Preface and Acknowledgments

Cuno, James

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Preface and Acknowledgments

James Cuno

Whose Muse?: Art Museums and the Public Trust

OVER THE COURSE of ten months, from October 2001 through June 2002, the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors and the Harvard University Art Museums, of which at the time I was director, organized a series of lectures on the subject of the public’s regard for and trust in art museums. The participants and I...

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James Cuno

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100024

Preface and Acknowledgments

James Cuno

Over the course of ten months, from October 2001 through June 2002, the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors and the Harvard University Art Museums, of which at the time I was director, organized a series of lectures on the subject of the public’s regard for and trust in art museums. The participants and I suspected that we would approach the topic from different points of view, and we did not discuss our papers with one another before hand. But we did read each paper along the way, and a month after Philippe de Montebello’s lecture, we gathered together in his office at the Metropolitan Museum (except for Neil MacGregor, who was unable to join us) to revisit our topic and discuss it among ourselves with the benefit of hindsight. An edited (but not censored) version of this round table discussion closes out this book.1Anne d’Harnoncourt participated in the round table discussion and lectured in our Harvard series although her essay is not included here.

In the round table discussion, James Wood remarked that he sensed an almost “suspicious consensus” and wondered if we might not have had more varied viewpoints if we had asked other people to contribute. No doubt we would have. But I was not looking for representative viewpoints from across the profession; I thought other views and voices had been heard often enough. One knows what the aggressive, risk-taking, expansionist directors think; they have expressed their opinions in print and in speeches many times. Equally one knows what the audience-building, community-activist directors think; they, too, have written and spoken widely on their beliefs. I wanted to offer an alternative to these viewpoints. I did not want to present a debate, nor a sampling of current opinion. I wanted it to be focused on first principles, as it were, on the basis of the contract between art museums and their public. I wanted to know if we could articulate those first principles and if they could be the building blocks for a case for public support for art museums.2Examples of the public airing of differing views on these subjects include discussions with Thomas Krens and Philippe de Montebello in “Hip vs. Stately: The Tao of Two Museums,” New York Times, 20 Feb. 2000; Malcolm Rogers and James Cuno in “Cuno vs. Rogers,” Boston Herald, 15 Dec. 2000; and T. J. Medrek, “Considering Form and Function of Museum of the Future; Museum Directors Pose Tough Questions about Future of Arts,” Boston Herald, 18 Dec. 2000. The trajectory of the fate of the art museum (specifically the Guggenheim) as multinational corporation can be tracked by comparing Alex Prud’homme, “The CEO of Culture, Inc.,” Time, 20 Jan. 1992, with Deborah Solomon, “Is The Go-Go Guggenheim Going Going . . . ,” New York Times Magazine, 30 June 2002.

Since the conclusion of the lecture series, I have moved to London, where I am director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Britain’s oldest and largest center for the study of the history and conservation of art. The Courtauld also has a renowned collection of paintings and drawings. My responsibility for those collections has brought me into conversation with the directors of London’s museums. Not to my surprise, the issues explored in our Harvard lecture series are very much on the minds of British museum directors.

Numerous people helped make possible the lecture series published in this book. At the outset, Agnes Gund challenged us to found the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors, which since 1995 has gathered in small groups art museum directors and Harvard faculty to discuss topics bearing on the leadership of today’s art museums. Yve-Alain Bois, Philip Fisher, Peter Gomes, Ronald Heifetz, Mark Moore, Peter Sacks, Elaine Scarry, Helen Vendler, and others were generous with their time and challenging in their questions, as were the museum directors who participated in the program. It was in our luncheon and dinner discussions that the idea for this lecture series was proposed. We found ourselves returning again and again to the question of the purpose of an art museum and its contract with the public. None of us was comfortable with the image of the art museum in the press as either (or oddly, both) an immensely popular and varied educational and cultural center or an arrogant and greedy hoarder of ill-gotten goods gathered in league with dishonorable people. Nothing of this rang true with the art museum as we knew it. So we organized the lecture series “Art Museums and the Public Trust” to explore the topic further and present its contents in published form.

Richard Benefield, Stephanie Schilling, Sharon Wing, Ann Starnbach, and Evelyn Rosenthal of the Harvard University Art Museums were central to the planning and execution of the lecture series and this publication. We thank them and all others who helped on this project.

1 Anne d’Harnoncourt participated in the round table discussion and lectured in our Harvard series although her essay is not included here. »

2 Examples of the public airing of differing views on these subjects include discussions with Thomas Krens and Philippe de Montebello in “Hip vs. Stately: The Tao of Two Museums,” New York Times, 20 Feb. 2000; Malcolm Rogers and James Cuno in “Cuno vs. Rogers,” Boston Herald, 15 Dec. 2000; and T. J. Medrek, “Considering Form and Function of Museum of the Future; Museum Directors Pose Tough Questions about Future of Arts,” Boston Herald, 18 Dec. 2000. The trajectory of the fate of the art museum (specifically the Guggenheim) as multinational corporation can be tracked by comparing Alex Prud’homme, “The CEO of Culture, Inc.,” Time, 20 Jan. 1992, with Deborah Solomon, “Is The Go-Go Guggenheim Going Going . . . ,” New York Times Magazine, 30 June 2002. »

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