Philippe de Montebello

The fact that imperial Metropolitan Museum of Art director Philippe de Montebello is ending his 31-year tenure in just a few months is bad enough for the Upper East Side’s delicate collective psyche. But what would happen to the neighborhood’s sense of nobility if the molasses-voiced descendent of Napoleonic aristocracy (and, on his mother’s side, of the Marquis de Sade) actually moved away?

According to city records, Mr. de Montebello and his wife, Edith, director of financial aid at the Trinity School, sold their two-bedroom co-op at 25 East 86th Street this month for $2.195 million.

The buyer is graphic designer Holly Okner, whose father happens to be the investor Peter A.  read more »

Philippe de Montebello, who stepped down as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art after 31 years in January, will become New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts' first professor to teach the history, evolution and culture of museums. An announcement will be made tonight at a dinner celebrating the institute’s 75th anniversary, according to the New York Times. In addition to teaching at N.Y.U., he will advise the university on its plan for a new overseas campus at Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

“It’s a wonderful new chapter,” said Mr. de Montebello, who earned his master’s degree in art history at the institute. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

Mr. de Montebello, who turned 72 on Friday, said he planned to teach full time. But rather than lecturing on what might seem most obvious — how to run a museum, for example, or the history of 15th- and 16th-century French and Netherlandish painting, his scholarly area of expertise — he said he would cover the history of collecting and connoisseurship and the evolution of museums, including the central issue of how the museum’s mission can be defined in today’s world.  read more »

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Philippe Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the past 30 years, announced to the Met’s board of trustees yesterday afternoon that he will resign from his post at the end of the year or until they could find a replacement.

The New York Times reports:  read more »

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the highest paid director of a nonprofit in the country, according to a survey of nonprofit executives conducted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.  read more »