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Week Two | On Collections: Politics of Desire and Sacrifice

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Week Two | On Collections: Politics of Desire and Sacrifice

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In 'Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value', Arjun Appadurai writes, "Thus, the economic object does not have an absolute value as a result of the demand for it, but the demand, as the basis for real or imagined exchange, endows the object with its value." (p.4, emphasis added). Appadurai expands on this idea, naming the two major sides of the cycle of exchange in the introduction of the paper as desire and sacrifice. These two things function in a reciprocal, dialectical relationship, deeming value based on one another. The greater the willing sacrifice of the one who desires the object, the greater the desire for the object grows. The kinds and systems of exchange vary greatly-- by society, function, size, and kinds of desire-- whether that be wealth, honor, or simple necessity.

The pure act of 'collecting', acquiring and ordering objects for display, requires both sacrifice and the desire to order and explain the desired thing, to both possess a thing and the narrative attached to it. As Sharon Macdonald writes of typological organization during the European turn of focus onto rationalism in the nineteenth century, "In art museums, the new discipline of art history informed a novel means of organizing galleries from the late eighteenth century, the works typically being presented as exemplifications of particular styles, themselves classified by both 'period' and 'civilization' and 'nationality,' and thus being spatially organized such that visitors could take an educational tour through the progress of art over time, crossing continents, and experiencing characteristic differences, as they did so." (p.87, emphasis added).

The ordering of objects, through these 'characteristic differences' or similarities, assigns a narrative, one that can be manipulated by the person/institution that displays them. Practices of collecting veer to the desire for perfection, as Baudrillard expands on, and 'completeness' or absoluteness dominates the compulsion. He writes, "It remains characteristic of the collection that there comes a point when the self-absorption of the system is interrupted and the collection is enrolled within some external project or exigency (whether associated with prestige, culture, or commerce makes no odds, only assuming that the object ends up confronting one man with another, thereby constituting itself as a message)." (p.24). A collection, therefore, is a method of communication from one body to another. One built out of sacrifice in the name of desire to send a message to another body, about themselves. This can be an articulated identity through means of demonstrating otherness, it can be to engage in cultural governance through garnering value for the objects in one's collection and their associated moral value, or even just to demonstrate wealth through the acquisition of highly valued objects-- but the function of the collection remains the same.

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Roberts, Andrea Suozzo, Alec Glassford, Ash Ngu, Brandon. “The Metropolitan Museum Of Art - Nonprofit Explorer.” ProPublica, 9 May 2013, https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131624086.

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The Metropolitan Museum's Total Assets, 2023

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The Metropolitan Museum's Total Assets, 2023

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Patio from the Castle of Vélez Blanco. Marble of Macael (Sierra de Filabres), 1506. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/199003.

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How much did the Metropolitan Museum pay for the 'Madonna and Child'?

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Week Three: Condensing The World Into Knowable Parts

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Week Three: Condensing The World Into Knowable Parts

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As the European epistemological mindset shifted toward 'rationalism' throughout the eighteenth century, burgeoning with the growing standing of democratic forms of government and the decline of overarching ecclesiastical power, the 'museum collection' shifted to suit the changing needs of the newly dominant controlling classes. A progressive interest in the 'human sciences' and the taxonomic classifications of objects, civilizations, species, and kinds of knowledge brought on an 'encyclopedic' approach to the collection. As the museum became increasingly public, the justification for its existence became increasingly academic; and the museum structure was reorganized to suit the housing of studies undertaken to broaden human knowledge. The organization and classification of knowledge became the principal focus of collections of objects during this period as objects were brought from across the European tread of the world through expansionism.

