Philippe's Way

Some thoughts on art by the outgoing - and extraordinarily successful - director of the Met, Philippe de Montebello:

Another reason art museums matter is that, unlike historical facts and events, works of art exist not only in the present, but also in the past, the past that transmitted them to us. Events, on the other hand, can be retraced but they have no presence; we can't experience them. Archives and documents refer to events but are not they. However, the work of art, as Bernard Berenson put it, is the event.

So we can read about a historical event in, say, 15th-century Mantua, but we cannot experience it. On the other hand, we can experience its art and thus in a very real way enter into Renaissance Mantua by looking at a painting by Andrea Mantegna, court painter to the Gonzagas, the rulers of Mantua; the very painting that their eyes actually rested upon.

But in attempting to answer the question "why should we care?" I'd like to suggest a final, more broadly significant lesson. It is mankind's awe-inspiring ability, time and again, to surpass itself. What this means is that no matter how bleak the times we may live in, we cannot wholly despair of the human condition.