Donatien Grau. Living Museums

Museen als Orte des Kunstgenusses wie als historisch gewordene Institutionen lassen sich auch mit der Frage betrachten, wer eigentlich die Köpfe dieser Tempel der Kunst sind. Welche Persönlichkeiten haben die Geschicke der großen traditionellen Häuser mit welchen Motiven wie geführt? Was bewegt internationale Kuratoren oder Museumsleute und wie haben sie sich der Aufgabe gestellt, die Häuser einer beständig wachsenden Besucherzahl zu öffnen? Donatien Grau hat mit einflussreichen Museumsmachern eindrucksvolle Gespräche geführt. Ihm verdanken wir persönliche und kunsthistorische, kulturpolitische und zeitbewusste Einblicke in die Praxis des Museums, in die Geschichte der Institutionen und in ganz persönliche Haltungen zur Kunst. Dieser Band liest sich wie ein Kunstkrimi über Vermittlungsarbeit und persönliche Motive dafür. Interviews mit MICHEL LACLOTTE, Direktor des Louvre, Paris, 1987-1995; SIR ALAN BOWNESS, Direktor der Tate, London, 1980-1988; SIR TIMOTHY CLIFFORD, Direktor der National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1984-2006; PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, Direktor des Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977-2009; IRINA ANTONOVA, Direktorin des Pushkin Museum, Moskau, 1961-2013; PETER-KLAUS SCHUSTER, Generaldirektor der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, 1998-2008; SIR MARK JONES, Direktor des Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2001-2011; TOM KRENS, Direktor des Guggenheim Museum, New York, Venedig und Bilbao, 1988-2008; WILFRIED SEIPEL, Generaldirektor des Kunsthistorischen Museum, Wien, 1998-2008; HENRI LOYRETTE, Direktor des Musée d'Orsay, Paris (1994-2001) des Louvre, Paris (2001-2013). DONATIEN GRAU (*1987) arbeitet als Kunstkritiker im Feuilleton, als Kurator im Museum oder als Gelehrter im universitären Kontext. Seine lebendige und kluge Stimme hat ihren festen Platz im Feld der Kunst.

Préface
Stories told in person Museum directors from around the world Museum concepts, up close

Texte du rabat

As places to enjoy art, as well as institutions that have become historic, museums can also be examined through the question of who exactly heads up these temples of art. What kinds of personalities have guided the fates of these large, traditional institutions? How have they done so, and what has motivated them? What galvanizes international curators or museum employees, and how have they risen to the challenge of opening their organizations to increasingly large numbers of visitors? Donatien Grau has conducted impressive conversations with influential museum operators. We have him to thank for these personal, art historical, cultural-political, and timely insights into museum operations, the histories of various institutions, and their leaders' very personal attitudes toward art. This volume reads like a detective story about the mediation efforts of museums and the personal motives behind them.

Interviews with MICHEL LACLOTTE, Director of the Louvre, Paris, 1987-1995; SIR ALAN BOWNESS, Director of the Tate, London, 1980-1988; SIR TIMOTHY CLIFFORD, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1984-2006; PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977-2009; IRINA ANTONOVA, Director of the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, 1961-2013; PETER-KLAUS SCHUSTER, General Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1998-2008; SIR MARK JONES, Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2001-2011; TOM KRENS, Director of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Venice, and Bilbao, 1988-2008; WILFRIED SEIPEL, General Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1998-2008; HENRI LOYRETTE, Director of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (1994-2001), and the Louvre, Paris (2001-2013).

DONATIEN GRAU is a newspaper art critic, a museum curator, and a university teacher. His lively and clever voice has a firm place in the field of art.

Échantillon de lecture
Introduction

Museums have a striking ability to make us believe in the present moment that they have been here, and will be here, forever. When we enter the Louvre, whose architecture has been consistently changing over the last half-century, we have the sensation that the display of objects has always been what it is now. But the museum has expanded beyond its limitations, adding new wings to a growing ensemble. Ieoh Ming Pei's pyramid was built on the esplanade. New departments have been founded-most recently, one devoted the arts of Islam. A new entrance was added in the 1990s, which was restructured at the beginning of Jean-Luc Martinez's tenure in 2013. The Louvre now has a president-director, who oversees all aspects of the museum-it had no such position until Michel Laclotte's appointment in 1987. When the Grand Louvre was conceived, under Laclotte's supervision, it hosted roughly two million visitors and was planned for five million. Ten years later, it hosted more than ten million. In the 1990s, there was only one Louvre, whose borders kept shifting. In 2017, there were three: the Louvre in Paris, the sanaa-designed Louvre-Lens in northern France, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, newly opened in a Jean Nouvel building. The museum of museums, as the Louvre is known, has changed. And so have all museums of comparable scope and relevance.

In the same way as museums can appear eternal-eternal in the present-it is a commonplace to say that leadership does not play any role in the history of museums; museums are places for the community, where individuality does not matter; they are collaborative endeavors of a group of equals: the curators. Art museums are devoted exclusively-following Ruskin's ideal for London's National Gallery-to the contemplation of works created by human genius. But as the number of visitors who go into museums has kept growing at an unprecedented pace over the last three decades, they have become institutions with a constituency. Not only do they reflect the politics of the time-those of the states in which they are located and to which they often belong-but they have, more importantly, become political players in their own right. The directors of institutions have been leading this specific political impetus of the museum as a force in itself; every museum, therefore, is increasingly taken between two forms of positioning: as political force or as device for political forces. They have to confront and address the changes in our cultures, which allow us to look at history outside of the solidified narrative that for so long repressed other narratives. They are forums.

This empowerment of museums is tied to an empowerment of the directors, embodying the institution they lead. They have become, over the last thirty years, public figures, to the point that some of them might be better-known for their high profile than for their action. They are far away from the previous generations of old-school curators-turned-directors and, as such, paved the way for figures that are emerging today. Some have had a vast amount of political, financial, and institutional power and have played, perhaps quietly, a major role in contemporary diplomacy. We have witnessed the shift of figure from the museum director as connoisseur to the museum director as ambassador, cabinet minister, or even as statesman.

From my many conversations with Philippe de Montebello, the longest serving director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who, for thirty years acted as the museum's face and voice, while radically shaping the institution, I understood how important museum directors had been in making those shifts. I understood that something essential had happened in the world of museums-and, in fact, in the world's cultural and political history-and that it had happened silently, without anyone paying much attention to those changes that touched the very core of time-the place