#“Weiss! You manage to do all this on your own? Thats amazing!”

[rwby-confess]

Confession #125

[rubyinasnuggie]

Random Headcanons No One Asked For:

-Both Ruby and Weiss are left handed

--Yang was 100% prepared to tease them about it when Blake very pointedly uses her left hand to write something

--Blake is ambidextrous

--which makes Yang the only right-handed one on the team

--until the fall of beacon oops

-Ren is fully color blind

--once baby Nora figured that out, she made it her mission to explain to him what colors are based on other sensations (sue me I love this trope)

--she describes pink as the quiet comfort they share in each other's presence

--Ren finally sees color for the first time when his semblance upgrades, and he can finally see the pink petals with Nora

-Blake likes to climb on things and find random nooks and crannies to read

--it turns into a game of reverse hide-and-seek when someone needs her: depending on how urgent it is the entire squad will drop everything and look for her

-team STRQ won the Vytal tournament their first year, specifically Summer was the champion

--Yang was more upset about the disqualification than she'd ever admit, because she secretly imagined Summer was out there somewhere watching the tournament, proud of her babies

-Tai pulled himself out of his depression by gardening: having a routine helped him, so he encouraged baby Ruby and Yang to get similar gentle hobbies

-Ruby raises chickens at home

--she very lovingly feeds them corn and calls them her ladies

--Yang affectionately calls them creatures and cluckers and other such rude things to get a rise out of Ruby

-Ruby deeply wants a cow

--this is her one and only retirement dream

--although honestly she can never imagine herself living past her 20s

-Yang struggled with picking a hobby, she gets bored easily and hates the expected

--its only post-Beacon that she understands the benefits of a routine

--thats why she ends up with a ton of chores, just some structure to help her through the day

-Ruby will drink any type of milk, but Strawberry milk is her favorite

-Sun is allergic to bananas but he doesn't know

--he thinks bananas are supposed to be spicy

-Weiss loves sour apple

-Pyrrha loves chocolate almonds

-Yang thinks fish are creepy, she just generally doesn't love the ocean

--she thinks Neptune is a little clown though

-Oscar gets dressed by putting on his left sock, left boot, then his right sock and right boot

--RNJR made it their mission to interrupt him during this just to see him walk around with one boot on

-Ruby likes to bake, it's one of the few solid memories she has of her mom

--one night Weiss was feeling homesick and Ruby taught her how to make mug cakes

--"its probably not that good compared to your cake butler, but it's pretty simple, and I like them!"

--Weiss secretly makes them at least once a week, even back home in Atlas

-Weiss has taken flight lessons, at one point Ironwood really pushed for her to become a pilot in the military

-Blake has a field journal of the different types of Grimm she's encountered

--team RWBY & JNPR have spent several nights sitting in a circle talking and adding to the journal

--while traveling across Anima, Ruby sketched and took notes on all the Grimm she saw, just in case she ever found Blake again

-Weiss collects rocks

--no, not crystals. actual rocks

--shes rarely spent time in the real outside, but whenever she has, she picks up little rocks and puts them in her pocket before anyone can see

-Jaune never actually stopped writing left and right on the bottom of his shoes actually

-Weiss had never been allowed to paint her nails as a kid, she'd always get weekly French manicures instead

--by the second semester at Beacon, Ruby, Weiss, Nora, and Ren would have weekly manicure nights where they'd paint each other's nails

--there were several times they'd rope the rest of the teams into it, especially during the Vytal tournament where they'd write team names on their nails

--during the singles round they'd write Yang on one hand and Pyrha on the other

--"we couldn't make it fit without cutting one of the R's!"

