Former Met museum head talks about new book

• Philippe de Montebello led the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 31 years.
• "He was able to fulfill a lot of holdings dreams about what museums could and should be."
• The book documents de Montebello's reactions to art in several cities of the Western world.

"The book is purely a serendipity of places," said Philippe de Montebello in a telephone call from New York.

The longest serving director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who stepped down in 2008, was talking about "Rendez-vous with Art," the new book he wrote with British art critic for Bloomberg NewsMartin Gayford.

The book, which brings de Montebello to Louisville this week for the Kentucky Author Forum, is not a detached and purely intellectual survey of art but rather a kind of travelogue that reveals de Montebello's feelings about famous pieces of art and important pieces that don't enjoy the fame of, say, Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa."

The book documents de Montebello's and Gayford's conversations about specific pieces of art in several cities in the Western world — New York, Florence, London, Madrid and Paris among them.

At times, those conversations turn to the experience of looking at art in museums, art preservation and the idea of crowds, in a chapter called "Crowds and the Power of Art." Also woven into the conversations is de Montebello's personal history concerning museums and his first encounters with various art pieces. In these conversations, de Montebello's love and care for art and his personality come through, especially in a chapter called "A Flood and a Chimera." There, he describes how decades earlier he had seen the horrible damage caused when flood waters filled a Florence church and attached museum and covered the objects inside with mud.

De Montebello described the book as serendipitous because of the way it came about. Several years ago, publisher Thames & Hudson approached de Montebello about writing a book, but he said he wasn't ready to write one.

"I'm teaching. I'm busy," he said he told them. "Then I said, you know, it could be a collaboration if someone could listen when I speak, somebody who writes."

The publisher paired him with Gayford, and the two convened when their schedules allowed.

"I would email him and say, 'I'm off to Florence on a conference. Can you join me for two days?' " said de Montebello. "And that was how it worked."

For the Kentucky Author Forum, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman will talk with de Montebello about the book and his career, details of which he discusses briefly in the book.

Kimmelman, who began covering art, the Met and de Montebello for The New York Times in the early 1990s, said he expects to discuss de Montebello's career at the Met and his role in creating a museum that has become what he called "a beacon for museums all over the world, even ones not of the same scale."

That career included making the museum more of a public square by creating popular shows and increasing the museum's holdings with works by such artists as Vermeer and Rubens and specific works, including Vincent Van Gogh's "Wheat Field with Cypresses" and Jasper Johns' "White Flag" among others. One that attracted significant attention was the museum's 2004 acquisition of Renaissance artist Duccio di Buoninsegna's "Madonna and Child" for more than $45 million. In "Rendez-vous with Art," de Montebello talks about that piece and the decision to buy it for the museum.

Kimmelman credited the book with revealing more about de Montebello than just his take on running a museum.

"It's wonderful to hear him tell about what he cares most about and not speak through the institution," Kimmelman said.

He described de Montebello's term at the Met as one with inherited challenges when in 1977 he took over from Thomas Hoving. Hoving had helped create controversies with a purchase of a Greek vase that had been stolen and launching marketing campaigns that had more to do with marketing than the museum's holdings.

Although Hoving is recognized as one of the inventors of the blockbuster exhibit, de Montebello redefined such events by making curators a more integral part of the museum's decision-making processes and narrating the museum's audio guides for these shows himself. The results: Under his tenure, the museum saw three of its largest blockbuster exhibits.

"In a very quiet, steady and sort of ingeniously brilliant way," Kimmelman said, "he was able to fulfill a lot of holdings dreams about what museums could and should be. But to do it without upsetting the Met, and, in fact, building its audience and strengthening the collection."

By the end of his 31-year leadership of the Met, de Montebello was heading an institution with a nearly $193 million operating budget that welcomed more than 4.6 million visitors each year, had 18 curatorial departments and had grown its publishing division. While de Montebello's career has been extensive, he recognizes that "Rendez-vous with Art" is somewhat limited.

"In Paris, I didn't cover the medieval history that I like and never got around to looking at the modern things I like," he said. "There was a lot we didn't do, including the Islamic collections. And I collect Islamic art."

He said he wished he and Gayford had gone to see art in Berlin, Beijing and Russia's State Hermitage Museum. But time and schedules didn't allow it.

Reporter Elizabeth Kramer can be reached at (502) 582-4682. Follow her on Twitter at @arts_bureau.

IF YOU GO

What: University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum with Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and co-author of "Rendez-vous with Art," in conversation with Michael Kimmelman, current architecture critic and longtime chief art critic for The New York Times.

When: 6 p.m. Wednesday

Where: The Kentucky Center, 501 W. Main St.

Cost: $20

Tickets:www.kentuckycenter.org or (800) 775-7777