The Tom Campbell Watch: Another Kid-in-the-Candy-Store Interview

PopeHenn.jpg
Sir John Pope-Hennessy: Most recent Brit in a major American museum job?

Will the real Tom Campbell please stand up?

The London Telegraph's Jasper Rees snagged an interview with the Metropolitan Museum's new director for today's paper. I got real excited when I got to this paragraph:

As the exhaustive interview process with the 12 trustees began, it became increasingly apparent to Campbell "that the ideas that I was bringing to the table seemed to be very much resonating with the ideas and concerns they had."

Now for the good stuff, I salivated. And then:

What those ideas are will remain under wraps until Campbell assumes office.
Gee, Jasper, he's already there! But what Campbell thinks of the pressing museum issues of the day still remains mysterious. We eagerly await the first substantive interview. It's a bit scary, though, that Campbell let a beeper go off when Jasper's allotted 30 minutes were up. I've never heard a beep in a lifetime of interviews with museum directors and other high-profile artworld luminaries.

Speaking of whom, Rees further demonstrated his fuzzy grasp of the American museological scene with this obtuse observation:

No one from these [Great Britain's] shores has held such a high-profile museum job abroad since Sir John Pope-Hennessy, the great Renaissance scholar, was made the Met's director of European paintings by [Philippe] de Montebello.
Actually, he was appointed by Philippe's predecessor, Tom Hoving. And where did Malcolm Rogers and Graham W.J. Beal come from? Da Bronx?
January 12, 2009 10:54 AM | |

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LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I've been a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and the annual conference of the Museum Association of New York, and on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University. more

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This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on January 12, 2009 10:54 AM.

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