In the introduction to his new book, Rogues’ Gallery, author Michael Gross recounts a meeting with former Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Philippe de Montebello. Sitting in de Montebello’s office in early 2006, Gross explained his plan to write an unauthorized history of the Met. After he had finished, de Montebello “straightened up defensively,” Gross writes, and countered, “You are laboring under a misimpression. The museum has no secrets.”

What follows from this anecdote are 483 pages that suggest otherwise. Rogues’ Gallery is the result of three years of intensive research into the history and leadership of the Met — all without its cooperation or approval. It is the story of the people who have made and shaped the museum, with each of six sections centered around a key figure in the institution’s history, and it is a fascinating read — by turns funny, outrageous, and disconcerting — that makes public what arguably should have been public knowledge long ago. Gross’s coup is not only in the vast amounts of information he has obtained but also in his ability to tell a story about the rich and powerful people of New York nearly effortlessly and without disdain.

Gross, who characterizes himself as “somewhere between a journalist and a historian,” is no stranger to well-to-do New Yorkers. His previous book, 740 Park, followed the players in “the world’s richest apartment building,” among them Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Chryslers. Rogues’ Gallery is his 11th book, the latest in a line of works that tackle such subjects as Bob Dylan, Ralph Lauren, and the modeling business.

In anticipation of Rogues’ Gallery, which hits bookstores today, ARTINFO called up Gross to ask him a few questions. We ended up discussing the Met at length, with the author speaking his mind about its inaccessibility, its public/private dilemma, and the why the museum is not the people who run it.

How did you conceive of Rogues’ Gallery?

Having done 740 Park, people said, What are you going to do next, 820 Fifth? The last thing I wanted to do was another residential building, which would have basically been telling the same story, only with the names changed. So I thought, How do I define myself? I don’t write about real estate; I write social history, and this last book was about a great institution of the New York aristocracy…. What are the other great institutions of the New York aristocracy? The library, the opera, the Colony Club, the art museum … and my editor stopped me there and said, I think that’s it!

I had read Tom Hovings book about the Met and thought it was terrific; I had read Calvin Tomkinss semi-authorized history of the Met; and my wife, curiously, had read this ancient biography of Luigi di Cesnola, who was the first director of the Met, and she raved about it. So I thought, This will probably have a cast of characters at least as interesting as 740 Park, and even though it’s in New York, it’s really a bigger subject, because it’s America’s greatest art museum.

Do you have any kind of art background?

Absolutely none. One of the most wonderful things about what I do is that every new book gets to be an education in another subject. You get to spend a year or two — or in this case, three — immersed in a subject. Have I been going to art museums since I was a kid? Yes, absolutely. Am I an art historian or a museographer? Absolutely not. But I didn’t intend this to be a work of art history or museography. In the same way that I’ve always resisted being a beat reporter, I’ve always seen myself as being in worlds but not of them.

It sounds like quite an epic undertaking, especially because the Met, as you say, was so hostile to you.

Precisely. It’s the single hardest thing I have ever done. I’ve done books where people were uncooperative or even hostile, but here the effort to impede me was constant. I had to find ways to report while enduring phone call after phone call where people yelled at me. People were going around New York calling me a sleaze — apparently you’re sleazy if you dare to think that you have a right to write about a public institution. Eventually it got to be funny, but even boxers who can take a punch feel them. And in the end it made it a much more rewarding experience, because the harder you have to work for information, the better the information is. I’m not sure whether it was ironically rewarding or rewardingly ironic, but it was one of those.

Why do you think they were so hostile?

They told me that 740 Park was a very bad advertisement, because they didn’t want me poking and prodding into the deepest recesses of the lives of their trustees and benefactors — which of course was precisely what I was going to do. Should they have realized that I was going to get there anyway, and that maybe if they’d helped me, they could have ensured that their point of view was fully represented? They blew up that possibility right at the beginning.

The book was conceived in September ’05, and the conversation with Philippe de Montebello and Met President Emily Rafferty that ended my attempt at getting cooperation was in February or March of ’06. I spent that entire period trying to gain their cooperation, and afterwards I continued to try sporadically to get them to rethink their decision. One of the very first things I heard, which was subsequently confirmed by Emily Rafferty, was that shortly after I made my first phone call to the communications department, the senior staff of the museum was ordered not to speak to me. And then, according to a letter I was sent, the board of trustees was told by the administration that any attempts I made to communicate with them should be sent to the communications office, which had already made it clear that it would not be communicating with me.

Did that hostility affect your feelings about the museum?

