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Thomas Pearsall Field Hoving (January 15, 1931 – December 10, 2009) was an American museum executive and consultant and the director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
.


Early life

He was born in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
to Walter Hoving, the head of Tiffany & Company, and his wife, Mary Osgood Field, a descendant of Samuel Osgood. Hoving grew up surrounded by New York's upper social strata. As recounted in his memoir, ''Making the Mummies Dance'', these early experiences would be invaluable in his later dealings with the Met's donors and trustees. After schooling at Manhattan's Buckley School, Eaglebrook School in Massachusetts and a brief stint at
Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...
, Hoving graduated from the Hotchkiss School in 1949. He received a B.A. in 1953, an M.F.A. in 1958, and a Ph.D. in 1959, all from
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
.


Career

As an undergraduate he majored in art and archaeology and supplemented his studies with regular trips to New York City to draw at the Art Students League. He went to work for the Met in 1959, serving on the staff of the medieval department at
The Cloisters The Cloisters, also known as the Met Cloisters, is a museum in the Washington Heights, Manhattan, Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. The museum, situated in Fort Tryon Park, specializes in European medieval art ...
until 1965, when he became curator of the department. He left the Met in 1966 to become New York mayor John V. Lindsay's parks commissioner, but in 1967 returned to the Met as director after the incumbent, James J. Rorimer, died suddenly on May 11, 1966. He assumed the directorship on March 17, 1967, and presided over a massive expansion and renovation of the museum, adding many important collections to its holdings.


Career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

His tenure at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
was characterized by his distinctive approach to expanding the Met's collections. Rather than build more comprehensive holdings of relatively modest works, he pursued a smaller number of what he termed "world-class" pieces, including the Euphronios Krater depicting the death of
Sarpedon Sarpedon (; ) is the name of several figures in Greek mythology * Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, who fought on the side of Troy in the Trojan War. Although in the ''Iliad'', he was the son of Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Gre ...
(returned to Italy in 2008), Velázquez's '' Portrait of Juan de Pareja'', and the
Temple of Dendur The Temple of Dendur (Dendoor in the 19th century) is a Roman Egyptian religious structure originally located in Tuzis (later Dendur), Nubia about south of modern Aswan. Around 23 BCE, Emperor Augustus commissioned the Egyptian temple, temple d ...
. The expansion of the Met during Hoving's directorship was not confined to its collections. Hoving also spearheaded a number of building projects and renovations of the Met itself, from a controversial expansion of its galleries into Central Park to the construction of its underground parking garage. Two of the building's most characteristic features—the huge exterior banners announcing current shows, and the broad plaza and steps leading from Fifth Avenue to the Met's entryway—are products of Hoving's tenure. At one point, he even floated a plan to remove the Met's "great staircase" leading from the central lobby to the second-floor galleries. That particular project remains unrealized. Hoving described the negotiations between the Metropolitan Museum, the
Cairo Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, commonly known as the Egyptian Museum (, Egyptian Arabic: ) (also called the Cairo Museum), located in Cairo, Egypt, houses the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world. It houses over 120, ...
, Egypt's Organization of Antiquities, and the U.S. State Department to bring the exhibition ''The Treasures of Tutankhamun'' to the Met as "the high point of my Metropolitan career." The exhibition was the result of years of negotiations, including plans for a variety of cross-cultural collaborations, galvanized by President Richard M. Nixon's June 1974 trip to
Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
and finalized in an accord signed by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmi in October 1975. In July 1976, Hoving visited Egypt to negotiate terms of the traveling exhibition and finalize details of the Museum's collaboration with officials there. Hoving was the director of the controversial " Harlem On My Mind" exhibit, curated by Allon Schoener, which garnered significant protests from local activists and artists for its exclusion of black artists, as well as for the inclusion of an anti-Semitic essay in the catalogue. Hoving apologized and included disclaimers before the essay in the catalogue, but did not remove it. In his memoirs he revealed 2009 that
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested o ...
's masterpiece
Mona Lisa The ''Mona Lisa'' is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, ...
was sprinkled for several hours inside the Metropolitan Museum.


