Thomas Hoving, the former director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and author of numerous artworld-related books including Masterpiece and Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on 10 December from cancer at 78. Hoving became the Met’s youngest director in 1967 at age 35 and during his tenure (through 1977) made a great many innovations – among them forming a contemporary art department and hanging the now-signature banners on the facade to advertise shows – to make the then stagnating museum a more popular institution.
