Thomas Campbell, former Met director, to lead Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Arts

Thomas Campbell
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In a startling choice, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) announced today (30 October) that it had appointed Thomas P. Campbell, the former director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as its new director and chief executive.

Campbell resigned from the Met in February 2017 amid a financial shortfall at the museum and other management concerns. Yet his selection today after a six-month search came as a surprise mainly because he is replacing Max Hollein, who left the San Francisco institution to take over Campbells old job as director at the Met earlier this year.

As director and chief executive in San Francisco, starting on 1 November, Campbell will oversee the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park and a staff of 500.

“We are thrilled to be able to name a new director of such accomplishment to lead the next chapter in our institutions history,” said Carl Pascarella, a member of the search committee for the post at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, in a statement. “We conducted a thorough international search, reviewing an extensive and diverse group of highly qualified candidates and interviewing the finalists over a period of months. In the end, our choice was clear and unanimous.”

Campbell, 56, was quoted in the statement as saying: “I am deeply gratified to take up the responsibility of leading the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. It is a great privilege to become part of an institution with such outstanding curatorial expertise and famously loyal audiences and supporters, and I am especially pleased to have the opportunity to continue the great work done by my friend and predecessor Max Hollein. I am eager to begin collaborating with the trustees, the staff and the entire cultural network of San Francisco.”

An art historian specialising in European tapestries, Campbell joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1995 as an assistant curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts and supervising curator of the Antonio Ratti Textile Center. He curated major Renaissance and Baroque tapestry exhibitions at the Met in 2002 and 2007, and was named director and chief executive of the Met in 2009, following the retirement of the museum's long-time director Philippe de Montebello.

His eight-year tenure in those positions won mixed reviews, with some praising his efforts to democratise the venerable institution and draw more visitors, extend the museums digital projects and put a greater emphasis on Modern and contemporary art, and others fretting over his financial decisions and aggressive expansion plans. A plan for a new $600m Modern and contemporary wing was put on hold early last year amid concerns about a soaring budget deficit that contributed to Campbells resignation. (Recently the museum resumed planning for the wing in a revised form.)

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco today praised Campbells Met stewardship. “During his tenure at the Met, he led a revitalisation and modernisation achieved through award-winning exhibitions and publications, major capital projects and historic donations of works of art,” it said. It noted that attendance rose by more than 50% during his tenure to a record seven million visitors yearly, “with audiences that are now more diverse than ever before”.

“Toms impressive scholarship and curatorial achievements, his fundraising expertise, and his record of engaging new audiences make him the right leader for FAMSF right now,” Dede Wilsey, president of FAMSFs board, said in the statement.

For his part, Hollein, who led FAMSF for two years, saluted Campbell as a “great and esteemed colleague” and said the de Young and Legion of Honour would “certainly continue to thrive significantly” with him at the helm.