Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Any wealthy, social-climbing, self-important, status-seeking individual even sensing that Michael Gross is taking an interest in their doings would be well advised to donate every penny of their riches to charity and flee to South Dakota, pronto. At least, that's my advice after reading Rogues' Gallery, a peek behind the scenes at the shenanigans of the donors, trustees, curators and directors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the nearly 140-year life of that institution. Indeed, given all the dysfunction that Gross chronicles, I'm amazed that the museum manages to open its doors at all, much less function more or less smoothly as a superb collection of the world's greatest art.This is an intriguing book to appear at what may be a major turning point in the Met's history. Some of today's mega-collectors (hedge fund tycoon Steve Cohen, retailer Eli Broad and casino king Steve Wynn)have shown little interest in getting involved with the Met; others have favored their regional museums or contemporary art collections. Meanwhile, its core function -- offering visitors a collection of the 'best of the best' -- is challenged by what former director Philippe de Montebello has referred to dispargingly as ultra-nationalists bent on destroying the universal cultural mission of the great museums. (Translated: countries like Greece and Turkey would like their pilfered art back, please.) It's not surprising that Gross didn't win the cooperation of Met authorities for his work on this book, and almost certainly it's being scoured (as I type) by various attorneys for people who would love to sue Gross for libel. (They probably won't succeed; his most outrageous insights into the characters of folks like Oscar and Annette de la Renta seem to be well-documented.)Gross's specialty is taking readers behind the scenes at high-profile yet secretive Manhattan institutions just like the Met -- the world of modeling or the white-glove co-op apartments like that of 740 Park Avenue, for instance. At first, the museum world strikes the reader as a bit of a departure for him, until you realize that for centuries, the patrons and purchasers of art (if not the artists themselves) have always treated it as a means to an end. For the Medicis, for instance, hiring great Florentine artists up to and including Michelangelo was a way to placate the church (frescoes and altarpieces helped ease the pain of having to deal with usurious bankers) and boost their public image (how wonderful to have a saint who looked just like young Piero...) So when it came time for Gilded Age New York to try and match -- and preferably exceed -- the Europeans at the collecting game, what would be more natural than the fact that they would want to create a showcase institution? And so was born the Met.Gross is at his strongest and (to me, at least) his most interesting when he chronicles the interminable tugs of war between the trustees, donors and curators and the city authorities over the institution's core mission. Was the museum's goal simply to make insiders feel self-important or was it also to create in the public a sense of what great art was and could be? The Met, which has always relied on public funding, has also always wrestled with the degree to which it is willing to bow to a more populist approach, as Gross deftly shows, starting with his survey of the furious debate over whether or not to open the institution's doors on a Sunday -- the only day the hoi polloi had free and on which they could realistically be expected to visit. Gross shows how a similar struggle between serving the public and catering to wealthy donors and trustees has continued to this day, in everything from its admissions policies to the way it displays its works. Frequent (ordinary) Met-goers are likely to finish this feeling somewhat irritated and patronized by the elite who govern the institution.Gross tackles the Met's larger than life personalities with a pen dipped in vitriol and a degree of enthusiasm that has probably caused several coronaries among his targets and set skeletons rattling in closets as enthusiastically as former Met director Thomas Hoving once made the mummies dance. Alas, some of the scandalous details he brings to light pique his curiosity to such a great extent that he gets carried away by them, sometimes at the expense of more thought-provoking material about the museum itself. After a while, the titillating gossip was entertaining, but took up pages that I would have preferred to see filled with equally chatty and gossipy recounting of how these collectors approached their roles as trustees. Sometimes, alas, the personalities overwhelmed the bigger picture, and while Gross's gossip is guaranteed to have le tout Manhattan buzzing, it doesn't always shed enough light on museum governance to justify its inclusion.This is tied to a more significant shortcoming. While Gross gives the reader tantalizing glimpses of the ways in which the museum fills (or fails to deliver on) its core artistic mission, it is the personalities and not the institution that are at the heart of the book. That's not surprising -- people are always livelier subjects than buildings or impersonal entities -- the moments when Gross does address some of these issues, such as the Met's reluctance to display works of living artists, the problematic pedigrees of many antiquities in its collection and the debate over deaccessioning objects (museum-speak for selling), are among the strongest but are also usually cut short. Too often the question of what makes a great collection -- personal or museum -- is pushed to the back burner in favor of more gossip about the people doing the collecting and curating. I'd have loved to know, for instance, whether Diana Vreeland ever outlined a curatorial philosophy for the Costume Institute she helped to create in its current form, and could gladly have done without some of the details of the society matrons banding together to pay her salary, one small example among many.More broadly, readers who aren't familiar with art and the art market, reeling off the lists of objects various trustees and donors handed over to the Met (or, in some cases, that the Met sought and didn't get) becomes wearing; there's little there to explain why certain objects were sought after, how museums approach their curatorial role, etc. It's a bit like wandering into the Met itself without one of Philippe de Montebello's tape-recorded guides to the collection and trying to make sense of the whole thing. When Gross does tackle this, he does so with a wonderful eye for the telling anecdote and the hilarious detail, as in the vivid and hilarious saga of how one wealthy Jewish widow, once snubbed by the museum establishment, later had the same curators literally tripping over each other to woo her as a donor once they realized what a magnificent collection she and her late husband had accumulated over the years.It's that kind of material that makes this book another truly great yarn in his series of books devoted to the doings (and misdeeds) of Manhattan's self-anointed elite. This one just happens to be set against the backdrop of the social climbing that goes on as the city's nouveau riche set their sights on joining one of the Met's acquisition committees or other boards. While I can understand the Met's reluctance to put themselves at Gross's mercy -- imagine what scandals he could have unearthed with unrestricted access?? -- their failure to do so, together with the examples Gross lists of the ways in which the Met still acts as if it were a private club, raises once again the very serious issue of just how accountable they are to the non-elite: those of us who aren't millionaire or billionaire art collectors.This isn't the definitive warts-and-all book on the Met, for the reasons given above. (Which are also the reasons that I've rated it four stars, rather than five stars.) But with summer fast-approaching, it's a wonderful book to tote to Central Park and read sitting on the Great Lawn while gazing at the vast bulk of the Met on the horizon. Alternatively, take it to the beach and read while sipping a daiquiri and marveling, yet again, at the follies of those who believe that great wealth or pedigree confers upon them great wisdom and judgment. If you're looking for a historic view of the link between art and commerce, try the marvelous  Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Enterprise) , an immensely readable history. For insight into the perennial debate over who owns art, try  Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World , a book that is just as lively and a bit more focused on the art and less on the gossip of the art world.  The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition  is a scholarly look at what makes a museum; while excellent, it's a far more ponderous read. Another glimpse of the Met is given by Calvin Tomkins in  Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art , whose credentials as a surveyor of the art scene are far more solid than Gross's but who, as Gross points out, subjected his own book about the Met to review by the museum's honchos -- a journalistic no-no that would/should lead readers to question its objectivity about the institution itself.

