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Metropolitan Stories
October 15, 2019 @ 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Tuesday, October 15
6:30 p.m. reception, 7:00 p.m. program
$10 for Club members, $20 for non-members
Hidden behind the Met Museum’s Picassos and Vermeers, the Temple of Dendur, and the American Wing, exists another world: the hallways and offices, conservation studios, storerooms, and cafeteria that are home to the museum’s devoted and peculiar staff of 2,200 people–along with a few ghosts.
An insider’s look into this private side of the Met, Christine Coulson’s Metropolitan Stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant vignettes in which we discover larger-than-life characters, the downside of survival, and the powerful voices of the art itself. The result is a novel bursting with magic, humor, and energetic detail, and an ode to lives lived for art, ultimately building a powerful collage of human experience and the world of the imagination.
Enjoy an evening of art and stories as related by Christine Coulson (MA, Williams ’93), who began her career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1991 as a summer intern. She returned in 1994, and over the next 25 years rose through the ranks of the Museum, ultimately working as Chief Advisor to the Director.
Coulson will be joined in conversation by Liz McGowan (BA Princeton ’79; MA ‘81 & PhD, ’83, NYU), Chair of Williams College’s Art History Department. Their discussion, like Coulson’s novel, will offer an insider’s look into a world that is typically hidden from the public. Join us for an extraordinary opportunity to life the institutional veil and glean insights into the inner workings of the art world, and the unsung heroes that make it all possible.