DAVID BRESLIN
Met Curator in Charge of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art
The Met’s curator in charge of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art is bringing cutting-edge masterpieces into one of New York’s most august institutions and overseeing the renovation of its Tang Wing into a temple of contemporary creation.
WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? My infant daughter Grace has helped remind me that there are 24 hours in the day. And to quote the title of a great David Wojnarowicz painting: History keeps me awake at night.
WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? The day after my father died, my brothers and I went to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. I have this wonderful picture of John and Marc flanking Matisse’s The Joy of Life, as if the painting were standing in for where Dad would be. It’s such an indelible reminder of the pleasures the past can give the present (when it’s not keeping you awake at night).
“My infant daughter Grace has helped remind me that there are 24 hours in the day.”
NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Fugazi played at Drexel University in the early 1990s. My dad worked there at the time. Though they weren’t exactly post-hardcore music fans, my parents must have heard them interviewed, and they introduced the band to me. I was probably 12 or 13. My work continues to be informed by them, particularly thinking about the tightrope they walked between improvisation and radical precision, heart-on-your sleeve emotion and raw aggression, political conviction and open-ended abstraction. I still try to wear their egalitarian ethos—all-ages shows, affordable ticket prices—like a uniform, even if under a suit!
WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? My favorite kind of art reveals itself slowly, like a mystery or a revelation. Take a candy piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. You and others can take a piece from this shimmering field, and the museum will ultimately replenish it to its ideal weight. The work is depleted and constituted anew. There’s delight and surprise and a commingling of senses, memory, and time. How do I explain this curious thing that I love to all the very smart people out there who don’t think about art every day? And what do I owe the artwork and the artist when I explain it? How much backstory—about the AIDS crisis, the artist’s biography—do I share or withhold so the work comes alive to viewers on their own terms?
in your life?
