Ask virtually anybody in the museum world, and they’ll tell you that he’s done a very good job of doing just that. Tom Freudenheim, former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art and London’s Gilbert Collection as well as the former assistant secretary for museums at the Smithsonian, where he oversaw all of the institution’s museums, has known de Montebello since the two were classmates at NYU. “Philippe instinctively recognized that not only are the works inside the Met treasures, but that the institution itself is a treasure,” says Freudenheim, “and that it was a really important place that he could play with a little bit but that he shouldn’t mess up. And he really didn’t. Quite the contrary. The Met that Philippe is leaving is an even greater museum than the one he inherited, and that’s very difficult to manage in this climate, when everybody’s trying to make institutions in some way come down to the lowest common denominator. He’s been able to find the perfect balance between seriousness and pop, which is something that, in a way, nobody else has been able to accomplish.”
So why retire now? Despite two titanium knees, the 72-year-old de Montebello still plays tennis four times a week, “and I only play singles, so when I’m playing, I’m really playing,” he points out. Age, of course, is one factor. “A 72-year-old man should not be mapping what the Met should do for the next 25 years,” he says. “It’s because I know I don’t have my finger on every pulse of what the latest thinking is that it’s time for someone else who does.” And anyway, he says, he’s not particularly interested in planning for the future. “I’m more interested in reflection,” he says. “I want to think about what I’ve done and why. What really is a museum? Is a museum useful anymore in today’s world?”
In an attempt to answer these questions, de Montebello is embarking on a second career. Starting next fall, he’ll be teaching graduate courses in the history of museums at his alma mater, NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. As a man who is, he admits, “terrified of idleness,” he sounds downright gleeful about how much work his new post will entail. “I’ll probably be working harder than I do here for the first couple of years,” he says. “I mean, this is graduate school. One course for one semester is 14 two-hour lectures. Do you know what it takes to prepare 14 two-hour lectures? It’ll be full-time!”
So while that daily agenda probably won’t be necessary, de Montebello wants it made quite clear that he’s not taking himself out of the game just yet. “I am not retiring,” he says. “Next year you’ll find me in the library boning up for my courses. I am not going on a cruise.”
