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