Thomas Hoving, Best-Selling Author and Former Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to Publish Memoir on artnet.com

NEW YORK and BERLIN - artnet is pleased to announce that it is publishing Artful Tom, the new memoir by Thomas Hoving, best-selling author and former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The memoir is being published exclusively on artnet in weekly installments beginning with Chapter 1, which is available in artnet Magazine today (www.artnet.com/ArtfulTom).

In his latest art world tell-all, Hoving reveals: — how he smuggled art treasures from Europe as a young curator. — why he got fired from Connoisseur magazine. — the secrets that helped the Italians get back his beloved million-dollar Euphronios krater. — how he got the police to move bodies out of Central Park as Commissioner of Parks. — inside stories of ABC’s television newsmagazine 20/20.

A renowned museum executive, Hoving was first a curator (1959-65) and then director (1967-77) of the Met, where he presided over a dramatic expansion of both the museum and its audience. He specialized in high-profile acquisitions of masterworks — an abiding interest, and the subject of his previous artnet Magazine column, “My Eye” — as well as opening the museum to a broader and more youthful public via blockbuster exhibitions like “King Tut.” Under his leadership, the museum embarked on its great expansion plan, which added 125 galleries to the museum and doubled its space. The extensive acquisitions that took place during his tenure include the Lehman Collection, the Packard Collection and the Temple of Dendur.

After a decade as director, Hoving left the museum and became the on-air correspondent and entertainment editor for the ABC newsmagazine 20/20. He then went on to form Hoving Associates, a museum consulting firm, and later became the Editor-in-Chief of Connoisseur magazine.

Hoving is a best-selling author whose numerous titles include Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1993), The Hunt For Big-time Art Fakes (1997), Art for Dummies (1999), and American Gothic: The Biography of Grant Wood’s American Masterpiece (2005).

Visit artnet.com/ArtfulTom to read Artful Tom.

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Press contact: Sarah Bradley artnet Worldwide Inc. 61 Broadway, 23rd floor New York, NY 10006-2701, U.S.A. Tel: +1-212-497-9700 ext: 197 sbradley@artnet.com

Source: artnet

Sarah Bradley, artnet Worldwide Inc., +1-212-497-9700, ext: 197, sbradley at artnet.com