Later career

He left the Met on June 30, 1977, to start an independent consulting firm for museums, Hoving Associates. From 1978 to 1984 he was an arts correspondent for the ABC
newsmagazine A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio, or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories in greater depth than newspapers or new ...
'' 20/20''. His debut in its second-ever installment on June 13, 1978 was a feature about the making of ''
Jaws 2 ''Jaws 2'' is a 1978 American horror thriller film directed by Jeannot Szwarc and co-written by Carl Gottlieb. It is the sequel to Steven Spielberg's '' Jaws'' (1975), and the second installment in the ''Jaws'' franchise. The film stars Roy ...
''. In 1978, he published ''Tutankhamun. The Untold Story'', a non-fiction book about the discovery of the Egyptian tomb, with particular attention to its discoverer, Howard Carter. He edited ''Connoisseur Magazine'' from 1981 to 1991; along with his memoirs of his time at the Met, he is also the author of books on a number of art-related subjects, including art forgeries,
Grant Wood Grant DeVolson Wood (February 13, 1891February 12, 1942) was an American artist and representative of Regionalism (art), Regionalism, best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest. He is particularly well known for ''America ...
,
Andrew Wyeth Andrew Newell Wyeth ( ; July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) was an American visual artist and one of the best-known American artists of the middle 20th century. Though he considered himself to be an "abstractionist," Wyeth was primarily a realis ...
, Tutankhamen, and the 12th-century walrus ivory crucifix known as the Bury St. Edmunds Cross. Additionally, in 1999, he wrote the text for the ''Art For Dummies'' book in the " ...For Dummies" series.


Personal life

In 1953, Hoving was married to Nancy Bell, a
Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States. The college be ...
graduate whom he met at a house party in Princeton. She was the daughter of Elliott V. Bell (1902–1983), a writer for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' who managed the two successful gubernatorial campaigns for his friend, Thomas E. Dewey. They had a daughter. Hoving died of
lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma, is a malignant tumor that begins in the lung. Lung cancer is caused by genetic damage to the DNA of cells in the airways, often caused by cigarette smoking or inhaling damaging chemicals. Damaged ...
at his home in
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
, New York City, on December 10, 2009.


In popular culture

Hoving appeared in '' Who the *$&% Is Jackson Pollock?'', a 2006 documentary by Harry Moses about a supposed "lost"
Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household ...
painting, where he dismissed the claims, believing that true connoisseurs are the only ones who can identify the real from fake paintings and that fingerprints and forensic evidence are secondary. The clincher, he stated, was that the 'Pollock' painting had a gesso ground, something that Pollock never used. He was the subject of the titular profile in ''A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles'', a 1969 collection of biographical pieces by
John McPhee John Angus McPhee (born March 8, 1931) is an American author. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourt ...
.


Works

* * * * * Hoving, Thomas. ''King of the Confessors: A New Appraisal.'' cybereditions.com: Christchurch, NZ, 2001. * Hoving, Thomas. ''King of the Confessors.'' Simon & Schuster: New York, 1981. * Hoving, Thomas. ''Tutankhamun. The Untold Story.'' Simon & Schuster: New York, 1978.
Artful Tom, A memoir // Artnet


Bibliography

* * "Outdoorsman of the Big City", ''Life'', April 29, 1966. *


References


External links



* ttp://libmma.org/digital_files/archives/Thomas_Hoving_records_b18583829 Thomas Hoving recordsat the Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hoving, Thomas 1931 births 2009 deaths American art curators Deaths from lung cancer in New York (state) Directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art People from Manhattan Hotchkiss School alumni Princeton University alumni New York City Department of Parks and Recreation Buckley School (New York City) alumni