Through this kind of hierarchical organization, the forming "survey museum" could claim knowledge and representation for entire civilizations, and manipulate that 'knowledge' into a narrative suited to the structures of power that organized the museum project in the first place. As Preziosi writes, "This phenomenon is at the same time at the heart of the socially-sanctioned need or even legally enforced obsession in many societies to discipline and "fix" the meanings of things; to give each entity an appropriate historical, political, chronological, geographic, and ethical locus or "address." And to do so ideally by embedding objects in a story or narrative; in an unfolding evolutionary history or teleology — a linked series of entities fabricating an overall shape to the time of a time and place." (p. 83, emphasis added)

The survey museum, the first major one of which in America was the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, became a tool of social ordinance designed to demonstrate the national wealth of the demos and the character of the nation. As Duncan and Wallach write, the alignment of the national project with what was recognized as "universal genius" (57) was integral to the character of the survey museum and necessary for the image of the state in its reflection to both the public citizenry and international spheres. In the formation of the Metropolitan Museum in particular, an arrangement of display between the public and private spheres allowed for the presentation of the public through the workings of the private. "Public would mask private-- or try to. The Museum would be located on city land and would be owned by the city. However, the Museum collection would be owned and controlled by the concerned citizens who made up its board of trustees." (58). The Metropolitan became a center of established power in meaning-making and national character, operated by a controlling class of wealthy citizens.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gallery Map - Google Search. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.

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Drawn Map of the Metropolitan Museum Galleries

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Drawn Map of the Metropolitan Museum Galleries

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The Met Around the World - The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/met-publications/the-met-around-the-world. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.

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Reenvisioning The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

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After nearly forty years since the inauguration of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the Met is embarking on a plan to renovate and reconceptualize its 40,000 square feet, creating three distinct new galleries for the Arts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Arts of the Ancient Americas, and the Arts of Oceania.

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METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART (ACCESSION NUMBER 08.242)

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Josiah Wedgewood, 'Antislavery Medallion' (1787)

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Josiah Wedgewood, 'Antislavery Medallion' (1787)

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Week Four | New Gods and Rituals (Of Sight)

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Week Four | New Gods and Rituals (Of Sight)

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Ways of seeing and interacting with materials in museums can be influenced by the environments created around them and the relative order of objects in their placements. Elements of design or architecture that may influence these ways of seeing include (but are not limited to) the directed flow of traffic, atmosphere, surveillance, lighting, accessibility, and material. Interpretation relies on previously instilled value judgments based primarily on experience and education. Design choices that rely on value judgments associated with particular classes, behaviors, beliefs, or political agendas can align the context of the objects placed in a collection with or at odds with those judgments, creating a dialectical between public and institution-instilled ideas about objects. In addition, the growing educational justification of the Museum through the last two centuries has encouraged the dynamic of Authority/Student at play between the museum as an institution and the public, creating an environment or atmosphere that treats the public as a subject, being taught ways of seeing that align themselves with civic or national identifications. As Bennett writes in The Exhibitionary Complex, "It is then, as a set of cultural technologies concerned to organize a voluntary self-regulating citizenry that I propose to examine the formation of the exhibitionary complex." (63, emphasis added).

In The Art Museum as Ritual, Duncan writes, "Like most ritual space, museum space is carefully marked off and culturally designated as reserved for a special quality of attention-- in this case, for contemplation and learning." (10, emphasis added) The 'framing' of this 'ritual space' contributes heavily to what a religious environment might refer to as an 'attitude of reverence', requiring the participants to engage in certain behaviors through methods of social discipline. The architectural and atmospheric toolkits of museums share attributes with the toolkits of religious spaces in a similar manner, creating environments detached from time, the outside world, regular social obligations, and values. As Duncan writes, "As we shall see, others, too, have described art museums as sites which enable visitors to achieve a liminal experience-- to move beyond the psychic constraints of mundane existence, step out of time, and attain new, larger perspectives." (12, emphasis added). This connection with the 'higher authority', (in this case, the Eurocentric "universal genius" (57, emphasis added) of Duncan and Wallach's The Universal Survey Museum) allows for what Duncan quotes as a "replacement for religion", (12, emphasis added) or a shift in the hierarchical powers as mirrored in the political shift of the 18th century. The new God, so to speak, then becomes the cultural authority of the museum.

