Connections/Physics

My name is Aileen Chuk, I'm the registrar at the Metropolitan, and my topic is "Physics."

I'm a failed physicist. I started out wanting to be a scientist, and I realized I was never going to be good at it. And yet

I've gone into the art world, and I use that perspective in almost everything I do.

A registrar is responsible for taking care of all the art in the collection.

Anything comes in or out of this museum: packing, shipping, transport, couriers

site-installations. Whenever you move anything, there's physics involved.

Things are created over various time periods with different technologies.

And yet the same basic rules of physics always apply

mass, size, scale, volume, tipping points. Those haven't changed over the millennia. It's an equalizer.

I see the art but the first thing I think about is, "How did they get it in here?"

The Temple of Dendur is a very large building, intact. I see that as not so challenging, because it was

in one place, we knew exactly how it was built, and we could deconstruct

each numbered block, bring it to the United States and reconstruct it. It's always helpful to have a diagram.

The Cloisters is a classic example of interpretive architecture.

Many of these monasteries were destroyed through religious persecution

and they were in fragments. They didn't come with a map.

Architecture's a way of humans putting themselves into scale.

When we went from mud huts to grandeur, we were going to make a statement. This

set of reliefs is from a capital that was 900 acres, with walls that were 120 feet thick

five miles long, in northern Iraq, one of the first civilizations.

These are humans saying, "We're here."

The Greeks also. The Sardis Column is originally fifty-six feet high. It is represented in our galleries by only a very small portion of it, the bottom and the Ionic capital at the top.

How did they make these with no technology? How did they install these? And that's what I have to do every day. Moving

artwork all around the world, you're not always going to have your fancy equipment. You're going to have to think as the ancients thought.

A ceiling by Tiepolo was part of an exhibition in Venice. So I was bringing

Tiepolos back to Venice. It was one of the most challenging things I've ever done, because they

don't have elevators in Venice. They have cobblestones, and our modern art-moving equipment doesn't work.

But a dowel works, and that you can trace back to the Egyptians. If in doubt, revert to the ancient methods. Science

is all about empiricism. It's what you can see. It has physical form. It's like a

facedown. Take a fifty-six-foot column, put me in front of it, and ask me to move it.

I can combine an interest in science, as an amateur, and

apply it on a daily basis. It's giving me problems

to solve. It's helping me

understand the very nature of things

on a very intimate level.