NEW YORK CITY

Morrison Heckscher, chairman of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discusses the newly-renovated 30,000 square feet of gallery space that now houses a comprehensive collection of American art.

DISTINCTLY

AMERICAN
by Jim Balestieri

orrie Heckscher has been the chairman of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 2001. Having made it his mission to expand and redesign the American Wing, the Mets extensive American holdings have been re-imagined in 25 new galleries, with works displayed chronologically as well as thematically. Morrison H. Heckscher, Twenty-one of the new the Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman of the American Wing galleriesincluding the at The Metropolitan Museum of 18 sky-lit Joan Whitney Art. Photograph courtesy The Payson Gallerieshave Metropolitan Museum of Art. been created to display the American Wings extraordinary collection of paintings, which date back to the 1870s through the strong support of founding trustee-painters Frederic Edwin Church and John Frederick Kensett. The American Wing opened on January 16th. Mr. Heckscher graciously took time out from the opening festivities to speak with American Fine Art Magazine.

A view of Emanuel Leutzes Washington Crossing the Delaware in Gallery 760: History, Landscape, and National Identity, 185075. Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Gallery.

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CONTENTS

PREVIEWS

AUCTIONS

EVENTS

MUSEUMS

INDEX

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John Singer Sargent (18561925), Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 188384. Oil on canvas, 821/8 x 43 in., Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1916 (16.53).

American Fine Art Magazine: The new American Wing is stunning. Who were some of the prime movers in the project and how did the space evolve? Morris Heckscher: In 2001, when I became Chairman of the American Wing, I got the directors approval to study ways in which the American Wing could be improved. Peter Kenney, 56
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curator of Decorative Arts, Lulu C. Wang, one of our trustees, and architect Kevin Roche were instrumental in the process. We wanted to address some of the American Wings shortcomings the collection was on two levels, for example, which gave the impression that works on the lower levelworks by Eakins, Homer and Sargentwere
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somehow less important. AFAM: You enter the American Wing through the colonial galleries. Portraits line the walls. Among the George Washingtons and other portraits of the famous are a number of paintings of people we no longer know much, if anything, about. What kinds of stories

The paintings seen in, Gallery 753: Era of the Revolution, 17761800, express the pride of a young nation born of revolution and celebrate its heroes and hard-fought battles. Artists Benjamin West, Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull, and Gilbert Stuart are found here. The George M. and Linda H. Kaufman Galleries.

do such portraits tell us today, some 250 years after they were painted? MH: We may not remember them, but these portraits were the way in which people remembered their families and friends. There was no way then to record a likeness other than in portraiture. The portrait by Ralph Earl of General Marinus Willetta hero

of the Revolutionhangs beside the sword pictured in the painting. This kind of thing lends an immediacy to the experience. Another Earl portrait, the one of Elijah Boardman, a merchant, offers us an image of the new American. From his ofce we see through to his shop the imported textiles he traded in. His dignity is comparable to that found

in Gilbert Stuarts portrait of George Washington. Each man is portrayed in a grand manner. AFAM: The works do seem to be in a kind of dialogue with one another, based on where the viewer stands. What are some of your favorite dialogues between the works, that is, 57

Another view of Gallery 760: History, Landscape, and National Identity, 1850-75.

what are some of your favorite places to stand in the American Wing? MH: Between the portraits of Boardman and Washington, you see Sullys painting of Queen Victoria on her accession to the throne. Its an interesting counterpoint: the dignity of the young Queen captured by the American artist eager to make a name for himself between these two stately American men. I wanted there to be as many of these deliberate positionings as possible, vistas through the galleries, ways to use the natural 58
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light that comes into the galleries to draw visitors through. The wonderful eagle faces left, suggesting as you pass that you follow his gaze. You turn your head and there it is: Leutzes Washington Crossing the Delaware. You can see Sargents Madame X two galleries away, near the Eakins. You are drawn through the gallery featuring Sargents nature paintings to the gallery featuring Sargents portraits. We use the points of the compass: north, south, east and west as geographical and temporal guides as well.
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AFAM: Can you tell us a bit about the process of restoring, reframing and installing Leutzes Washington Crossing the Delaware? MH: Gary Barrett spearheaded the restoration of the painting, the frame and the reputation of the Leutze. Thirty years ago, it was more of an embarrassment than an asset. It was considered bombastic. Heres an anecdote: our restorers uncovered dates painted, probably by Leutze, as he worked on it: months and days in 1851. Some of these are in the ice

Thomas Eakins (18441916), The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull), 1871. Oil on canvas, purchase, The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Fund and George D. Pratt Gift, 1934 (34.92).

