Books & Arts
图书与艺术
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
大都会艺术博物馆
The Metropolitan’s new director gives his first interview
与大都会博物馆新管理人的初次面谈
“I FEEL like Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz’; picked up by a whirlwind and dropped down in a land where everything is much more brightly coloured,” says Thomas Campbell, who on January 1st became the new director and CEO of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. His description is both apt and unexpected.
“我感觉像《绿野仙踪》里的桃乐茜；被一阵旋风刮起，然后在一个地方掉了下来，那里一切都是色彩斑斓，”托马斯•坎贝尔的描述恰如其分，也令人出乎意外。元月一日他成为了纽约大都会艺术博物馆的新任管理人和行政总裁。
Until five months ago, the British-born 46-year-old, educated at Oxford University and London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, was by his own account, “an open shirt, tweed jacket sort of guy”. He liked to clear his diary to give time to his research and writing. Now he owns several new suits and has a crammed schedule. The studies to which he has devoted the past 20 years have had to become a hobby, like the watercolours he paints. The Campbells have moved from the suburbs to a flat near the Fifth Avenue museum. It comes with what many consider the international museum world’s top job.
坎贝尔出生于英国，现年46岁，他在牛津大学和伦敦考陶尔德学院受过教育，按他自己的说法，五个月前他还是“一个穿开禁衬衫、粗花呢夹克的家伙”，他正要清理工作日志以腾出时间进行研究和写作。现在，他有了几套新西装和一份排得满满的日程表，于是他投入了二十年的研究不得不变成了爱好，就像他喜欢画水彩画一样。坎贝尔一家从郊外搬到了平坦的第五大街博物馆附近。他开始了被很多人看作是国际博物馆界最高级别的工作。
Cinderella also comes to mind when considering the events of the past year. During the search for a successor to Philippe de Montebello, the French-born director who was retiring after 31 years as head of the museum, Mr Campbell, a British tapestry specialist, never featured on the gossips’ shortlist, although all but two of the museum’s directors in the last century have been recruited from within. Mr Campbell joined the Met in 1995, but he has never headed a department and was only one of its ten curators in European sculpture and decorative arts.
想想过去一年发生的事情，这时灰姑娘也不禁浮现在脑海里。前一任管理人是出生于法国的菲利普•德•蒙提贝罗，他在位已三十年，正准备退休。在寻找接班人期间，身为挂毯专家的坎贝尔先生从未出现在传闻的候选人名单上，虽然在上个世纪，博物馆管理人除了两位都是从内部选拔的。坎贝尔先生1995年进入博物馆，但是从未担任过任何一个部门的领导，仅仅是欧洲雕刻与装饰艺术部的十名主任之一。
What the gossips overlooked—but the search committee did not—are the two exceptional exhibitions of Renaissance and Baroque tapestries that he organised in 2002 and 2007. A surprise hit with both public and critics, the shows demonstrated Mr Campbell’s considerable scholarly, diplomatic and administrative skills. In addition, supervising the museum’s Antonio Ratti Textile Centre introduced him to curators from almost every department and increased his knowledge of the museum’s immense holdings, which number more than 2m objects.
传闻忽视了两次杰出的展览会，就是在2002年和2007年举办的文艺复兴和巴洛克挂毯艺术展览会，但是遴选委员会并没有忽略。展览会令公众和批评家感到惊讶的成功，证明了卡贝尔先生相当的学术、外交和管理能力。此外，指导博物馆的安东尼奥•拉提纺织品中心把他介绍给了差不多每一个部门的主任，并且提高他关于博物馆巨大的藏品的知识。博物馆的藏品数量超过两百万件。
Thinking about his new role and all those treasures, Mr Campbell smiles and says, “I feel like a kid in a candy store.” This is probably not a phrase the aristocratic Mr de Montebello would have uttered. Superficially, he and the boyish Mr Campbell could not be more different. Yet superficial is what their differences appear to be.
坎贝尔先生想到他新的角色和这些宝贝，微笑着说，“我感觉就像是一个在糖果店里的孩子。”这可能不是德•蒙提贝罗先生所要用的词，表面上看，他和坎贝尔先生可能没有更多的不同，他们外表看上去的差异是无关紧要的。
Mr de Montebello has been characterised as a connoisseur; a curator’s director. He says that the choice of Mr Campbell as his successor “sends out a clear message that scholarship is more important than marketing”. Mr Campbell is proud that, as he takes over, the Met has exhibitions on Babylonian trade routes, the Italian Renaissance, African textiles and 17th-century Chinese watercolours, all planned by his predecessor.
德•蒙提贝罗先生被人们描述为是一位鉴赏家，主任的指导者。他说，选择坎贝尔先生作为接班人“传递了一个清晰的信息，就是学问是比营销更重要的”。在接管时，让坎贝尔先生感到自豪的是，博物馆有上任馆长计划的关于巴比伦商路、意大利文艺复兴、非洲纺织品和十七世纪中国水彩画的展览会。
Both men prize scholarship, a global outlook and outreach, while keeping a respectful eye on the bottom line. Mr Campbell has inherited a well run, financially sound institution. Emily Rafferty, its president, is a gifted fund-raiser. The museum’s last annual report values the endowment at $2.5 billion. Mr Campbell believes that the great encyclopedic museum he heads can be “a place of inspiration, almost of refuge and hope” in a difficult economic climate, but cuts will have to come. Some will not be unwelcome. In Mr Campbell’s view fewer expensive loan shows will free up financial and creative resources for innovative displays of works from the permanent collection.
管理者们重视学问和工作的全球视野和范围，同时在最低限度上保持一个令人尊敬的视角。坎贝尔先生继承的是一个运行良好、财力雄厚的机构，它的总经理艾米莉•拉弗蒂是一位天才的募捐者，博物馆的去年年度报告估价捐款达二十五亿美元。坎贝尔先生相信，在当前艰难的经济背景下，他领导的这座伟大的百科全书式的博物馆可能是一个给人以鼓舞的地方，几乎是一个皈依和希望之处。但是裁员是必然的，某些人将是不受欢迎的。按照坎贝尔先生的观点，少一些昂贵的贷款可以空出财务和创造性的资源，用于创新永久馆藏作品的展览。
Some changes will not be money-saving. Not only does the new director intend to put the entire museum collection online, but he is also eager to use the internet more inventively to “tell the great stories of the objects we own and give visitors a sense of their artistry.” Mr Campbell buzzes with ideas about how this might be done. “It is a world of opportunities,” he acknowledges but adds quickly, “the challenge is delivering quality content.” For all his boyish appearance and references to “The Wizard of Oz”, Mr Campbell speaks with conviction and determination. There is no doubting his maturity, as well as his enthusiasm and his passion, when he talks about his feeling for art and his sense of responsibility to the institution he leads as well as to its millions of visitors.
有了一些变化，但将不是存钱。这位新馆长不仅打算将全部的博物馆藏品搬上互联网，而且他还期望更有创造性的利用互联网以“讲述我们拥有的这些东西的伟大的故事，并给予访问者们艺术品质的感受。”有了这些想法，坎贝尔先生在忙于怎样实现它。“互联网是一个充满机会的世界，”他承认，然而马上补充，“挑战也传递了高质量的信息。”虽然他有着孩童般的外表并提到了《绿野仙踪》，但坎贝尔先生的讲话是带着确信和决心的。在他谈到对艺术的感受、对他领导的这个机构和数百万的访问者的责任感时，他的成熟、积极性和热情是无可怀疑的。 |
发表于 2023-10-30 17:15:03