In the case of the Metropolitan Museum, multiple factors are at play in determining the politics of sight and knowledge that influence the experiences and interpretations of collected objects. The museum's neoclassical, stately architecture and its monumental size give it a classical European civic structure, placing it among a class of buildings that deal primarily in education, religion, and law; all disciplinary functions. The museum's location, in prime real estate beside Central Park and on 5th Avenue, places it in a fiscal class far above the average person, giving the impression of wealth and centrality. The use of monumental, neoclassical architecture continues inside, where the 'Great Hall' expands into high, arched ceilings in the visitor's first impression of the building, which is reminiscent most prominently of a cathedral. Following the flow of traffic through to the most obvious pathways, up the central stairs or to either the left or right sides of the hall, the visitor's ticket is checked and enters one of three central, prominent galleries: European Painting, Ancient Greek and Roman Art, and Egyptian Art; all being classical, Eurocentric examples of the lauded 'universal genius'. To get to galleries containing Indigenous, African, Oceanian, Asian, Temporary Exhibitions, or Modern Art, the museum-goer must first traverse one of these three collections, prioritizing the experience. Inside these galleries, the use of lighting, surveillance, sound, traffic control, etc., changes to suit the effect on the visitor.

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Case Study: European Art & Asian Art Galleries | From Field Notes, 2.1.25

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Case Study: European Art & Asian Art Galleries | From Field Notes, 2.1.25

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As a case study, the European Painting galleries, which are the central 'heart' of the museum, so to speak, are a series of interconnected, mazelike rooms painted in dark, primary colors. There are central seating options in front of evenly spaced pieces, and the pieces are spotlit from above to centralize focus. People walk slowly, attended by at least one guard per room, or sit to gaze at a single piece. People, for the most part, are completely silent or have quiet conversations. The atmosphere is reminiscent of a church, in which the primary activity is quiet contemplation. In juxtaposition, the Asian Art gallery, which one must traverse a balcony and café to get through (positioned directly next to glass cases), has a more spectacular atmosphere. Monumental pieces of religious art are situated beside glass cases packed with objects, most of which are contextually functional or religious rather than artistic. Music, interspersed with occasional chanting, plays from speakers. Here, lighting is bright and equal, with a special focus on the cases. The seats are generally not used unless for rest, by disheveled-looking tourists. People take photographs and speak loudly, and the phenomenon of the guard occurs far less. Alarms can be heard going off in some areas, though these rare guards do not seem concerned by them. The atmosphere here is less cathedral-like and more exhibit-like, reminiscent of a specimen collection or a tourist attraction. Comparatively, the design of the two galleries is polar, resulting in a mixed public perception, and likely, a far differing 'educational' experience-- the design of the museum itself being polar to the design of the Asian Art wing, which in itself forces a character opposition between what is civic/national, and what is foreign/other.

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Journal, Finch Heirendt. Photograph taken Feburary 14th, 2025.

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Metropolitan Museum Floor Plan | Floor One

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Metropolitan Museum Floor Plan | Floor One

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Metropolitan Museum Floor Plan | Floor Two

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Metropolitan Museum Floor Plan | Floor Two

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Asian Art | "Collection Highlights" | Metropolitan Museum

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Asian Art | "Collection Highlights" | Metropolitan Museum

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Astor Chinese Garden Court | Metropolitan Museum

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Astor Chinese Garden Court | Metropolitan Museum

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European Painting Gallery | Metropolitan Museum

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European Painting Gallery | Metropolitan Museum

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Richmond Room, Metropolitan Museum American Wing

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Richmond Room, Metropolitan Museum American Wing

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Benkard Room, Metropolitan Museum American Wing

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Benkard Room, Metropolitan Museum American Wing

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Mckim, Mead, and White Stair Hall, Metropolitan Museum American Wing

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Mckim, Mead, and White Stair Hall, Metropolitan Museum American Wing

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Week Seven | On The Domestic Fundamentals of an 'American Culture' 

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Week Seven | On The Domestic Fundamentals of an 'American Culture' 

