Who
An unabashed elitist and staunch traditionalist, de Montebello has served as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1978. He plans to retire at the end of 2008.
Backstory
The son of French aristocrats and artists, de Montebello settled in New York in 1950 at the age of 14 after his family emigrated from France. Following Harvard—and after enlisting in the Army—de Montebello's arts-administration career started in 1963 when he interrupted his master's degree program at NYU and took a job at the Met as a curatorial assistant. He's been there ever since—except for the years between 1969 and 1974, when he ran the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston—and was appointed director in 1978, replacing Thomas Hoving.
De Montebello has presided over a massive expansion of the museum's facilities, doubling the display space, inflating annual attendance from 3.5 million to 4.6 million, and beefing up the collection to two million objects, including a major donation of 19th century French paintings and $300 million worth of Picassos and Matisses. His most recent big purchase? Duccio's Madonna and Child from the 14th century, which the Met put up $45 million to acquire.
Of note
If there's one individual who personifies New York's traditional art establishment, it's de Montebello. For one thing, his voice, which the Times has called "magisterial," has come to embody art for many Met-goers, because for many years he's narrated the highly popular audio guides. His guiding philosophy—that the Met should act as a cultural standard-setter rather than pander to current trends—is now accepted as gospel by the Met's board. That he is held in high esteem by many in the art community is not to imply that he's adored—he's notoriously cold and occasionally abrasive, and has been known to chide the museum's donors about gaps in the museum's collection that he'd like to see filled. At any rate, ending his reign as the longest serving director in the museum's history was, he said, a "wrenching" decision, but he concluded that "after three decades, to stay much further would be to skirt decency." When he finally departs the Met, he will join the faculty at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, where he'll teach something he knows a thing or two about—the history and culture of museums.
Drama
De Montebello has remained unapologetic about the fact that many antiquities acquired by the museum may be of illicit provenance. Still, he's been willing to negotiate the return of certain treasures, even if he's not exactly thrilled about it. In 2006, he came to an agreement with Italy to return various artefacts, including the Euphronios krater, a vase from the fifth-century B.C. that was considered the museum's most prized antiquity.
Keeping score
In 2007, the Chronicle of Philanthropy declared de Montebello the highest-paid nonprofit executive in the country, pegging his total annual compensation at $4.7 million.
Personal
He's married to the former Edith Myles, a financial aid officer at the Trinity School; they have three children—Marc, Charles, and Laure—and live on the Upper East Side. The de Montebellos pass their free time at their weekend home in Bridgehampton.
No joke
Through his mother, Germaine Wiener de Croisset, de Montebello is a descendant of the Marquis de Sade.
