Trojan Wars v. Cupcake Wars – You Decide

There’s a message for you….

Yesterday, I had a meeting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Met has what is probably the world’s finest art collection, and while they have always made films and DVDs of lectures and such, they are now getting into the business of producing video – both for their website, and I think, (if they are amenable) for television as well.

It is absolutely breath-taking to wander their galleries, which I did after our meeting.  The halls are filled with iconic art piece after iconic art piece, from magnificent paintings to sculpture to archaeological fragments. (Or not such fragments, as the museum holds an entire Egyptian temple – The Temple of Dendur).  Not to sound predictable, but there are a million stories in the museum that could cry out to be told.

The BBC has done quite a good job of this recently in their series (and book), A History Of The World in 100 Objects.

Of course, they did it in radio, but as we all know, video is now as simple to produce as radio (or text) and the potential here is limitless and endlessly fascinating. This simple truth was driven home to me when I went home, turned on the TV and pored through the ‘offerings’ for the evening.  How is it possible that just two miles from the incredibly rich and powerful offerings at The Met, all cable could come up with as Cupcake Wars or Miami Ink?  Let’s be honest, there isn’t a whole lot there – not compared, to say, the Iliad.  Hmm… Lemme see.  Cupcake Wars vs. Trojan Wars.  Vanilla vs. Chocolate or Greeks vs. Troy?  A tough call.

In the 1980s, I used to spend my summers working on archaeological excavations in Israel and Cyprus.  My first dig was at a place called Tel Anafa, in northern Israel, near Kiryat Sh’mona.  My first day was spent in the broiling sun at the bottom of a trench, digging with a small brush, millimeter by millimeter, and removing hundreds of bits of broken pottery called sherds.  After a few hours of this, I thought, this archaeology thing is not for me.  Raiders of The Lost Ark this was not.

When the heat became too intense, we all returned to ‘camp’, and in the shade of a tree (mercifully) we began to wash the potsherds we had gathered.  Buckets and small brushes were the order of the day – and by now the idea of picking grapefruit on a kibbutz with Dutch volunteers was looking far more interesting.

Then, as I washed one of the sherds, I noticed so writing on it.

These are called Ostrica.  Most of the writing is pretty banal.  “Remember to pick up a quart of milk on the way home”. Stuff like that. Ostrica were the Post-It Notes of the 5th Century BC.

I stared at it for a long time. It was only a few letters, but suddenly, someone from 2500 years ago was talking to me.  It was a life-changing moment, for now, for the first time, i didn’t just see piles of dirt or trenches or broken pots on the site where we worked, but rather an entire town, filled with people not so different from us. In a moment, the ancient world became real to me, and set off a life-long passion for history and art.

That was one completely insignificant piece of broken pottery, with, probably, not much of a message on it.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and countless other museums and galleries aroudn the world are filled with far more powerful remnants and artifacts of the past that can speak to millions and millions of people if we just unlock them and let them speak.

Until now, we have not only locked up the power of the past, but we have also locked up the potential power of the medium of television and video, by applying it, for the most part, to the most banal and pointless subjects we can imagine (if imagination is the right word).  But the potential for what video and television could do is all around us. All we need to is marry the two.

And as we all know, it’s not that hard (nor that expensive) to do.