Tom Hoving’s Metropolitan Museum, in His Own Words
After photographing the jacket of the late Thomas Hoving's Metropolitan Museum memoir, "Making the Mummies Dance," to illustrate my remembrance yesterday, I decided to leaf through the book, to relive through his eyes that tumultuous era.
I came upon Hoving's own description (p. 369) of what his 10-year reign (1967-77) as the Met's director was all about:
My goal was to make the Met a people's cultural paradise, full of fun and celebration, an open-book library of the visual arts of the highest possible excitement and controversy, an institution that would stand for the best of popular instruction.And what did he want to be remembered for (p. 370)?
I also wanted the place to be efficient, crisp, decisive and, above all, intellectually honest, telling the truth about the works of art in the collections and continually striving to show the public levels and gradations of quality---the good, the better, the best.
Mostly the fact that the place is now owned by the younger people and the general public, not the stuffy elite nor pseudoscholars. And the fact that the museum is jammed and that it really is the number one tourist attraction in the city.Those goals, largely realized, still stand.
No statement, at this writing, has been issued by the Met itself, but perhaps significantly, "Today's Featured Work of Art" on the museum's home page is this:
Sally Miller, "Mourning Picture," ca. 1811
December 11, 2009 12:10 AM
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LEE ROSENBAUM I'm a veteran cultural journalist with many pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and major art magazines. I have been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and have provided arts commentary on NPR and public radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I am a HuffPost Arts writer. I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. 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 at Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Annual Meeting, Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, on arts blogging at American University and on Smithsonian exhibition controversies at Rutgers University.
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moreLEE ROSENBAUM I'm a veteran cultural journalist with many pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and major art magazines. I have been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and have provided arts commentary on NPR and public radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I am a HuffPost Arts writer. I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. 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 at Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Annual Meeting, Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, on arts blogging at American University and on Smithsonian exhibition controversies at Rutgers University.
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