Speaker 1: Pushkin. Starting today, if you don't live in New York State,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to pay a mandatory entrance fee to
Speaker 1: visit the Metropolitan Museum. Eyewitness News ABC seven, New York,
Speaker 1: March first, twenty eighteen. The new policy was announced in January,
Speaker 1: but it took effect today. Adults who do not have
Speaker 1: ID proving that they live right here in New York
Speaker 1: have to pay twenty five dollars. Seniors will pay seventeen dollars.
Speaker 1: If I had to pinpoint the beginning of my obsession
Speaker 1: with art museums, it would be the moment the Metropolitan Museum,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest museums in the world, decided to
Speaker 1: impose entrance fees. It was a difficult time for the institution.
Speaker 1: They had a forty million dollar deficit. They got rid
Speaker 1: of ninety employees, Exhibitions were canceled, there was a shake
Speaker 1: up in the leadership. Up and down the Upper East
Speaker 1: Side of Manhattan, there was hand ringing and a great
Speaker 1: gnashing of teeth. I remember one New York Times headline
Speaker 1: from that time, is the met Museum a great institution
Speaker 1: in decline. That was followed by one expression of anguish
Speaker 1: after another, including this from the former chairman of the
Speaker 1: Met's Drawings and Print Department. To have inherited a museum
Speaker 1: as strong as the MET was ten years ago, with
Speaker 1: a great curatorial staff, and to have it be what
Speaker 1: it is today is unimaginable. Well exactly because for the
Speaker 1: life of me, I couldn't imagine how it was. The
Speaker 1: Met was crying poverty. I mean, they have one of
Speaker 1: the largest and most valuable art collections in the world
Speaker 1: one point five million objects. What's all that art worth?
Speaker 1: I don't know, A hundred billion dollars more. The MET
Speaker 1: might be the richest nonprofit institution in human history. All
Speaker 1: they would have to do is pick a couple things
Speaker 1: off the shelf and they'd never see a deficit again.
Speaker 1: This is like Jeff Bezos firing the gardener because he's
Speaker 1: out of cash. Just go to the ATM, Jeff. But
Speaker 1: they couldn't do it. They would rather fire people and
Speaker 1: make a family of four cough up to one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars at the gate than even think of parting with
Speaker 1: a single one of their possessions. Why it's a puzzle,
Speaker 1: And it is for puzzles like this that we have
Speaker 1: revisionist history. My name is Malcolm Gladwell, you're listening to
Speaker 1: my podcast about Things Overlooked and Misunderstood. This is our
Speaker 1: fifth season, five years of digression, high dudgeon, needless provocation,
Speaker 1: and my absolute favorite grand unified theories. In this season
Speaker 1: of revisionist History, I want to explore our emotional attachment
Speaker 1: to objects and rituals and tradition and the way in
Speaker 1: which those attachments portray us. And in this first episode,
Speaker 1: I would like to make sense of the strange relationship
Speaker 1: of the art world to art. During his thirty one
Speaker 1: year tenure as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Speaker 1: Philippe de Matabello, the Met's eighth and longest serving director,
Speaker 1: guided the acquisition of more than eighty four thousand works
Speaker 1: of art. I found this in a video series called
Speaker 1: Great Museums, an episode from twenty ten and Acquiring mind
Speaker 1: lots of wide angle shots of marble floored galleries and
Speaker 1: gilt frame paintings. NPR Susan Stamberg narrates over what sounds
Speaker 1: like an orchestra right there on the set. Born in France,
Speaker 1: educated at Harvard in nineteen sixty three, Demande Bello brought
Speaker 1: a background in European pay The film runs for an hour.
Speaker 1: It's about the most famous director of the Met, Philippe
Speaker 1: du Montebello, descendant of a noble French family. In particular,
Speaker 1: it's about how much stuff Philippe Dumontebello bought during his
Speaker 1: thirty one year tenure as head of the Met. Tapestries,
Speaker 1: African sculptures, a fabulous premier, an evening gown that's to
Speaker 1: die for. He even bought things he didn't want to buy.
Speaker 1: Philippe has been an incredible director for supporting the acquisitions
Speaker 1: of objects of great quality from across the globe. It
Speaker 1: goes on and on about the acquiring, to the point
Speaker 1: where you wonder, or at least I wondered, Wait, I
Speaker 1: thought you didn't have any money Today, nearly two million objects,
Speaker 1: comprising an encyclopedic treasury of world art, are contained in
Speaker 1: the Met's growing election. Apparently I was wrong in the numbers.
