Philippe de Montebello Author

Philippe de Montebello is the longest-serving director in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s history. His retirement in 2008 was described as the end of an era ‘in the cultural life of the city, the state, the nation, and the world’. He is a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, and has a worldwide influence on cultural policies, often in an advisory capacity. He is now Fiske Kimball Professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and an Honorary Trustee of the Prado Museum. Martin Gayford is art critic for The Spectator and the author of acclaimed books on Van Gogh, Constable and Michelangelo. He is the author of many books, including Man with a Blue Scarf, Rendez-vous with Art, (with Philippe de Montebello), A Bigger Message, Modernists & Mavericks, A History of Pictures (with David Hockney), The Pursuit of Art and Spring Cannot be Cancelled, all published by Thames & Hudson.