Original subtitles

Nestled in New York's Central Park,

this is the largest art museum in America.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is 2.3 million square feet

of objects spanning 5,000 years of history.

The museum really was an audacious vision

to create a cultural centre that rivalled the greatest in the world.

The Met is a collection of collections -

paintings, jewellery, textiles, statuary,

and the world's most famous fashion gala.

Every year we're pumping out something pretty amazing.

It's America's treasure house.

The collection is what excites every curator

to be part of this institution.

In 2020, the Met turned 150,

in its pomp and ready to celebrate.

I'm this excited!

But as the revels began, Covid-19 struck New York.

There are new warnings about the Coronavirus outbreak.

For the first time ever, the Met was shut...indefinitely.

Walking through the museum with 5,000 years of the greatest

works of art, it's a spiritual experience.

This is an exhibition install, frozen in time.

Initially, a cash crisis loomed.

We're likely to see somewhere between 100 and $150 million

of loss.

Then national outcry at racial injustice

had the Met examining its own record...

You see so many pictures of men winning.

..and resolving to change.

These objects were stolen,

they were never intended to be in a space like the Met.

It would be an anniversary year nobody would forget...

Nothing compares

to what our city and country is going through right now.

..however hard they tried.

We can overcome.

When the world unlocked,

would there still be a place for America's treasure house?

It's spring 2019.

The Upper East Side streets bordering Central Park

emerge from winter looking clean and fresh.

Occupying a site four blocks long on Fifth Avenue,

the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a year from its 150th birthday.

As usual, on a Monday morning, just before opening,

the Great Hall is a greenhouse.

My staff comes here at

about 5.00, 5.30 in the morning.

We take out all the old flowers,

then we start making the arrangements.

And, of course, we have to be done before all the tourists come.

New Yorkers treat the place like home, but in an average year,

most of the seven million visitors through these doors are tourists.

If you have a bag, please have it open. All bags!

Good Morning. Good morning.

Many of them are Americans making a pilgrimage.

It's pretty fabulous.

It's the visitor dollars that keep the Met open.

So you've stepped into the Greek and Roman Department.

We're starting in Ancient Greece.

Greek and Roman is laid out chronologically.

The Met has around two million objects,

one million of them on show.

Now, I want you to think about sightlines

as we're going on our tour. Things are grouped and displayed together,

so that if I took all the object labels away,

just visually, looking down a hallway,

you'd be able to understand the history of that art and culture.

Follow me in. We're entering Ancient Rome.

It takes tour guides a year to learn the history.

We're entering Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

Down the hallway into Ancient America.

Mayan and Aztec are in the far gallery,

getting into Peruvian objects that are about 1,000, 1,500 years old.

The Met's not trying to be the largest institution

or the biggest holder of objects,

but to tell the most comprehensive story we possibly can.

The museum is organised into 17 departments.

The objects don't change,

but the curators place them in new contexts to tell fresh stories.

It almost looks like he's parachuted down in.

A team from the Medieval Department are installing a new exhibition.

It's a 9th-century limestone Mayan sculpture

of the rain god Chaac.

And it's part of the Crossroads installation.

These objects have all been displayed before,

but here, they'll tell a story of disparate cultures

flourishing simultaneously 500 years ago.

It's one of the exciting things about this installation,

is that it really crosses the collections.

We have a number of big sculptures that are being brought in.

We've got another one coming from the Asian Department.

A big 13th-century Khmer sculpture.

Images of piety and power

from Asia, the Americas, Africa and Europe now sit side by side.

Go back.

All the sculptures are between the 4th century and the 15th century.

It's interesting how different cultures are doing similar things

at this period, when they're not doing it at any other time.

Assistant Curator Andrea Achi has a special interest

in the North African culture in this era, in particular Byzantine Egypt.

This space is my favourite space at the Met because in 2000,

when they were doing renovation to the Byzantine Galleries, um,

they just discovered it.

She has another exhibition in this understairs gallery,

the Art and Peoples of the Kharga Oasis.

What I've done in this installation is to talk about really where

these objects are from, and the fact that

objects don't just come from the air into vitrines.

I'm actually an archaeologist by training,

and I've excavated right next to the excavation that the Met did

so I know this material really intimately.

So, for example, these are gold from, um, Alexandria.

The people who were wearing these were people of colour

and they were Egyptians and they had really specific ideas

of what it meant to live well.

This filigree jewellery comes from a time

when Roman culture is giving way to Byzantine.

For next year's anniversary celebrations,

she'll cast Met treasures in a new light

with an exhibition called The Good Life.

One thing I'm trying to do is disrupt this notion of

what African art is,

because when we think about African art we only think about West Africa.

Visitors don't usually think about Egypt and Ethiopia and Sudan.

50 years from now, maybe someone will look at jewellery like that

and say, "Oh, that's African art."

Departments tend their permanent galleries while spending months

or years developing temporary exhibitions for the future.

But the Costume Institute presents several every year.

