♪♪
-This is the largest art museum in the Americas,
five floors high, four city blocks long.
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
is 2.3 million square feet of treasure.
-The museum was largely an audacious vision.
-I just want to be surrounded by art and beauty.
-In 2020, the Met turned 150,
the museum planned an anniversary year
nobody would forget.
-I'm this excited.
-Every year, we're pumping out
something pretty amazing.
-But as the revels began, COVID struck New York.
-There are new warnings about the coronavirus outbreak.
-For the first time ever, the Met closed indefinitely.
-Walking through the museum with 5,000 years
of the greatest works of art, it's a spiritual experience.
-With the future unknown, was its survival in question?
-This is an exhibition install frozen in time.
This is a reminder that we can overcome.
-Then, the killing of George Floyd rocked America.
-People are mad at the institution,
and I did not fully see that coming.
-The Met began to question its record on diversity...
-This has everything to do with a redefinition
of what art museums are.
-...on inclusion...
-You see so many pictures of men winning.
-...on social justice.
-These objects were stolen.
They were never intended to be in a space like the Met.
-The museum has had to retreat.
Now it's trying to come back
and wants to come back with what face?
-When the world unlocks, will there still be a place
for the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
♪♪
[ Siren wailing in distance ]
♪♪
-It's spring 2019, one year before the start
of the museum's 150th anniversary.
The Met opens at 10:00,
but at 8:00, the art press come in for finger food
and reassurances.
In the recent past,
these journalists reported mismanagement
and a drop in visitor numbers.
-If you'll please take your seats, we'll begin.
-Has the Met's new CEO, Dan Weiss, turned it around?
-I'm delighted to welcome all of you here this morning.
It's a pleasure to report to you that we have a balanced budget.
We have to find more than $60 million.
We changed our admissions policy
and that has helped us with our finances,
but has had no negative effect,
none, zero on visitation to the museum.
And now we can turn to the program
and the opportunities ahead.
-Director Max Hollein is a new groom from Austria.
-This year we actually have a full spectrum
of major exhibitions.
One is quite a work, Leonardo Da Vinci Saint Jerome.
-Next up...
-You'll be glad to know I'm not the performance surprise.
-Quincy Houghton came from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles
to plan exhibitions.
-I'm going to give you a quick overview
of the summer and the fall.
We're commemorating the 50th anniversary
of the Apollo moon landing.
-The major show, The Last Knight,
the art, armor, and ambition of Maximilian of Austria.
-The museum's first sound based commissioned
by British artist Oliver Beer.
-The first sculpture commission on the Met's facade,
and the artist who we've selected is Wangechi Mutu.
She's an outstanding artist, born in Nairobi.
Then, in conjunction with our camp exhibition,
we will have a battle of legends,
a voguing competition.
The judges will include Josè Xtravaganza, Anna Wintour.
So it's now my pleasure
to introduce the House of Gorgeous Twisters.
[ Applause ]
-Let them feel the music. Deejay, pump it up.
♪♪
-The Met is old, but also new.
Displays like this show the museum's more than
marble statues and old masters.
-To be able to blend our culture with this historical culture
and bring what we have for the future
to match what they have from the past, it's great.
-We're going to bring life, energy, style,
grace, technique, all of that.
We're gonna give it to you. - Period.
-Gorgeously as well.
-This is a 19th century institution
speaking to 21st century visitors.
-Strike a pose.
-What we are producing here has everything to do
with the redefinition of what art museums are.
It's not necessarily just about object-based exhibitions.
Programing really is about the public,
the art, and the issues that are happening in the world.
And in today's society,
to be a relevant and engaging and important institution,
you have to bring diverse voices to the table,
whether they're on the stage or on the walls or on the staff.
-Thank you so much.
Have a great, gorgeous afternoon.
-So today, you saw a voguing performance
in the Met, but it's in the American wing.
And the first thing I did when they were finished performing,
I turned to the head of the American art department
and said, "This is America."
♪♪
-The Met is in its pomp,
the books balanced, and the future bright.
The surrounding streets of the Upper East Side
are well-heeled and lush.
As usual, on a Monday morning just before opening,
the Great Hall is a greenhouse.
-My staff comes here at about 5:00, 5:30 in the morning.
We take out all the old flowers,
then we start making new arrangements.
And of course we have to be done before all the tourists come.
-New Yorkers treat the place like home,
but in an average year,
most of the seven million visitors
through these doors are tourists.
-Please have it open, all bags.
-Good morning. Good morning.
-Many are Americans making a personal pilgrimage.
-It's pretty fabulous.
-It's the visitor dollars that keep the Met open.
-So you've stepped into the Greek and Roman department.
We're starting in ancient Greece.
Greek and Roman is laid out chronologically.
-There are around a million objects on show
presented by 17 departments.
