More on Philippe de Montebello’s Departure

The time has finally come for Metropolitan Museum chairman James Houghton to take out his little list. Although the Met’s soon-to-be-former director has said he does not want to pick his own successor, Philippe de Montebello has (as reported first in CultureGrrl and later in the NY Times) provided Houghton with a periodically updated list of people he believes are well qualified for the job.
I would characterize Philippe as both a traditionalist and a principled pragmatist—a strong but self-effacing leader who was willing to compromise when the times demanded it, but who still cherished and defended (within his institution and in public forums) the time-honored principles of scholarship and collection-building.
Nothing illustrates his balancing act between pragmatism and principle better than his current role in cultural property wars. He has been in the forefront of agreeing to givebacks of antiquities to Italy, while, at the same time, he has been tirelessly stumping on behalf of the “universal museum,” delivering a series of speeches and interviews defending the right of major encyclopedic institutions to hold onto works that may have been improperly removed from countries of origin but that nevertheless help to tell the story of comparative world culture.
My own previous suggestions about “Who Should Succeed Philippe” are here, updated here.
As I’ve said before, I hope that the new director will take the museum in some new directions. But that by no means diminishes Philippe’s achievements, not the least of which is the admiration, bordering on adoration, that he has inspired in his professional staff.
I’ll be off this morning to the official retirement announcement at the Met, after which I may be heading downtown to the studios of New York Public Radio.
The Met’s press release on Philippe’s imminent retirement is here.