Camp is 2019's main event -

a celebration of theatricality in costume.

Flamboyant pieces by modern designers strike poses

beside mannered garments from history,

exploring the origins of the term "camp".

The main annual show is a much-anticipated New York event.

Fashion fans arrive suitably dressed.

CAMERAS SHUTTERS CLICK

It's launched on the first Monday in May by the famous Met Gala.

It's a starry, starry night

where celebrities and the designers who dress them

make a splash and donate heavily.

In 2019, it raised $15 million.

The money funds the work of the Costume Institute.

Their collection of some 30,000 garments spans five centuries.

In the department's labs, textiles are intensively researched.

It's actually a surgical microscope.

I don't know how anyone would do surgery on this

because it's very... It's very finicky about staying in focus.

We're doing microscopic analysis to determine

the difference between these two fabrics, gazar and zagar.

What everyone thinks is gazar might not be gazar,

and what people think is zagar might not be zagar.

The difference is basically the density of the weave.

These investigations are vital.

Some modern materials pose a threat.

We have 18th-century gowns worn to, like, the French court

that are in much better condition than this dress from the 1960s.

We already have stuff from the 1990s that is starting to degrade rapidly.

We're acquiring a lot of new and contemporary garments

that have synthetics, that have inherent vice,

a quality intrinsic to them that causes their own self destruction.

This is by a woman named Diana Dew.

A movie dress, leather with illuminated photographs.

Well, they should have put, like, "leather" in quotes

because this is obviously not leather. This is called pleather.

The fabric is polyurethane.

It's flaking, it's falling apart.

There's this white bloom that's come to the surface

and, actually, you can smell it.

It stinks.

What we're smelling is off-gassing chemicals that can actually harm

other objects in our collection.

This is very recent. It's, like, five years old.

It's a certain kind of polyurethane that's susceptible to oxygen.

We're going to put it in this big bubble, essentially,

and pump the bubble full of argon gas. Taking out all the oxygen

should slow down the degradation of that dramatically.

The exhibition schedule is punishing.

Upstairs, Camp still has four months to run.

Downstairs, they are already planning the 150th year show,

where black will be the new pink.

I mean, every year we're pumping out something pretty amazing.

We technically have less than a year to plan.

Erm, so we'll see, fashionably late. Right?

The museum is led by a new executive team.

APPLAUSE

This year, we actually have a full spectrum of major exhibitions.

Director Max Hollein is responsible for the Met's creative vision.

The first sculpture commission on the Met's facade,

and the artist who we've selected is Wangechi Mutu.

She's an outstanding artist, born in Nairobi.

I'm going to give you a quick overview of the summer and the fall.

Quincy Houghton plans the exhibition schedule.

We're commemorating the 50th anniversary

of the Apollo moon landing...

Steering the ship is Dan Weiss, the CEO,

and since the Met was established in 1870, it's 16th president.

The museum is run from a quiet floor high above the public galleries.

From up here, Dan can see spring in Central Park and winter in Paris.

In college, I had images from the Metropolitan on my wall,

and one of them was this painting by Alfred Sisley,

and now I have the real thing, which is a great privilege.

The Met actually began in Paris,

with American industrialists dreaming of an American Louvre.

When the museum was founded 150 years ago,

it really was largely an audacious vision

that a bunch of businessmen in New York City had -

to create a cultural centre

that rivalled the greatest cultural institutions in the world.

And it was preposterous. They had really no art.

They had ambition, they had vision.

But they had no art. And they had limited funds.

And somehow through this...this, er, extraordinary experiment,

they were able to generate great interest and support.

And in this moment in our history,

what I think about all the time,

is how do we find the right balance between respecting our tradition,

exhibiting, collecting, studying

the works of 5,000 years of civilisation,

and at the same time serving the public that's changing in ways

that we all see every day.

The Met opened in April 1870,

a museum for the New World celebrating the art of the Old.

The philanthropist founders believed that by getting close

to beautiful objects, visitors' lives would be improved.

The collections are extensive, and constantly growing.

They have one of the world's largest assemblages

of 17th-century Dutch master paintings.

This is one of the most beloved areas of the Met.

It's something that New Yorkers in particular feel very attached to.

Historians argue that the cosmopolitanism, the tolerance

of New York City really extends back to its Dutch roots.

It's definitely humbling being responsible for the Rembrandts

and the Vermeers of the Met,

but I have to say it's nice being the curator for an area

that is such a crowd pleaser.

There are around 200 Dutch works,

but one frequently scores high in visitor surveys.

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher

was the first painting by Vermeer to come to America.

It's the kind of painting that really was so revolutionary

for 17th-century Dutch art. It's not a scene from the Bible,

from classical myth or history.

This is an ordinary anonymous, everyday scene

that somehow is incredibly poetic and moving

thanks to the magic of Vermeer.

The Met's is a world-leading collection of Dutch masters.

These works have been enjoyed by New Yorkers since 1871,

when the Department of European Paintings began.

We've collected continuously for nearly 150 years.