-Now I want you to think about sightlines
as we're going on our tour.
Things are grouped and displayed together
so that if I took all the object labels away,
just visually looking down a hallway,
you'd be able to understand the history
of that art and culture.
Follow me in. We're entering ancient Rome.
-It takes a year to train as a guide.
♪♪
-We're entering Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
Down the hallway into ancient America.
Mayan and Aztec are in the far gallery,
getting into Peruvian objects
that are about 1,000, 1,500 years old.
The Met's not trying to be the largest institution
or the biggest holder of objects,
but to tell the most comprehensive story
we possibly can.
-Regular visitors don't need a tour guide.
They know the history by heart.
I think we have to go out... [ speaks indistinctly ]
♪♪
It's the Cycladic sculptures, I like all these small ones.
There's something so incredibly elegant about them.
I mean, I don't know how you can not like these.
-British born Diana Heller has lived
and worked in New York since 1964.
-She's one of my favorite people in the Met.
She, to me, is so calm that I often come
and just say hello to her when I'm leaving,
I come almost as much as once a week or at least two
or three times a month.
The moment I walk in here, I take a huge sigh of relief.
♪♪
This is a relatively recent opening.
It's under the huge, great big stairway.
It's just the layout. [ Speaks indistinctly ]
-The under stairs gallery is home to the exhibition
Arts and People of the Kharga Oasis.
It's curated by Andrea Achi.
This space is my favorite space at the Met because in 2000,
when they were doing renovations to the Byzantine galleries,
they just discovered it.
-Achi is from the medieval department
with a special interest in Byzantine Egypt.
-What I've done in this installation
is to talk about really where these objects
are from and the fact
that objects don't just come from the air into vitrines.
I'm actually a archeologist by training.
And I've excavated right
next to the excavation that the Met did.
So I know this material really intimately.
So, for example, these are gold from Alexandria.
The people who are wearing these were people of color
and they were Egyptians
and they had really specific ideas
of what it meant to live well.
-For the 150th year celebrations,
the curator plans to challenge perceptions
with a show called "The Good Life."
-The one thing I'm trying to do is to swap this notion
of what African art is,
because when we think about African art,
we only think about West Africa.
Visitors don't usually think about Egypt and Ethiopia
and Sudan.
50 years from now, maybe somewhere we'll look
at jewelry like that and say, like, "Oh, that's African art."
-Departments tend their permanent galleries
while spending months
or years developing temporary exhibitions.
But the Costume Institute presents
several new exhibitions every year.
Right now, the main event is Camp
a pump action pink extravaganza.
The main annual show is a much anticipated
New York event.
It's launched on the first Monday in May
by the famous Met Ball.
It's a starry, starry night
where celebrities and the designers
who dress them make a splash and donate heavily.
The 2019 ball raised $15 million.
The money funds the work of the costume institute,
the hive of expensive activity.
-That's actually a surgical microscope.
I don't know how anyone would do surgery on this
because it's very... it's very finicky about staying in focus.
We're doing microscopic analysis to determine the difference
between these two fabrics, gazar and zagar.
-What everybody thinks is gazar might not be gazar.
And what people think is the zagar might not be zagar.
-The difference is basically the density of the weave.
-Conservators tend a collection of over 30,000 items.
Atmospherics are controlled.
Even the bravest moth stays away.
Artificial materials face a special peril.
-We have 18th century gowns worn to, like, a French court
that are in much better condition
than this dress from the 1960s.
We already have stuff from the 1990s
that is starting to degrade rapidly.
-These fashion police are on constant patrol.
Sarah Scaturro is with the vice squad.
-We're acquiring a lot of new and contemporary garments
that have synthetics that have inherent vice
a quality intrinsic to them that causes
their own self-destruction.
This is by a woman named Diana...[ speaks indistinctly ]
movie dress leather with illuminated photographs.
Well, they should have put like "leather" in quotes
because this is obviously not leather.
This is called pleather. The fabric is polyurethane.
It's flaking, it's falling apart.
There's this white bloom that's come to the surface
and actually you can smell it.
It stinks.
What we're smelling is off gassing chemicals
that can actually harm other objects in our collection.
This is very recent, it's like five years old.
It's a certain kind of polyurethane
that's susceptible to oxygen.
We're going to put it in this big bubble, essentially,
and pump the bubble full of argon gas.
Taking out all the oxygen should slow down
the degradation of that dramatically.
-The exhibition schedule is punishing.
Upstairs, camp still has four months to run.
Downstairs, they are already planning
next year's standout show
where black will be the new pink.
-I mean, every year we're pumping out something
pretty amazing.
We technically have less than a year to plan,
so we'll see, fashionably late, right?
♪♪
-However loud the clamor below, five floors up,
a deep pile hush pervades the corridor of power.
From here, Met CEO Dan Weiss can see spring in Central Park
and winter in Paris.
