Met Chooses Tapestries Curator to Lead Museum

By CAROL VOGEL
Published: September 9, 2008
Ending months of fervid speculation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art reached into its ranks on Tuesday and chose Thomas P. Campbell, a 46-year-old British-born tapestries curator, to succeed Philippe de Montebello as director and chief executive.

Thomas P. Campbell Visitors at "Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor" an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum that Thomas P. Campbell curated in 2007.
The appointment, effective Jan. 1, was approved in an afternoon vote of the museum’s board of trustees after a suspenseful eight-month search that began after Mr. Montebello, 72, announced plans to retire after 31 years in the post.
Given the profile of the Met and Mr. de Montebello, a patrician presence who presided over scores of ambitious exhibitions and acquisitions, it was the most closely watched search ever in the museum world. The Met’s committee worked so secretively that some trustees and most of the museum’s curators were still unaware on Monday that Mr. Campbell had emerged as the top candidate.
In selecting him, the Met seems to have opted for intellectual heft as well as continuity. Educated at Oxford and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, Mr. Campbell arrived at the museum in 1995 and built his reputation through much-praised catalogs that were both scholarly and sumptuous, and shows involving complex logistics and diplomacy. His exhibition “Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence” became the sleeper hit of 2002, attracting some 215,000 visitors — more than twice what the museum had projected — with works that had never been seen before in America.
James R. Houghton, the chairman of the Met, said, “Clearly we wanted a scholar and art historian who is respected in his field, has a keen intellect and can be decisive.”
In capturing the post, Mr. Campbell is said to have edged out finalists including Max Hollein, the popular director of the Stadel Art Institute of Frankfurt, and two Met curators who currently outrank him: Ian Wardropper, 57, the head of Mr. Campbell’s department, European sculpture and decorative arts; and Gary Tinterow, 54, the curator in charge of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art.
Asked whether he expected any ruffled feathers as a result of Mr. Campbell’s appointment, Mr. Houghton said: “Probably. This is a hell of a job.”
Yet when Mr. Campbell’s name surfaced recently, many of the Met’s seasoned curators started rooting for him. Respected among his peers as a scholar, he also happens to be well liked.
Although he has not run a big department, his managerial heft was tested when, shortly after his arrival, he became the supervising curator of the Antonio Ratti Textile Center, which houses the Met’s encyclopedic collection of 36,000 textiles.
Beyond the challenge of carving out his own identity after the de Montebello years, Mr. Campbell faces the task of maintaining the quality of the museum’s programming and covering its vast operating expenses in the face of eroding corporate support.
In a shaky economy, he will have to be an adroit fund-raiser and social butterfly, courting wealthy donors and collectors who could help pay for crucial acquisitions and eventually bequeath collections to the museum. (In a reflection of those pressures, the search committee even went so far as to vet the finalists’ spouses.)
The ninth director in the Met’s 138-year history, Mr. Campbell confronts a world that has radically changed in the three decades since Mr. de Montebello took the job.
The museum’s mandate and its competition are more global than ever, with new art institutions with innovative agendas sprouting up in Europe, Asia and unexpected corners like the mega-wealthy United Arab Emirates.

Baltimore art curator is named to Walker post
Star Tribune
Last update: September 9, 2008 - 8:59 PM

Darsie Alexander

Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has hired a new chief curator: Darsie Alexander from the Baltimore Museum of Art. Starting Nov. 10, she will replace Philippe Vergne, who also served as the Walker's deputy director before he left in August to head the Dia Art Foundation in New York City.
Alexander will oversee the work of eight curators including heads of the film, performing arts and design departments.
She is expected to strengthen the Walker's efforts to weave together all fields of contemporary art including photography, painting, video and works on paper.
"She will bring the right energy, dynamism and approach to working with all the curators in a more holistic manner," said Walker director Olga Viso. The women were colleagues and friends for much of the past decade during which Viso worked at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and lived for a while in Baltimore.
Alexander, 43, has been at the Baltimore museum for eight years, beginning as associate curator in 2000 and serving as senior curator and head of the contemporary art department since 2005. Her many exhibitions include "SlideShow" (2005), "Robert Motherwell Meanings of Abstraction," (2006) and a retrospective of the Austrian sculptor Franz West that will open in Baltimore in October and may travel to the Walker. She has written extensively on performance art, conceptualism and new media.
Her first museum job was as assistant curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1998-2000). A 1988 graduate of Bates College, she earned a 1991 MA in art history from Williams College.
Her husband, David Little, is an art historian rumored to be the leading candidate for the photography curator post at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. They have two young children.