Speaker 1: Not one point five million objects, two million objects. Let
Speaker 1: me give you an example, maybe my favorite example of
Speaker 1: this weirdness in the art world. It has to do
Speaker 1: with a public hearing held in July of nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one at the Financial Accounting Standards Board, better known as
Speaker 1: the f a SB. The FASB is the Vatican of
Speaker 1: the American accounting profession, and this was one of the
Speaker 1: occasional open sessions the FAB holds in order to share
Speaker 1: with the broader American public subjects of grave concern to
Speaker 1: the accounting universe. The venue was the FASB's Norwalk, Connecticut headquarters.
Speaker 1: The subject accounting for contributions received and contributions made, and
Speaker 1: capitalization of works of art, historical treasures, and similar assets.
Speaker 1: The room was packed. They videotaped the proceedings so people
Speaker 1: could watch in the overflow room. I've read a transcript
Speaker 1: of the hearing, all nine hundred and forty seven pages
Speaker 1: of it, and I would like to direct your attention
Speaker 1: to a particular exchange. It was between the then chairman
Speaker 1: of the f a s B, Dennis Beresford, and a
Speaker 1: man named C. Douglas Dillon. Dillon was a tall man,
Speaker 1: gray suit patrician a certain stature. He was former director
Speaker 1: of Dillon, Read and Coe, the Wall Street firm founded
Speaker 1: by his father, and was possessed of maybe the greatest
Speaker 1: resume in mid century America. US Treasury Secretary from much
Speaker 1: of the nineteen sixties, Ambassador to France, chair of the
Speaker 1: Brookings Foundation, president of the Harvard Board of Overseers, a
Speaker 1: close friend of John Rockefeller the third, a world class
Speaker 1: collector of Impressionist art, and, most relevant for the purposes
Speaker 1: of the hearing that day, chairman of the Metropolitan Museum
Speaker 1: of Art in New York City. The American Establishment sent
Speaker 1: its biggest gun to confront the FASB over the agency's
Speaker 1: proposal to change the rules surrounding the accounting for contributions
Speaker 1: received and contributions made, and capitalization of works of art,
Speaker 1: historical treasures, and similar assets. The accountants wanted the art
Speaker 1: world to follow the same accounting rules as other businesses.
Speaker 1: Dylan versus Dennis Beresford, chairman of the FASB, member of
Speaker 1: the American Accounting Hall of Fame and the Financial Executive's
Speaker 1: International Hall of Fame. Way back on day one of
Speaker 1: the proceedings in question, Beresford had made it plain that
Speaker 1: he wasn't going to stand for any nonsense. So C.
Speaker 1: Douglas Dillon was restrained in his objections. Gracious, I'm going
Speaker 1: to guess this was his first visit to Norwalk, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: The room must have been hushed, right, I mean, it's C.
Speaker 1: Douglas freaking Dillon. He does a little preamble, carefully explains
Speaker 1: how outraged the MET is at the intrusion of accountants
Speaker 1: into their business, launches into a vivid description of the
Speaker 1: extraordinary size of the met's collection. And then, and this
Speaker 1: is maybe my favorite part of the entire nine hundred
Speaker 1: and forty seven page transcript, Dilan says, quote, we have
Speaker 1: a new curator of Islamic art, been with us for
Speaker 1: a couple of years now. We have certainly the greatest
Speaker 1: collection of Islamic rugs in the Western Hemisphere, one of
Speaker 1: the two or three in the world. He has never
Speaker 1: been able to even see that collection because so much
Speaker 1: of it is in storage and is so difficult to
Speaker 1: get out, so costly and time consuming. That he knows
Speaker 1: by the records what they are, but he hasn't been
Speaker 1: able to look at them. C. Douglas Dillon is speaking
Speaker 1: to an audience of accountants. Accountants are people who like
Speaker 1: to count things. More than that, they are people who believe,
Speaker 1: as a matter of deep professional principle, that everything can
Speaker 1: be counted. And they have proposed that the art world
Speaker 1: agree to start counting things like everyone else. And in response,
Speaker 1: this pillar of the American Establishment shows up in suburban
Speaker 1: Connecticut and says, we can't count our things. There's just
Speaker 1: too many of them. They're all buried somewhere in storage.
Speaker 1: To give you an example, the guy who was responsible
Speaker 1: for Islamic rug collection, maybe the greatest Islamic rug collection
Speaker 1: in the world, mind you, has never even seen our
Speaker 1: Islamic rug collection. I have to say, this is where
Speaker 1: the art world loses me. So I called up the
Speaker 1: staffer at the FSB who organized that hearing all those
Speaker 1: long years ago. His name is Ron Bassio. Just retired.
Speaker 1: This is a good exercise for a seventy three year
Speaker 1: old to test the memory to go back. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: very I'm very impressed. Basio returned to his old offices
Speaker 1: at FASB headquarters to take my call so he would
Speaker 1: have access to the critical documents. So I'm just going
Speaker 1: to pull up the financial statements of the Metropolitan Museum
Speaker 1: and I want to just want to very briefly walk through.