People have come and asked me

how many different museums we've borrowed these pictures from,

and it is kind of nice to be able to say, actually, this is all ours.

The museum started with collections donated by the founders themselves

and their art-loving friends.

The very first acquisition in November 1871

was this Roman sarcophagus, given by a Turkish diplomat.

America was booming.

It was fashionable among the new elite to collect the art

of the ancient world and bequeath it to the Metropolitan Museum.

As visitors enter the Greek and Roman Departments,

they pass the fragmentary Head of a Youth.

Carved in the 2nd century BC,

it's said to be the face of Alexander the Great.

30,000 objects represent these classical civilisations,

but also their forebears.

The Etruscans, whose culture the Romans absorbed,

are represented by vessels showing scenes from daily life.

These minimal marble forms are the work of artists

at the Cycladic Islands, from a Neolithic civilisation

that flourished in the Aegean in the 4th century BC.

Also on the ground floor,

galleries devoted to another 19th-century passion

for the European age of chivalry.

The Arms and Armor Department began

with a purchase of a single French collection in 1904.

The accent was on armour designed for display and ceremony,

not battle. A group of 16th-century helmets

celebrate the genius of Milanese armourer Filippo Negroli.

Today, this collection numbers 14,000 items,

one of the most encyclopaedic in the world.

I've been coming to the Met since before I was five years old.

I grew up on 86th Street.

The museum is a sanctuary.

This is a church. This is a cathedral.

There are people who come religiously to see a certain object

and stand before it.

You go into the galleries and realise there is more to the world

than just...bad news.

Maintaining ancient objects like these is the work of conservators.

Hermes Knauer did it for 40 years.

This shirt, when it came in, in 2008, was orange with rust.

I spent three-and-a-half months cleaning this.

Each one of these rings has an inscription

and it's the 99 names of God.

This piece may have belonged to the Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal.

All of these pieces have not only a history,

but people who are dedicated to care for them.

But you don't see them. The museum is an iceberg.

You see the tip of an iceberg, but seven-eighths of it is underground.

The iceberg is several floors deep.

The public never see this network of labs, studios, workshops

and archives.

Our newly acquired pistol sword.

Ted Hunter and Sean Belair are conservators and armourers.

I'll remove the corrosion and then probably apply

a protective coating to make sure

it doesn't reactivate in the future.

We do like to disassemble our firearms

so you really have to figure out how they come apart.

Do you take the hammer off? Would that help? Well, the hammer...

Can't see what's behind it. Well, there's a nut here,

but you can't get past there first.

So we need to remove...

You know...

Hmm. Yeah.

Sometimes the design solutions these craftsmen come up with are...

..real headscratchers.

Aha! There you go!

We approach things, I think, on a foundation of the old techniques,

with our hammers and antique tools in hand,

and in the other hand we have our modern chemicals and adhesives

and scalpels and things. We use conservation-grade materials.

We understand the science, but because it's arms and armour,

sometimes you just need a hammer.

Some of the thousand-piece collection goes out on loan

to other museums. Coming or going, every item must be examined.

This armour belonged to the Duke of Sessa

and is going on loan to Florence.

I will use cleaning techniques

that are what I think of as the modern techniques.

Probably use my microscope for some of it.

I don't want to take any gold off, I don't want to wear down

any of the etching or the repousse work. On the other hand,

I will probably need to use a more traditional technique

to reattach these lames.

So it's going to need a combination of things

to get it to display worthy.

Cos when I send this off on loan, it's got to look good.

We've got a reputation to uphold, right?

If I get going now, I could probably get it roughly cleaned up

and the mannequin made in a month or so, but it's going to be tight.

Right now, there's a lot of things happening. I'm juggling this,

and we have a major exhibition coming called The Last Knight,

with lots of armour. And we're borrowing pieces that we don't have

anything comparable. And I'm... I think Sean agrees,

we're very excited about it. It's going to be good.

These workshops date to the first years of the museum.

Away from the public galleries,

they're a haven for these enthusiasts.

Every department is fun for people who are in it.

I've been here now, um... almost 18 years.

There's so many things that we do,

done by people who are passionate about what they are doing.

There are around 2,000 staff, most of them unseen,

maintaining and expanding the collections,

preparing for next year's challenging exhibition schedule.

Curator Dr Wolf Burchard is building an exhibition about five centuries

of British trade and its effect on interior design.

It will open the 150th celebrations.

These here are the 18th-century galleries and they're very much

the centrepiece of the British Galleries.

The Met's existing British Galleries are being remodelled for the show.

They include whole rooms purchased and carefully removed

from British stately homes after the Second World War.

This is a room from the 1750s.

I think this colour has come out really beautifully.

When it was done in the 1990s, it was a much brighter yellow.

But it was all done with sponges

and made the whole room look a bit like your local pizzeria.

It's extremely important to get these things absolutely right.

Burchard has a $20 million budget and most of his exhibits.

What he needs now is time.

