Music

Pushkin

Starting today, if you don't live in New York State, you're going to have to pay a mandatory entrance fee to visit the Metropolitan Museum.

I witness news, ABC7 New York, March 1st, 2018.

The new policy was announced in January, but it took effect today, adults, who do not have ID proving that they live right here in New York, after paid $25.

Seniors will pay $17.

If I had to pinpoint the beginning of my obsession with art museums, it would be the moment the Metropolitan Museum, one of the greatest museums in the world, decided to impose entrance fees.

It was a difficult time for the institution. They had a $40 million deficit.

They got rid of 90 employees. Exhibitions were canceled. There was a shake-up in the leadership. Up and down the upper east side of Manhattan, there was hand-dringing and a great gnashing of teeth.

I remember one New York Times headline from that time. Is the Met Museum a great institution in decline?

That was followed by one expression of anguish after another, including this from the former chairman of the Met's Drawings and Print Department.

To have inherited a museum as strong as the Met was 10 years ago, with a great curatorial staff, and to have it be what it is today, is unimaginable.

Well, exactly. Because for the life of me, I couldn't imagine how it was the Met was crying poverty.

I mean, they have one of the largest and most valuable art collections in the world. 1.5 million objects. What's all that art worth? I don't know, $100 billion more?

The Met might be the richest non-profit institution in human history. All they would have to do is pick a couple things off the shelf,

and they'd never see a deficit again. This is like Jeff Bezos firing the gardener because he's out of cash. Just go to the ATM, Jeff.

But they couldn't do it. They would rather fire people and make a family of four cough up to $100 at the gate than even think of parting with a single one of their possessions.

Why? It's a puzzle. And it is for puzzles like this that we have revisionist history.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.

This is our fifth season, five years of digression, high-dudgeon, needless provocation, and my absolute favorite, grand unified theories.

In this season of revisionist history, I want to explore our emotional attachment to objects, and rituals, and tradition, and the way in which those attachments betray us.

And in this first episode, I would like to make sense of the strange relationship of the art world to art.

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