-Pyrrha and Weiss became each other's default plus one's for fancy events, to the point people began to speculate that the two were dating

--Jaune was somehow jealous of them both and it was very confusing to him since he had poor self awareness

-Yang cuts Ruby's hair, but after she lost her arm she lost the fine motor skills to do a good job, so Blake started to do it

-Blake is always there to help Yang with her phantom pains and residual limb pain

--she helps massage Yang's arm while leaning close and purring

--Yang cried the first time Blake did this because she's not used to being taken care of

-Nora never gets sick and is the designated nurse when a bug goes around the teams

--the electricity incident was the first time Nora has ever been bed-ridden

-Weiss took ballet as a child

-Jaune is actually pretty good at the guitar

-Pyrrha is not musically inclined at all its a miracle she managed to do the iconic JNPR shine dance

--jk but actually she's a decent dancer when she has the steps choreographed for her but she has no natural rhythm

-in the last few months before Pyrrha's death, she and Jaune would waltz on top of the roof together

--there were several almost kisses

--maybe a few successful kisses who knows

-there are occasions (obv extremely rare) when Ren actually takes the bulk of the energy from Nora

--this leads to thrilling game nights where Ren makes multiple 40pt remnant-equiv-of-scrabble plays while Nora naps

-Oscar is the only person who can beat Ren in scrabble, although it's very closely matched

-Oscar is amazing at chess and will play it against himself like a little square

-Yang and Ruby are experts at the tabletop war game they play in the library

--9 times out of 10, the winner is one of them

-Oscar is the only one who also knew about Compost King, which was very exciting for Jaune

--Compost King is a common game night activity while they were in Haven because its so hard to say no to Oscar

-Yang is a straight-A student and has always been

-Blake never had any formal education and she finds a lot of the classes incredibly dull or ineffective at teaching the material

--she's always the one convincing Yang to skip a class and lie in the sun-warmed grass with her

--she still gets Bs easily

-Oscar is a very fast reader and will devour any book he's given

--his aunt would frequently bring home books from town just to keep him entertained

-Ruby has suffered from migraines and nightmares her entire life, post-Beacon they only got worse

-Weiss shops at local dust stores whenever she can, even though she could get shipments for free

--however she does have Ron Swanson's "I know more than you" energy when she's shopping

-Blake and Ren will sometimes take naps together

--not cuddling, just occupying the same general space

--wake them up at your own risk

-if Ruby isn't engaged with something, she can start to scatter and dissolve into rose petals

--its a very slow process and someone has always snapped her out of it before she's fully vanished, but Yang is worried about what would happen if no one caught her in time

-Ren is afraid of horses

-Blake hates being cold

-Yang naturally radiates heat cause semblance duh

-Weiss glued the tiniest gravity crystals to the underside of Ruby's bed to ensure it never falls

-JNPR likes to push their beds all together so they can sleep in one big pile

-Nora can only sleep if she's holding someone's hand

Hope u guys enjoyed! These are in no particular order, sorry that I kinda jumped around a lot 😅

Feel free to reblog and add your own ideas and headcanons! ❤

[photosofusly]

Exclusive interview: Thomas Campbell on why he stepped down from the Met

Thomas Campbell stepped down as director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in June, leaving the institution that he first joined as a curator more than two decades ago.

Campbell announced his resignation at the end of February amid growing concern over the institutions financial management, criticism of a $600m planned David Chipperfield-designed wing for Modern and contemporary art and speculation about his future after eight years at the helm. But the timing still came as a surprise. As the Mets board searches for Campbells successor as director, and tackles its annual operating deficit, it has made Daniel Weiss, the museums president since 2015, also its chief executive.

In a statement, the Met said that the next director will be responsible for setting the artistic direction and curatorial priorities of the museum, while Weiss, as president and chief executive, will establish the Mets institutional, capital and infrastructure priorities.

The Art Newspaper: Why did you decide to step down? Thomas Campbell: I think Ive moved the museum forward in many respects. Weve really modernised and come into the 21st century. We have an extraordinarily strong programme. Weve grown our audience by 40%. Weve digitised. Weve expanded the Modern and contemporary arena. And weve done a lot of planning for the future.

We are well on track to get the finances to a comprehensive, sustainable budget by 2020. There is no ideal time, but I think it is a moment when I can step away feeling that the museum is in a very strong place. Dan Weiss, with whom I have worked so closely, is up to speed. He is a very strong leader, so the museum is in good hands.

