Curator's Cut

Enjoyable series of short videos from the Metropolitan Museum filmed during lockdown highlighting recent exhibitions and specific works of art.

These are emailed to members and patrons once a week, so I hope it is OK to share the links. Unfortunately, I deleted the first one and can no longer find it. Most take the form of a talk from the curator’s home with a Powerpoint presentation and are made rather endearing by their different styles of presenting and occasionally IT issue. It is a shame the start and end of each follows quite a prescriptive script, but the sentiments are welcomed. I certainly look forward to more arriving in my inbox. 

Episode2: Crossroads: Power and Piety

C. Griffith Mann, Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. Looks at a new cross-departmental installation which brings together objects from the Medieval period across cultures which reflect religious power and piety. It groups 12 objects in four themes, divine authority, scared aura, venerated intermediaries and pious patrons. A great way of showing common themes across different countries.  

Episode3 : Rayyane Tabet : Alien Property

Kim Benzel, Curator in Charge of Ancient Near Eastern Art, discusses the exhibition “Rayyane Tabet / Alien Propert”y the story of how four 9th-century B.C. stone reliefs, excavated in 1911 at Tell Halaf, Syria, ended up at The Met and how Lebanese contemporary artist, Rayyane Tabet, interprets them. I found this talk a bit convoluted and would like to have heard more about the reliefs themselves.

Episode 4 : Aesthetic Splendours

Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator, Department of American Decorative Arts, show us the exhibition “Aesthetic Splendours: Highlights from the Gift of Barrie and Deedee Wigmore” which highlights a promised gift from this couple of paintings and decorative arts that present high points in America's Gilded Age.

Episode 5 : Van Dyck's Study

Adam Eaker, Assistant Curator, European Paintings. Eaker tells the story behind 17th-century Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck's intriguing “Study Head of a Young Woman”. He talks about his relationship to the painting and some recent research which included the fact that the picture may be of Van Dyck’s sister Susanna.

Episdoe 6 : Tradition and Tonality

Michael Gallagher, Sherman Fairchild Chairman of Paintings Conservation. Michael guides us through the  conservation of a picture of a bustling food market by Flemish painter Joachim Beuckelaer.