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The phenomenon of the 'period room' first began in Sweden in the last quarter of the 19th century, as collectors began to be less interested in typological classifications and more interested in classification by function, style, or period. This approach to the collections of domestic material culture in Western Europe was certainly not new by this era, but was beginning to surface amid what were becoming 'living' history museums and wax figure installations. For these exhibitions, the primary focus was promoting a nation's history as a rhetorical device, usually to enforce a narrative of superiority in decorative arts or a unified culture. In the case of the United States' interest in its historical decorative arts and domestic history, as Pilgrim notes in Inherited From the Past, "Americans first had to become convinced that they had a culture before that culture could be promoted. Although there are individual examples of buildings saved and collectors of Americana before the 1870s, the awareness and appreciation of our past does not seem to begin until then." (p.6, emphasis added)

The American Wing Period Rooms in the Metropolitan Museum opened to the public for the first time in 1924, a moment in United States history in which appreciation for the American decorative arts was becoming an important recognized part of a rhetorical hegemonic 'American' culture. The project of exhibiting these began in 1910 (Hecksher, 163) and carried on for fourteen years until its opening, in which the curatorial staff at the Metropolitan Museum sought out not only decorative arts suited to each room, but the paneling and fixtures of rooms from the historical moments themselves. These rooms were the product of a Frankenstein's-Monster arrangement, wood being taken from houses that might have remained intact otherwise (Pilgrim, 12-13) and decorative arts collected from around the United States in order to recreate period settings from particular houses or moments in history. The goal was authenticity, to recreate a domestic scene from a particular era, however, this is more or less relative. Using scenes taken from various places and left to the tastes of a curator, as well as being a product of historical imagination, period rooms are what Pilgrim calls "period rooms of period rooms", (p.22), an approximation of itself. The argument has been made that these rooms provide more spectacle than authentic education.

A great deal of the rooms from the late 18th and 19th century at the Metropolitan American Wing, for instance, the Richmond Room, are taken to model a very specific economic class. They model examples of wealth in historic domestic situations, and certain fixtures in these rooms call back to very specific ideas about the American identity. For instance, in the Richmond Room, the wallpaper features prominent examples of European civic and religious architecture across a river from pastoral fields and women wearing Greco-Roman dress, people pulling boats up to the shore and running through the grass-- an example of a pastoral, romanticized articulation of the colonization and governance of the United States. In the Benkard room, the decorative arts displayed are very much representative of the American federal era, featuring eagles, wheat motifs, and neoclassical decorations reminiscent of the Adams' styles popular in Georgian England. These rooms call back to an American etiology as descended directly from Europe's 'enlightenment' history and rationalistic democracy, featuring pastoral, romantic themes, and showcasing examples of white wealth and power in the 19th-century United States. The question, here, then becomes: whose history is being showcased as representative of the United States during this era? And why?

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Clock, Benkard Room | Metropolitan Museum, 1792–1819

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Clock, Benkard Room | Metropolitan Museum, 1792–1819

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Looking Glass, Benkard Room | Metropolitan Museum, 1800-1820

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Looking Glass, Benkard Room | Metropolitan Museum, 1800-1820

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Ivory Chess Set, Benkard Room | Metropolitan Museum, c. 1800

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Ivory Chess Set, Benkard Room | Metropolitan Museum, c. 1800

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Bronze Plaque, Benin c. 16th C. | Metropolitan Museum, Repatriated 2021 

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Bronze Plaque, Benin c. 16th C. | Metropolitan Museum, Repatriated 2021 

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Week 9 | Restitution at The Metropolitan Museum

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Week 9 | Restitution at The Metropolitan Museum

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The Metropolitan has multiple pages online discussing its policies surrounding cultural restitution and repatriation of objects. It is caught up in a long history of Western art museums holding contentious objects at the protest of communities, particularly those who suffered tragedy or cultural attack under colonialism, war, genocide, looting, or other forms of aggressive attack. At the Metropolitan Museum in particular, there are multiple bureaucratic systems in which a contented object must go before it is returned to it's rightful owner or country of origin. On a page on their website labeled 'Repatriated Objects', the museum explains that pieces must be reviewed by curatorial departments before undergoing a decision-making process by the Board of Trustees and the Counsel's Office; and this is before any kind of diplomatic agreement is made with the representation from the object's origin. Underneath this list of processes, there is a list of objects that have been repatriated in the last twenty years. Among them, Benin Bronzes, Nazi-era stolen artworks, 13th-century Nepali temple pieces, etc. These objects, usually gifted to the museum some years after the initial tragedy, war, invasion, excavation, etc., were found to have been unrightfully taken and were given back. This does not mean that the Museum has no objects in its possession of contentious origin.

