Thomas Hoving: The Man Who Made the Mummies Dance

If ever a personality reigned over a time and place, it was Thomas Hoving’s during his decade as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  From 1967 to 1977, Hoving enjoyed a more dynamic and varied career than scores of museum directors, curators, and scholars enjoy over a lifetime. 

Hoving's escapades are recorded in his 1993 memoir Making the Mummies Dance in which he describes the Met as, “the most diverse and dazzling art museum in the world.” And while other museum professionals may argue with this boast, it cannot be argued that Thomas Hoving is one of the few museum directors ever to reach the “rock star” level of celebrity. He was truly a showman’s showman.

Had Hoving never participated in the invention of the blockbuster exhibition, had he never overseen one of the mightiest acquisition periods in the history of one of the world’s great museums, and had he never used his colossal energy to excite the art world, he could easily have been a novelist; Hoving was a born raconteur. While discussing the gargantuan art collection of Arthur Sackler (the benefactor whose name graces one of the Smithsonian art museums), he tells the following uncorroborated tale: 

I had heard lots of stories about how Arthur Sackler made his money, but I could never get him to verify the tales.  One story had it that when he and his two brothers—also medical doctors, both, like Arthur, married to doctors—were about to graduate Columbia’s Physicians and Surgeons College, they held a conference about what they wanted to do next.  Private practice didn’t much appeal, and one of the Sackler brothers suggested they invent something or make something better.  They pounced upon Argyrol, a disinfectant created by the art collector Alfred Barnes, which was in general use in the twenties and thirties.  They succeeded in removing the toxic properties in the solution and patented it as Betadyne, which became the surgical scrub used in virtually every modern operating room worldwide.  The Sacklers made millions.

This incidental tale is typical of how Hoving’s writing is much like unpacking a set of Russian petrushka dolls; there is always a story within a story.

After leaving the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1977, Hoving spent much time writing, lecturing, and consulting.  He was also an accomplished sailor and pilot.  Thomas Hoving, one of the museum world’s great entrepreneurs, died on December 10 at the age of 78.

--Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery

Thomas Hoving / Burton Philip Silverman / Charcoal on paper, 1967 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; purchased with funds provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc.

Comments

[JHD]

With all due respect to Hoving, who was a genius at marketing and a true connoisseur of art, he did not invent the blockbuster.

The historian Michael Kammen dates it to 1963, when the Louvre lent the Mona Lisa to the National Gallery and the Met. In NYC alone, more than 1 million people stood in long lines to see her between Feb. 7 and Mar. 4 of that year.

Some go back further to 1909, when the Met staged the blockbuster, two-sided Hudson-Fulton exhibition. On one side were 143 paintings from the Dutch Golden Age: works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, etc. On the other were galleries of pre-1815 decorative arts and colonial paintings. Nearly 300,000 people saw the exhibition, which lasted less than 2 months.

[National Portrait Gallery]

Your comment provoked no small amount of talk here at the NPG. Most of us generally agree that the “blockbuster” exhibition era began with the seven-city tour of King Tut from 1976-1979. However, the showing of the Mona Lisa in 1963 was no small cultural endeavor, to which the visitorship certainly attests.

Still, several questions arise when we begin this discussion:

First, is the blockbuster an event by itself, or can it be fixed within the framework of a larger cultural enterprise (such as the Hudson Fulton exposition you indicate, or a world’s fair, perhaps)?

Second, with respect to the Mona Lisa, borrowing individual great works is no small task, but large thematic exhibitions from overseas were difficult to create before the federal government agreed to indemnify loans from foreign cultural institutions in the 1970s. Is any large scale exhibition a blockbuster show, or is such a show defined by its exotic nature and its foreign origins?

Third, if we accept the notion that any large scale show that has significant attendance is a blockbuster, then should we go back to the Louvre of the late eighteenth century and call the first large scale public art showings “blockbusters”? Those shows drew huge numbers and they paved the way for things to come, for sure.

Fourth, a word that kept coming up in our conversations here was “hype.” Most of these large scale shows are ushered into place with large marketing initiatives and gift shops that contain boatloads of exhibition-specific souvenirs. Before there was marketing, could there be a blockbuster? The very word blockbuster seems to imply hype and attention and a sort of wonder that goes beyond what Stephen Greenblatt calls the “wonder and resonance” usually attached to a successful museum experience.

Your comment also led to a further discussion of the fate of the blockbuster. It is interesting to note that as such shows became more proliferate, the public demand for such shows seems to have waned. The other side of that is that marketing has taken such a firm root in our institutions that many smaller shows are hyped with the same vigor and intensity as the Tuts and Ramesses’ were a couple of decades ago. If marketing constitutes part of the definition, then the blockbuster intention abounds.

And while I am sticking with Hoving (and Carter Brown, of course) as the progenitor(s) of the blockbuster experience, the foundations of that experience are certainly in events like the ones you describe. I am obligated to define the term blockbuster a little more precisely, perhaps; perhaps we all are. It seems to be one of those generic terms that we get away with using until we are pinned against the wall with it.

This is an awfully interesting topic; thank you for your comment.

- Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits

[JHD]

Warren,
All of the points you raise are valid. I was merely rejecting the words "invention of the blockbuster exhibition," and I stand by my comment that Hoving did not invent them.

I think a more appropriate description of what he did was "popularize" them. Another way to say that is that Hoving ushered in the era of the blockbuster. This last description accommodates your comments that the era may be over.

Hudson-Fulton was certainly marketed, btw -- not perhaps with the things found in museum shops today, but marketed nonetheless.