William Cohan has a story in Vanity Fair explaining the ouster of the Met’s director, Thomas Campbell. It recaps the explanations for Campbell’s sudden fall but puts a bit more flesh on the story. Cohan’s version is well worth reading for nuance and detail. But even he offers a more succinct version:
“It’s not a very complicated story,” says a source close to the Met. “Tom was a curator. He was plucked out to run a big job—not just director but director and C.E.O. He forged an agenda with the board. He had some management issues. They together made all these decisions to get ahead on digital. Tom wasn’t on his own. They together decided to invest in modern and contemporary. The place is politically, totally insane. Along the way, whatever is going on among the board members about who’s up and who’s down, Tom obviously lost enough support there and he obviously lost curatorial support—the curators run the whole culture. And because he wasn’t a good manager, they urged him to leave and he resigned and that’s the story.”
Inside a Met Director’s Shocking Exit and the Billion-Dollar Battle fo (Vanity Fair)
