Key Choi testifies on research libraries
Key Choi, a retired art dealer pursuing a PhD, testifies about using the New York Public Library and the Vartan Gregorian Center for his research on French artists and Asian art. He emphasizes the importance of open access to knowledge.
Good afternoon.
My name is Kiel Choi, a proud birthright citizen of Korean heritage.
Though a native of New England, I have lived in New York since the early 1980s.
This is where I met my wife, where together we raised our son, and where I have over four decades thrived professionally as an art dealer who nurtured a worldwide clientele
that comprised preeminent private collections and major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection.
Subsequent to my retirement in 2016, I had been fervently pursuing a PhD at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich.
My doctoral project explores how French artists engaged with different classes of Asian art that had reached Europe through trade and diplomacy in the mid-18th century.
This research has been facilitated by convenient access to world-renowned research facilities located within a 20-minute subway journey from my co-op apartment on the Upper West Side, the Thomas J.
Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library.
Together, they afford me infinite opportunities to comprehensively explore not only the critical literature in my field, but also, in many cases, pertinent rare books, prints, drawings, paintings,
and decorative arts.
In addition, the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities, located in the Stephen Schwarzman Building, has offered me not only a commodious space in which to conduct research and to write,
but also an intellectual home where on a daily basis I encounter and learn from many committed scholars doing important work across a wide range of fields.
Having worked at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Bodleian Library at Oxford, I can also attest as to how great libraries housed in great historic buildings can also shape one's perspective.
In this respect, the building is exceptional because its place at the heart of this great city signifies how the unfettered pursuit of knowledge is fundamental to the health of our democracy.
Thank you.