Like nearly everyone else, I found Rogue's Gallery fascinating to read. I am an inveterate Met goer, and have been for 50 years. The stories Gross tells are delicious. But I'm not clear on the author's real intentions. On the one hand, he criticizes the Met over and over again for being a private club. (As though anyone but the truly rich could found and maintain a world-class museum.) When the Met takes public money, he complains that the Met remains secretive. But when public money is withdrawn, he criticizes the Met for commercializing itself to raise money on its own. It isn't the fault of the Met that donors are selfish or willful; it's not the fault of the Met that the people who come to help it are rich and self-interested. Many of the people who have worked there have had difficult personal lives or have behaved badly. (But that would be true of every great institution in the world.) A startling number have actually died in service to the museum. But it seems no matter what, the Met administration is always shown in a bad light. And while the gossip is delicious, most of it isn't relevant to what we see in the museum. Some of it (like the story of Jane Englehard's birth and first marriage, which could be a book in itself)) seems to be there just because Gross had done the research and found a good story; it has no bearing on the Met at all. And while the book is very detailed, it is not always clear. As someone who is familiar with the Met's many changes, I would have appreciated a much clearer presentation of the Master Plan that has governed the Met's development for over 30 years. At the end, Gross confronts the chief problem the Met now faces: the truly rich are no longer much interested in the Met any more. And so Gross goes from demonizing the great donors of the past as difficult and selfish (and bad fathers!) to lamenting that they they have disappeared from the earth and will no longer endow the Met with their treasures.This book is deeply flawed, and the author is biased, but I recommend it to anyone who loves (or just visits) the Met.

So interesting

Pretty good : excellent for a long flight.

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