In college, I had images from the Metropolitan on my wall.
And one of them was this painting by Alfred Sisley.
And now I have the real thing, which is a great privilege.
-The Met began in Paris, where globe-trotting
industrialists dreamed of an American Louvre.
-When the museum was founded 150 years ago,
it really was largely an audacious vision
that a bunch of businessmen in New York City had
to create a cultural center that rivaled
the greatest cultural institutions in the world.
And it was preposterous. They had really no art.
They had ambition. They had vision.
But they had no art. And they had limited funds.
And somehow through this... This extraordinary experiment,
they were able to generate great interest and support.
And in this moment in our history,
what I think about all the time is how do
we find the right balance between respecting
our tradition, exhibiting, collecting,
studying the works of 5,000 years of civilization
and at the same time serving the public
that's changing in ways we all see every day.
-The Met opened in April 1870.
It wasn't just a museum, it was an art museum.
The philanthropist founders believe that being close
to beautiful objects would improve visitors' lives.
-We are caretakers of the art.
People can get very close to it
and see the the layers of painting,
the brilliance of the colors,
whereas in other places you may not be able
to get that close at all.
For instance, like the Mona Lisa,
you're like 10, 15 feet away.
Here we are inches away.
-Locals feel a sense of belonging and ownership.
-This is one of the most beloved areas of the Met.
It's something that New Yorkers in particular
feel very attached to.
Historians argue that that cosmopolitanism,
the tolerance of New York City,
really extends back to its Dutch roots.
It's definitely humbling being responsible for the Rembrandts
and the Vermeers of the Met.
But I have to say, it's nice being the curator for an area
that is such a crowd pleaser.
The Met's is a world leading collection of Dutch masters.
These works have been enjoyed by New Yorkers since 1871,
when the European paintings department began.
-We've collected continuously for nearly 150 years.
People have come and asked me how many different museums
we borrowed these pictures from.
And it is kind of nice to be able to say,
actually, this is all ours.
-The museum started with collections
donated by the founders and their art-loving friends.
The first acquisition was a Roman sarcophagus
given by a Greek diplomat.
The Met's oldest departments
reveal the tastes of America's Gilded Age.
-I've been coming to the Met since before
I was 5 years old.
I grew up on 86th Street.
The museum is a sanctuary.
This is a church. This is a cathedral.
There are people who come religiously
to see a certain object and stand before it.
You go into the galleries and realize
there is more to the world
than just bad news.
-Preserving ancient objects is the work of conservators,
Hermes Knauer did it for 40 years.
This shirt, when it came in in 2008,
was orange with rust.
I spent three and a half months cleaning this.
Each one of these rings has an inscription,
and it's the 99 names of God.
This piece may have belonged to the Shahjahan
who built the Taj Mahal.
All of these pieces have not only a history,
but people who are dedicated to care for them.
But you don't see them. The museum is an iceberg.
You see the tip of an iceberg,
but 7/8 of it is underground.
♪♪
-The public never see this network of labs,
studios, workshops, and archives.
-Our newly acquired pistol sword.
-Ted Hunter and Sean Belair
are part of a team laboring unseen
to keep the arms and armor collection at the cutting edge.
-I'll remove the corrosion and then probably apply
a protective coating to make sure
it doesn't reactivate in the future.
We do like to disassemble our firearms,
so you really have to figure out how they come apart.
-Do you take the hammer off? Would that help?
- Well, the hammer... - Can't see what's behind it?
-Close a nut here, but you can't get past there first.
So we need to remove, you know.
- Hmm. - Yeah.
-Sometimes this design solutions
these craftsmen come up with are real head scratchers.
- Aha! - There you go.
-Some of the 14,000 piece collection
goes out on loan to other museums.
-So this armor is going on loan to Florence.
I will use cleaning techniques
that are what I think of as the modern techniques.
Probably use my microscope for some of it.
We're going to reattach these lames
because when I send this off on loan,
I don't want anything flopping around.
I've got a reputation to uphold, right?
-We might guess that this calling, this environment
attracts a certain kind of personality
and we'd be right.
-Every department is fun for people who are in it.
And I've been here now almost 18 years.
There's so many things that we do done by people who are crazy
passionate about what they're doing and everybody's like
gung ho about everything we do, I love being here.
-The Met is its people around 2,000 staff
all counting down to the 150th year.
Beside the 2020 calendar on Wolf Burchard's desk
are his worry beads
because his new exhibition will open the 150th celebrations.
-So these here are the 18th century galleries
and they're very much the centerpiece
of the British galleries.
-To tell the story of 500 years of British trade
and its effect on interior design,
the existing British galleries are being remodeled.
They include entire rooms
rescued from crumbling stately homes.
-This is a room from the 1750s.
I think this color has come out really beautifully.
