The de Montebello Years: Curators at the Met celebrate 3 decades of acquisitions

To celebrate Philippe de Montebello's 31 years as Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the curators of the Museum announced on June 2 plans to organize an exhibition of approximately 300 of the more than 84,000 works of art acquired during his tenure.

Among the highlights of the celebratory exhibition will be a standing Buddha in mottled red sandstone from India (Gupta period, 5th century).

Montebello – the eighth and longestserving Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art – announced in January his plans to retire at the end of the year.

The unique exhibition – ‘The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions,' -- which will be on view in The Tisch Galleries from October 24, 2008, through February 1, 2009 – will be a collaboration of the curators currently working in the Museum's 17 curatorial departments.

Special emphasis will be placed on works that were transformative to the Metropolitan Museum's collections by building on existing strengths and expanding into new areas of collecting.

"We wanted to create an exhibition to celebrate Philippe de Montebello's auspicious career by focusing on an area of spectacular achievement at the heart of the institution acquisitions," said Helen C. Evans, the exhibition's coordinator, who is the Metropolitan Museum's Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art.

"The breadth and greatness of the works on display in ‘The Philippe de Montebello Years' will tell multiple stories – of his stellar leadership of the Museum's more than 300 curators, conservators, scientists, librarians, and educators of the excellence of the collections in representing 5,000 years of human artistic achievement around the world; and of the Museum's vital evolution in terms of renovating, expanding, and reinstalling galleries, developing conservation and research facilities, and enhancing visitors' understanding and experiencing of art."

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