Speaker 1: I was just I was just wondering if that could
Speaker 1: be googled up here as well. Yeah, he's on his computer,
Speaker 1: I'm on mine. We're downloading the Metropolitan Museum of Arts
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen annual report and locating the crucial part the
Speaker 1: statements of financial position. Beginning on page forty four, I
Speaker 1: have cash receivable for investments sold retail inventories. These are
Speaker 1: all straightforward accounts receivable, straightforward contributions receivable, and thanks the pledges.
Speaker 1: Financial statements for almost any organization look pretty much the same.
Speaker 1: You start by listing your assets, everything of value. Then
Speaker 1: you list your liabilities loans, mortgages, pension obligations. Then you
Speaker 1: balance them. That's why it's called a balance sheet. Bassio
Speaker 1: and I are going down the list of the METS assets.
Speaker 1: Then there's investments, which I'm assuming is the endowment. Could
Speaker 1: be endowment or it could be just investments in total.
Speaker 1: They may not all be part of the endowment. Then
Speaker 1: I have fixed assets three hundred and ninety three million,
Speaker 1: and then I have collections and I have nothing. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a precise accounting of everything the MET
Speaker 1: has of value, the amount the museum made last year
Speaker 1: from selling stocks, the amount of cash it has on
Speaker 1: hand its endowment, the amount it's owed from various creditors,
Speaker 1: the amount it god in gifts and donations, even the
Speaker 1: value of the inventory in its gift shop everything, and
Speaker 1: they add it all up and they come up with
Speaker 1: a number total assets. But next to the line item
Speaker 1: entitled collections, that is to say, the millions of unimaginably
Speaker 1: rare and precious art objects owned by the museum, the
Speaker 1: eighteen van goes, the forty six Picassos, the twenty Rembrandts.
Speaker 1: There is no dollar figure, nothing, It's blank. All it
Speaker 1: says is c note A. Okay ah here it is
Speaker 1: note A. In the appendix it says, in conformity with
Speaker 1: accounting policies generally followed by art museums, the value of
Speaker 1: the museum's collections has been excluded from the statement of
Speaker 1: financial position. Excluded. This is a multi billion dollar organization
Speaker 1: with billions and billions of dollars in art, and it's
Speaker 1: none of it is listed on their in the financial statement.
Speaker 1: It seems I don't I don't even understand how that
Speaker 1: style that was Your reaction is similar to the reaction
Speaker 1: that some of our board members had. On top of that,
Speaker 1: it turns out that the met would rather charge admission,
Speaker 1: cut exhibitions, and get rid of ninety people than sell anything,
Speaker 1: even though they have so many things like Islamic rugs,
Speaker 1: that the guy running the Islamic rug collection hasn't even
Speaker 1: seen any of Islamic rugs because they're all in storage somewhere.
Speaker 1: In fact, most of the met's collection is in storage,
Speaker 1: huge football field sized warehouses, presumably somewhere in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: full of stuff. And when the FASB says, why don't
Speaker 1: you tell us, like a normal institution, just how much
Speaker 1: your stuff is worth? Because I don't know. Maybe it
Speaker 1: would be easier to think rationally about how to run
Speaker 1: things if you knew that fact, the MET goes crazy,
Speaker 1: dispatches c Douglas Dillon to Norwa, Connecticut to say never,
Speaker 1: not on my watch. We've never done that and we
Speaker 1: never will. Yeah, this is unlike any other business. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to carry assets at either book or market value,
Speaker 1: and you're supposed to put them in your financial reports,
Speaker 1: and they don't. This is Michael O'Hare, who teaches in
Speaker 1: the Business School at Berkeley. If you ask anyone, anyone
Speaker 1: who knows their way around a balance sheet about the
Speaker 1: way museums record their assets, you get the Michael O'Hare response.
Speaker 1: I was talking about this at some conference and somebody
Speaker 1: from an orchestra, some financial person from an orchestra said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you mean you buy a painting and
Speaker 1: then it just disappears. And that's what happens. There's an
Speaker 1: expense and then that's the last we hear about it
Speaker 1: in the financial records. It's quite it's quite bizarre. For
Speaker 1: the longest time, I would bore everyone I met with
Speaker 1: how strange I found all this until one day I
Speaker 1: was in Holland on my book tour. In Leiden, out
Speaker 1: with a bunch of people in a bar, and I
Speaker 1: told the group the story of the epic showdown between
Speaker 1: Dennis Beresford and C. Douglas Dillon, and this one guy,
Speaker 1: a philosopher, said, Oh, it's like Smog. Smog, the dragon
Speaker 1: from the Hobbit who sits on a mountain of treasure.
