The decision by the Metropolitan Museum, around the time Thomas P. Campbell replaced the long-serving Philippe de Montebello as director, to embrace contemporary art “all in,” raised the question of what the museum could contribute to the conversation that was new in a city with three other major museums—not to mention countless other outlets—already deeply involved in collecting and displaying contemporary art. In various public statements, museum staffers made clear that the Met would leverage its extraordinary encyclopedic holdings of past art to provide a deepening context in which to understand the art of the present. This sounded promising—no artwork is an island, so to speak—and led one to expect that in exhibitions and installations, present and past would be seen more or less on equal terms, each one illuminating the other even as their unique qualities were still allowed to shine, much in the manner of displays at such institutions as the Phillips Collection in Washington and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Or the Getty at the moment, where a first-century A.D. obelisk has been placed at the center of the circular entrance hall of Richard Meier’s building to announce its new show, “Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World,” setting up a powerfully resonant dialogue between ancient and modern.

Campbell duly hired Sheena Wagstaff, the chief curator of Tate Modern and a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, to head the newly renamed department of Modern and Contemporary Art, and two years ago the