Monday, September 29, 2008

Thomas Campbell Named Met Museum's New Director

Suite 101 (Stan Parchin)

Stan Parchin has provided a great introduction to the new Director of the MMA. Here's an extract but see the above page for the full story:

Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Met, the world-renowned authority and published scholar in the field of European tapestry succeeds Philippe de Montebello, the museum's revered leader for 31 years, on January 1, 2009.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Board of Trustees called for an 11:00 AM press conference on September 9 to reveal the identity of Mr. de Montebello's successor after an arduous eight-month international search for a new director. Both de Montebello and Campbell attended the event to introduce the museum's new head and field questions about the future direction of the United States' largest art museum.

Thomas Campbell, 46, is a native of Cambridge, England. He received his B.A. in English language and literature from the University of Oxford (1984) and Diploma from Christie's Fine and Decorative Arts program in London (1985). He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art (1987 and 1999, respectively).

While pursuing his Master's degree, Campbell realized that the importance of tapestry as propaganda in European art and history had been overlooked by modern scholars. From 1987 to 1994, he addressed this oversight by developing the Franses Tapestry Archive. Its more than 120,000 images subsequently secured the resource's place as the world's superlative repository of information about European tapestries and figurative textiles.

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