Speaker 1: Smog doesn't want to use his gold, he doesn't wear
Speaker 1: it out to dragon social events. He does not list
Speaker 1: his holdings on his annual dragon financial statement. He just
Speaker 1: wants to hoard it. And I'm like, oh, my god, Smog, Yes,
Speaker 1: that explains everything. Was an old dragon and a gray stone.
Speaker 1: His red eyes blinked as he lay alone. His joy
Speaker 1: was dead and his youth spent. He was knobbed and wrinkled,
Speaker 1: and his limbs bent in the long years to his
Speaker 1: gold Jane, his heart furnished the fired way. This is J. R. R.
Speaker 1: Tolkien reading his poem The Horde to his belly's slime
Speaker 1: gem stuck child and Goldie with snuff and lick to
Speaker 1: his bellies slime gems stuck thick. That's what happens when
Speaker 1: a dragon sits on his treasure for too long, and
Speaker 1: the stuff that couldn't fit under his belly the dragon
Speaker 1: has buried deep inside his lair in storage. Following that
Speaker 1: epiphany in the bar in Leiden, I resolved to perform
Speaker 1: a field test of the hypothesis that art museums are
Speaker 1: modern day versions of the dragon's smog. This was a
Speaker 1: few months back. I was going to be in Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: for another reason anyway, so I decided to pay a
Speaker 1: visit to the Andy Warhol Museum, the largest museum devoted
Speaker 1: to a single artist in North America. So I made
Speaker 1: an appointment with the museum's curator of art, Jessica Beck,
Speaker 1: and on a bright and cold morning in Pittsburgh, I
Speaker 1: headed out to the city's North Shore neighborhood to the
Speaker 1: beautiful Old Warehouse that holds the museum. I told Beck
Speaker 1: I didn't want to see just the collection, the art
Speaker 1: on the walls. I wanted to see everything. So Beck
Speaker 1: graciously took me upstairs to the archives. We're just off
Speaker 1: the staircase. There were dozens of brown cardboard boxes stacked
Speaker 1: in neat piles. Oh I see. Oh they're like they're
Speaker 1: covered in the plastic and you know, capped behind glass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this again is just a portion of the murder
Speaker 1: whole mother. Yeah, how many are here? The cardboard boxes?
Speaker 1: How's what Warhol called his time capsules. There are six
Speaker 1: hundred and ten of them in total. He would put
Speaker 1: things in these cardboard box boxes, tape them shut, and
Speaker 1: set them aside. But he also had other boxes, idea
Speaker 1: boxes what are called basement boxes. After Warhol died, everything
Speaker 1: was shipped to Pittsburgh in an armada of tractor trailers.
Speaker 1: The museum's best guests is in their archive. They have
Speaker 1: at least five hundred thousand objects. And so all the
Speaker 1: other boxes are behind our door. Yeah, the rest of
Speaker 1: them are back there. Yeah, but it's not it's not
Speaker 1: something I can see that I'm not sure, and I
Speaker 1: can ask, we can find out because I wasn't sure.
Speaker 1: We found one of Warhol's time capsules that had been opened.
Speaker 1: It was on the counter like a patient, eitherized upon
Speaker 1: a table. We peered inside. So this is his fifties suits,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, Hong Kong, so his first trip to Asia.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are closed right now because we're
Speaker 1: sort of trying to figure out how to keep the
Speaker 1: objects from shifting. I was suddenly curious. I wanted to
Speaker 1: see inside one of the clothes boxes. Beck said she
Speaker 1: didn't have the authority to open one up, but she
Speaker 1: made a few calls. Finally she found someone. Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: we have something. Okay, that's take a look. Another of
Speaker 1: the museum's staff hurried towards us. This is John, So
Speaker 1: we're just going to peek into one, just to get
Speaker 1: a sense of I was splaining, you know that a
Speaker 1: lot of things are unfolders, but um, so they're they're heavy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're you know, like way forty or fifty pounds in
Speaker 1: some cases. John positioned himself in front of the box
Speaker 1: and began opening it up. His movements were assured, practiced. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we treat the media box itself like it's part of
Speaker 1: an object, So that's why were the gloves. So these
Speaker 1: would have been boxes that Andy would have this assistant
Speaker 1: store things in. We've taken the time to line the
Speaker 1: boxes with this folder type material so that the objects
Speaker 1: in the box do not touch the acidic cardboard of
Speaker 1: the original box, and they're kind of packaged. Very objects
Speaker 1: in here packaged in a sort of a Tetris kind
Speaker 1: of way with folders that are marked in catalog. So
Speaker 1: in its original form, this stuff would have been just
Speaker 1: crammed in it. I wasn't sure what I was expecting
Speaker 1: to see in the box. Drawings, notes, makeshift sculptures, old canvases,
Speaker 1: the working life of an artist. So this is a
Speaker 1: pretty cool on a lenticular of the daisies. Did he
Speaker 1: make that or is that just something he bought? That
Speaker 1: was probably something he bought. At best he would have
Speaker 1: commissioned to be made, But I think this was something
Speaker 1: that was purchased and then used as an inspiration for
Speaker 1: us later working. And you can smell it, right, do
Speaker 1: you do? You smell that? That? That's the object itself
Speaker 1: off gassing. The lenticular is one of those pieces of
Speaker 1: cardboard with an image on it that's printed in such
Speaker 1: a way that it looks like it has three dimensions.
