hello um
so I’m here to speak about how
demographic growth so the increase of
the world population has changed the
social contract has changed our habits
and has changed the role of museums and
the arts thereby so the first time or
the moment when world population reached
a milestone the milestone of 1 billion
people was around 1800 people were
shocked there’s a certain mr. Robert
Malthus who’s often times still quoted
with his doom and gloom prophesies and
analyses and he said that this this
growth would bring the end of mankind
well in 1975 we reached four billion the
world still not come to an end on the
contrary
life expectancy has grown tremendously
people bigger swaths of people are the
middle classes and in 2025 just imagine
that we’re going to be 8 billion on this
planet it’s scary
but what happened during that
demographic pressure is a change of
society a change of how we interact with
one another and of how we define Society
so Richard Sennett who is now professor
at the London School of Economics wrote
a book called the fall of public man
where he analyzed what happened in
London and in Paris at the end of the
18th century beginning of the 19th
century due to that demographic pressure
it’s really fascinating so what happened
was that people could no more deal in
the same way with foreigners as they
used to in a less populated world so
when you went to a town that you wanted
to meet some
you couldn’t just directly go to that
person you need an intermediary who knew
both parties
that’s one another one is that the
notion of privacy the way we know it now
with gated communities more or less
started then and when you think I don’t
know some of you may have gone to London
in Belgravia and Westminster they’re
these squares that have in the middle of
garden and only those who are living
around have the key to go into the
garden it’s no more public space it’s
taken away from the public realm there
is there many many other aspects in
urbanism as well so where people
traditionally lived in a city all social
classes combined in one block of flats
in one quadrangle if you will
people got segregated so the poor people
in London for instance moved to the East
End the rich people went for the West
and society was fragmented socially very
very fragmented but then came the saving
grace which is a mixed blessing as
everything is in the development of
societies which is the notion of the
nation-state so that you are proud to
belong to a unit that is much bigger
than you independent of your social
status you become a patriot and you’re
no more coaxed by some nutty Duke to go
to war you go as a patriot to war and
fight for your country now the stage for
these nation-states
was set often obviously in in increments
but there are two important dates for
that one is the American Revolution
which started in 1775 and the other one
is the eventual revolution which is
dated nine 1789 and in those contexts
there was a kind of legislation for
every citizen of France of the United
States there were civic rights defined
for every citizen the problem in the
American idea of creating a nation-state
that normally is based on the idea of
homogeneity ethnic homogeneity and
cultural homogeneity was a little bit
skewed as we all know one of the the
original sins of American history is
slavery
so that homogeneity did not exist and
the country struggles still with this
there was also the decimation of the
native population and America is an
immigration country so homogeneity is
not a given as it would be in European
countries and now I’m coming to the Arts
because you probably waited when do the
art show their face so just one year
after the American Revolution started in
1776 the Empress of the Austrian hungry
Austrian Empire
Maria Theresia and her son Joseph the
second maid which is part of
enlightenment thought we have to use our
collection to educate those who are in
our realm and give them an idea of what
it means to be all part of one unit
nation-state basically so they asked an
obscure Swiss Christian for measure to
refashion their collection and make it
publicly accessible and what formation
did completely changed the way art
history is written ever since he
presented all the schools by nations so
there was the Dutch school there was the
Flemish school there was the British
school the French the Spanish Italy
didn’t exist as a notion as a country so
there was the Neapolitan school the
Venetian and so on and so forth and then
he snuck something in which was the
German school again a country that did
not exist there was Prussia there was
Austria there were all these naughty
Duke’s everywhere that sent some people
to America to fight on behalf of the
British and
this is the beginning of a way of
spinning what national identity means so
think about that art historians there’s
also the beginning of of academic art
history artists Dorian’s try to define
what is the essence of German Asst as
you can see it in a painting and
somebody very deadpan very serious said
so the French may be elegant and their
paintings extremely elegant but we
Germans we are profound we’re rustic but
we are profound
they are superficial and you get this in
basically every art history writing in
the 19th century categorizing people in
a very sweeping way and categorizing the
the arts in a very very sweeping way and
nowadays when you go to museums you you
find on the label the name of the artist
date of birth and then you find that
this person is American or German born
American there were even kind of
ridiculous disputes is Vincent van Gogh
French or is he – he’s Dutch born but he
spent most of his artistic life in
France and the French like to take
everybody in so for a lot of friends she
is actually French but you may laugh
about this I don’t know if you know the
name Whistler a very very interesting
American painter who spent most of his
life actually in in in London and who
was born in Massachusetts in Lowell and
he didn’t think that this was sexy
enough so he said I have the right to
define where I’m born I was born in st.
