Sir John Pope-Hennessy: Most recent Brit in a major American museum job?
Will the real Tom Campbell please stand up?
The London Telegraph‘s Jasper Rees snagged an interview with the Metropolitan Museum’s new director for today’s paper. I got real excited when I got to this paragraph:
As the exhaustive interview process with the 12 trustees began, it became
increasingly apparent to Campbell “that the ideas that I was bringing
to the table seemed to be very much resonating with the ideas and concerns
they had.”
Now for the good stuff, I salivated. And then:
What those ideas are will remain under wraps until Campbell assumes office.
Gee, Jasper, he’s already there! But what Campbell thinks of the pressing museum issues of the day still remains mysterious. We eagerly await the first substantive interview. It’s a bit scary, though, that Campbell let a beeper go off when Jasper’s allotted 30 minutes were up. I’ve never heard a beep in a lifetime of interviews with museum directors and other high-profile artworld luminaries.
Speaking of whom, Rees further demonstrated his fuzzy grasp of the American museological scene with this obtuse observation:
No one from these [Great Britain’s] shores has held such a high-profile museum job abroad since Sir John
Pope-Hennessy, the great Renaissance scholar, was made the Met’s director of
European paintings by [Philippe] de Montebello.
Actually, he was appointed by Philippe’s predecessor, Tom Hoving. And where did Malcolm Rogers and Graham W.J. Beal come from? Da Bronx?