Speaker 1: They're big with children. This one had flowers on it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we find like notes like well the Hay's in tent,
Speaker 1: like why he was collecting the ice along with the
Speaker 1: objects them? You know what we can serve sort of
Speaker 1: source material. Yeah, so he's got like six venticular than that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In that top folder, John continued digging deeper. Deeper into
Speaker 1: the same box, we found an old movie scrapboard that
Speaker 1: once belonged to a fan somewhere, a bunch of eight
Speaker 1: by ten glossies of movie stars, card Gable, Bing Crosby,
Speaker 1: the seal ball. Do you want to go when more folder? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do what last last folder would be cool? So here, lads,
Speaker 1: we looked at a piece of what seemed like junk
Speaker 1: mail an invite to an art opening. So we even
Speaker 1: keep the paper clips. Yeah, I see, it's particulous. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: everything's got stop. John started whispering. It seemed appropriate. We
Speaker 1: were deep in the dragon's lair. Now, why are Andy
Speaker 1: Warhol's time capsules full of junk because he collected junk? Well,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to meet Andy Warhol, all you have
Speaker 1: to do in the eighties was go to the flea market,
Speaker 1: the sixth Avenue flea Market. I'm in New York talking
Speaker 1: with Simon Dunan writer fashionista. In fact, I just would
Speaker 1: searched flea market in the Warholl Diaries and it comes
Speaker 1: up about twelve times, because he's always going to coming
Speaker 1: from blah blah blah. I've known Simon ever since he
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Eccentric Glamour years ago, which included
Speaker 1: chapters on Simone de Beauvoir, Tilda Swinton, the supermodel Iman,
Speaker 1: and Me, which remains the most preposterously inaccurate but nonetheless
Speaker 1: deeply flattering thing anyone has ever written about me. I
Speaker 1: love Simon Douna. Anyway, back in the day, Simon knew
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol and the flea market where he hung out.
Speaker 1: It was a protean flea market kept growing, expanding, retreating
Speaker 1: anytime there's a new law available. The flea mark expanded
Speaker 1: and it was a significant social scene. Like I remember
Speaker 1: seeing Catherine de Neuve there and it was just a
Speaker 1: place that you went if you were in New York.
Speaker 1: It was a way of you know, checking everybody out
Speaker 1: and meeting your friends. We were in Simon's apartment and
Speaker 1: impossibly sheet worn of rooms. I could walk you around
Speaker 1: and show you many things that Jonathan and I or
Speaker 1: I myself bought at the sixth Avenor flea market. That
Speaker 1: bust of Michael Jackson, which people think is that Jeff
Speaker 1: Coon's was ten bucks at the flea market. Yeah, have
Speaker 1: you told Jeff Good Simon Dunnan found treasure at the
Speaker 1: flea market. Everyone did, but Warhol treated his treasure a
Speaker 1: little differently. When Andy Mohol died, it emerged that he
Speaker 1: had not unpacked most of this stuff that he'd gotten
Speaker 1: at the flea market. There were these stories, I think
Speaker 1: in Vanity Fair about his house packed with shopping bags
Speaker 1: that he'd gotten at the flea market. When he bought
Speaker 1: his Russell Right china, he collected he collected those cookie
Speaker 1: jars famously. He would buy those Toysche chocolates. He was
Speaker 1: obsessed with them, but he would chew them and spit
Speaker 1: them out, you know, because he was always very concerned
Speaker 1: about keeping his trim little figure. So the idea that
Speaker 1: he collected these big, sort of rotund cookie jars to
Speaker 1: be stuffed with cookies, it's kind of hilarious because he
Speaker 1: was sort of, you know, always very conscious of his figure.
