I appreciate that

kind introduction, Dan.

I am delighted

to be here for many reasons; to celebrate this

occasion

and

for me it's personal because

I love the Met

and I love New York

and I love American art,

But it's also public and official

because every time I travel anywhere in the world on your behalf

representing our country,

I am

thrilled by the honor

of

being for a very short period of time, indeed,

a representative to the world of this country that we love and cherish.

Everyone here at the museum;

people who have

devoted their lives and their careers to

creating a world-class institution, deserve our thanks.

Dan and the board, Tom Campbell,

Emily Rafferty,

Harold Holzer, everyone on the staff;

I'm delighted that Mayor Bloomberg is here this evening,

Representative Carolyn Maloney, and

other

public officials who support

this American treasure.

Now improving and

a way of

demonstrating continuing creativity on behalf of the museum is no easy task

but you have

once again pulled it off.

To be here with you,

in order to welcome

this New American Wing is a special pleasure

but it's also been

my great delight as Secretary to launch a new partnership between

the State department and the museum that will help the Met reach a global

audience.

As Dan said, this work has been led

so well by the Assistant Secretary for Education and Cultural Affairs, my friend,

Ann Stock

and her team working closely with the team here at the museum.

We started with a

commitment to showcase the remarkable new Islamic art galleries

to demonstrate to the world

what the Met had done on behalf of Islamic art

and what we did was to send the word out to two-hundred-and-seventy American

embassies and consulates, twenty-five of them in Arab nations,

promoting this exhibit

and doing so with

online outreach, posters, video tours, and interviews with the curators and

conservators.

This is giving more than fourteen million foreign visitors the chance to

experience, at a distance, the Met's art and insights.

We are also now exploring plans to incorporate

educational materials developed by the Met in our English language training

programs

that serve disadvantaged young people around the world.

But what a way of showcasing American history and values

to open to the world this new American Wing?

So we will be back, Tom, to talk with you about how we might collaborate in doing

so.

Because walking through

these extraordinary rooms

and seeing not only masterpieces of American art, but a sense of

our country coming into its own

will have a profound effects on how people think about who we are

and perhaps even more importantly

who we will be.

If you look at the work

in these

rooms and think about it, of course, you can be inspired by so many

of the paintings or the sculptures,

but I want just for a moment to

talk about the iconic work of Washington Crossing the Delaware.

Now I'm well aware of historical quibbles,

uh... but

sometimes metaphor in image

tell the story even better.

If you look at the faces of the men that are pictured there and

imagine how they must have felt on that

bitterly cold Christmas night.

The revolution was not going well,

the idea of America that these men were fighting and sacrificing for

was fragile,

the future uncertain,

that evening, we're told, that General Washington had Thomas Paine's words read

aloud to his troops,

"These are the times that try men's souls."

But Paine had not lost hope,

he wrote that not a place upon Earth might be so happy as America.

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength in distress,

and grow brave by reflection.

Those men who crossed the Delaware were no summer soldiers, no sunshine patriots,

they were Americans doing what Americans would do again and again in the

centuries that followed:

pulling together

to overcome every challenge,

working for the common good,

providing exceptional leadership

for an exceptional nation.

Standing before that

painting tonight, more than two hundred and thirty-five years later, we can still

look at it and think of

those brave first patriots

but it's not just thinking about the past that we should be inspired to do.

We've come a long way since then of course in that challenges we face are

not existential in the same way,

despite which you might see and hear on cable

television,

but these are indeed difficult days for many Americans and there is a lot of

work ahead of us to renew our strength at home and

secure our leadership abroad.

How can anyone walk through this new American Wing and not believe

that America has the talent and ingenuity,

the grace and the grit,

to come through any icy waters?

We've done it before and

we are doing it again.

Each time we face new challenges there are the naysayers who have to be proven wrong

and we do it not just with words but

we outwork we out innovate

we out compete every rival.

We build a resilient economy at home and a

global architecture of institutions and alliances that not only protect

our interest and advance our values but

really do stand for the best

of humanity

and yes, we do sometimes smile in the face of trouble and

gather strength from distress,

and grow brave by reflection.

Being here in this city that I love,

we've lived through terrorist attacks,

two long wars,

and a global financial crisis in just the last decade.

But America remains

an exceptional country.

I see that as I travel hundreds of thousands of miles a year,

everywhere I go,

American leadership is still respected and admired, and

it's not just because we have a strong

economy,

it's not just because we have the strongest military in the world, it's not

just because our workers for the most productive, or our

universities and cultural institutions

set the global

gold standard.

It's because of who we are,

what you can see in the faces of the people who are portrayed in

the remarkable paintings that fill this new American Wing.

Yes, we have challenges but I have no doubt,

and neither should anyone,

that we will

meet them

and overcome them.

Today is a

special time

to be reminded

of who we are as Americans,

to know that this new American Wing

holds much more than

wonderful

art objects.

It holds the promise of

what this country stands for,

who we are as a people,

and the kind of future that we will make together.

Thanks very much to the Metropolitan Museum and to all of you who so

generously support it, year in and year out.

You have helped to show us our past