But what about you, personally? Was it a New Years resolution? I have been approached a number of times over the last few years by other institutions and Ive always turned offers down because Im so focused on the Met. One of the great experiences of being director has been learning about art and cultures beyond my training as a historian of European art. As Ive travelled and talked with audiences and peers around the world, Ive really come to see the degree to which in an ever more connected but divided world art is a critical portal to an understanding of history and culture. So what I am really looking forward to doing is becoming more involved, and teaching, lecturing and writing about art, and why art matters at this critical moment.

Are you moving on to a Kenneth Clark stage in your career, in broadcasting? I will explore a number of options. I think that museums and cultural institutions have a critical role to play. One of the things Ive loved as a museum director is being a spokesperson, moving beyond to advocate for the arts, podcasting and lecturing.

Looking back, what do you think will be your defining achievements as the Mets director? It is amazing how much we have done in the past eight years, so there are a number. Working on the Islamic Galleries was one of the most satisfying and rewarding projects I have undertaken in my life. But stepping back from that, I came to the Met as a historian because I saw it as perhaps the only museum in the world that had the leadership, the funding, the leverage and the audience where I might advocate for a subject that I really cared about: European tapestry. I am incredibly proud of the two big tapestry exhibitions that I did because I think they helped change the nature of art history.

When I became a director it was my top priority to ensure that the Met went on being a space where scholarship could flourish and where we would go on pursuing really big, ambitious projects that would change our understanding of the past. So what am I most proud of? I think I am most proud of the fact that that is what we have done. We have perhaps the best programme of any museum in the world, with exhibitions that range from antiquity to contemporarythat are vibrant, relevant. They are not crowd pleasers; it hasnt been by pandering or by doing popular blockbusters. If you look at last year, [weve had] everything from Seljuks and Pergamon to Valentin de Boulogne, Vige Le Brun, Jerusalem, Kerry James Marshall and now the Age of Empires. Its an amazing programme: wide-ranging, engaging and relevant.

How important was making that scholarship more accessible? I believe profoundly that our mission is to make our collections and scholarships as accessible as possible to as wide an audience as possible. I think that perhaps it is true to say that the Met, for various reasons, was perceived as a rather elitist and not always very friendly place. Tourism is rising in New York, no question. But the growth we have seen in our visitors, from 4.5 million to seven million visitors in the past calendar year, hasnt happened by coincidence. That is a response to the changes we have made in many different ways to make the museum accessible, friendly and not elitist.

Do you feel that, when the Met collected and displayed more contemporary art, it was damned if it did and damned if it didnt? During the first 40 years of its life, the Met collected a lot of Modern and contemporary art. The Modern of its time was the Hudson River School and the contemporary was Whistler and Sargent and their ilk. The museum kind of lost its nerve in about 1910 because what was coming out of Europe was too drastic, too revolutionary and, of course, there was a hiatus of about 30 years in which time MoMA [Museum of Modern Art], the Guggenheim and the Whitney came into existence. In the 1940s, Met curators began playing catch-up. Part of the museums history in the past 60 or 70 years has been an on-again and off-again relationship with Modern and contemporary art.

When I became director, I was given a very clear mandate by the board, and I believed in it myself, that it was time that the Met embraced Modern and contemporary in a more robust way. Obviously, thats an agenda Ive pursued, I think with great success. Ive always tried to do it in balance with the encyclopaedic nature of our ambitions. What were doing is not aping MoMA or the other institutions. We are doing something unique. I think we are developing something distinctive, valuable in its own right and something that will be an investment for the future as it draws in donors and patrons and gifts.

What do you say to the criticism that the Mets board has been taken over with people with a vested interest in Modern and contemporary art? There has been so much misinformation. Firstly, to say that the Met has been taken over by Modern and contemporary collectors is not just a caricature; it is a gross misrepresentation. As we have appointed new trustees during my tenure, we always look at a range of different issues. We are always conscious that we are building a board for an encyclopaedic institution and trustees that we have brought on have varied interests.

