On October 24, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will pop the cork on what amounts to a four-month-long retirement party for its suave director, Philippe de Montebello. The valediction is an exhibition, “The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions.” On view through February 1, 2009, this hit parade of 300 objects was culled from the more than 84,000 pieces that have come to the Met during de Montebello’s 31-year reign.

His successor, Thomas P. Campbell—an English-born tapestries curator at the museum who was an unexpected choice—will have big shoes to fill: The erudite de Montebello, 72, has been called the Sun King of high culture. He is aristocratic in bearing and in lineage and blessed with a premier grand cru French accent that he has retained despite living in the U.S. since age 14. “Philippe was one of my very few interview subjects who scared me half to death,” admits the veteran—and not easily quailed—art and architecture critic Martin Filler. “He was one of the last museum directors who acted like a scholar rather than the manager of a business. He’s been an island in a rising tide of mediocrity.”

The upcoming show may essentially be less an opportunity to see the director’s favorites than a thank-you to him from his curators. De Montebello is well-known as a curator’s director. “He listens. He may not be interested in an object personally, but he approves a purchase if he appreciates the intellectual reasons for acquiring a piece,” says Helen Evans, the Met’s chief curator of Byzantine art and the exhibition’s coordinator. “Philippe is outstanding at setting aside his own tastes.” Nevertheless, the director’s taste, both its refinements and its failings, will be writ large in the galleries.

The very format of the show will rankle connoisseurs who have bridled at de Montebello’s easy hand with curators. “He was not as firm as he should have been with them,” says one longtime art world observer. “I think of all the hideous installations of major shows, for one thing.” Individual pieces will recall what such critics consider flaws in de Montebello’s stewardship. Jasper Johns’s White Flag, 1955, acquired in 1998, for example, will remind many of the perceived short shrift—the recent display of Jeff Koons sculptures on the museum’s roof notwithstanding—that de Montebello has given postwar and contemporary art. “The late 20th-century art program altogether just hasn’t been top quality,” says one major New York contemporary- art dealer. “Some of the better shows they have mounted lately came from other museums.”

The noted Picasso biographer John Richardson says of de Montebello’s reign: “It’s been fascinating to watch Philippe grow into his job, and he’s proved to be a brilliant diplomat.” The growth Richardson remarks on was displayed in what was perhaps the director’s most challenging moment: Faced with charges from the Italian government that the Met’s holdings included looted antiquities, de Montebello responded petulantly at first but finally found his inner statesman and signed an agreement to repatriate artifacts in return for future loans. In another example, although de Montebello purportedly crossed swords with the powerful de Menil art-collecting dynasty during his five-year directorship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in New York he has managed to charm his board members. This was particularly evident in his greatest, and most controversial, acquisition: Duccio di Buoninsegna’s circa 1300 Madonna and Child. In 2004, after viewing the painting, de Montebello offered $45 million for it on the spot, without consulting the trustees. “The self-regard was incredible, that he was so confident his board would come up with the money,” says one insider. “To have won over these people— Jayne Wrightsman, Annette de la Renta and James Houghton, not a shrinking violet among them—is an unbelievable feat.”

Also unbelievable to some was the pick of Campbell, who is only 46 and whose name was rarely on the lips of art world insiders who had been scrutinizing the long search process. He was chosen over two more senior colleagues at the museum—his own boss, Ian Wardropper, the head of European sculpture and decorative arts, and Gary Tinterow, the curator in charge of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art. Other contenders were said to be the Tate Gallery’s director, Sir Nicholas Serota; the Louvre director Henri Loyrette; and Max Hollein, the director of the Schirn Kunsthalle, in Frankfurt.

When Campbell takes over on January 1, 2009, he becomes the Met’s ninth director in its 138-year history. But he would probably be the first to say, as Filler does, that there is a universal feeling that “no one can possibly replace Philippe, only succeed him.”

"An Epoch Ends" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2008 Table of Contents.