Tom Campbell named as Met's New Director

via NYTimes:

A New Voice From Within at the Met
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: September 9, 2008

The name Thomas P. Campbell probably won’t ring many bells with the public. Inside the Metropolitan Museum, though, the news of his ascension to director is likely to be greeted by many colleagues with pleasure and relief.

Other museums these days have looked toward polished administrators or contemporary-art wheeler-dealers to raise money and deal with neophyte collectors. Since Philippe de Montebello announced his pending retirement, among the names bandied about in the art-world echo chamber for the longest time were a few lightning rods and contemporary-art favorites who, it was suggested, could provide useful connections to new money and links with living artists — so that the Met might become, as if it weren’t already, sufficiently “relevant.”

The chattering class was wrong as usual. In selecting Mr. Campbell, 46, the museum affirmed its own priorities, never mind the unsolicited advice, and continued a tradition of promoting from within. Mr. Campbell, untested in a director’s chair, has nonetheless been immersed for the last 13 years or more in the ways of this institution and is clearly committed to it; he is regarded as energetic, level-headed, popular, not visibly unhinged — like at least one curator turned Met director of the past — and not someone whose career was a long public campaign for the job. [read on...]

Read the Met's press release at MAN.

See also (via NYTimes):

Curator at Met Named Director of the Museum
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: September 9, 2008

Ending months of fervid speculation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art reached into its own ranks on Tuesday and chose Thomas P. Campbell, a 46-year-old English-born tapestries curator, to succeed Philippe de Montebello as director and chief executive.

The appointment, effective Jan. 1, was approved in a late-afternoon vote by the museum’s board of trustees after a suspenseful eight-month search that began when Mr. Montebello, 72, announced plans to retire after 31 years in the post.

Given the profile of the Met and Mr. de Montebello, a patrician presence who presided over scores of ambitious exhibitions and acquisitions, it was the most closely watched search ever in the museum world. The Met’s committee worked so secretively that some trustees and most of the museum’s curators were still unaware on Monday of its decision.

In selecting Mr. Campbell, the Met seems to have opted for intellectual heft as well as continuity. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute in London, he arrived at the museum in 1995 and made his reputation through much-praised scholarly catalogs and ambitious shows involving complex logistics and diplomacy. His exhibition “Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence” became the sleeper hit of 2002, attracting some 215,000 visitors, more than twice what the museum had projected, with many works that had never been seen in America.

Reached by telephone, James R. Houghton, the board chairman, said, “Clearly we wanted a scholar and art historian who is respected in his field, has a keen intellect and can be decisive.”

[read on]