Cleaning the Box

I have this big old wooden box, just like the In and Out boxes that used to sit on some of my desks in the years I worked, where I keep papers that need to be attended, in one way or another. As with the career days, some things just kind of sift to the bottom because I feel no time, or the time is not ripe, to move them. Today I came across one of those -- an appreciation by NYT critic Michael Kimmelman for Thomas Hoving, who preceded Philippe de Montebello at the Met and who died in December 2009, right before my own health issues. I liked both Kimmelman's writing and the Hoving it portrayed. Kimmelman said Hoving "believed that art museums were public repositories of wonderment....he wanted people to feel that same outsize thrill he felt standing in front of a picture, that...rush that comes from knowing something is terrific." I guess I kept the piece because I was then staggering each time I revisited the Waterlilies show at the MoMA.

Kimmelman ends the appreciation by recounting his first contact with Hoving, in the mid-80's, and Hoving's wish that the public feel a sense of both privilege and adventure when entering the Met. He writes of marveling after the meeting that New York "was the most amazing show on earth and thinking that a life fully lived should be a joy ride." And so New York remains, even as we collectively slip, slide away on the frozen streets and sidewalks of this long winter.