When it was done in the 1990s, it was a much brighter yellow,
but it was all done with sponges and made the whole room
look a bit like your local pizzeria.
It's extremely important to get these things absolutely right.
-Burchard has a $20 million budget
and most of his 700 exhibits.
What he needs now is time.
-This was originally a dining room
from a house in London, a very, very talented artist
is going to recreate what would have been that view
in 18th century London.
Whereas the other room is going to be the view
that you would have had of the country landscape.
We have about eight months left. We're opening in February 2020.
And given that this will mark
the 150th anniversary of the Met,
we really have to stick to that deadline.
When you look at this space right now, you think,
well, how is it going to open in eight months?
But it's all going to go according to plan.
I have no doubt.
-The Met serves a city defined by the word "new."
150 years after its creation,
the challenge is to persuade digital age visitors
to stand still and concentrate on old things.
That magic is worked by the design department.
Patrick Herron is the lead designer on this project.
-Shall we move her up ever so slightly,
but does she then have to move further to the left?
-I think what we want to avoid is having too many big gaps.
-His team have mocked up
what will be a display case of 18th century
consumer durables that made luxury accessible to almost all.
-What if we've moved her further to the back?
-These Georgian chocolate pots, candlesticks, and snuff boxes
were never meant to be seen together.
Herron must arrange them to tell a group story.
-We did move the lids around a little bit.
-I saw that. But it's fine.
-Get the arrangement wrong
and it could look like a grandma's mantelpiece.
-There's a lot of back and forth between how the objects
get displayed, how they're lit.
-We're wondering about that one.
-It's a bit too close to this.
So it needs to just slot down and over.
It's quite finicky.
I don't think I knew what I signed up for, but here I am.
-Yeah, it's going to be fantastic.
[ Ship horn blows ]
♪♪
-With so much preparation and progress, fall flies by.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are a blur.
As 2020 begins,
the flagship exhibition of the Met's birthday celebrations
is nearing completion.
-I'm this excited.
-Andrea Bayer is in charge of all curatorial staff.
But making the Met the story of the museum's evolution,
told in 250 objects is her personal project.
-10 grand rooms,
10 episodes through the history of the museum
is going to be a thrilling, immersive experience.
I'm incredibly proud of what we have achieved here.
One of our greatest Egyptian sculptures, Pharaoh Hatshepsut,
she's going to sit right there.
And then out the window we see the great obelisk.
After her death, her sculptures were defiled by her coruler
who took over from her, and that is his obelisk.
So history over a long period
of time coming together.
We will have things here ranging from a Nepalese facemask
through Richard Avedon's portrait of Marilyn Monroe.
So that gives you a sense of how truly global
and encyclopedic the museum is.
And each of the collecting departments
has gone to their donors, their supporters,
and asked whether they want to give gifts
in honor of the museum's anniversary.
And let me tell you, ha ha,
a number of exceptional things have come in
and some of them have made their way into this exhibition.
-It's not just about objects.
This exhibition also underlines an ongoing mission.
-When we began in 1870,
it was about bringing great objects
to a New York public to inspire and to educate.
It's important to remember that the Met has lived through,
for example, several periods
in which there was a great debate about immigration
and who is an American.
And many of the steps taken by the Met
were to help new immigrants understand
how do you make yourself an American?
How do you make yourself a citizen of the world?
It's always been a part of the museum's mission.
-Today, the Met wouldn't presume to define what or who
an American is.
In old age, the museum is eager to show
how young it is and awake to woke ideas.
-We have the responsibility to share ideally
the greatest artworks of the last 5,000 years,
but it's also important the museum is
not only like reliving previous times,
but it really also needs to live in our current time.
-Max Hollein realized that the Met looked exclusive,
not inclusive.
Wangechi Mutu became the first artist ever
to exhibit work in niches on the exterior.
-The facade of the metropolitan has been empty
since the museum was built.
Asking a contemporary artist to place something in there
that is about the issues of today is a statement
and saying, listen, we're willing to talk about
what we're going through as a culture and as a people,
and we're willing to put you in that position
as the bearer of these ideas
in the front of this institution.
-The African-inspired figures
are called The New Ones Will Free Us,
and that's what Max wanted them to do.
-Artists are, of course, great seismographs for
things that happen in society.
They are also the address agencies urgencies.
They help us look at the world
in a way that we need to look at it.
Wangechi Mutu is, with her art,
a very important proponent
for our bringing in a new practice,
looking at art not only from a Western perspective.
-I think of these women as characters that have
the capacity, the freedom, and the opportunity to be
where they need to be, to say what they have to say.
They're here and they're present and they've arrived.
♪♪
[ Siren wailing in distance ]
♪♪
-Days before opening, Wolf Burchard's exhibition
of 500 years of British art and commerce nears completion,
but many objects still require care.
