Writing anything about “The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions,” the Metropolitan Museum’s spectacular tribute to its legendary, about-to-depart director, may not have been necessary.[1] The show could be summed up by printing “WOW!” in large, bold-face letters and letting it go at that. Alternatively, the exhibition’s opulence and diversity could be conveyed very effectively just by a list of the splendid works of art on display. If the selection of objects included in “The Philippe de Montebello Years” were the permanent collection of some small provincial museum, it would be a place of pilgrimage. The sheer variety and scope of the exhibition—three hundred paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, musical instruments, furniture, textiles, costumes, decorative arts, armor, and more, of all sizes, from all periods, and from all over the world—are impressive evidence of the depth and breadth of the Met’s encyclopedic collections. What is even more remarkable is the included works represent only a fraction of the more than 84,000 objects acquired by the Met, by purchase and gift, under de Montebello’s leadership. (Admittedly, this staggering number includes, among other “multiples,” several substantial collections of modern paintings, given by the people who lovingly assembled them, and an enormous, near-definitive, historical collection of photographs, but even so.) The rigor and wide range of the selection (made by the Met’s Forum of Curators, Conservators, and Scientists, representing seventeen departments, under the direction of the curator Helen Evans), along with the dazzling excellence