挑一件，仔细琢磨透，恐怕都能助你取得博士学位。

    但是，如果连游客都需要拥有艺术史学位才能在馆内玩得尽兴的话，情况就不妙了。没有人比托马斯•坎贝尔更了解这一点。2008年9月，他由纺织品展馆的馆长晋升为大都会艺术博物馆的总掌门。然而，就在他履新大约一周后，美国经济陷入了一场严重的衰退之中。

    他刚一上任，就立即冻结了博物馆的招聘工作，还裁掉了大约15%的员工，而此时，博物馆的全部捐赠基金价值下降了约四分之一。为了保持大都会艺术博物馆在文化界的地位，坎贝尔认为必须扩大博物馆吸引力。

    幸运的是，坎贝尔拥有不少非常有吸引力的展品。他说：“我认为伟大的艺术品、甚至一些看起来极其朴素的展品，也会让人们穿越时空，与其他时代的人们联系起来。他们生活的时代或许迥然不同，但却往往怀着非常相似的希望和梦想。”坎贝尔的计划是，帮助我们每一个人找到这种联系，把它连接到此时此地。大都会艺术博物馆的某些数据正在上扬。去年，该博物馆的入馆人数超过了560万人次，创下了历史新高。

    坎贝尔在接受《财富》杂志（Fortune）采访时谈到了织锦世界最初如何让他惊叹万分；满足馆长的需要与放养一群猫有何相似之处；这家伟大的博物馆的某些部分为什么有点像通天塔（Tower of Babel）。下文是经过编辑的采访实录。

    《财富》：最初是什么吸引你到大都会艺术博物馆工作的？

    托马斯•坎贝尔：从广义上讲，是哲学上的原因。我曾经是一位研究织锦的学者，来大都会艺术博物馆的原因是，我认为在这个地方，我可以组织真正具备学术影响力的大型展览，但与此同时，我还可以吸引到大量的普通观众。

    我真的认为，大都会艺术博物馆是作为一家教育机构建立起来的。它不仅仅是一家美国博物馆，还是一所涵盖了所有文化的博物馆。在当今世界，这种理念依然具有重大的现实意义。无论是开罗还是埃及发生的动荡，它们都可以追溯到几个世纪之前的问题，是它们在当下的体现。知道吗？穿行在我们的美术馆，或许可以找到其中一些问题的答案，从而以更宽广的视野理解当下、过去过去与未来之间其联系的复杂性。

    You could probably earn a Ph.D. working with just one piece out of the hundreds of thousands on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art any given day.

    But it's bad business if visitors need an art history degree to have a good time at the museum. No one knows this better than Thomas Campbell, who moved up from his position as a textile curator to direct the museum in September 2008, about a week before the economy took a plunge.

    Right after he took the job, the Met froze hiring, laid off roughly 15% of its staff, and its total endowment funds dropped by about a quarter of its value. To maintain the Met's cultural relevance, Campbell believes he's going to have to broaden its appeal.

    Luckily, he says, he's got some very appealing material to work with. "I think great works of art, or even very just very humble objects, connect you through time and space with people who might have been living in very different times but often with very similar hopes and dreams." The plan is to help people, anyone really, draw those connections to the here and now. Some of the Met's numbers are looking up. Last year, it pulled a record attendance of over 5.6 million people.

    Campbell talks to Fortune about how he was first wowed by the world of tapestries, how catering to curators can be like herding cats, and why parts of the great museum were a bit like the Tower of Babel. An edited transcript is below.

    Fortune: What drew you to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the first place?

    Thomas Campbell: Broadly, philosophically, I was a tapestry scholar, and I came to the Met because I saw it as a place where I could organize big exhibitions that would have real scholarly clout but at the same time where I would have a broad general audience.

    I truly believe that the Met was set up as an educational institution, and not just as an American museum but a museum of all cultures. In the current world, that vision is as relevant as ever. Whether it's trouble in Cairo or in Syria, these are present day manifestations in some cases of issues that go back centuries, and you know, in our galleries you can kind of unpack some of this and get a broader understanding of the complexity of the present and of the past and the way it's all linked.