This past spring, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hired a new director, Max Hollein, their tenth white male director, much to the disappointment of many in the art world, an industry starved for diversity. That is not to say though, that the new director should be expected to uphold the Eurocentric male dominated aura one feels while mulling around the Met. His vision for the institution is one that his colleagues seem eager to see come to fruition, a vision of cultural and technological integration within the museum walls.

            Focusing on cultural integration, Thayer Tolles, Marica F. Vilcek Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, spoke specifically about the ways in which the American wing has transitioned since its inception in 1924. When talking about the early years of the Met, she notes haphazard collecting practices and a lack of strategy in building a collection worthy of the Met’s longstanding elite reputation. By the early 1900’s thanks to a number of large “transformative” bequests, however, this gives way to “purposeful collecting” with a focus on American art. The interpretation and presentation of “American Art” is what Thayer, her fellow curatorial staff, and Hollein have to grapple with in 2018, as the country has – without argument – never looked more different than it did in 1924.

            A few key changes have occurred since the push for a more diversified American art collection. Most recently, the opening of Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection in the American Wing brings together some 116 artworks from over 50 indigenous cultures across North America. This is, unsurprisingly, the first exhibition of indigenous art in the American wing, since according to the Met’s website the collection “originally focused on colonial and federal decorative arts and architecture.” It is interesting that even in the rational behind the institutions skewed collecting history, the decision of referencing their celebration of the colonial era, a period defined by the devastation of the indigenous community, still goes unchecked. Rather than admitting its shortcomings in the press release for a show that will be celebrated, as much as it is criticized, the Met offers no mea culpa – only an assurance that “the Wing’s collecting areas have continued to evolve.” Contrastingly, commenting on the opening of the exhibition, Hollein feels the show, “marks a critical moment in which conventional narratives of history are being expanded to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of cultures that have long been marginalized.“

            This expansion of narrative can also be felt a floor above in the paintings galleries, where “surprising conversations” are happening according to Tolles. These conversations, though also likely between visitors, are happening between newly juxtaposed works of art. For instance, a room of colonial portraiture includes Alexander Hamilton (among other Anglo settlers) while also including a Spanish colonialist and a pair of portraits of indigenous tribes people. This room could easily have been filled with portraits of old white men, but the additions create a more nuanced approach to undertaking colonialism in the Americas and a larger context of understanding.

            Even more interesting, was the post-war and reformation gallery, teeming with what Tolles called “the elegant interweaving of cultural traditions.” Marble busts of Hiawatha and Minnehaha by African American/Indigenous artist, Edmonia Lewis sit perched across from disparate depictions of abolitionist John Brown. Surrounding Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Standing Lincoln are a painting by Homer that “evokes the dislocation and endurance of African American culture that was the legacy of slavery” and a marble relief sculpture of a young black woman by Charles Claverley. According to the wall text, this portrait was revised to include the inscription “The Race John Brown Died For,” a call back to the abolitionist pictured nearby.  A pairing of watermelon paintings – that could easily be overlooked by someone unfamiliar with colonial American visual culture – was one the more skillful curatorial decisions. African American artist Charles Porte, in Cracked Watermelon, chose to reclaim the stereotypes associated with the fruit and his fellow black Americans, while Winslow Homer subtlety hints at racial tensions in his unassuming painting The Watermelon Boys. Both paintings speak to a specific collision of post war racial themes and American painting traditions, yet they carry vastly different perspectives.       

            This is the goal of both Hollein, and Tolles at a curatorial level.  To offer different perspectives and added context to subject matter that is as ubiquitous as the American flag. Slavery and colonialism are getting a makeover at the Met, it is left to be seen which other histories of marginalized Americans the institution is willing to take on.