This 17th century staircase features balustrades
carved in three dimensions from a single elm tree.
Much of it's been reconstructed.
-I've worked on this staircase since 2014.
To bring it back to life,
to make it speak again is kind of our goal
and it's a step by step process.
It's a staircase, but reaching the top now,
I am very pleased.
-In the next room, conservator Carolyn Riccardelli
is protecting a Tudor fireplace from dust.
-There's a gap between the mantel,
the stone, and the paneling.
So we want to prevent dust from getting built up behind it.
That's where pests make their way.
-A skilled conservator leaves no trace of their existence.
It's not a job for egotists.
-We try to make our interventions invisible.
-A certain personality type goes into this.
Well, certainly meticulous.
I guess you're always aiming for perfection,
but there's a certain point where you realize
that you've gotten as far
as you're going to get and you need to stop.
There is a history in the museum of not
wanting to show conservation and not wanting to talk at all
about how the objects are cared for.
And that has really changed. - That's changed.
I think before it was a concern that it would take away
from the sense of wonder
and appreciation of the work of art itself.
And now we see it as a complement to the art.
♪♪
-On February 24th, Upper Fifth Avenue smells like team spirit
as New York's arty glitterati come to a private opening.
-Good evening and welcome to the Met's renovated
and reimagined galleries
for British decorative arts and design.
-What you will see are a dazzling array
of objects and spaces,
but also with an updated curatorial narrative.
-Many will be seeing items they have donated.
-It's quite surreal to actually see real people here.
You really want to pinch yourself.
Our new director Max Hollein, he was very keen on
what he calls alternative additional narrative.
So we are addressing the contrast of the beauty
and sometimes the humor of the objects
and the cruel aspects of the empire,
such as the slave trade.
So what would be important here is those slaves have a voice.
And so we have quoted firsthand accounts of the slaves.
So we tell a more comprehensive story,
but also address subjects that are more difficult.
So far, the reaction has been rather positive.
-This case required so many hours of work,
to see it all in place is so rewarding.
♪♪
-This was once the dining room in Kirtlington Park,
a British stately home cut out and sold to the Met in 1931.
Its Georgian glory restored,
the current residents of the actual house
have crossed the Atlantic to experience it.
-It was a real double take.
It's like walking into your home,
but it's it's obviously clearly not.
We're in the Met.
They've got the paintings, the lights,
the beautiful view out the window.
It's actually pretty accurate.
You look down and you see the lake.
And you can see, I think, at home it's a 25-mile view.
You can see a really long way.
-It's a strange kind of like déjà vu, isn't it?
You sort of, you know,
you're standing where I was putting the Christmas tree up.
The Met put back a copy of the room, but not all of it.
So we're missing the main ceiling.
Everything else is the same.
It's quite odd, yes, it is quite odd.
It does feel quite strange being back, being in here.
♪♪
-On March the 2nd,
the new British galleries opened to the public,
kicking off the anniversary year.
One day earlier,
the first case of coronavirus had been reported in New York.
It was a small story.
And as eight million citizens went about their business,
the virus spread.
-There are new warnings about the coronavirus outbreak
as it rapidly takes hold.
-New York battled on. Shutting down was unthinkable.
-I had been in discussions with city government
each day and each day,
they were encouraging us to do what we can to stay open
to protect the economy
and ensure the well-being of our public and our staff.
-Crowds thronged the galleries, a perfect viral storm.
The Met's board took the hard decision.
-The only appropriate thing to do is to close
the institution immediately.
We call the mayor's office to tell them
that we were going to be announcing at 12:30
that we will close at the end of the day.
City Hall did not argue with us.
They also had not yet made a decision themselves
as to what they would recommend.
-Today is March 12th.
The anniversary is on April 13th.
All the things we're going to do for the 150th,
but there is a lot of worry in the air.
-The fact of the matter is,
you don't know where it's going to strike next.
-Other cultural institutions
increasingly thought
it was appropriate to close,
but no one had actually made the gesture to do so.
Once we made that decision, others followed suit.
Within 24 hours,
the entire cultural infrastructure of New York City
and all of Broadway
and everywhere else was closed.
[ Siren wailing ]
-A state of emergency was declared
in New York in the last hour.
-The city that never sleeps,
dozed, not knowing when it would wake.
-Right before we had to leave the building,
it felt like we were in an enormous moment
in the institution's history and in our own histories.
-The museum hadn't closed its doors for more than three days
for more than a century.
The 150th looked like being a memorable year,
but not in a good way.
-We determined that over the next 12 months
we're likely to see somewhere between 100
and $150 million of loss.
-You have artworks that are in the midst of treatment.
-Panel discussions and lectures and talks.
Everything has either been canceled or postponed.
-Our anniversary projects like Making the Met
that we're so close to the finish line.
We basically pushed those exhibitions to the fall.
