Thomas Hoving was a one-of-a-kind museum director. After him, directors split into two camps: the populists primarily concerned with what plays at the gate and the gatekeepers, determined to preserve their idea of aesthetic standards.
He died today at age 78. (Randy Kennedy obit here.)
He invented the blockbuster but was most proud of his ability to spot a fake. He’d freely admit that he sympathized more with forgers than with the collectors and museum professionals they fooled. In False Impressions: The Hunt for Big Time Art Fakes, he wrote about a favorite, Frank X. Kelly, whom Hoving met while an
undergraduate. A painting restorer, Kelly played the horses, knew
baseball like the beating of his own heart, smoked constantly, ate
badly and made art fakes.
Hoving found some unfinished Monets in the stacks and
confronted him. The old man promised to teach Hoving his trade secrets
if the young man kept quiet. Hoving learned that a good fake looks
juicier, more appealing, than the original. The surface only mattered,
as deeper analysis produced conflicting information. Cooking up a
complicated provenance for the piece was unnecessary and often made the
deal more suspicious.
On tour for the book in Seattle, he took care to be quotable. Choice samples from a 1996 interview here.
On museum directors:
They’re muddled progressives, staunch conservatives or the petrified. Especially the petrified. I don’t think they have any idea what they’re doing. I was director (at the Met) from 1967 to 1978. That’s too long. Directors should get out after seven years. After that, they’re either too tired or too gutless to do the job.
On fakes:
Everybody wants to believe they’ll find a Ming vase at a flea market, pay $1.89 for it and sell it for $1 million. There are serious collectors who’ve fallen for Degas pastels painted in oils. They can’t tell. And when they find out, they cover it up.
On his contribution:
I’m a popularizer. I opened the place up. I wanted to see John Travolta pick up girls on the steps of the Met. I tried to make the Met a subway stop. I was the first to hang big banners outside. Our audience was old and the audience at the Museum of Modern Art was young. I wanted to steal Modern’s audience.
Here’s a 2008 video of Hoving lavishing praise on Dale Chihuly.
Leave a Reply