Was the planned David Chipperfield-designed Modern and contemporary wing a project too far? The work on the south-west wing came out of a detailed feasibility study, which was led by the architects Beyer Blinder Belle. We identified projects that ranged right across the museum and necessary infrastructure investment. The top project that came out of that on the infrastructure side was the urgent need to replace the roofs over the European painting galleries. It is a huge project; we have been analysing it for two years. It is going to cost $150m and it was for that purpose primarily that we did a $250m bond issue early in 2015 for infrastructure needs.

In terms of elective projects, we had a whole variety of different ideas but the project that seemed of most relevance to the board back in 2013 and 2014 was the very inadequate nature of the galleries in the wing in which we show Modern and contemporary art, recognising that: one, the Met should be very active in this area; and, two, that it is of increasing interest to our audiences.

We cant go out into the marketplace to buy works of art that are $50m, $60m or $70m apiece. What we can do, and what the Met has always done, is build beautiful galleries so that donors and collectors will see us as a worthy destination. Thats what happened with our Chinese collections. We rebuilt our Chinese galleries back in the 1980s and early 1990s and, based on those beautiful spaces, we have received gifts that have turned us into one of the most important destinations for those who want to see Chinese paintings anywhere in the world.

Our board felt, rightly, that we have an opportunity in rebuilding the south-west wing. So that led to an architectural competition and the appointment of David Chipperfield. We have had a very productive relationship with David that has resulted in a very exciting schematic design for what the museum might do in the future. So we now have the basis to go out and do fundraising. We know that there is considerable interest within the community of Modern and contemporary art collectors in that project.

That all said, we also have this huge infrastructure project and as we have studied them together it is clear that we cant do them at once. Clearly the museum has a capacity issue. So we have decided to go ahead with the infrastructure project first and push off work on the south-west wing into the 2020s.

Did you feel harshly treated when the budget deficit of $5m or $6m was reported as a projected deficit of $40m? I think a lot of misinformation has been put out there about the museum finances. Look, we have a $3bn endowment. We have a triple-A rating, which allowed us to do the $250m bond issue. So the museum is in a very strong position. The situation we were dealing with was that, because of internal inflationary pressure, external factors such as legally having to put more money aside for pensions, our own decision to take on a bond issue and add debt repayment, and some weakening revenue schemes, it was clear we needed to pull back a bit and do some financial restructuring, and that is what we planned a year-and-a-half ago. It is quite difficult; it generates quite an amount of press. We have hit the targets that we set ourselves. We are through some of the most difficult work and we are absolutely on track to have a fully balanced, comprehensive and sustainablea critical word budget by 2020. We added up all the money we have raised over the past five years and it is something like $600m. We have a very strong donor base that is supportive of our multiple activities.

Was the speculation about your relationships with staff that appeared in certain publications the worse thing youve had to deal with as a director? It goes with the territory. When you are in a high-profile position like this, you are always the subject of gossip and innuendo. This is a very competitive place. It is project driven. In order to move the institution forward I have had to give resources to individuals and teams across the institution who I believed could effect meaningful change. I am proud of the change and achievement we have had both in the digital sphere and elsewhere. There are charges of favouritism but quite frankly that is what leadership is all about. Its about making decisions.

Its always been a he that runs the Met so far, but do you think it is ready for a female director as your successor? I cant opine on that. Its something for the search committee. I would say that across the country there is a big demographic shift going on. In the AAMD [Association of Art Museum Directors] there are a great many women directors, more than there were 20 years ago. There are some very capable individuals out there and, internally, something like 70% of our staff are women and many of my senior executive staff are women. So I think our search committee has a very strong field, both male and female, to work with.

View Full Article Here: Exclusive interview: Thomas Campbell on why he stepped down from the Met

Exclusive interview: Thomas Campbell on why he stepped down from the Met was originally published on CALM | We Drive The Calmest, Strive Regardless