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol was a hoarder, all the classic symptoms. Simon
Speaker 1: Dudon used to head up the window dressing department at Barney's,
Speaker 1: and he famously did an homage to Wharel after his
Speaker 1: death entitled The Compulsive Collector. We took the mannequin dressed
Speaker 1: in jeans, the blue blazer turtleneck, and then I just
Speaker 1: went and bought one of those tacky Warhole wigs that
Speaker 1: you could get at the Halloween store, put the glasses
Speaker 1: on him, and instantly it became Andy, to the point
Speaker 1: where Pat Hackett, who wrote the Warhole Diaries, was sort
Speaker 1: of you know, skipping down Seventh Avenue and screeched to
Speaker 1: a She banged on the window. She said to me,
Speaker 1: he had a heart attack. I thought, Andy, come back
Speaker 1: from the dead. I can show you the window. Simon
Speaker 1: brought out a book filled with pictures of his most
Speaker 1: famous windows. Oh, this is fantastic. This is you can see.
Speaker 1: It looks just like just like him. And all around
Speaker 1: the mannequin was stuff, the exact same kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that later found its way into the boxes at the
Speaker 1: Warhol Museum. The definition of a collector is someone who
Speaker 1: collects objects discriminately, someone who selects and chooses. But as
Speaker 1: Simon so nicely put it, Andy Warhol was a compulsive collector.
Speaker 1: His collecting was indiscriminate. And what happens when he dies
Speaker 1: and his indiscriminate collection passes into the hands of a museum.
Speaker 1: They don't edit it or streamline it. They keep it
Speaker 1: exactly as it was hidden the way behind locked doors.
Speaker 1: The Warhol Museum is an indiscriminate collection of an indiscriminate collection.
Speaker 1: The special thing about it, I think is that it
Speaker 1: feels like it could be detritus in any other situation, right,
Speaker 1: like remains of a day. Like there's you know, the
Speaker 1: flight kit you would get on a first class international flight,
Speaker 1: like the slippers, the vomit bag, the silver wear from
Speaker 1: that international flight, like in one of the time capsules.
Speaker 1: So it's it's this like sense of Warhol when you're
Speaker 1: with the material. But then again it's it's not you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we even have the box after he died
Speaker 1: at the hospital of his clothing and his final effects
Speaker 1: that were left at the hospital. We have that box
Speaker 1: preserved as it was picked up from the hospital, so
Speaker 1: it had his jacket in it that he wore to
Speaker 1: the hospital for that final visit. The backpack exactly how
Speaker 1: it was packed, so it has like all of his
Speaker 1: classes and the business card for his doctor in the
Speaker 1: front pocket. Now, I don't mean to pick on the
Speaker 1: Warhol Museum. This is what all art museums do. During
Speaker 1: his tenure running them at Philippe de Montebello, acquired eighty
Speaker 1: four thousand objects, the overwhelming majority of which were packed
Speaker 1: away in boxes and sent to storage in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: never to be seen again. That's not any different from
Speaker 1: the mountain of detritus in cardboard boxes upstairs at the
Speaker 1: Warhol Museum. Somewhere in the United States, there are twin brothers.
Speaker 1: I don't know precisely where they live, but in a
Speaker 1: big city. Can you just describe them? They're not married.
Speaker 1: I take it they're not married. The psychologist Randy Frost,
Speaker 1: who work closely with them for some time, refers to
Speaker 1: them as Alvin and Jerry, both pseudonyms. Born into a
Speaker 1: wealthy family, childhood prodigies, rumpled suits in bow ties. These
Speaker 1: are two people I really liked intensely. The brothers lived
Speaker 1: in adjoining identical penthouse apartments, in a hotel, each with
Speaker 1: an eight hundred square foot great room with double height ceilings,
Speaker 1: and each brother had filled his great room with things.
Speaker 1: I'm quoting now from Frost's account of the case from
Speaker 1: a book he co authored called Stuff. Every square foot
Speaker 1: of the great room and dining room was packed with
Speaker 1: works of art and period furniture, eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings, sculptures,
Speaker 1: bus antiques, lamps, jewelry, and more. Ende. They had no
Speaker 1: pathways between all of their stuff. You stepped over things
Speaker 1: as you walked. Some of the piles were six feet high.
Speaker 1: On top of the art were clothes everywhere, and papers,
Speaker 1: business cards, bits of junk. They were lovely. They were
Speaker 1: intense in what they did. They had this kind of
Speaker 1: bonds as twins, but tension at the same time. Fascinating,
Speaker 1: fascinating characters and really very interested in this phenomenon for themselves,
Speaker 1: this phenomenon meaning hoarding. Frost began to study hoarding behaviors
Speaker 1: with the assumption that they sprang from the same place
Speaker 1: as obsessive compulsive disorders. But the more he worked with hoarders,
Speaker 1: the more he became convinced that description didn't fit OCD.
Speaker 1: Behavior is about the catastrophic reaction to an intrusive thought,
Speaker 1: and those intrusive thoughts are negative danger, threat, contamination. But
Speaker 1: so much of hoarding appeared to be the opposite. It
Speaker 1: appeared to be about pleasure. One of the brothers, Alvin,
Speaker 1: would come home for lunch nearly every day just to
Speaker 1: be among his things, not to organize, but to enjoy.
