Pope Leo XIV centers audience on museum directors, speaks of matter as inheritance and memory

When Pope Leo XIV recently received directors of the world's major museums at the Apostolic Palace, their meeting centered on "materiality". The word evokes memories of warehouses. It reminds us of a gallery's temperature, humidity measurements in a vault, custom-made boxes in which a canvas crosses the ocean: the things a museum director deals with day after day. The Pope took the word literally and made it the central theme of the event. Some opinions suggest a pontiff should stick to a specific vocabulary: soul, grace, spirit, heaven. To them, a pope speaking of "matter" may sound somewhat out of place. In fact, Christianity often has presented matter as the culprit. Early gnostic and manichean sects linked it to a malign principle, and the Church spent much time insisting that the body and the created world are good, based on a single phrase from the prologue of the Gospel of John: "The Word became flesh". Therefore, a pope who names wood, stone, metal, pigment and paper is stepping on ground assumed not to belong to him, even when crossing it before people whose work is caring for those materials. The audience took place on October 10 in the Clementine Hall. About 70 guests from the Group Bizot attended, an organization since 1992 that brings together directors of many of the world's most important museums to exchange exhibitions, loans and professional talks. It receives its name from Irène Bizot, who directed the Réunion des Musées Nationaux in Paris, city where the group was born. Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, presides. Among the attendees were Max Hollein, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Tristram Hunt, of the Victoria and Albert Museum; and Nicholas Cullinan, of the British Museum. Seated beside them were Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican Museums, and Sister Raffaella Petrini, president of the Governatorate of the Vatican City State, to whom the Museums answer, a presence that reminded all that the host was a collector.

The Pope's museums date from January 1506, when the Laocoön was unearthed on the Esquiline Hill and Julius II sent Giuliano da Sangallo, accompanied by Michelangelo, to identify it before installing it in the Belvedere courtyard. Pope Leo's vision of museums Leo based his brief discourse on three assertions: matter is available, is malleable and is memory. The first issue refers to the gift. Matter is delivered to human beings, and the artist receives it as an heir receives an inheritance, as something he must protect and make fruitful. The image places the artist in a precise position: an heir may dispose of what has been given to him without being its original owner, and must account for how he administers it. To illustrate his point, the Pope cited Laudato Si' (n.º 98), which recalls that Jesus worked with his hands, in daily contact with the matter God created. The proof of the goodness of matter is then a craft: the son of the carpenter dedicated his life to working wood and stone. The rest of the argument follows from there. The artist who transforms what is in his hands returns it to others as a gift, and the culture that arises from it honors the beauty of creation. The second aspect refers to form. Matter is malleable; it can be shaped according to the artist's idea, giving body or sound to emotions, dreams and words. Speaking of matter as a gift, as malleable reality and as memory, Leo XIV avoids both contempt for things and their idolatry. The verb he chose was "to form", the same Genesis uses to refer to God while working the land. The image is of a human being, imitating God's work, infusing transcendent meaning into matter. This reminds me that Michelangelo, who knew marble from the quarry, embodied this relationship in a sonnet: "The best artist has no single thought / that a block of marble does not contain / in excess, and only then comes / the hand that fulfills the desires of the mind".