00:01We love you too!
00:02Oh my gosh!
00:04Beyonce!
00:06Sam, is this Erte?
00:08Is it Erte?
00:16Before the couture and the chaos...
00:18It is always a very exciting moment.
00:21It's a big celebration for creativity,
00:24for the arts, for fashion, for New York City,
00:26and certainly also for the museum.
00:27Met director Max Hollein met us on a Wednesday
00:30in a closed museum to show us what they've been working on.
00:34What is the lead time to developing an exhibit like this?
00:37Is it year by year, or are you looking many years ahead?
00:39So, it took us eight years to get this show together.
00:42It wasn't that we were thinking about eight years,
00:44how do we do it, but really to get all these important loans
00:47to one place, that's really the challenge.
00:49So, the preparation for these shows usually take more than,
00:53I don't know, two years.
00:55And importantly about this exhibition,
00:57it's only Met's collection.
01:00So, you don't have any loans, this is all your in-house?
01:02No, it's all from the Met's collection.
01:04The Met actually is one of the biggest and most profound collections of fashion.
01:09So, we have 37,000 garments here.
01:12Fashion is not only one of the really complex ways of expressing human creativity,
01:18it's also something that basically is so attuned to the current time,
01:23but it is also something very difficult to collect.
01:26It's very perishable, right?
01:28It's perishable, it takes up a lot of space.
01:31The Met Gala provides the funds that are necessary to run a department,
01:36to run a collection, really,
01:38or the ample service of preservation of fashion history for our communities.
01:42Can we go take a look?
01:43Please, come.
01:44Like everywhere in Manhattan, real estate is at a premium.
01:47The museum can't expand anymore into Central Park.
01:50So, it has to find creative ways to carve out new gallery space within the pre-existing footprint.
01:56This was the retail store.
01:58This is the gift shop?
02:00Yeah, this was the gift shop.
02:01So, now enters to the gift shop, but we actually changed the gift shop into grand exhibition galleries.
02:08You are the first ones to see the new galleries of the Met.
02:12These are all objects from the Met's collection.
02:14It's a show that's like a manifesto.
02:16It's called costume art.
02:17And what it tells you is the story of the importance of the dress body,
02:22of fashion, in art, in art history.
02:25So, on the one hand, you see fantastic costumes.
02:28But on the other hand, you also see how all the other artworks in our museum.
02:33And how, on the other hand, also other art influences fashion and vice versa.
02:38But fashion can also be kind of political, right?
02:40Of course, it's always also a statement of expression, of power.
02:43Fashion is so fascinating because it's probably the art form that responds so immediately to our current time.
02:49I imagine it's unique in that you have curators from different expertises working together in a way that they probably
02:54wouldn't otherwise that you would have.
02:56We have 140 curators working here.
02:59Everyone is very specialized in their area.
03:02And so, we need to create more opportunities for them and for our different areas to be in dialogue, in
03:08conversation.
03:10We want to have one inspire the other.
03:12David, this is menswear.
03:13You could wear that on set.
03:15Well, you should take inspiration of this.
03:17Not only what you want to look at, but yes, what you need to wear, right?
03:22I'm going to push him sartorially, and I'm going to tell him it's art, so he has to do it.
03:25Indeed, indeed.
03:26But the Costume Institute is only a small piece of the bigger picture.
03:30After struggling to survive COVID and the resulting hit to both patrons and patronage,
03:34last year, the Met had its highest attendance since 2019.
03:39We have 6.3 million visitors a year.
03:43Wow.
03:43We are currently undergoing a total kind of overhaul of about a quarter of our entire gallery system.
03:49You're the director.
03:50You're the CEO as well.
03:51And I'm curious, when it comes to benefactors, is there more reluctance now because of the broader cultural undertones that
03:58we have?
03:59Just the economy.
04:00Yeah.
04:01Are people less willing to give or to engage?
04:03So, we've seen quite the opposite.
04:05I think you see this museum being enormously supported, of course, by philanthropy.
04:10So, I think that there are various ways that this museum serves its audiences, its communities, and, I think, broader
04:17purposes that we all care about,
04:19no matter where you are on the political spectrum.
04:21That means investing $1.5 billion over the next decade, building out new galleries and exhibits to be more inclusive
04:28across genres, geography, and time.
04:30It is very important to not have only Greek and Roman and European front and center, but really apply the
04:39same care, apply the same grandeur, the same rigor to all the other areas.
04:46Placing a bust from northern Pakistan next to an old European master, and displaying a Congolese power figure not as
04:53an ethnographic artifact, but as a significant work unto itself.
04:56I think it's also important to see that we sometimes walk through these galleries and think that this is like
05:02archaeology.
05:03But a lot of this is contemporary art.
05:05Can you just speak to what you have in store with the museum here over the next decade or so?
05:10So, we reopened the European paintings galleries.
05:13We reopened the Rockefeller Wing just last year.
05:17We will open the new Costume Institute galleries in a couple of days.
05:22Next year, we will reopen our ancient West Asia galleries, and then also our new Wing for Modern and Contemporary
05:29Art.
05:29That alone is a massive project, construction of about $600 million.
05:35Is the new footprint of the museum, are you trying to get people to have those conversations in real time
05:39as they move through the museum?
05:40That's exactly right. So, the whole museum becomes, in that way, more fluid.
05:44We really show how, in that sense, African art is so connected to European art in that context, etc.
05:50Who are those who are coming to the Met Museum in the year 2026?
05:54Our average age currently is 35.
05:57We have people from the very young age to the end of their life, but it basically shows you the
06:02diversity of our audience.
06:04And our local visitorship is enormously strong.
06:06And then, of course, domestic and international tourism.
06:11Last Monday's gala raised $42 million to help fund not just the Costume Institute, but museum programming and activities for
06:19all its visitors, no matter what they wear.
06:22Why was now a good time for a statement about the importance of fashion?
06:26I think that fashion has been part of the Met's history and the Met's institution for such a long time.
06:32It responds very quickly to what's going on in the world, how contemporary culture feels these days.
06:39So, it's actually sometimes faster and more immediate than painting, sculpture, drawing, and I love that.
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