The resignation – some would say, forced resignation – of Thomas P. Campbell as director and CEO of the debt-ridden Metropolitan Museum of Art can only sadden those of us who favor this beloved institution and know its scholarly leader even casually.
Sadden but not surprised. When Campbell became director in 2008, I thought he was an exhilarating choice, because he was a curator and not a manager. And I thought he was an odd choice, because, well, he was a curator and not a manager. Those mixed feelings turned out to be prescient. ...
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Read MoreIn WAG’s June “Celebrating the Globe” issue, I wrote about my passion – OK, some would say my obsession – with all things ancient Greek, particularly Alexander the Great, the Greco-Macedonian king whose conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. when he was in his mid-20s would lead to the dissemination of Greek culture in the East, underscoring a cultural cross-pollination and political tension that are still with us today.
Recently, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan explored these themes in its blockbuster exhibit “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World,” which I also wrote about in our June issue and which featured a kind of greatest hits of the Hellenistic (post-classical Greek) world. ...
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