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Slate Culture

Working: How Curator Sheena Wagstaff Chooses Art for the Met

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.42K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Host Rumaan Alam talks about art curation with Sheena Wagstaff, who leads the Metropolitan Museum's program of modern and contemporary art for the Met Breuer and the Met Fifth Avenue. First they discuss the curator’s role of deciding which works of art are culturally important. Then Wagstaff makes her case for why people should see art in person and why it’s such a tragedy that no one is able to see the Met Brauer’s current exhibition of works from prolific German painter Gerhard Richter. Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to [email protected]. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. And if you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on Working. It’s only $35 for the first year, and you can get a free two-week trial now at slate.com/workingplus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Are you ready for a Monzo Business Bank Account?

0:03.3

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0:05.3

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0:09.8

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0:14.0

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0:17.0

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0:20.0

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0:25.0

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0:28.1

Te's and sees apply. The Metropolitan Museum has these incredible historic collections.

0:40.0

You've come through that entrance, you've gone up the Bosall staircase, you've already felt slightly

0:46.1

belittled in the temple of culture. What you can do with modeling contemporary art

0:51.9

at a place like the Met is complicate that

0:54.3

that story that narrative.

0:58.7

Hello and welcome back to working I'm your host Isaac Butler and I'm your other host, Isaac Butler.

1:04.0

And I'm your other host, Raman alum.

1:06.0

Ruman, I know that you have been reviewing up a storm lately.

1:10.0

I've been loving reading your book reviews, but I'm just wondering how has that been going?

1:14.3

Well I'm very lucky that that my entirely non-essential job is writing about books you know I

1:20.3

learned that as a kid that I could take a book with me and escape from wherever my family had dragged me to and now that I'm trapped at home, I can escape from that reality by reading and it's still technically my job.

1:31.0

That's great. I'm very excited for our listeners to get to know Shina Wagstaff

1:36.0

our guest this week. Can you tell us a little bit about her and what she does?

1:39.7

Shena Wagstaff is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. Shena oversees their modern and contemporary art, so in her capacity there she works on the programming at the Met Breyer, which is an offshoot of the main museum.

...

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