-Although I was thinking about the exhibition,
to be honest with you,
I was really thinking about New York City
and we're 2,200 people who work at the museum.
♪♪
-There was a small security presence,
but the iceberg of the Met had frozen at 4:00 p.m.
March 12th, the staff had gone to ground.
-I'm in Charleston, South Carolina.
-I'm at my home in Montclair, New Jersey.
-I've made several wedding cakes,
but nothing to the scale
of what I was planning on making for the 150th.
-Data executive and avid baker, Margaret Choo,
was to have made the official anniversary cake.
She did it anyway,
despite knowing she might have to eat it all herself.
-And it's so good.
If you've come out of this and you've lost weight,
you're just doing it wrong.
-Now, the Met's digital presence
was the museum.
Met websites would be viewed
34 million times.
-The fourth branch of the museum is our digital branch.
That team has been working to
find ways to bring
the light in a beauty
of an art museum
to people when 700 New York City residents are dying every day.
-There was a nationwide shortage of protective equipment.
New York hospitals were under pressure as never before.
The Met's five conservation departments
had large reserves of gloves for handling precious objects.
Over 23,000 gloves
and 300 masks distributed
where it was most needed to medical facilities.
-The Textile Conservation Department
became a mask making factory.
-How many masks? 1,300.
If I speed things up, I could make one per 20 minutes.
[ Laughs ]
-This is Valentino, radio check.
-The Fifth Avenue building is itself an antique.
Around the clock security staff,
keep it safe from antique collectors.
-You have to be concerned with external entities,
try to compromise our perimeters and take advantage
of what they might perceive as a scaled down presence.
-By May, conservators are making weekly visits
to check on vulnerable objects in their new twilit world.
-All right.
-Carolyn Riccardelli keeps everyone safe.
-Textile conservation made these masks for us.
So I want to read the letter.
I think it's important that you hear this.
As wonderful colleagues,
these masks were sewn...
[ Voice breaking ] It is not that emotional.
I'm just... sorry.
These masks were sewn with grateful hearts in appreciation
for your care and dedication to the museum,
we thank and salute each of you.
Ready? All right.
How are you doing, Rachel?
I'm okay. [ Laughs ]
Hanging in there.
If these rounds are really simple,
that that means we're doing everything right.
So for textiles, I'm looking for insects,
slipped hinges.
Some things we've covered up with brown paper
to protect them from light exposure.
Next is Sahel.
Yeah, lights off completely in here.
Everything looks good. Next is Making the Met.
-Hooray!
-[ Laughs ]
The show is in the process of being installed.
Yeah, look at this, all these notes,
this is an exhibition install frozen in time.
I'm looking for any critters flying out like moths.
Japanese armor, we're used to things being covered up,
but it's still exciting to see what's inside.
I mean, who wouldn't be excited by that?
It's nice to come here and look at stuff.
And here's our saint.
So she's credited for ending the plague in Palermo.
Andrea, is it St. Rosal-ia? - Santa Rosalie.
So this is by van Dyck,
the Flemish artist working in Palermo, Italy.
And it has taken on additional relevance for all of us.
-Come on, we're ready. We're ready for you.
-This is an exhibition about the museum's history.
One of the things that has really changed for us
is the knowledge that we are living
in one of the big moments for the museum.
-Alone in the empty halls,
Carolyn Riccardelli goes in search of a very old friend.
-Each time I'm in the museum,
I go to see Tullio Lombardo's Adam,
which is a sculpture that I worked on
for more than 10 years.
He's a marble sculpture from the Renaissance,
maybe 1495.
The pedestal beneath it collapsed
and he fell to the floor
and broke into 28 large fragments
and hundreds of small fragments.
It was a terrible accident.
It affected everybody in the museum
and it was through the efforts of a huge group of people
that brought it back to the public view.
For me, this is a reminder that we can overcome.
♪♪
-Spring becomes summer.
In solitude, the executive staff
experienced their workplace in a new way.
-Walking through the museum with 5,000 years
of the greatest works of art ever produced,
it's a spiritual experience to be alone
with all of that collective humanity.
You learn a lot about yourself and about the world around you.
-Director Max Hollein asks questions about the future
whenever it might start.
-It's a time of reflecting what is really important for us.
How can we best reach our audiences?
How are we going to be an even better institution?
-Closed by the virus,
the Crossroads project is Max's own vision.
It celebrates creative commonalities
between disparate cultures.
With projects like this one, when you've just opened it,
and you could only share it with your audiences
for a couple of days,
it's feels right now as if these installations are in waiting.
♪♪
-In July, news from Governor Cuomo
has the museum astir.
-We're going ahead with phase three opening
low-risk indoor arts,
entertainment, museums.
-Now came the race
to be ready for reopening.
The completion of Making the Met was first on the agenda.
-Okay, here. I'm ready.
