Who Should Succeed Philippe at the Met? An Update

I had to be dumbfoundedly amused by my discovery, at the end of yesterday's de Montebello appraisal in the NY Times, that the men who happened to be my former top three choices for the Metropolitan Museum's succession---Neil MacGregor, Timothy Potts and William Griswold---were listed (in the very same 1-to-3 order) by Charles McGrath as "among the names most frequently mentioned" for the top post at our country's top art museum.

They were merely the names mentioned by ME as the directors whom I (in my seasoned, informed judgment) believed would do the best with the post. They were certainly not the "names most frequently mentioned," which would probably bump to the top of the list three whom I kept off mine: Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, who had told me flatly that he didn't want the job, but who now has additional deal-killing baggage; Met curator Gary Tinterow, whom some believe is being groomed for the job; James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, who has a high profile as an articulate spokesman for the profession on major issues.

I myself would revise my own list, which is now nearly nine months old---half a lifetime, in gossip years. I still like MacGregor but still doubt he wants it (even more so, now that he's just announced his own ambitious expansion plans for the British Museum).

Griswold and Potts had better not take the job any time soon: As McGrath himself mentioned, they've just signed on to new posts, at the Morgan and the Fitzwilliam, respectively. If Philippe really does hang on for a good while longer (and I know of no reason why he shouldn't, if he wants it), then those two again become top prospects.

And another museum director must surely be added to the upper ranks of CultureGrrl picks: Michael Govan, whose energetic, creative and principled leadership of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art during the short time that he's been there surely demands inclusion on shortlist provided by Philippe to Met chairman James Houghton.

Govan also has a lot of major unfinished expansion business at his current post. Ripeness is all, and I think perhaps the most ripe is my prior Number 4 pick, Max Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, who has the advantage of insider status, as a former Met staffer and a former New York museum director (who was the latest casualty in the Whitney revolving-door director syndrome). That is surely a somewhat controversial but, I think, wise choice---just as Philippe was at the time of his ascension.

For my 2002 Wall Street Journal appraisal of Anderson's Whitney tenure, which had the unfortunate timing of appearing very shortly before his departure from that post, go here.