Thomas Hoving Dies at age 78

Thomas Hoving, art critic, author and past Director of the Metropolitan Museum of art recently past away.  The NY Times ran a tribute and retrospective article on Hoving's tenure at the Met and beyond.

The NY Times states

Mr. Hoving stepped down in 1977, after a decade in the job, with the intention of becoming the head of a new branch of the Annenberg School of Communications, to have been established within the Met for the purpose of making fine art more accessible through television and films. But the plan, backed by a $40 million pledge from the publisher Walter H. Annenberg, fell apart amid criticism by some city officials, who questioned Annenberg’s motivations and complained the center would occupy space in the museum that rightfully should have been used for exhibiting art.

From 1978 to 1984 Mr. Hoving was an arts correspondent for ABC’s “20/20,” and from 1981 to 1991 he edited Connoisseur magazine. But his post-museum career was mostly filled with writing books, several of which sold well, though sometimes for the wrong reasons. “King of the Confessors,” his 1981 account of his pursuit of the ivory cross and the Met’s acquisition of other treasures, was rejected by the Met’s bookshop because museum officials felt that it mischaracterized the museum’s collecting policies.

His memoir of his years leading the Met was written with all the flair of a potboiler, helped along by passages that bordered on the fictional, at least heavily embellished. Mr. Hoving seemed to anticipate criticism of the book and the pivotal years it described by saving some of the harshest assessments for himself, calling himself cold, driven, hypocritical and impulsive.

One thing he never claimed to be was modest. Under his leadership, he wrote, “the most sweeping revolution in the history of art museums had taken place.”

 To read the full article on Thomas Hoving, click HERE.