The museum has several departments dedicated to the research of the provenance of objects; however, the legal implications of 'gifted' or purchased objects from legal channels after their initial displacement by illegal means complicate matters. For instance, out of the some 160 pieces from Benin, not all are from the 1897 massacre, and some, though they are, have been purchased or gifted through legal channels. In a statement recorded by the New York Times, "The works in the Met’s collection “were largely given to the institution in the 1970s and 1990s by individuals who acquired them on the art market,” a spokesman told the New York Times in April." (See here) The Metropolitan Museum, by and large, paints a very complicated entanglement of factors in the face of what, in the public mind, is a very clear-cut issue, one way or the other.

Red tape and bureaucracy aside, the Metropolitan is about as forthcoming as the British Museum or the Louvre when it comes to provenance research. All three museums run programs for Nazi-era provenance research and are actively invested primarily in the evaluation and return of these objects as their public focus on the topic of repatriation. The Metropolitan and British Museums allow for digital collections search options to the public to allow for civilians to look through objects collected during this era, and open themselves to communication from the public in regards to the origin of these objects. These museums are also central in the public debate over cultural patrimony and museum heritage, widely criticized for holding objects that are viewed as stolen. The Metropolitan Museum holds several notable objects that are the subject of much public scrutiny from across the globe, including but not limited to Nigeria, Cyprus, Indonesia, India, Greece, and Cambodia. It has been slow to, or absent from, making statements on any of these objects directly.

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Claude Monet, The Garden of Monet's House in Argenteuil, 1873 | Nazi-Stolen Artwork Being Restituted by The Metropolitan Museum

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Claude Monet, The Garden of Monet's House in Argenteuil, 1873 | Nazi-Stolen Artwork Being Restituted by The Metropolitan Museum

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Art of Native America, Metropolitan Museum Acknowledgement Statement

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Art of Native America, Metropolitan Museum Acknowledgement Statement

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Week 10: Decolonizing The Metropolitan Museum

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Week 10: Decolonizing The Metropolitan Museum

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The Metropolitan Museum, founded in an era of American history with a stark fascination and collecting practice for indigenous American art, tools, textiles, and material culture, in the same generation in which the Mexican-American War and Spanish-American Wars were fought, and colonial settlement of traditional lands was propping up industry with newfound force. Their collection of American Indigenous material culture at the Metropolitan Museum is the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection, which has been collected by the two for half a century of connoisseurship. The objects' provenance before their purchase by the Dikers or their subsequent gifting to the Museum, however, is muddy. The Museum gives a long statement expanding on their ownership of these objects, which, when boiled down, is essentially a very long, tangential acceptance of the fact that most of the objects in the collection were taken by violent means and hold incredible cultural significance for their people. There is, however, no comment on an effort for repatriation or restitution.

As Christina Kreps writes in Non-Western Models of Museums and Curation in Cross-Cultural Perspective, "Curation is no longer just about taking care of objects. It is also about cultivating harmonious relationships directed toward redressing historical wrongs, and showing respect for diverse worldviews and belief systems as they pertain to people’s perceptions of, and relations to, objects.” (469) The very worldview attached to the institution needs to fundamentally change: a perspective shift away from the knowledge-seeking/owning and racial politics of settler colonialism is required. As Mirzeoff writes, "It would require a space where you’re willing to look at the challenge of making the new without hierarchy, without preconditions, and without any guarantees. It is a global challenge. It’s not a question of throwing out art objects but of creating a space that embraces the necessity of decolonization. I want an institution – whether university, museum, gallery or whatever – that doesn’t reproduce white supremacy, that doesn’t represent a prison, in which there isn’t expropriated labor, there isn’t extinction, and there isn’t genocide. What would that look like?" (21).