This was originally a dining room from a house in London.

A very, very talented artist is going to recreate what would have

been that view in 18th-century London.

Whereas the other room is going to be the view that you would

have had of the country landscape.

We have about eight months left.

We're opening in February 2020

and given that this will mark the 150th anniversary of the Met,

we really have to stick to that deadline.

When you look at the space right now,

you think, well, how are they going to open in eight months?

These are all part of the glass cases.

Installation of the art has to start at the beginning of July,

so we really need to make sure that these will be installed

within the next six weeks.

But it's all going to go according to plan, I have no doubt.

The display will feature around 700 objects.

Presenting them to digital-age visitors in an arresting way

is the job of the Design Department.

Patrick Herron is the lead designer on this project.

Shall we move her up ever so slightly?

But does she then have to move further to the left?

I think what we want to avoid is having too many big gaps.

His team have mocked up what will be a display case of 18th-century

consumer durables that made luxury accessible to almost all.

Well, what if we moved her further to the back?

These Georgian chocolate pots, candlesticks and snuff boxes

were never meant to be seen together.

Now they must tell a group story.

We did move the lids around a little bit. I saw that, but it's fine.

There's a lot of back and forth between how the objects

get displayed, how they're lit.

We're wondering about that one.

It's a bit too close to this. It needs to slot down and over.

It's quite finicky.

I don't think I knew what I signed up for, but here I am.

Yeah, it's going to be fantastic.

SHIP'S HORN BLOWS

Preparations for the Met's slew of celebratory events

go on through autumn and winter.

As 2020 begins, the flagship exhibition Making The Met

is nearing completion.

I'm this excited!

Andrea Bayer is in charge of all curatorial staff,

but this is her personal project -

the story of the Museum's evolution, told in 250 objects.

Ten grand rooms, ten episodes, through the history of the museum.

It's going to be a thrilling, immersive experience.

I'm incredibly proud of what we have achieved here.

One of our greatest Egyptian sculptures, Pharaoh Hatshepsut,

she's going to sit right there, and then out the window

we see the great obelisk.

After her death, her sculptures were defiled by her co-ruler

who took over from her, and that is his obelisk.

So, history over a long period of time coming together.

We will have things here ranging from a Nepalese face mask,

through Richard Avedon's portrait of Marilyn Monroe.

So that gives you a sense of how truly global

and encyclopaedic the museum is.

And each of the collecting departments has gone

to their donors, their supporters, and asked whether they want to

give gifts in honour of the museum's anniversary.

And let me tell you - ha-ha! -

a number of EXCEPTIONAL things have come in,

and some of them have made their way into this exhibition.

It's not just about objects.

This exhibition also underlines an ongoing mission.

When we began in 1870, it was about bringing great objects

to a New York public, to inspire and to educate.

It's important to remember that the Met has lived through, for example,

several periods in which there was a great debate about immigration

and who is an American? And many of the steps taken by the Met

were to help new immigrants understand how do you make yourself

an American, how do you make yourself a citizen of the world?

It's always been a part of the museum's mission.

The 21st-century Met wouldn't presume to define

what or who an American is.

In old age, the museum is keen to show how young it is

and awake to new ideas.

Diversity amongst staff and the selection of art is a priority

for the new management team.

We have the responsibility to share,

ideally, the greatest artworks of the last 5,000 years.

And so it's important that the museum is not only reliving

previous times, but it really also needs to live in our current time.

Appointed one year ago, Director Max Hollein

felt the Met's architecture looked exclusive rather than inclusive.

Wangechi Mutu is the first artist EVER

to exhibit work in the niches in the exterior.

The facade of the Metropolitan

has been empty since the museum was built.

Asking a contemporary artist to place something in there

that is about the issues of today is a statement. It's saying,

"Listen, we're willing to talk about what we're going through

"as a culture and as a people,

"and we're willing to put you in that position,

"as the bearer of these ideas, in the front of this institution."

The African-inspired figures are called The NewOnes, will free Us

and that's what Max wants them to do.

Artists are, of course, great seismographs

for things that happen in society.

Also, they address urgencies.

Also, they help us look at the world

in a way that we need to look at it.

Wangechi Mutu is, with her art, a very important proponent

for our bringing in a new practice,

looking at art not only from a Western perspective.

I think of these women as characters that have the capacity,

the freedom and the opportunity to be where they need to be,

to say what they have to say.

They're here and they're present and they've arrived.

Days before opening, Wolf Burchard's exhibition

of 500 years of British art and commerce is nearing completion.

It spans the Tudor to the Victorian eras,

but rests heavily on 18th-century British mercantile expansion.

A display of teapots will take visitors to marine technology,

Anglo-Chinese relations, and slavery.

Most of the 700 exhibits are from the permanent collection

of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts.

Ceramics, textiles, paintings and furniture

sit with monumental architectural objects.

This 17th-century staircase was bought by the Met in the 1930s,

rescued from the demolished stately home Cassiobury Park.

