Met Plans Exhibit to Send Off de Montebello While Hitting Up Neil MacGregor to Take His Old Job

Staying with museums for a second, the Met has announced plans to put up an exhibit celebrating the career of their long-time-but-now-retiring director, Philippe de Montebello (whose leaving you might remember us reporting on here). The museum will pull out some of the many thousands of pieces he helped acquire and put them all together into an installation entitled “The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions” (with a title like that, no one is sure to be confused by what it’s all about, will they?). Here’s a bit:

The museum says 300 of the works – out of 84,000 that were added during de Montebello’s tenure – will be featured in an exhibition organized in tribute to the retiring director.

Curators in the museum’s 17 curatorial departments chose the works, focusing on those with the biggest impact on the Met’s collections.

Elsewhere in news surrounding the Met, word has sneaked out that the now-director hunting museum approached the British Museum‘s head honcho, the famous Neil MacGregor, who thought the offer over but then turned it down, saying that he plans to stay where he’s at for at least the next five years (a presumed big raise to keep him probably helped a little in the decision, too).

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