Sometimes, I step back and ask myself big questions. What is the significance of art? What is the value of scholarship? What’s the use of philanthropy? What’s the point of devoting money, time, and energy to big cultural institutions?

I was thinking about these questions the other day, during my one of my daily visits to the Metropolitan Museum. And as I was thinking, I happened to walk by one of the artworks that I look at most often.

It doesn’t have a title. It’s made from fragments of a marble grave monument, a stele from around 400–375 BCE, from a cemetery in Athens, Greece. This grave marker shows a seated woman holding an infant. It’s not the look of piece that captures my attention, but its inscription, which is provided in a plaque.

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m moved most deeply by words. I can look at things, I can listen, but in the end, it’s always words that strike me to the core.

The inscription of the grave marker explains what we’re looking at:

My daughter’s beloved child is the one I hold here, the one that I held on my lap while we looked at the light of the sun when we were alive and that I still hold, now that we are both dead.

And I think, the love of this grandmother for her grandchild still endures, more than two thousand years later. We understand her sorrow at the loss of this beloved child, her yearning for the two of them to be reunited, her dream of sitting again with that baby in her lap as a consolation for her own death—I experience all of this. I’m so moved by this inscription that I get tears in my eyes every time I read it.

That is the value of art, of scholarship, of philanthropy. So much time, energy, money, study, and care was dedicated to ensuring that I, Gretchen, had the opportunity in the year 2025 to stand in Gallery 158 of the Metropolitan Museum and see and experience that artwork.