It features balustrades carved in three dimensions

form a single elm tree.

I've worked on this staircase since 2014.

To bring it back to life, to make it speak again

is kind of our goal

and it's a step-by-step process, it's a staircase,

but reaching the top now, I am very pleased.

In the Tudor Gallery,

conservator Carolyn Riccardelli

is protecting a 500-year-old fireplace from dust.

There is a gap between the mantle, the stone and the panelling.

And we want to prevent dust from getting built up behind it.

That's where pests make their way.

A skilled conservator leaves no trace of their existence.

We try to make our interventions invisible.

A certain personality type goes into this.

Well, certainly meticulous.

I guess you're always aiming for perfection

but there's a certain point where you realise that...

..you've gotten as far as you're going to get and you need to stop.

There is a history in the museum

of not wanting to show conservation and not wanting to talk at all

about how the objects were cared for, and that has really changed.

That's changed. I think, before, it was a concern that it would

take away from the sense of wonder and appreciation

of a work of art itself.

And now we see it as a complement to the art.

It's like being at the dentist.

In the workshop,

another team are recreating lost elements of a Georgian table.

It's like surgery. The same tools.

It looks a bit like a spine. Mm-hm.

What we'll do is, we'll just remove this section here to get an idea.

In this case, we have the cast of the original carving here.

And from that we have this negative into which we pour an epoxy resin,

which then comes out like this.

It's difficult for you to see

but there's evidence of the missing carving.

And in this case we have the design drawing.

And then we used ornaments from the mirror to copy from.

It really now would be a complete piece of furniture,

when it wasn't for so, so many years.

On February 24th, the Met hosts a preview gala

for friends and patrons.

GLASS TINKLES

Good evening and welcome to the Met's renovated

and reimagined galleries for British Decorative Arts and Design.

What you will see are a dazzling array of objects and spaces

but also with an updated curatorial narrative.

Many will be seeing items they've donated.

When you're here almost always by yourself,

it's quite surreal to actually see real people here.

You really want to pinch yourself.

Our new Director Max Hollein, he was very keen on what he calls

alternative or additional narratives.

So we are addressing the contrast of the beauty and sometimes

the humour of the objects,

and the cruel aspects of the Empire, such as the slave trade.

So what would be important here is those slaves have a voice,

and so we have quoted first-hand accounts of the slaves,

so we tell a more comprehensive story,

but also address subjects that are more difficult.

So far, the reactions have been rather positive.

This case required so many hours of work.

To see it all in place is so rewarding.

This was once the dining room in Kirtlington Park,

a British stately home cut out and sold to the Met in 1931.

Its Georgian glory restored,

the current residents of the actual house have crossed the Atlantic

to experience it.

It's a real double take.

It's like walking into your home but it's...

It's obviously clearly not, we're in the Met.

They've the got the paintings, the lights,

the beautiful view out the window.

And it is actually pretty accurate. You look down and you see the lake.

And then you can see...I think at home it's a 25-mile view.

You can see a really long way.

It's a strange kind of, like, deja vu, isn't it?

You sort of, erm... You know,

you're standing where I was putting the Christmas tree up.

And the Met put back a copy of the room but not all of it.

So we're missing the main ceiling.

Everything else is the same.

It's quite odd, yes, it is quite odd.

It does feel quite strange... being back, being in here.

On March 2nd, the new British Galleries opened to the public,

signalling the start of a year of landmark exhibitions and events.

But one day earlier,

the first case of coronavirus had been reported in New York.

It was a growing problem abroad, but as yet, not a big story in America.

As the city's eight million citizens went about their business,

the virus was spreading.

There are new warnings about the coronavirus outbreak

as it rapidly takes hold.

New York battled on.

Shutting down was unimaginable.

I had been in discussions with city government each day, and each day

they were encouraging us to do what we can to stay open,

to protect the economy,

and ensure the wellbeing of our public and our staff.

In any museum, crowds throng the galleries - a viral perfect storm.

The Met's board see their responsibilities.

The only appropriate thing to do

is to close the institution immediately.

We called the Mayor's Office to tell them that we were going to be

announcing at 12.30 that we will close at the end of the day.

City Hall did not argue with us.

They also had not yet made a decision themselves

as to what they would recommend.

Today is March 12th.

The anniversary is on April 13th.

All the things we were going to do for the 150th...

But there's a lot of worry in the air.

The fact of the matter is,

you don't know where it's going to strike next.

Other cultural institutions increasingly thought it was

appropriate to close. But no-one had actually made the gesture to do so.

Once we made that decision, others followed suit.

Within 24 hours, the entire cultural infrastructure of New York City

and all of Broadway and everywhere else was closed.

SIREN WAILS

A state of emergency was declared in New York in the last hour...

The city that never sleeps doesn't know when it will wake.

Right before we had to leave the building,

it felt like we were in an enormous moment

in the institution's history and in our own histories.

The museum hasn't closed its doors for more than three days

for more than a century. The 150th looks like being a memorable year -

but not in a good way.