Petersburg and that’s it and he is
always described as American but there
is nothing profoundly American or an
American about him he just happened to
cross the the Atlantic and be part of a
very rarefied a group of people in
England and in Europe so the Nazis
pushed it even further art was stolen
from all over Europe as the
the German army Nazi army was was was
invading all the neighbors and there was
a discourse on Rembrandt being actually
much more German than Dutch because he
had this profoundness that we Germans
have and nobody else does so and then
there were others who were considered to
be the other degenerate although they
may have been German born they were not
the right artists to really define the
German soul so the sameness and other
nassif ining both go hand in hand and of
course it’s a very futile enterprise to
do that so how about population in the
1960s had crawled its way up to three
point I don’t know how many billion
inhabitants the fights of nation-states
in world war one and two showed that it
couldn’t continue in that way and all of
a sudden our world was not just a world
of nation-states it was a world it
became a world of zones of influence
it was the Western world versus the
communist bloc and then there was a
third world with countries that hadn’t
economically developed sufficiently such
as India China and countries from Latin
America Brazil at the same time the
United Nations were founded and there
was an organization that is very dear to
my heart although they are utterly naive
and extremely extremely optimistic but
it’s better that an extremely past
pessimistic and yeah and I don’t know
what the the equivalent of naive a
negative is so they started to define a
worldwide list of heritage of humanity
so on that list you have the Statue of
Liberty
you have the Cathedral of Chartres in
France you have Mayan sites in Mexico
you have the historic city of Timbuktu
in Mali
places in India and Rajasthan in China
in Australia and what happened very very
slowly since World War two is that we
all understand that we have actually a
shared heritage and as our world
population is growing and growing and
growing as mobility is growing as
[Music]
immigrants are all over the world this
is in terms of movement of people for
economic and other reasons it has never
been to that point on planet Earth so
there is no more other we just see
people were less fortunate than us some
people would like to customers other but
it is basically yeah we see the humanity
in what we perceived as the other more
easier we have that opportunity America
tried to build a national school the
Europeans never looked at it because
they were far too much navel-gazing
themselves and what happened after World
War Two was that the American National
Art which was really pushed by the
Kennedy administration for instance for
the annales in Venice and and elsewhere
it was Jackson Pollock
de Kooning so Abstract Expressionism but
it was no more seen as just American it
was seen as representing the Western
world so we are slowly slowly moving
away from this idea of a static self and
a very odd and most likely inferior
other but it’s very slow this movement
so where we are we today the the worst
art museum because it all boils down to
the worst happens and that’s why I’m
here
seize its role in telling the history of
our world heritage in a new way
so right now we’re thinking about
redistributing our galleries and we will
not make a point of define
what separates us but actually
accentuating what unifies us what unites
us and make sure that we are all taking
care of that shared heritage of art from
all over the world anecdotally something
that I’m extremely proud of we have been
organizing naturalization ceremonies in
our Renaissance Court the first one took
place in January of last year and we
just had the second one which was at the
beginning of this month April and there
were fifty new Americans coming from all
over the world some elect 30 countries
from Argentina to Zambia and the keynote
speaker said to them I hope when you’re
coming you are bringing your cultural
suitcases along and you’re opening those
suitcases and enrich America as previous
generations have always done the federal
judge who officiated said you are
standing here in a place where the
culture of the entire world is preserved
and where we learn about the creativity
of mankind now that you’re an American
citizen do help us to steward this for
future generations at that same event
the current President of the United
States gave a talk not in person comes
by a video as in the previous year it
was still Obama and he said something
that gave me pause and not in the way
you think it gave me pause because he
said and now you’re American and now you
have to assimilate everybody looked on
the ground but assimilation doesn’t mean
become a white person that would be very
difficult if you’re from Zambia it also
doesn’t mean start to eat hamburgers
this is not very healthy but it could
mean that we are all sticking by certain
foundational rules of this country which
is the Constitution and
which is a social contract so it is not
as negative as it was perceived in that
meeting by most of us who were there let
me conclude with this demographic growth
it is indeed scary that in 2025 we’re
going to be 8 billion people on this
planet it has huge implications on the
environment we’re seeing this so all the
more do we need to work together to
steward this planet and to steward our
heritage because that is also what
connects us and then there is a just a
very good little piece of information
although in the 20th century we grew by
400% kind of unimaginable the peak of
growth is over we are currently in terms
of world growth at 1% so it’s it’s it’s
a line that goes down and this is in
parts related to the middle
classification of the world and to a new
economic system that is settling in
which again will change the social
contract and I am optimistic enough to
think that this social contract will be
a worldwide one that the UN will not be
as toothless as it currently is there is
the United States of Europe that is
forced to constitute itself there are
many tensions that make it extremely
