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Gary Tinterow: Hi, I’m Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Met. I’m here with the artist Pablo Bronstein to discuss his new work, featured in the exhibition Pablo Bronstein at the Met, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Pablo, it seems that you’ve created in your drawings, etchings, and computer drawings a mythical history of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. And I wondered why it was important for you that the events you depict—the construction of the façade, the transport of The Temple of Dendur—why are these demonstrably false histories? Pablo Bronstein: They’re false because the Museum is relatively new, and so we know that the history did not happen this particular way. They’re not false in the sense that they are outright lies, because there is a sense of emotional truth to them. So, for example, when you’re looking at The Temple of Dendur, the impression that the Museum wants you to have is one of awe. And so the idea would be that, as it is so impressive, this temple was also brought into the Museum in an impressive way. I think the Museum—all museums—that show art at world-class level talk about their heritage in an emotional sense, as if it were a kind of Napoleonic exercise. Gary Tinterow: Okay, but, you know, an important difference, let’s say, with an American museum as opposed to, |
