No. 42: Former Met Director Thomas Campbell Defends His Legacy

On February 4th, the New York Times published a front page story entitled “Is the Met Museum ‘a Great Institution in Decline’?” The article ignited a ferocious public backlash against New York City’s most-visited institution and its director and CEO, Thomas P. Campbell. By the end of that same month, Campbell had announced his resignation—making his tenure as director the shortest since the Met’s fourth, Herbert Eustis Winlock, who presided over the institution from 1932 to 1939.

Principal among the issues that led to Campbell’s resignation was a roughly $10 million budgetary deficit (public knowledge for a year or so prior to his resignation), which officials warned could swell to $40 million if immediate action was not taken.

In a conversation with Artsy, days after his July 14th departure from the Met, Campbell was candid about the issues that contributed to that deficit—including his own ambition as director. But he also painted a far more nuanced picture of the circumstances surrounding the major grievances levied against him and the museum: in particular, heavy investment in expanding the museum’s activities in modern and contemporary art and extensive resources put into digital infrastructure to help expand the reach of the United States’s largest museum.