Museums: The Muses' Marble Acres

(4 of 4)

With such depth to draw on, the Met can afford to place quality first. The day when donors' private collections were hung in toto is past; the Met insists on constantly upgrading as finer examples become available. Also past are the days when objects were crammed together in unlighted Victorian display cases. To catch the eye of the young (1,000 schoolchildren a day visit the Met by appointment), the museum inaugurated one of the first children's museums in the U.S., with spinning color charts, and a movie of unwrapping a mummy that fascinates even adults.

Home-Grown Art. The Met aims to be both a place of contemplation and study; and Rorimer's proudest statistic is that 32% of the museum visitors return as often as two to three times a month. Artists come in droves, as students to sketch everything from Renaissance Madonnas to abstract collages, as established painters to perfect. Dutch-born Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning, who haunted the Met as a young man, says: "The greatest thrill of my life is to walk from the Rembrandt rooms and find my Easter Monday hanging on the wall."

Now that American art has risen to lead the contemporary world market, the Met is challenged to make room for home-grown work. Significantly, this occurs at a time when a major re-evaluation of earlier periods of U.S. art is in full swing. In response, the museum will put on view next month some 450 works of U.S. painting and sculpture, spanning three centuries in a previously impermanent panoply drawn from its own collection. Rorimer has also just announced plans for a new $4,000,000 American wing. The Met being the Met, no sooner said than half the funds were promised. It all fits into the Met's grand philosophy—to live with the best of the past without slighting the present.