We determined that over the next 12 months we're likely to see

somewhere between 100 and $150 million of loss.

You have artworks that are in the midst of treatment.

Panel discussions and lectures and talks -

everything has either been cancelled or postponed.

Our anniversary projects like Making The Met,

they were so close to the finish line,

We basically pushed those exhibitions to the fall.

Although I was thinking about the exhibition,

to be honest with you, I was really thinking about New York City

and the 2,200 people who work at the museum.

The cavernous building is frozen at noon, March 13th.

The staff have clocked out and gone to ground.

I'm in Charleston, South Carolina.

I'm at my home in Montclair, New Jersey.

I've made several wedding cakes but nothing to the scale of what

I was planning on making for the 150th.

The membership executive, an avid baker,

was to have made an official staff cake.

She did it anyway,

despite knowing she might have to eat it all herself.

That's so good!

If you've come out of this

and you've lost weight, you're just doing it wrong.

The fourth branch of the museum is our digital branch.

That team has been working to find ways to bring the light

and beauty of an art museum to people

when 700 New York City residents are dying every day.

There's a nationwide shortage of protective equipment.

New York hospitals are under pressure as never before.

The Met's five conservation departments have large reserves

of gloves for handling precious objects.

Over 23,000 gloves and 300 masks distributed

where it was most needed, to medical facilities.

The Textile Conservation Department, no longer repairing fabrics,

becomes a mask-making factory.

How many masks? LAUGHING: 1,300.

If I speed things up I could make one per 20 minutes.

RADIO BEEPS This is Valentina, radio check.

The Fifth Avenue building is itself an antique.

Security staff move in to keep a round-the-clock vigil.

You have to be concerned with external entities...

..try to compromise, you know, our perimeters and take advantage

of what they might perceive as a scaled-down presence.

By May, conservators are making weekly team visits

to check on vulnerable objects in their new twilit world.

All right. Carolyn Riccardelli is safety officer.

Textile Conservation made these masks for us

so I want to read the letter.

I think it's important that you hear this.

"Wonderful colleagues, these masks were sewn..."

It's not that emotional, I'm just... Sorry.

"These masks were sewn with grateful hearts in appreciation

"for your care and dedication to the museum.

"We thank and salute each of you."

Ready? All right. How are you doing, Rachel?

I'm OK, you? I'm OK.

Hanging in there.

If these rounds are really simple,

that means we're doing everything right.

So for textiles, I'm looking for insects, slipped hinges.

Some things we've covered up with brown paper to protect them

from light exposure.

Next is Sahel.

Yeah, lights off completely in here.

Everything looks good.

Next is Making The Met. Hooray!

SHE LAUGHS

The show is in the process of being installed.

Yeah, look at this, all these, erm, notes.

This is an exhibition install frozen in time.

I'm looking for any critters flying out, like moths.

Japanese armour. We're used to things being covered up,

but it's still exciting to see what's inside.

I mean, who wouldn't be excited by that?

It's nice to come here and look at stuff.

And here's our saint.

So she is credited for ending the plague in Palermo.

Andrea, is it Saint Ros-alia? Santa Rosa-lia.

This is a beautiful painting by Van Dyck, the Flemish artist,

working in Palermo, Italy, in 1624.

And it shows the Saint.

During the terrible plague, people were praying to her,

and Van Dyck was in the city and captures that moment.

It was one of the first works of art that was purchased

and it has taken on additional relevance for all of us.

Come on, we're ready. We're ready for you!

This is an exhibition about the museum's history.

One of the things that has really changed for us is the knowledge

that we are living in one of the big moments for the museum.

When alone in the empty halls,

the conservator goes in search of a very old friend.

Each time I'm in the museum I go to see Tullio Lombardo's Adam,

which is a sculpture that I worked on for more than ten years.

He's a marble sculpture from the Renaissance, maybe 1495.

The pedestal beneath it collapsed

and he fell to the floor and broke into 28 large fragments

and hundreds of small fragments.

It was a terrible accident that affected everybody in the museum.

And it was through the efforts of a huge group of people

that brought it back to the public view.

For me, this is a reminder that...we can overcome.

Spring becomes summer.

In solitude, the executive staff

experience their workplace in a new way.

Walking through the museum with 5,000 years of the greatest

works of art ever produced, it's a spiritual experience

to be alone with all of that collective humanity.

You learn a lot about yourself and about the world around you.

Director Max Hollein asks questions about the future,

whenever it might start.

It's a time of reflecting. What is really important for us?

How can we best reach our audiences?

How are we going to be an even better institution?

Closed by the virus, the Crossroads Project is Max's own vision.

It celebrates creative commonalities between disparate cultures.

The idea for Crossroads was, we actually want to show that

the history of humankind, the history of cultural evolution,

is clearly all the history of interconnectedness.

That these are works coming out of Africa, out of Asia,

out of Europe, out of the Americas,

and they all have a similar idea behind them.

In juxtaposition, two carvings of African men.