necessary that we all work together to
steward the future of this planet and
the future of mankind thank you [Applause]
so I’m here to speak about how
demographic growth so the increase of
the world population has changed the
social contract has changed our habits
and has changed the role of museums and
the arts thereby so the first time or
the moment when world population reached
a milestone the milestone of 1 billion
people was around 1800 people were
shocked there’s a certain mr. Robert
Malthus who’s often times still quoted
with his doom and gloom prophesies and
analyses and he said that this this
growth would bring the end of mankind
well in 1975 we reached four billion the
world still not come to an end on the
contrary
life expectancy has grown tremendously
people bigger swaths of people are the
middle classes and in 2025 just imagine
that we’re going to be 8 billion on this
planet it’s scary
but what happened during that
demographic pressure is a change of
society a change of how we interact with
one another and of how we define Society
so Richard Sennett who is now professor
at the London School of Economics wrote
a book called the fall of public man
where he analyzed what happened in
London and in Paris at the end of the
18th century beginning of the 19th
century due to that demographic pressure
it’s really fascinating so what happened
was that people could no more deal in
the same way with foreigners as they
used to in a less populated world so
when you went to a town that you wanted
to meet some
you couldn’t just directly go to that
person you need an intermediary who knew
both parties
that’s one another one is that the
notion of privacy the way we know it now
with gated communities more or less
started then and when you think I don’t
know some of you may have gone to London
in Belgravia and Westminster they’re
these squares that have in the middle of
garden and only those who are living
around have the key to go into the
garden it’s no more public space it’s
taken away from the public realm there
is there many many other aspects in
urbanism as well so where people
traditionally lived in a city all social
classes combined in one block of flats
in one quadrangle if you will
people got segregated so the poor people
in London for instance moved to the East
End the rich people went for the West
and society was fragmented socially very
very fragmented but then came the saving
grace which is a mixed blessing as
everything is in the development of
societies which is the notion of the
nation-state so that you are proud to
belong to a unit that is much bigger
than you independent of your social
status you become a patriot and you’re
no more coaxed by some nutty Duke to go
to war you go as a patriot to war and
fight for your country now the stage for
these nation-states
was set often obviously in in increments
but there are two important dates for
that one is the American Revolution
which started in 1775 and the other one
is the eventual revolution which is
dated nine 1789 and in those contexts
there was a kind of legislation for
every citizen of France of the United
States there were civic rights defined
for every citizen the problem in the
American idea of creating a nation-state
that normally is based on the idea of
homogeneity ethnic homogeneity and
cultural homogeneity was a little bit
skewed as we all know one of the the
original sins of American history is
slavery
so that homogeneity did not exist and
the country struggles still with this
there was also the decimation of the
native population and America is an
immigration country so homogeneity is
not a given as it would be in European
countries and now I’m coming to the Arts
because you probably waited when do the
art show their face so just one year
after the American Revolution started in
1776 the Empress of the Austrian hungry
Austrian Empire
Maria Theresia and her son Joseph the
second maid which is part of
enlightenment thought we have to use our
collection to educate those who are in
our realm and give them an idea of what
it means to be all part of one unit
nation-state basically so they asked an
obscure Swiss Christian for measure to
refashion their collection and make it
publicly accessible and what formation
did completely changed the way art
history is written ever since he
presented all the schools by nations so
there was the Dutch school there was the
Flemish school there was the British
school the French the Spanish Italy
didn’t exist as a notion as a country so
there was the Neapolitan school the
Venetian and so on and so forth and then
he snuck something in which was the
German school again a country that did
not exist there was Prussia there was
Austria there were all these naughty
Duke’s everywhere that sent some people
to America to fight on behalf of the
British and
this is the beginning of a way of
spinning what national identity means so
think about that art historians there’s
also the beginning of of academic art
history artists Dorian’s try to define
what is the essence of German Asst as
you can see it in a painting and
somebody very deadpan very serious said
so the French may be elegant and their
paintings extremely elegant but we
Germans we are profound we’re rustic but
we are profound
they are superficial and you get this in
basically every art history writing in
the 19th century categorizing people in
a very sweeping way and categorizing the
the arts in a very very sweeping way and
nowadays when you go to museums you you
find on the label the name of the artist
date of birth and then you find that
this person is American or German born
American there were even kind of
ridiculous disputes is Vincent van Gogh
French or is he – he’s Dutch born but he
spent most of his artistic life in
France and the French like to take
everybody in so for a lot of friends she
is actually French but you may laugh
about this I don’t know if you know the
name Whistler a very very interesting
American painter who spent most of his
life actually in in in London and who
was born in Massachusetts in Lowell and
he didn’t think that this was sexy
enough so he said I have the right to
define where I’m born I was born in st.