-This is an exhibition
about the development of the museum itself.
All departments are contributing.
Today, a Met treasure is traveling from
the first to the second floor.
Curator Diana Craig Patch
is responsible for Egypt's great queen.
-Hatshepsut is in the show Making the Met
because she is one of our best known pieces.
The Egyptian government shared the statue with us,
which is something that we always want to acknowledge.
And she is exquisite.
She looks out across time. She doesn't look at anyone.
She just looks out across time.
It goes right here. - Okay.
-Hatshepsut will be placed in the window,
her back turned on the park
and the obelisk of the upstart ruler who succeeded her.
- Look at her. - The obelisk.
-Sensational.
Isn't that sensational?
♪♪
-Acquired in 1929,
the statue is carved from limestone, fragile,
and at around 3,000 pounds, hard to move.
-I don't think there's much variability in that.
It doesn't look like there's a whole lot of place to move it.
-Crayton Sohan leads the in-house art movement team.
-Everybody's got her, right?
Well, I just want to make sure
somebody is keeping her from swinging.
[ Whirring ]
- Right here. - Crayton?
We have to make sure she's actually looking straight
regardless of the base.
They can't center the base, they have to center her face.
Egyptian statues are never balanced.
- Right. - So if you balance for the base
than the face can be looking somewhere else.
-Memories of Carolyn Riccardelli's
Adam statue which spontaneously collapsed
in 2002, are easily stirred.
It took 10 years and many hands to rebuild him.
-The thing is, Diana, that it's very close here
and it has a little bit more room in the back so.
- We can back up a little bit. - A tiny bit.
-One slip now and this queen could be rubble.
-No, no, no, no, no.
I'm just looking at her face.
It just needs to go about a half inch that way.
- Okay. - All right.
-Ready?
- Oops. She's moved. - Okay, okay, okay, okay.
When they went to move it over that little bit,
it slid and the whole back end went out.
-Yeah, she's not straight.
-The back end is no longer...
Can we do with the back end, too? Okay, fine.
-Can you run down and get me two more wood clamps?
♪♪
[ Object clatters ]
-I can't. I can't...
[ Indistinct conversations ]
- Diana? - Yep.
Are we ready?
I'm looking.
Yeah, she's getting better, a little bit more.
There she goes. She's fine. - Is it good?
-Yeah, you could stop. Thank you very much.
It's funny, she's not that big, but she's not easy.
Nothing on Egyptian statuary straight.
-They managed to get a pyramid perfect, Diana.
-Yeah.
-In August, New York is beginning to open up.
Shops will admit mask-wearing customers and restaurants
can serve diners in the open air,
in bus lanes, and on pavements.
Inside the Met,
the final preparations for opening are underway.
-People want to be here and without people here,
without that energy, the museum becomes
something more like a mausoleum than a living institution.
-After months walking the empty halls,
Max and Dan are very slightly buoyant.
-There's lots going on for the first time in six months.
We now have plants and flowers.
-This was kind of pulled back from the pole,
but it looks like minimal art, right?
I actually photographed it
and all the hand sanitizer machines
looked like a new sound installation.
And it was obvious. We've got a lot of hand sanitizers here.
-Staff and visitors must be safe and feel secure.
A task force is overseeing the critical moment of reentry.
-Yes, I'm sorry. I was... I should have it on.
-Laurel Britton is head of revenue and operations.
Now her previous experience in military studies
has come to the fore.
-The greatest challenge has been the size of it,
the scope of this building and our collection,
trying to keep staff safe and trying to get visitors safe
and just making sure
we're doing everything we can to minimize risk.
-Joy is muted.
Massive financial losses have led
to a 20% cut in staff.
-We thought we would declare victory and move on
to the 151st year.
We didn't realize that 150th would be maybe
one of the defining years in the history of the museum.
♪♪
-Finally, the day dawns.
- First in line. - I know.
-Tell me, what is it like to be able to come back here
after so many months? - It's crazy good.
♪♪
-I've been taking my girls to the Met since they were babies.
I couldn't get here early enough.
So they open at 10:00, we got here at 9:00.
-I don't know if I've ever been happier
to be someplace in my life.
To see people here is just going to be wonderful.
-After five months and 15 days, the communications team knows
foot fall will be a barometer of public confidence.
-Normally, on a August day, we could get 30,000 people.
We'll be able to accommodate up
to 14,000 people or 2,000 an hour.
-It'll be a really nice experience for New Yorkers,
I think.
We've been waiting months.
-Good morning, everyone's a member
or has a 10:00 reservation? - Yes.
-All right, thank you.
-The first steps are tentative.
Entry is by ticket and time slot.
Routes through galleries are laid out.
Everything has been deep cleaned.
You could eat your breakfast off the Met.
-We anticipate a pretty nice turn out.
