Met Re-Jiggers Vision for Contemporary Art Collection
Posted: January 11, 2012 Filed under: Museum News | Tags: Contemporary art, Sheena Wagstaff, Tate Modern, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas P. Campbell Leave a comment »Ok, Monger doesn’t mean to be totally Met-centric this week but one can’t deny the awesomeness of Sheena Wagstaff’s appointment as the new head of the 20th-21st Century Art Department. Wagstaff is currently the Chief Curator of London’s Tate Modern.
The Met has always seceded contemporary art dominance to the likes of the Tate Modern or MoMA but actions of director Thomas P. Campbell show that he is bucking the trend. Campbell recently finalized a plan to display contemporary art collections in the soon-to-be-vacated Whitney Museum building while the Met’s contemporary galleries undergo renovations and Wagstaff’s appointment indicates an ambition to increase the profile of the museum’s younger works.
The NYT quotes Campbell as saying:
“I’ve been conscious since I became director that a timely recalibration of Modern and contemporary art — not just art of the West, but globally — was something we had to do,” Mr. Campbell said in a telephone interview. “The opportunity to take over the Breuer building is very exciting. It gives us space to show Modern and contemporary art in the context of our encyclopedic collections.”