Speaker 1: Frost to go with him on some of those visits,
Speaker 1: and Alvin would walk through the chaos, pick up random objects,
Speaker 1: and describe the story behind each one of his treasures.
Speaker 1: Look at this doctor. His voice rose with excitement as
Speaker 1: he found a ring. The ring he thought was from
Speaker 1: western India. It was huge, almost the size of a walnut.
Speaker 1: To said, seeing the book, when you're walking through Alvin's
Speaker 1: apartment with him and he's picking up objects, But many
Speaker 1: of those objects have genuine value, many of them did,
Speaker 1: some of them didn't, some of them didn't. And it
Speaker 1: reminded me a little bit of Andy Warhol, because he
Speaker 1: collected things in this way, and things with immense value
Speaker 1: and things of no value and put them all into
Speaker 1: into these treasure chests. Yeah, yeah, was Alvin aware? He
Speaker 1: must have been aware intellectually of what was marketplace valuable
Speaker 1: and what was Yes, it just that it was all
Speaker 1: a value tea. It was all value to him, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And he had no desire. He didn't want to show
Speaker 1: off his treasures in any mil Frost says that the
Speaker 1: impulse to Hoarde has three motivations. It's one is instrumental,
Speaker 1: that is, I might need it someday. The other is emotional,
Speaker 1: that is, this emotional connection with another person or of
Speaker 1: aunt or something. And the third is esthetic, this idea
Speaker 1: of the beauty of the physical world. The second of
Speaker 1: those ideas, the emotional one, Frost describes as the Proust
Speaker 1: effect from the famous passage in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.
Speaker 1: He's eating this cookie and all of a sudden, it
Speaker 1: brings him back to his childhood when his aunt used
Speaker 1: to make these cookies for him, and he remembers the
Speaker 1: way it felt a little bit like the phenomena is
Speaker 1: like hearing a song from your childhood. What started to
Speaker 1: dawn on me was that with people with this problem,
Speaker 1: these objects form that kind of an experience in a
Speaker 1: much more intense way than everybody else. So somehow these
Speaker 1: objects are keys to these visceral memories that get produced.
Speaker 1: So finding something, anything, some token, some memento, anything that
Speaker 1: from your past triggers a much more vivid recollection than
Speaker 1: than in the rest of us than for the rest
Speaker 1: of us. Yes, and it is a recollection, so hold on.
Speaker 1: It's such a fascinating notion. So you mentioned music, so
Speaker 1: most of us would have it. You know there are
Speaker 1: songs if you play them. Yes, have that thing for me?
Speaker 1: Yeas only you. I don't know why that song because
Speaker 1: I can imagine. So what you're saying is that feeling
Speaker 1: I have with yas only you, only with a book
Speaker 1: of match box of matches or absolutely yes, a playbill
Speaker 1: or a yes. One of Frost's patients, it was a
Speaker 1: woman who couldn't throw away a Disney blanket that her
Speaker 1: daughter had loved as a small child, because she feels
Speaker 1: like if she throws it away, she will lose the
Speaker 1: memories associated with that blanket, and she will lose that
Speaker 1: piece of history, her personal history. And if she throws
Speaker 1: away too much, there's nothing left of her. For another patient,
Speaker 1: it was one of those ATM cash envelopes from five
Speaker 1: years ago. There was no cash in, and she spent
Speaker 1: the cash that was in it, but on the back
Speaker 1: she'd written how she spent it, and it wasn't anything
Speaker 1: unusual grocery store drunks or a few other items. She
Speaker 1: put it in the recyco box and she started to cry,
Speaker 1: and she said, it feels like I'm losing that day
Speaker 1: in my life. And if I lose too much, there'll
Speaker 1: be nothing left of me. There'll be nothing left of me.
Speaker 1: One of the twin brothers, Alvin, was a successful event organizer.
Speaker 1: He once told Frost that he had lost a folder
Speaker 1: containing his notes from something he'd organized, and even though
Speaker 1: the event was recent, every memory he'd had of it
Speaker 1: was gone, and when he found the folder again, his
Speaker 1: memories returned. If your mind works that way, why would
Speaker 1: you ever throw away that folder? Most people would look
Speaker 1: at this and see a mess, he told Frost on
Speaker 1: one of their visits to his penthouse, And then he said, really,
Speaker 1: it's layered and complex. Their penthouses were so overwhelmed with
Speaker 1: stuff that they had to live elsewhere in smaller rooms
Speaker 1: in the hotel, which were also overwhelmed with stuff. But
Speaker 1: they couldn't part with any of it. It would be
Speaker 1: too great a loss. They didn't want to itemize it
Speaker 1: or put it under balance sheet or show the world.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they had their own Islamic rugs buried somewhere
Speaker 1: in their great room, which they had never seen when
Speaker 1: you got them away from there from the subjective hoarding,
Speaker 1: it away from their apartments. Yeah, I mean, what were
Speaker 1: they like? Oh, they were they were fun, they were fascinating,
Speaker 1: They knew something about everything. They were both delightful, delightful people.