Before they come through the doors,
there's a vetting process as it relates to,
you know, the COVID-19 protocol.
-Once Deputy Director of the Secret Service,
Security Chief Keith Prewitt balances biohazards
with public relations.
-You see the the Plexiglas that's been installed,
things like that on the surface can appear unwelcoming.
But I think in today's environment,
it's very reassuring.
And they're going to go through and become reacquainted
with this place that they love.
-It's been months since the head of communications
had good news to communicate.
-Dan and Max have been navigating the pandemic
and the financial challenges the museum face.
So there are a lot of tough choices
and they stay positive.
It's all about the business.
-I'm running to, what, the contemporary collection.
Modern art.
I just want to be surrounded by art and beauty.
♪♪
-The Met was the first great New York institution
to close, the reopening is about more than just art.
-Any idea of, you know, in terms of what it means
for New York City?
-Oh, yeah. It means that there is some semblance of normalcy.
The Met only closed for, what, max three days prior to COVID?
So this is... This is a big first step.
♪♪
-Almost all of the time slots
are now fully reserved through the day.
We have been through a lot of challenging moments
in the last six months
and what we've been working towards is this moment.
-With the tourist trade suspended,
the museum is back where it was 150 years ago,
catering to New Yorkers.
-Oh, I'm ecstatic. Are you kidding?
Like, I'm ready to do a handstand.
I'm so happy the Met is back.
-I grew up in New York.
So I've been coming since I was in second grade.
-To come back to the place we love,
to come back and to visit the artists
that with love,
part of it is our heritage as well.
-It's not just a place, you know,
it has more significance than just a building.
-People that have gotten here like throughout the day,
like they walk through the door
and they throw their hands up and they'll scream.
They're like, yes.
-There was a woman that just went, "Whoo!"
You know, like this when she came in.
-Yes. Young people connecting
with the romantic paintings.
The children, they love, the Temple of Dendur
and anything in the Egyptian wing.
♪♪
And then we have the modern art type folks.
They're more hipster type of people.
-Cynthia King had not left home since mid-March.
Five months later, this is her first outing.
-I'm a New Yorker. We grew up in the projects.
So here at the Metropolitan, we were able to see
what was going on in other cultures
and we were able to wonder about it.
For a child who's still a child who has grown up, it's life.
-Upstairs, visitors see Making the Met
for the first time.
-Walking through the doors
it's like going into a sacred space.
There is such beauty, so many treasures here.
Your mind, your imagination is sparked
by coming to something as
culturally, visually, artistically rich
as a collection like this.
-It was such an emptiness when it wasn't here.
Looking at beautiful things, I mean, you can't ask...
Looking at beautiful things just... I need it.
-It's nice to come back and see stuff that is new.
It feels like momentum the museum and the city
caring for and that it's this touchstone,
and this thing that's been here longer than any of us
has been alive.
And it's so solid and this building on Fifth Avenue,
feels like it's going to be here forever.
And so it's a... It's a symbol of New York
resilience for New Yorkers.
I think that's why they're coming.
-Everyone is wearing
their masks.
People are maintaining
social distance.
They're... they're helping us to keep this open
and to keep all of New York going.
-I've been a member for almost 40 years.
This is like a childhood home to me.
So this is a very important moment.
-I'm Greco Roman. My background is.
And so when I come in here, I got to see, like,
what my ancestors looked like.
I see my cheekbones. I see my lips. I see my nose.
It's like...
I see my past in here.
These are my stories. This is, like, my heritage.
-On the 27th of August, New York's death toll stands at
just over 32,000.
Visitors have come on trust,
assessing the peril, taking a risk for art.
-There weren't very many people that saw the sculpture
lying on the ground in pieces.
But I knew that there were people who thought
that it would be impossible to put it back together.
I think that the consensus among the conservators
was that we could do it.
We just didn't know exactly how yet or how long it would take.
When you've gone through seemingly impossible projects
all along the way, there are milestones and I feel like
we've passed an important milestone reopening.
People are very eager to come back to the museum,
but they're faced with the reality
that it's not like it was before.
You know, your first time you come back to that realization
really hits you hard.
People find solace in things that are ancient,
finding connections to people
that have possibly been through the same things.
And I think that's why people come to museums.
They want to feel the connection to the past
when you don't know what's coming in the future.
-Amid increased calls for social justice...
-You have to bring diverse voices to the table.
-...the Met looks inward.
-It's a time of reflecting
what is really important for us.
-These objects were stolen.
They were never intended to be in a space like the Met.
-The history taught to my children
have been that of slavery.
And there's more before that. There is more.
-The museum has had to retreat
and now it wants to come back with what face?
-All Things to All People?
Next time on "Inside the Met."
♪♪
-To order "Inside the Met" on DVD,
visit ShopPBS or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
This program is also available on Amazon Prime Video.
♪♪