One, a German altarpiece depicting an African Magus,

the other, a priestly elder from the Dogon people of Mali.

With projects like this one, when you've just opened it

and you could only share it with your audiences for a couple of days,

it feels right now as if these installations are in waiting.

In July, news from Governor Cuomo has the museum astir.

We're going ahead with phased reopening.

Low-risk indoor arts entertainment, museums...

Now comes the race to be ready for reopening.

The completion of Making The Met is first on the agenda.

OK, over here. All righty.

This is an exhibition about the development of the museum itself.

All departments are contributing.

Today, a Met treasure is being brought very slowly

from the first to the second floor.

Curator Diana Craig Patch is responsible for Egypt's Great Queen.

Hatshepsut is in the show Making The Met,

because she is one of our best-known pieces.

The Egyptian government shared the statue with us -

which is something that we always want to acknowledge -

and she is exquisite.

She looks out across time.

She doesn't look at anyone, she just looks out across time.

It goes right here. OK.

Hatshepsut will be placed in the window,

her back turned on the park

and the obelisk of the upstart ruler who succeeded her.

Look at her! I mean, is that sensational? Is that sensational?

Acquired in 1929, the statue is carved from limestone.

Fragile and weighing just over a ton, it's hard to move.

I don't think there's much variability in that.

It doesn't look like there's a whole lot of place to move it.

Crayton Sohan leads the in-house Art Movement Team.

Slow, because we are going to see how it picks up.

Everybody's got her, right?

I just want to make sure somebody's keeping her from swinging.

Ready. Crayton,

we have to make sure she's actually looking straight,

regardless of the base.

They can't centre the base, they have to centre her face.

Egyptian statues are never balanced. Right.

So if you balance with the base then the...

..face can be looking somewhere else. Right.

Memories of Carolyn Riccardelli's Adam statue,

which spontaneously collapsed in 2002, are easily stirred.

It took 12 years and many hands to rebuild him.

You see the thing is, Diana, that it's very close here.

And it has a little bit more room in the back.

We can back up a little bit. A tiny bit.

I'm just looking at her face.

It just needs to go about a half inch that way.

Right, whoa, whoa. Got her?

Ready?

No, no, no. Oops, she's moved. OK, OK, OK, OK, OK.

When they went to move it over that little bit...

Yeah. ..it slid and the whole back end went out.

Yeah, she's not straight any more.

The back end is no longer...

ALL TALK AT ONCE

OK, fine.

Can you run down and get me two four-foot clamps?

BANG AND CLATTERING

I can't. I can't!

They drop things...

Diana? Yeah.

Are we ready?

I'm looking.

Yeah, she's getting better.

A little bit more.

There she goes.

She's fine. Is it good?

Yeah, you can stop. Thank you very much.

It's funny, she's not that big but she's not easy.

Nothing on Egypt statuary is straight.

But they managed to get a pyramid perfect. Yeah.

HE CHUCKLES

In August, New York is beginning to open up.

Shops will admit mask-wearing customers,

and restaurants can serve diners in the open air,

in bus lanes and on pavements.

Inside the Met,

the final preparations for the opening are under way.

In times of trouble and duress, like after 9/11, people want to be here.

And without people here, without that energy,

the museum becomes something more like a mausoleum

than a living institution.

After five months walking these echoing halls,

Max and Dan are very slightly buoyant.

There's lots going on.

For the first time in six months, we now have plants and flowers.

This was kind of pulled back from the pole but it looks like

minimal art, right? I actually photographed it.

And all the hand sanitiser machines look like a new sound installation.

And it was obvious we've got a lot of hand sanitisers here.

A task force is overseeing the critical moment of re-entry.

Yes, I-I'm sorry, I was... I should have it on.

Laurel Britton is the Head of Revenue and Operations.

Now her previous experience in military studies

has come to the fore.

The greatest challenge has been the size of it.

The scope of this building and our collection,

trying to keep staff safe and trying to get visitors safe.

And just making sure we're doing everything we can to minimise risk.

Joy is muted.

Massive financial losses have led to a 20% cut in staff.

We thought we would declare victory and move on to the 151st year.

We didn't realise that the 150th would be, maybe,

one of the defining years in the history of the museum.

Finally the day dawns.

First in line. I know. Tell me,

what is it like to be able to come back here after so many months?

It's crazy good.

I have been taking my girls to the Met since they were babies.

I couldn't get here early enough.

So they opened at ten, we got here at nine.

I don't know if I've ever been happier to be some place in my life.

To see people here is just going to be wonderful.

After five months and 15 days, the Communications Team

know footfall will be a barometer of public confidence.

Normally, on an August day, we can get 30,000 people.

We'll be able to accommodate up to 14,000 people,

or 2,000 people an hour.

It'll be a really nice experience for New Yorkers, I think.

We've been waiting months.

Good morning. Everyone's a member or has a ten o'clock reservation? Yeah.

All right, thank you.

The first steps are tentative.

