For many, and I would agree with this perspective too, the most important dimension of art education is always the opportunity students have actually to be artists themselves, which means drawing, painting, sculpting, assembling, creating in their own right. That said, learning about art from more distance also has value. “I liked how our guest said that what we see in the objects of a museum may not be the same from one moment to the next. Depending on the light, the positioning of a picture, the information we have about what we are looking at, sometimes we pass over a painting with a glance and sometimes we gaze at it for ages and ages.”
Philippe de Montebello, LFNY alum (’58) and former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the stage of the auditorium on January 22, 2015.
These words, paraphrased from a parent a few minutes after the conclusion of a fascinating lecture (see video below) given in our Cultural Center two weeks ago by Mr. Philippe de Montebello, the longest-serving director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and one of the most renowned museum curators of all time, could just as easily have been expressed by our students. Comments from them, overheard and received by me as more than 150 eighth and ninth graders streamed out of the school auditorium, were similar. “I hadn’t realized that so much influences what we see in a work of art,” expressed one, to which another added something along the lines of “even when we think we know everything there is to know about something, what we feel might not be what the artist wanted.” And such conversations about art went on throughout the day.
The encounter with Mr. de Montebello was made even more special because our illustrious guest is an alumnus of the Lycée Français de New York, someone who had once passed his Baccalaureate at our school, like our Quatrième and Troisième students would do in the not-so-distant future, and had then headed to Harvard College, a destination which definitely captured the imagination of our eighth and ninth graders. The complicity they felt with him, as well as the respect Philip de Montebello showed our students created one of the strongest speaker-audience connections I have witnessed at the LFNY.
In an interview with the New York Times in 2010, Mr. de Montebello described working as a professor at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, where he had started teaching upon retirement from the Met, as follows: “If you’re conscientious and you are dealing with young minds and people who really pay attention to what you say…you have to realize that everything you say has to be properly documented, has to be well researched…you have to deliver the best that you can.” He might have said the same about his approach to speaking at our school; moreover, his seriousness of purpose was reflected back to him by a thoroughly rapt audience.
Learning about how to look at a work of art, a lesson in learning how to understand and appreciate oneself.
The context for Mr. de Montebello’s visit was simple. In partnership with the Director of our Cultural Center Pascale Richard, a team of secondary school art and history teachers had pushed back the walls of our classrooms and led our Quatrième and Troisième students to the auditorium because they had wished to enrich further our already excellent art history curriculum. How exactly? By providing our eighth and ninth graders with insights from someone so impassioned and authoritative that he could provide a perspective not only on the remarkable wealth of the past, but also on the relevance of art history to the present and future, as if learning about how to look at a work of art were also a lesson in learning how to understand and appreciate oneself and one’s fellow human beings.
“Until meeting Philippe de Montebello,” one student shared, “I had never thought about working in a museum. Now I can see how interesting that job would be.” Why, I had probed? “I’ve always loved art,” she went on, “but the more I learn about how to appreciate it and to talk about it, the more I think I should share my passion with others.” Hmmm, I thought to myself, a true LFNY student, very much like the alumnus from whom she had heard that morning. Exceptionally sensitive, exceptionally inquisitive, exceptionally thoughtful about how her own learning can and should be of service to others. Our deepest gratitude to Philippe de Montebello for his extraordinary example, as well as to our pedagogical team for providing our students with such outstanding possibilities for growth.
*The title of an exquisite book by Philippe de Montebello and Martin Gaylord, published to great critical acclaim this past September by Thames & Hudson.
About the Author :
Sean Lynch was Head of School at the Lycée Français de New York from 2011 to 2018, after having spent 15 years at another French bilingual school outside of Paris: the Lycée International de St. Germain-en-Laye. Holding both French and American nationalities, educated in France (Sciences Po Paris) and the United States (Yale), and as the proud husband of a French-American spouse and father of two French-American daughters, Sean Lynch has spent his entire professional and personal life at the junction between the languages, cultures and educational systems of France and the United States. In addition to being passionate about education, he loves everything related to the mountains, particularly the Parc National du Mercantour.