Thomas Hoving

Thomas P.F. Hoving (born January 15, 1931), is an American museum executive and consultant and the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He was born in New York City to Walter and Mary (Osgood Field) Hoving. He received a B.A. in 1953, a M.F.A. in 1958, and a Ph.D. in 1959, all from Princeton University. He went to work for the Met in 1959, serving on the staff of the medieval department at The Cloisters 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 March 11, 1966. He assumed the directorship on March 17, 1967 and presided over a massive expansion and renovation of the museum, successfully adding many important collections to its holdings. 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 20/20. He edited Connoisseur Magazine from 1981 to 1991 and is the author of several books, including Making the Mummies Dance (an account of his directorship at the Met) and Art for Dummies. He also wrote books on Andrew Wyeth, Tutankhamen, and art forgeries.

His father was retail genius Walter Hoving who ran Tiffany & Company for a quarter of a century transforming the store into a household word and making the blue box a coveted possession of people around the globe.

Career at the Met

Hoving's tenure at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 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. This course of action, which often involved spending well in excess of the Met's customary budgets, caused considerable controversy among the museum's trustees and in the greater art world. However, many of the pieces that Hoving personally pursued for the Met, including the Euphronios krater depicting the death of Sarpedon, Diego Velázquez's Juan de Pareja, and the Temple of Dendur, now rank among the museum's most popularly acclaimed acquisitions.

The expansion of the Met during Hoving's directorship was not only 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. In fact, 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 entry hall to the second-floor galleries. That particular project, at least, remained unrealized.

References

• Thomas Hoving. Making the Mummies Dance. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
• John A. McPhee. A Roomful of Hovings. New York: Farar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969.