Let the Mummies Dance

Thomas Hoving led the Metropolitan Museum from 1967 to 1977. During his ten years as director, he accomplished a real revolution in one of the richest and most mind-blowing museums. Under his leadership, world masterpieces and major private collections were acquired, the largest renovation of the building was undertaken, and the halls began showcasing contemporary artists and organizing blockbuster exhibitions — including, for example, an exhibition dedicated to Russian costume from the collections of Soviet museums.
To bring the museum to such success, Hoving had to, as he himself writes, be a little bit of a bandit, a gofer, a partner of smugglers, an anarchist, and a sycophant. And thus, “the Metropolitan, once elitist, prim, gray, barely breathing, came to life. The mummies began to dance.”
This book is an engaging story of how life in the museum is organized from the inside: about how Hoving's relationships with curators and conservators, collectors and benefactors, and the American elite of the 1960s and 1970s developed.
The book “Let the Mummies Dance. The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Inside” is the second edition of the “Directorial Series” of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, dedicated to the leaders of major world museums.