Petersburg and that’s it and he is
always described as American but there
is nothing profoundly American or an
American about him he just happened to
cross the the Atlantic and be part of a
very rarefied a group of people in
England and in Europe so the Nazis
pushed it even further art was stolen
from all over Europe as the
the German army Nazi army was was was
invading all the neighbors and there was
a discourse on Rembrandt being actually
much more German than Dutch because he
had this profoundness that we Germans
have and nobody else does so and then
there were others who were considered to
be the other degenerate although they
may have been German born they were not
the right artists to really define the
German soul so the sameness and other
nassif ining both go hand in hand and of
course it’s a very futile enterprise to
do that so how about population in the
1960s had crawled its way up to three
point I don’t know how many billion
inhabitants the fights of nation-states
in world war one and two showed that it
couldn’t continue in that way and all of
a sudden our world was not just a world
of nation-states it was a world it
became a world of zones of influence
it was the Western world versus the
communist bloc and then there was a
third world with countries that hadn’t
economically developed sufficiently such
as India China and countries from Latin
America Brazil at the same time the
United Nations were founded and there
was an organization that is very dear to
my heart although they are utterly naive
and extremely extremely optimistic but
it’s better that an extremely past
pessimistic and yeah and I don’t know
what the the equivalent of naive a
negative is so they started to define a
worldwide list of heritage of humanity
so on that list you have the Statue of
Liberty
you have the Cathedral of Chartres in
France you have Mayan sites in Mexico
you have the historic city of Timbuktu
in Mali
places in India and Rajasthan in China
in Australia and what happened very very
slowly since World War two is that we
all understand that we have actually a
shared heritage and as our world
population is growing and growing and
growing as mobility is growing as
[Music]
immigrants are all over the world this
is in terms of movement of people for
economic and other reasons it has never
been to that point on planet Earth so
there is no more other we just see
people were less fortunate than us some
people would like to customers other but
it is basically yeah we see the humanity
in what we perceived as the other more
easier we have that opportunity America
tried to build a national school the
Europeans never looked at it because
they were far too much navel-gazing
themselves and what happened after World
War Two was that the American National
Art which was really pushed by the
Kennedy administration for instance for
the annales in Venice and and elsewhere
it was Jackson Pollock
de Kooning so Abstract Expressionism but
it was no more seen as just American it
was seen as representing the Western
world so we are slowly slowly moving
away from this idea of a static self and
a very odd and most likely inferior
other but it’s very slow this movement
so where we are we today the the worst
art museum because it all boils down to
the worst happens and that’s why I’m
here
seize its role in telling the history of
our world heritage in a new way
so right now we’re thinking about
redistributing our galleries and we will
not make a point of define
what separates us but actually
accentuating what unifies us what unites
us and make sure that we are all taking
care of that shared heritage of art from
all over the world anecdotally something
that I’m extremely proud of we have been
organizing naturalization ceremonies in
our Renaissance Court the first one took
place in January of last year and we
just had the second one which was at the
beginning of this month April and there
were fifty new Americans coming from all
over the world some elect 30 countries
from Argentina to Zambia and the keynote
speaker said to them I hope when you’re
coming you are bringing your cultural
suitcases along and you’re opening those
suitcases and enrich America as previous
generations have always done the federal
judge who officiated said you are
standing here in a place where the
culture of the entire world is preserved
and where we learn about the creativity
of mankind now that you’re an American
citizen do help us to steward this for
future generations at that same event
the current President of the United
States gave a talk not in person comes
by a video as in the previous year it
was still Obama and he said something
that gave me pause and not in the way
you think it gave me pause because he
said and now you’re American and now you
have to assimilate everybody looked on
the ground but assimilation doesn’t mean
become a white person that would be very
difficult if you’re from Zambia it also
doesn’t mean start to eat hamburgers
this is not very healthy but it could
mean that we are all sticking by certain
foundational rules of this country which
is the Constitution and
which is a social contract so it is not
as negative as it was perceived in that
meeting by most of us who were there let
me conclude with this demographic growth
it is indeed scary that in 2025 we’re
going to be 8 billion people on this
planet it has huge implications on the
environment we’re seeing this so all the
more do we need to work together to
steward this planet and to steward our
heritage because that is also what
connects us and then there is a just a
very good little piece of information
although in the 20th century we grew by
400% kind of unimaginable the peak of
growth is over we are currently in terms
of world growth at 1% so it’s it’s it’s
a line that goes down and this is in
parts related to the middle
classification of the world and to a new
economic system that is settling in
which again will change the social
contract and I am optimistic enough to
think that this social contract will be
a worldwide one that the UN will not be
as toothless as it currently is there is
the United States of Europe that is
forced to constitute itself there are
many tensions that make it extremely
necessary that we all work together to
steward the future of this planet and
the future of mankind thank you [Applause]
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