Rogues’ Gallery:
The Secret History of the Moguls and the
Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum
Rogues’
Gallery by Michael Gross is a history of the New York Metropolitan Museum of
Art (colloquially known as the Met). It is not an official account. Quite the
opposite: an official letter from the museum states that it does not support his
project in any way. In spite of this message he decided to press on.
The result is an inside story of the Met written by an outsider, based on a wide range of written documents and interviews with some of the
persons mentioned in the book - some of whom cannot be mentioned by name,
because they work for the museum. If it was revealed that they had assisted MG
in any way, it might damage their position or career.
After a
brief introduction the main text is divided into six chapters, which follow a
chronological line from 1870, when the museum was founded, until 2009, when the
book went to press.
At the end
of the book there are notes with references, a bibliography, and an index.
What
about illustrations? This book mentions numerous people connected with the Met
and numerous objects of art, but there is not a single picture of them. In
fact, there is only one illustration in this book: a black-and-white picture
which shows the upper part of a giant staircase. This picture is used six times
to mark the first page of the six chapters.
There are two illustrations on the dust jacket of the hardcover version: the façade of the
museum (on the front cover) and a small picture of the author (on the back
flap). The paperback version has a different cover and a slighly different title as well (see below).
Each
chapter gives a name and a time frame, but there is something odd about the way
in which the names and the time frames are chosen:
* Chapter # 1
is named after a director - Luigi Palma di Cesnola - who held this
position 1879-1904, but the time frame of the chapter is 1870-1904.
* Chapter # 2
is named after a president - J. Pierpont Morgan - who held this position
1904-1913, but the time frame of the chapter is 1904-1912.
* Chapter # 3
is named after a person, who was never director and never president of the Met.
This is also true for the persons named in chapters # 4 and # 6.
* Chapter # 5
is also named after a director - Thomas Hoving - who held this position 1967-1977,
but the time frame of the chapter is 1959-1977.
Philippe de
Montebello was director for more than thirty years (1977-2008), but no chapter
is named after him. Other aspects are even more unfortunate:
(1) The
book covers 139 years in six chapters. The average chapter has 77 pages; the
longest is chapter # 5, which has 135 pages; the shortest is chapter # 1, which
has 43 pages. If an author wants to write chapters as long as these, the text should
be divided into several shorter sections by subheadings. This is not done here.
(2) MG did
a lot of research for this project. This is a good thing. But it seems he
decided that every single fact which he discovered must be mentioned in the book. There is a lot of gossip, not relevant for the history of the Met, in chapter 5 (for instance pp. 267-274).
In chapter six there are more than ten pages (pp. 380-392) about a German-Jewish banker, Fritz Mannheimer (1890-1939), who had no personal connection with the Met, although his widow and his daughter - known as Jane and Annette Engelhard - were connected with the museum many years after his death (chapter six is named after them). The result is that important and significant points tend to be lost in a sea of trivial details.
In chapter six there are more than ten pages (pp. 380-392) about a German-Jewish banker, Fritz Mannheimer (1890-1939), who had no personal connection with the Met, although his widow and his daughter - known as Jane and Annette Engelhard - were connected with the museum many years after his death (chapter six is named after them). The result is that important and significant points tend to be lost in a sea of trivial details.
(3) As
mentioned above, the six chapters follow a chronological line. I think it would
have been better to take thematic approach and cover one department after
another. For each department he could ask a series of questions, for instance: when was it
established? Who was responsible? What is the artistic value? Are there any
problems connected with this department?
Working my
way through the trivial details I noticed many interesting facts. For reasons
of space I can only mention a few examples here:
(A) In chapter
# 1 about the first director Palma di Cesnola he quotes a biography by Elizabeth
McFadden, The Glitter and the Gold (1971) and cites another biography by Anna G. Marangou,
Life and Deeds: The Consul Luigi Palma di Cesnola (2000) (page 46).
(B) In
chapter # 3 he mentions “an extraordinary set of colossal bas-relief sculptures
from Nimrud in ancient Assyria [in present-day Iraq], a series with a
provenance so rich and complex it is the subject of an entire book, From Nineveh to New York” (page 152). The book, written by John Malcolm Russell and
published in 1997, is listed in the bibliography (page 526).
(C) In
chapter # 5 he mentions the famous Euphronios krater, which was acquired by the
museum in 1972 (while Thomas Hoving was director). Many years later this case
would come back to haunt the museum: the Italian government demanded that this item
- and several other items - be returned to Italy
(D) In
chapter # 6 he explains how the leaders of the museum changed their minds about
this case in the beginning of the 21st century and decided to accept
the Italian demands. In 2006 director Philippe de Montebello was overheard
lamenting: “I will be known for only one thing: giving things back, giving
things back” (page 449).
It is
obvious to compare Rogues’ Gallery about the Met in New York Los Angeles
The latter
book (written by two reporters from the Los Angeles Times) has a shorter time span,
because the Getty was not opened until 1954, and it covers only the classical
collection of this museum. But the major difference between the two books is
that the reporters from Los Angeles Times know how to captivate an audience. Kurt Eichenwald,
author of Conspiracy of Fools, calls it “An epic story that, from the first
page, grabs you by the lapels and won’t let go.” And he is right.
Michael
Gross is an experienced auhtor. I am surprised to see he made so many unfortunate choices in connection with this project. While he knows a lot about the Met, he does not know how to present this knowledge
in a way that is reader-friendly. For this and other reasons mentioned above I
cannot give his book more than three stars.
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