Entry is by ticket and time slot.

Routes through galleries are laid out.

Everything is deep cleaned.

You could eat your breakfast off the Met.

We anticipate a pretty nice turnout.

Before they come through the doors, there's a vetting process as relates

to, you know, the Covid-19 protocols.

Once Deputy Director of the Secret Service,

Security Chief Keith Prewitt

balances biohazards with public relations.

You see the Plexiglas that's been installed.

Things like that, on the surface, can appear unwelcoming

but I think in today's environment, it's very reassuring.

And, erm, they're going to go through and become reacquainted

with this place that they love.

It's been months since Head of Communications Ken Weine

had good news to communicate.

Dan and Max have been navigating the pandemic

and the financial challenges the museum face.

So there are a lot of tough choices, and they stay positive.

It's all about the visitors.

I'm running to the Contemporary Collection. Modern art.

I just want to be surrounded by art and beauty.

The Met was the first great New York institution to close.

The reopening is about more than just art.

The idea of, you know, in terms of what it means for New York City?

Oh, yeah, it means that there is some semblance of normalcy.

The Met only closed for, what, max three days prior to Covid,

so this is a big first step.

Almost all of the time slots are now fully reserved through the day.

We have been through a lot of challenging moments

in the last six months,

and what we've been working towards is this moment.

When the Met first opened, visitors were American.

15 decades later, with tourism suspended,

the museum is back where it started.

Oh, I'm ecstatic, are you kidding?

I'm ready to do a handstand, I'm so happy the Met is back.

I grew up in New York so I've been coming since I was in second grade.

To come back to the place we love,

to come back and to visit the artists that we love,

part of it is our heritage as well.

It's not just a place, you know,

it has more significance than just a building.

People that have gotten here throughout the day, like,

they walk through the door and they throw their hands up

and they'll scream and they're like, "Yes!"

There was some woman that just went "Wah!"

You know, like this, when she came in.

Yes, young people, er, connecting with the Romantic paintings.

The children, they love the Temple of Dendur

and anything in the Egyptian Wing.

And then we have the modern-art-type folks.

Er, they're more a hipster type of people.

Cynthia King has not left home for five months.

The Met is her first destination.

I'm a New Yorker.

We grew up in the projects,

so here at the Metropolitan

we were able to see what was going on in other cultures.

And we were able to wonder about it.

For a child who's still a child who has grown up, it's life.

Upstairs, visitors see Making The Met for the first time.

Walking through the doors, it's like going into a sacred space.

There is such beauty, so many treasures here.

Your mind, your imagination is sparked by coming to something

as culturally, visually, artistically rich

as a collection like this.

It was such an emptiness when it wasn't here.

Looking at beautiful things, I mean, I can't...

Looking at beautiful things... just...I need it.

It's nice to come back and see stuff that is new. It feels like momentum,

the museum and the city carrying forward this touchstone,

this thing that's been here longer than any of us have been alive,

and it's so solid in its building on Fifth Avenue,

it feels like it's going to be here for ever. And so it's a...

It's a symbol of New York resilience for New Yorkers.

I think that's why they're coming.

Everyone is wearing their mask.

People are maintaining social distance.

They're helping us to keep this open

and to keep all of New York going.

I've been a member for almost 40 years. This is like a childhood home

to me. Yeah. So this is a very important moment.

I'm Greco Roman, my background is, and so when I come in here,

I get to see, like, what my ancestors look like.

I see my cheekbones, I see my lips, I see my nose.

And it's like... Oh, God, yes! It's like...

..I see my past in here. These are my stories.

This is, like, MY heritage.

It's 27th August.

The New York death toll stands at just over 32,000.

Today's visitors are taking a risk...for art.

There weren't very many people that saw the sculpture

lying on the ground in pieces.

But I knew that there were people...

..who thought that it would be impossible to put it back together.

I think that the consensus among the conservators was

that we could do it.

We just didn't know exactly how yet

or how long it would take.

When you've gone through seemingly impossible projects,

all along the way there are milestones.

And I feel like we've passed an important milestone reopening.

People are very eager to come back to the museum,

but they are faced with the reality that it's not like it was before.

You know, the first time you come back, that realisation

really hits you hard.

People find solace in things that are ancient, finding connections

to people that have possibly been through the same things.

And I think that's why people come to museums.

They want to feel the connection to the past...

..when you don't know what's coming in the future.

A series of racist killings forces America

to confront social injustice.

The Met examines its own record.

Any discussion about the future of the museum has to take account

of this moment. It's huge.

There are many questions to answer, not least about the art.

These objects were stolen. It's time for museums to be reconsidering

their own colonial past.

Opening shots. Framing the performer.

How does an institution dedicated to the past

change to reflect the present?

I could apologise all day long for my predecessors.

What is meaningful is to put yourself on the line.

Lead the way, Kelsey.

Covid will be a footnote.

This revolution will change the Met for good.

The history taught to my children is that of slavery.

And there's more.

Before that, there is more.