Speaker 1: If you talk to a lay person, they would probably
Speaker 1: think of hoarding as a kind of mental illness. I'm
Speaker 1: imagining it's not an mental illness. It's not a deficit
Speaker 1: that affects all aspects of your functioning. Yeah. The way
Speaker 1: I describe it sometimes is a form of giftedness. There's
Speaker 1: a gift associated with this, an appreciation for the physical world,
Speaker 1: an appreciation for the emotional experience that's associated with objects,
Speaker 1: and and that that gift unfortunately comes with a curse,
Speaker 1: and the curse is not being able to manage it.
Speaker 1: The hoarder is someone with the unusual ability to see
Speaker 1: beauty in the ordinary, which is exactly the point that
Speaker 1: Simon Douna made about Andy Warhol. The nicest aspect of
Speaker 1: him was that he was very democratic, example, he said,
Speaker 1: if everyone's not a beauty, then nobody is. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: kind of lovely, it's fabulous. It's that's why he thought
Speaker 1: these these drag queens, you know, Jackie Curtis and Hollywood
Speaker 1: Lawn were not objectively Sophia Laurent, but he saw beauty
Speaker 1: and magic and madness in them. You know, you know what,
Speaker 1: But Simon, that is the perfect illustration of the particular condition,
Speaker 1: wonderful condition of the order. Who applies that same logic
Speaker 1: to objects. If every object is not is not beautiful,
Speaker 1: then no object is right. It's exactly the same like
Speaker 1: some crappy old broken toy. It is the same as
Speaker 1: an honouveau fars that your grandmother left you. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's that is the god that's haunting it is, isn't
Speaker 1: it haunting? And it's why the Warhol Museum keeps all
Speaker 1: of Warhol's boxes, because they have the same condition that
Speaker 1: Warhol had. They have to insist on the meaning and
Speaker 1: beauty in all of that ephemera. They're the Warhol Museum,
Speaker 1: and like the hoarder, they worry that if they get
Speaker 1: rid of any of his stuff, they'll lose their connection
Speaker 1: to him. And can they count that stuff up and
Speaker 1: put a value on it. No, because to the hoarder
Speaker 1: everything is of equal value. So you get into these debates.
Speaker 1: They get esoteric sometimes, but you know, standard siding. Eventually
Speaker 1: the board says, all right, we gotta get to closure.
Speaker 1: We got to make a decision. We can't just go
Speaker 1: on forever. Ron Bossio My guide to the hearing of
Speaker 1: the FSB in nineteen ninety one, when C. Douglas Dillon
Speaker 1: appeared in Norwalk, Connecticut and stood up before the Vatican
Speaker 1: of Accounting and said, we cannot tell you what we
Speaker 1: have in our collections. That is not the way our
Speaker 1: imaginations are wired. And the Vatican backs down. The accountants
Speaker 1: realize that this is a battle they cannot win, with
Speaker 1: the result that on virtually every American art museum bound
Speaker 1: sheet there is some version of note A. In conformity
Speaker 1: with accounting policies generally followed by art museums, the value
Speaker 1: of the museum's collections has been excluded from the statement
Speaker 1: of financial position. When the moon was new, and the
Speaker 1: sanyang of silver and gold, the gods sang, the green
Speaker 1: grass they silver spilled, and the white waters they were
Speaker 1: gold filled. In Tolken's poem The Horde. Everyone who desired
Speaker 1: the treasure dies in the end, but the treasure remains
Speaker 1: buried deep in giant warehouses. In the Jersey. There is
Speaker 1: an old Hord in a dark rock. Who've gotten behind doors,
Speaker 1: and nun can unlock that grim gate. No man can
Speaker 1: pass on. The mound rows, the green grass, their sheep feed,
Speaker 1: and the loch saw and the wind blows from the
Speaker 1: sea show the Old Hord. The night shall keep while
Speaker 1: Earth waits and the elves sleep. Revision's history is produced
Speaker 1: by Mielobelle and Leamingiestu, with Jacob Smith, Eloise Litton and
Speaker 1: Anna naim Our. Editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by
Speaker 1: Louise Gera, mastering by Flawan Williams, fact checking by Beth Johnson.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the Pushkin Crew, Heataphane, Carly Migliore, Maya Kanig,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Jason Gambrell and of course al Hafe, Jacob
Speaker 1: Weisberg I, Alcin Diaper