让大都会艺术博物馆重焕生机的人

    《财富》：你如何让现代的观众认识到这些古老艺术品的现实意义？

    托马斯•坎贝尔：我认为我们可以做更多事情。比如，去年10月，我们重新开放了装饰一新的伊斯兰艺术展区。当时距离911事件已经过去了大约10年。我想，在911事件之前，大多数美国人或许对伊斯兰教知之甚少。接着，在那个恐怖的时刻之后，美国人不可避免地以一种非常极端化的视角来感知这一教派。我们重开这些画廊就是为了展现大量伊斯兰艺术品长达14个世纪的演变历史。令我吃惊，但并不觉奇怪的是，自从我们开办这些画廊以来，我们在4个月里迎来了大约37万名参观者，人潮如织，只有最受欢迎的临时展览才能见到这样的场面。

    《财富》：你们如何延续观众的这种热情？

    托马斯•坎贝尔：大都会艺术博物馆面向的是知识渊博的群体，但不能由此认为我们是一个精英机构。我花了很多心思来思考这样一个问题：我们如何能让这家博物馆变得更平易近人一些。

    出于某种原因，大都会艺术博物馆一直有一个传统，它从不做广告。我不太清楚这个传统的起源。我出任馆长之后，首先做的事情之一就是启动了一项名为“我们该见面了”的广告宣传活动（大都会艺术博物馆英文简称Met的另一层含义是“见面”——译注）。其中一条广告是一对夫妇在罗丹的雕塑“亲吻（The Kiss）”前拥吻的场景。

    同样，我们也打算重新设计一下户外的广场。这个广场的许多地方看起来都有点像一所监狱的院子，显得严峻且令人望而生畏。我们想把这里改造成一个非常有吸引力的地方，让人们一到大都会博物馆就产生一种非常美好的感觉。

    我们正在用更有创意的方式来思考第一次来参观的游客有可能产生的感受。令人惊讶的是，我第一次来的时候，画廊甚至从未编号。

    《财富》：让人们认同你对博物馆的愿景是不是一件很困难的事？

    托马斯•坎贝尔：我的任命决定宣布一周后，雷曼兄弟公司（Lehman Brothers）破产了。就在我等着上任的时候，我亲眼目睹了整个股市崩盘那一幕。好的一面（如果这也算的话）在于，如果没有这场危机，我这样一个刚刚上任、年纪又轻的馆长或许得花上相当长的时间才能说服人们认同我的想法。但外部的资金压力迫使博物馆上下所有的人必须认真思索我们的核心事务。因此，我上任没多久就开始实施我的计划了。

    《财富》：你还记得你第一次喜欢上织锦，也就是你的专长领域，是在什么时候？

    托马斯•坎贝尔：作为一位年轻的艺术史学者，我很幸运。我学习艺术那会，艺术涵盖的范围包括绘画，雕塑和建筑，我当时发现过去的主顾们花费巨资购买织锦，因此我就开始在旅途中观摩织锦作品。

   How do you make ancient pieces of art relevant to a modern audience?

    I think we can do more. For example, last October, we reopened the new galleries of our Islamic art department. It's about 10 years after 9/11. I think before 9/11 most Americans probably had relatively little understanding of Islam. And then, in that terrible moment, the perception was inevitably filtered through a very polarized light. What we've done in reopening these galleries is present 14 centuries of the evolution of many Islamic arts. And what's amazing to me, but not surprising, is that since we opened those galleries, we've had 370,000 visitors in four months. The galleries are drawing crowds as if they were one of our most popular temporary exhibitions.

    How do you sustain that kind of interest?

    While we're addressing people who know a huge amount, the Met mustn't be perceived as an elitist intuition. I've put quite a lot of energy into thinking about how we can make it feel more accessible.

    Take advertising: for some reason there had been a tradition that we never showed people with works of art. I'm not quite sure where that came from. One of the first things I did when I became director was start an advertising campaign called "It's time we Met." One ad in the series showed a couple kissing in front of Rodin's sculpture "The Kiss."

    Similarly, we're about to redesign the plaza outside. Most of it looks like a bit like a prison yard, it's austere, it's forbidding. We want to have an attractive place where people feel good about arriving at the Metropolitan.

    We're thinking much more creatively about what it is like to be a first time visitor. Amazingly, when I came, the galleries had never even been numbered.

    Has it been difficult to get people on board with your vision for the museum?

    Well, a week after the announcement of my appointment, Lehman Brothers went down. As I waited in the wings, I saw the whole stock market collapsing. The silver lining, in so far as there was one, is that it might have taken me quite a while as a young new director to get people on board. But the external finances forced all of our staff to think hard about our core priorities, so I could come in and really get my agenda going.

    Do you remember when you first fell in love with tapestries, your area of expertise?

    I was lucky, as a young art historian, I was studying art as it was then defined, which is painting and sculpture and architecture, and I realized the patrons of the past were spending huge amounts of money on tapestries, so I began looking at tapestries while traveling.