Kreps posits that the next best step might be to back away from institutional models of knowledge-seeking and into a politics of care. What would the Metropolitan look like, if instead of focusing on merely acknowledging the centuries of hateful practice that have led to the caging of their cultural materials, the Met focused on expanding public perception of present-day members of the Tribes from which the objects originate, or even after-effects of settler colonialism? What would focusing on present-day contexts and the return of heritage artefacts provide for the average museum goer?

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The Guardian, April 25th, 2023. "Where did the Metropolitan Museum of Art Get Its Native American objects?'

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The Guardian, April 25th, 2023. "Where did the Metropolitan Museum of Art Get Its Native American objects?'

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Mask, Metropolitan Museum, c.1870, Alutiiq/ Sugpiaq, Native American

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Mask, Metropolitan Museum, c.1870, Alutiiq/ Sugpiaq, Native American

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Cradleboard, Metropolitan Museum, c.1875, Kiowa, Native American

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Cradleboard, Metropolitan Museum, c.1875, Kiowa, Native American

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Week 12: Corporate Sponsorship At The Metropolitan Museum

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Week 12: Corporate Sponsorship At The Metropolitan Museum

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The Metropolitan Museum has a long history of attachment to big-name corporate sponsorships, which provide a large part of its financial support. Its founding members have included Rockefellers and Jays, with lineal connections to generational empires of both national and foreign wealth, which have come from, at times, controversial places. Today, contributing companies include TikTok, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the MetLife Foundation, Tiffany & Co., and Condé Nast, to name a few. Like the British Museum, which Serafino and Garrad focus on in their article, 'Fossil Fuel Sponsorship and The Contested Museum', these financial partnerships sometimes come into the public sphere in a bad way. The Met has a page on its website titled 'Corporate Support', which details not only a full list of corporate sponsors but also details on how to become a corporate sponsor and its benefits. It does not, however, detail how much each corporation gives and what exactly the specific benefits are for each partnership outside of the given membership scale. As Serafino and Garrad write, "In reality, a request may result in a protracted bureaucratic process that can diffuse attempts to enforce accountability. Paradoxically, it is often not ‘the public’ but the Museum that assesses what is in the public’s interest. Consequently, any information disclosed by the Museum needs to be subjected to an interpretative process by the recipients to (re)construct intelligible narratives around the recorded information’s original purpose. This process of generating a second-order description naturally involves its own ethical obligations if the ultimate goal is to scrutinise the ethical behaviour of others.” (p. 76)

One standout instance of public resistance to a corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum came in 2019, when the museum made a public statement rejecting any further contribution from the Sackler family, as well as taking down their name from gallery halls, (Pogrebin, The New York Times, 2021) given their role in the global opioid crisis. (Harris, The New York Times, 2019). This came alongside the same announcement from the Tate in London and the Guggenheim in New York. Recorded by the NYT, the President of the Met Daniel Weiss said, “The museum takes a position of gratitude and respect to those who support us, but on occasion, we feel it’s necessary to step away from gifts that are not in the public interest, or in our institution’s interest,” (Ibid.) This calls back to ideas expressed by Serafino and Garrad, in which the authors cite the complicated public/private nature of museum relations to the civic body and how, by and large, museums are designed to be representational entities, which means that there is a measure of incredible public involvement in financial decisions made by institutions, which the public willingly and unwillingly participates in. (75-76)

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Metropolitan Museum, List of Corporate Sponsors

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Metropolitan Museum, List of Corporate Sponsors

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"The Sackler Wing", Metropolitan Museum, 2021

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"The Sackler Wing", Metropolitan Museum, 2021

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'Benefits of Corporate Sponsorship', Metropolitan Museum

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'Benefits of Corporate Sponsorship', Metropolitan Museum