Reading the Art World: Daniel Weiss, President and CEO of Metropolitan Museum of Art
In the 18th episode of our podcast, Reading the Art World, we are speaking with President and Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Daniel Weiss about Why the Museum Matters, published by Yale University Press, as part of an ongoing series “Why X Matters,” in which prominent scholars critics and authors make the case for the importance of a single subject.
Since 2017, Dan has been at the helm of the MET, responsible for the overall leadership of the Museum, including establishing its key strategic, institutional, and capital priorities. There is currently a moment of reckoning for many museums, in which they're asked to respond to questions about diversity and inequality, their funding sources, their collections, exhibitions and programming, and how to meet the changing expectations of their audiences and communities. Dan makes a powerful case for why museums will continue to be essential to any society, why they matter as stewards of culture, places to generate new ideas, to build communities, advance learning and understanding, and create spaces of beauty and permanence.
“ There's something of a paradox… on the one hand, the popularity of museums — public support for them has never been higher — and at the same time, the public critique of museums has never been higher, and it caused me to think about, 'How do we find a way forward? What are the issues that are most central to what we do?'"— Dan Weiss
As a scholar of art history and seasoned leader, Dan provides a unique perspective on the issue of the museum. He received his BA in Art History and Psychology from George Washington University, MBA from Yale University, and PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Western Medieval and Byzantine Art, where he also was Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Through his various leadership roles, he’s seen how the role of the museum has evolved.
“The connection I was hoping to draw is that these people who lived so many thousands of years ago, who seem, in some ways, so alien to us, were not so alien, that in fact, they had the same kind of concerns we do, and that for them, as for us, art helps to provide a sense of their own identity. It helped to define their own culture, it helped to present the ways in which they made art and collected art, helped them to find a connection to the world around them in ways that isn't very different from what we do today, and if we know that and we can hold on to that, then maybe we have a little more humility about our own sense of where we fit into the grand sweep of human history.” — Dan Weiss
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