We often hear of artistic projects that take years to create: a Robert Caro biography, for example. A Broadway musical such as “Dear Evan Hansen.” But a museum exhibit taking almost a decade from conception to presentation?
Nevertheless, Carmen C. Bambach has achieved what The New York Times called a “curatorial coup” with “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer” at The Met Fifth Avenue. “It was a dream come true for me,” Bambach says. And it took eight years to come to fruition.
The array of 200 works has attracted more than 450,000 visitors since it opened in mid-November. It is on view until Feb. 12. If it were not for the three-month maximum length the drawings can sustain light exposure, it could have been extended forever. The exhibit has drawn raves from experts, and awed responses from regular folks: Could that really have been done when he was 13? Why did he leave so much unfinished? Is that really a doodle?
But also of interest is one woman’s ardent desire to amass the pieces from some 50 collections and institutions: a laborious scheduling and logistical process — a “mountain of practicalities” she says. Most Michelangelo works have “resting periods” after which they can’t be moved for several years. So you do the math. But Bambach was determined to give the full story of the Renaissance man who many of us know primarily from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the iconic David in Florence.
Although her field is Italian art, Bambach was born and lived in Chile until she was 14, when the 1973 coup d’etat that deposed President Salvador Allende drove her family to America. It was her mother who first exposed her to the world of art, and from her first exposure to Michelangelo, young Carmen was hooked. She spent 10 years at Yale collecting degrees and it was there, working on a senior thesis, that she made a discovery about one of Michelangelo’s drawings. She was convinced it had been published upside down. Some were skeptical, but two professors supported her idea, as did the director of the 10-year cleaning project of the Sistine ceiling. “We climbed those stairs together and he granted me a lot of access,” she recalls.
The goal of this exhibit — the most extensive on the artist ever — was to take us on a journey of the man’s process, through the designs, the drawings, the letters, the poems. “I want them to feel they’ve walked in Michelangelo’s shoes,” she says, “to feel his connection of the hand, the eye and the mind. Michelangelo himself felt the actual way he drew would never be possible to reproduce.” Here she is subtly referencing artists, from Raphael to contemporary ones, who employ others to multiply the original works. “The beauty is in the artist’s hand, not the concept,” she notes.
After eight years of planning, her passion paid off. Having her parents, now in their 80s, come to the opening, was immensely gratifying. What does she do for an encore? She points to an enormous stack of papers, research for the Leonardo da Vinci book she is writing for Yale University Press.
Meanwhile, as she strolls the galleries, often alone, she says it feels more a religious experience than professional feat. “I am walking on sacred ground,” she says. “I only hope I have humanized a genius, a man who did not want to be misunderstood.”
Michelangelo can rest in peace: at least one woman, many centuries later, totally got him.