Winslow Homer (18361910), The Gulf Stream, 1899. Oil on canvas, Wolfe Fund, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, 1906 (06.1234).

oes. We know now, something of his process, how it evolved for him. When our head of conservation, a specialist in European paintings, saw the nished product, he said, Now its a picture, meaning it would be seen properly for the rst time in a long time. AFAM: Washington Crossing the Delaware may be the single most recognizable image in American art. It has been made to serve any number of ideological agendas. It has been praised, eulogized, criticized,

parodied, deconstructed, called kitsch, turned into kitsch. What is it about this painting that seems to transcend anything anyone can say about it? MH: You have to take it on its own terms. It isnt an accurate depiction of a moment in history. Its a dramatization, an artistic retelling of an important story as an epic. We created a gallery for it, a gallery that recreates the way it was hung in New York in 1864, during the height of the Civil War, anked by Bierstadts Rockies and Churchs Andes. This also adds a

dimension to the story of the painting. AFAM: There are some magnicent pieces by relatively unknown or anonymous artists. I am thinking of the marble urn by Amos Van Wart, which your sculpture curator, Thayer Tolles, very kindly described for me, as well as the anonymous painting of Five Points. In a wing packed with stars, why did you include some of these works by lesser-known artists? MH: The Van Wart, for example, is a marvelous marble urn depicting 59

Gallery 771: Portraiture in the Grand Manner, 18801900 where John Singer Sargents Madam X is displayed. Terian Family Gallery. All images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Native Americans. One looks back, as if to times past; the other looks ahead, to the future. We recently acquired a small Bierstadt study of three Indian heads. So the urn draws you to the study which then draws you back to the magnicent Bierstadt. AFAM: What kinds of events are planned as you inaugurate the American Wing? MH: We shouldnt overlook the Duncan Phyfe Exhibition in the Irving and Joy Wolf Galleries going on right 60
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now. Duncan Phyfe was New Yorks greatest cabinetmaker. This is a major exhibition. And one other thing about the early galleries in the American Wing: Our greatest 18th-century room, the Great Hall of the Van Rensselaer Home in Albany, with its hand painted wallpaper is a unique, rare survival. There is a wonderful pedimented doorway and a row of scroll-top chests. We treat furniture as sculpture or architecture. Same with the magnicent 18th-century silverthese are works of art.
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AFAM: As the collection grows, are there any specic artists, eras or schools that you will be looking to add? MH: Want lists. Ive stopped making them. What you want and what is available seldom match. When something comes along that tells a story we havent told, we try to go after it. AFAM:Youve opened the American Wing on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Though the parallel is

imperfect, the nation today is once again deeply divided. Is this a good time to reexamine the growth and development of American art, or does our sense of crisis present special challenges? MH: Its a wonderful time to reexamine American art. Art tells us so much about our history. Here at the museum we focus on aesthetic qualities, but our American art collection, which we have been forming since 1870, has high points and depth. Its a thematic, chronological history of America

through art that tells us that tension and division are nothing new. Lets listen to what these artists tell us. To take a specific issue: the environment. Their great landscapes are an American response to European historical painting. They saw what the railroads were doing, the effects of clear-cutting in the Catskills and Hudson Valley. They saw what was happening to Native Americans. To them, the land was our treasure and our history, and thats what they painted.

AFAM: Last questionwhich artwork in the American Wing (apart from the LeutzeI dont want this to be too easy) would make a great inspiration for a movie? MH: So many. The way the works have been installed, I just hope people have a field day with the stories they tell. American Fine Art Magazine is proud to sponsor Morrison H. Heckschers lecture at the Philadelphia Antiques Show (April 27 through May 1, 2012). 61