Oh no. At the very beginning, I signed up at a very high level of membership in the museum — I considered it a tithe to a church where I worshipped — and I remained a member until May ’08. It’s very important to remember that the museum is not the people who created it, who sustained it, who run it; the museum is the museum. This is a case of public greatness being created by the somewhat baser motives of a group of people who range from good to bad. You can’t judge the institution by the people who created it or who run it; that’s a mistake. They’re transitory — it’s permanent.

What were you hoping to do with the book?

For the last 20 years, the rich, powerful, and successful in our world have basically been acclaimed. No one has looked at them skeptically; no one has tried to demystify them. Their self-created myth has been allowed to stand.

The job of people like me is to describe who they are, how they’ve gotten there, what they’ve created, and what their motivations are. It’s not necessarily welcomed by the subjects, but there has been a great tradition in America, for hundreds of years, of taking a critical look at power. And the fact of the matter is that the Metropolitan is run, and historically has been run, by the most powerful people in America.

… with very little regard for the public, it seems.

Yes, one of the themes that runs straight through the book is the public/private dichotomy: that this is a public institution on public land in a public building, the trustees hold the art in trust for the public, and yet they consider themselves this private institution that is accountable to no one. There’s a wonderful Robert Moses quote in the middle of the book that I repeated often to people who refused to give me interviews, because I thought it really summed up an attitude that was ingrained in the museum’s trustees and administration: “The arrogance and conceit of those people were phenomenal. They really felt they were the lords of creation and that nobody had the right even to question what they did.”

I joined the museum at the level that would entitle me to go to the annual meeting, because in my research I had learned that annual meetings were often somewhat raucous affairs where dissenting voices were heard. Well, the annual meeting that I went to for my three or four thousand dollars was a public relations sham. It was one of the silliest wastes of time, and I subsequently found out that among themselves, the trustees joke about it and say, If you want to be bored to tears, go to the annual meeting. I also found out that the board of trustees is also something of a sham — it’s a rubber-stamping body that approves the actions of the actual rulers of the museum, who are the handful of people on the executive committee. This is how this public institution ensures that the public doesn’t know anything about it.

Do you have any thoughts on how that gap could better be closed?

Well, I think the museum now, compared to 100 years ago, serves the public much better. But the museum should realize its place in New York. I’m not saying that every one of their curatorial and board meetings should be open to the public, but a little less “this is none of your business,” and a little more “this is very much your business,” would go a long way.

Also, more of a recognition of the place of art in the contemporary world would not only serve the public better — because it would feed a clear public hunger —it would also serve the museum better, because at the moment they’re not doing very much to cultivate benefactors and trustees for the decades to come. The top hierarchy of the Met is a very old group: I think Annette de la Renta, who’s a vice chairman, is 69; the other vice chairmen are 72 and 74. The people who have a living interest in art are much richer, much younger, and have much different taste.

I talk at the end of the book about the arrival of Damien Hirsts shark as a wobbly and questionable effort to address this issue. They bring in this very expensive, visible, controversial piece of art, as if to say, “You see? We do care about contemporary art.” But what came from that was more ridicule of their decision-making process and of their way of dealing with the contemporary art market. The museum’s attitude toward the art of its day has been and continues to be a major Achilles’ heel.

It’s interesting that you say that, because I recently went to the Met to see “The Pictures Generation” exhibition. That, to me, was a really good show and seems like a step in the right direction.

Certainly a step in the right direction, as Holland Cotter said in his review [in the New York Times], but remember, that review opened with him slapping the Met around for this same historical problem. For instance, they’ve just hired a very young director, Thomas Campbell, which is a good move, but he’s a tapestry man. Tapestries are not cutting-edge art. How well will he relate to people who are active in the contemporary art market, or to the guys who still have money after the recession?

At the end of the book you call Campbell “something of a wild card.” Can you clarify what you mean?

The last couple pages of the book were literally written in the two days after Campbell was appointed. At that point, he appeared to be a dark horse, something of a cipher. When de Montebello was made director, it was clearly part of a process by which the trustees attempted to regain a measure of control. They hired a very young guy, they stripped him of much of his power — the board emasculated the job to ensure that they would never have to deal with another Tom Hoving. It took de Montebello 30 years to restore the imperial directorship.

By picking someone without a constituency, without a history, the board of trustees has again restored the balance and given itself a measure of control over the museum. Had they picked somebody who was far more prominent, who had been there for years and had a track record and a well-known philosophy, it would have been a very different story.

What’s next for you?

I’m going back to real estate, but not in New York. I’m going to write a sort of Los Angeles version of 740 Park. I’m sure there will be those who say that I am quite cleverly getting out of Dodge after writing this book, but I’m actually very excited by it.