[Music].
It's been really amazing to work here for 25 years and see how this place is
constantly changing.
I work in an image archive and I love cataloging.
The collection that I work with is the Museum's archive of photographs taken by
staff, old gallery shots, objects,
spaces inside and outside the Museum.
It's the closest thing I get to time travel.
I've learned how to look for clues.
Sometimes there's no information. So for example,
I wound up with this group of about 30 images of the famous front steps of The
Met, and none of them had dates,
so I started looking more closely.
There was a woman walking her dog. There was a hot dog cart.
There was a man sitting on a bench, reading a magazine.
And it was Life magazine.
It was July 4th, 1970. The plaza had just been renovated.
The steps before were very narrow, very steep, very crowded.
The Met was really looking to open itself up to the world,
welcoming people into the Museum.
It's the Museum's 150th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of the front steps,
and they've become a pivotal part of New York. Just,
like, 50 years ago, you see hot dog vendors,
you see kids running through, you see people sitting and chatting.
I used to be terrified of change. Working in a
place like this and looking back in time at these photos and seeing change?
It's been a life lesson.
Time is the best lens that you have because
it helps you contextualize where you are.
When I visit The Met, I dress up. It's out of respect for the work! All
of these eyes may be looking right back at us
and I don't want these eyes to ask, what was he thinking?
[Laughs]
When I took over the fashion department at Parsons,
I was absolutely flabbergasted by the fact that there was no course in fashion
history and I thought, 'this is completely irresponsible'.
Imagine being a fashion designer and working on an elaborate swan gown and then
you find out that, well, Alexander McQueen did that 20 years ago.
You need to know that.
And it's not to put constraints on you as much as it is to know your kindred
spirits; to know you have a soul mate.
And I thought, well, I need to go to my Mecca, which is The Met,
and bring my students here.
We began here because this is the cradle of fashion. Ancient Egypt,
where tailoring was born.
It's a refinement of the clothes.
It's a minimalism which was offset by an exuberance of jewelry.
The manufacture of fabric began in Egypt and it began 8,000 years ago with flax.
And we would move from here chronologically to Ancient Greece and Rome where we
would start talking about drapery.
And when we look at the Renaissance,
those were the haute couture of the time.
[Music change]
For me, The Met is where I refuel.
It's where I find that I'm grounded, that I understand better who I am.
I was committed to dusting off the relics and saying,
these are alive.
They're as relevant today as they were at the time that they were created.
[Music]
I first saw ballet when I was six years old.
A ballet company came and performed at my family's church in my hometown of
Charlotte, North Carolina, and I remember being mesmerized.
I was really struck by the male dancers.
I've always thought that the male ballet dancer is kind of like a warrior poet.
And that planted in me this dream of coming to New York to dance with New York City Ballet.
I arrived here when I was 14 to begin this very rigorous ballet training.
There was a supporter of the ballet and they gave me a membership to The Met Museum.
I was always very curious about how ballet was connected to the other art forms
and in The Met I found a place that was designed for a person like me.
I saw the rhythm in repetition of a pattern,
the movement in a brushstroke, in a painting,
the clean lines and the precision of shapes and the grace.
This mix of strength and sensitivity that I'm trying to cultivate
as a ballet dancer.
The idea of épaulement is very important in classical ballet.
You're adding contour to the use of your upper body and you see that in Rodin.
The The Burghers of Calais is like a tableau for a corps de ballet.
I come here to be inspired, to find a clue,
to find the next step.
There are these long scroll pieces in the Chinese Wing with written commentary
from later generations,
in the same way that classical ballet taught person to person.
That creates this deep embodied dialogue across the ages.