Jan 10, 2008 04:49 AM
by Stefan Beck
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s director for three decades, will step down at the end of the year. Eric Gibson, a New Criterion contributor and the Leisure & Arts features editor of the Wall Street Journal, has written a fitting tribute to Mr. de Montebello, one which doubles as a caveat to those in charge of selecting his replacement:
Yet under Mr. de Montebello, the Met has clearly found its franchise. The search committee might want to keep this in mind as it vets the candidates, and to think very carefully before handing the director’s mantle to anyone intending to tamper with his achievement.
Even The New York Times has joined in the rush to heap well-deserved accolades upon Mr. de Montebello. Here’s part of a brief but well-deserved appreciation of the great director. It more or less confirms Gibson’s judgment that he truly has been a “conservative as radical”:
It’s usual to see a nimbus of adjectives whenever Mr. de Montebello is described, words like “patrician” and “imperious” and “old world.” Those words say somewhat less about his personal and institutional manner than they do about a chronic American anxiety over the largely non-American cultural richness embodied in the Metropolitan Museum’s collections. It is really a historic uneasiness for Americans—we see ourselves as a new departure rather than as part of the diverse and ancient continuum that Mr. de Montebello so elegantly championed.