|
Loading... Making the Mummies Dance : Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1993)by Thomas Hoving
None. Hoving knows how to play the "political game" This is a fun read and gives great insight in the management of the Metropolitan Museum. (  ) phillund | Feb 18, 2012 |  After reading this book, the impression I'm left with is that Thomas Hoving is a huge snob. Basically this book covers the early years of his appointment to director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. I think it helps to have visited the museum to properly appreciate the works he talks about acquiring, and the changes he made to the building. It is interesting to read a behind-the-scenes account of acquiring works and museum management - but a lot of it is just name dropping and casually mentioning million-dollar price tags. If I ever become a museum director (Lord, save me from that fate) I would want to read this again, but as a lowly curator it makes my brow furrow in disgust. It receives three and a half stars because it is well written - not because I like the content. (  ) lizzybeans11 | May 18, 2011 | Woo. Never a dull moment. No spade not called a spade, no opinion unexpressed. One thing I will certainly say for Hoving, though, is that he isn't any more afraid to discuss his own foibles and shortcomings and outright failures than he is everyone else's. That's part of what makes his writing appealing. When his own horn deserves tooting, it certainly gets tooted (and, again, he is fair - others' horns toot all over the place as well), but he doesn't ignore his errors. I'm still stunned by the sheer underhandedness that went into the acquisition of many, if not most, of the works in the museum, and the strata of hatred and enmity and cronyism (?) throughout the art and antiquities community. Maybe it's just as well I never went that route (it was a passing dream) - I would have been eaten alive. I was attracted by the title, which was Hoving's intent when he became Director of the Met. And he did it. (  ) Stewartry | Feb 10, 2011 | Rarely have I enjoyed a book more while disliking the author so intensely. I think he'd be rather difficult to be in proximity with -- and yet he can tell a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. What an amazing recount of the roller coaster ride of transforming this venerable museum. What an interesting take on city government and arts groups and community groups, etc. The part about the exhibit "Harlem on my Mind" was particularly poignant -- I saw this exhibit as a very small child and it's still etched in my head decades later. A man who accomplished a great deal, who can spin a yarn, and who one can admire for his accomplishments if not his demeanor or methods. Read it. ( ) Oreillynsf | May 15, 2010 | A look at what it's like to run a major urban museum: helpful, even now, for understanding stories about the returned artifacts, art auction prices, debates about whether paintings are authentic, and scandals about just how old and valuable things end up on the antiquities market (and in museums.) An entertaining read and a good companion piece to his _King of the Confessors_ -- or any of his other books. -Kushana ( ) Kushana | Feb 6, 2009 |
 In "Making the Mummies Dance," his bizarre, nasty and ultimately disheartening account of his stormy 10-year reign as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Hoving gloats about a bit of heads-up detective work. He writes that as a candidate in 1966 for the directorship, he discovered, unbeknownst to museum officials, that "the relentless State Commissioner for Human Rights, Eleanor Holmes Norton, was preparing to hit the museum with a series of legal charges alleging massive abuses in the hiring practices and promotions of women employees." His "shocker," he recalls, stunned the trustees, and he implies that it helped him to win the job. This anecdote is vintage Hoving for its combination of skulduggery, one-upmanship, bravado and unreliability. In 1966, Ms. Norton was working for the American Civil Liberties Union and had no dealings with the museum; she never served as State Commissioner, although in 1971 she became chairwoman of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Furthermore, according to the museum, no such investigation of hiring practices took place until 1971, during Mr. Hoving's own tenure; and then it involved the office of the New York State Attorney General, not Ms. Norton, who this week confirmed the inaccuracies of Mr. Hoving's story. Details, details. Mr. Hoving does not let them get in the way of this docudrama of a memoir, which, like the incident with Eleanor Holmes Norton, has little to do, in the end, with art, and sheds too little light on the running of a great museum. . . .
References to this work on external resources.
|
 Google Books — Loading...Popular coversRatingAverage: (3.86)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (4)
1