Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Michael Gross

Book Overview

"Behind almost every painting is a fortune and behind that a sin or a crime." With these words as a starting point, Michael Gross, leading chronicler of the American rich, begins the first independent, unauthorized look at the saga of the nation's greatest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this endlessly entertaining follow-up to his bestselling social history 740 Park , Gross pulls back the shades of secrecy that have long shrouded the upper class's cultural and philanthropic ambitions and maneuvers. And he paints a revealing portrait of a previously hidden face of American wealth and power. The Metropolitan, Gross writes, "is a huge alchemical experiment, turning the worst of man's attributes--extravagance, lust, gluttony, acquisitiveness, envy, avarice, greed, egotism, and pride--into the very best, transmuting deadly sins into priceless treasure." The book covers the entire 138-year history of the Met, focusing on the museum's most colorful characters. Opening with the lame-duck director Philippe de Montebello, the museum's longest-serving leader who finally stepped down in 2008, Rogues' Gallery then goes back to the very beginning, highlighting, among many others: the first director, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an Italian-born epic phony, whose legacy is a trove of plundered ancient relics, some of which remain on display today; John Pierpont Morgan, the greatest capitalist and art collector of his day, who turned the museum from the plaything of a handful of rich amateurs into a professional operation dedicated, sort of, to the public good; John D. Rockefeller Jr., who never served the Met in any official capacity but who, during the Great Depression, proved the only man willing and rich enough to be its benefactor, which made him its behind-the-scenes puppeteer; the controversial Thomas Hoving, whose tenure as director during the sixties and seventies revolutionized museums around the world but left the Met in chaos; and Jane Engelhard and Annette de la Renta, a mother-daughter trustee tag team whose stories will astonish you (think Casablanca rewritten by Edith Wharton). With a supporting cast that includes artists, forgers, and looters, financial geniuses and scoundrels, museum officers (like its chairman Arthur Amory Houghton, head of Corning Glass, who once ripped apart a priceless and ancient Islamic book in order to sell it off piecemeal), trustees (like Jayne Wrightsman, the Hollywood party girl turned society grand dame), curators (like the aging Dietrich von Bothmer, a refugee from Nazi Germany with a Bronze Star for heroism whose greatest acquisitions turned out to be looted), and donors (like Irwin Untermyer, whose collecting obsession drove his wife and children to suicide), and with cameo appearances by everyone from Vogue editors Anna Wintour and Diana Vreeland to Sex Pistols front man Johnny Rotten, Rogues' Gallery is a rich, satisfying, alternately hilarious and horrifying look at America's upper class, and what is perhaps its greatest creation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0767924894
• ISBN13: 9780767924894
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 4.8" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

michael's gallery

Mr. Gross surpasses himself. This "oeuvre d'art" is a MUST for ages 13 to 99 and over.

TRUE GRIT

Wow, someone has finally had the guts to tell the truth about how things really work inside cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum. It turns out that the greatest museum in America isn't run by such great people. To quote the book, the vices of the rich--greed, avarice, ambition, envy, obsession--are what drove the creation of the museum and drive the sort of people who want to be on museum boards. This isn't a book about art or art history. I mean it finally begins to lift the curtain on who actually owns and controls and donates the very very $$$$$ stuff in the museum. I was riveted and anyone who cares about the truth will be fascinated....so many complex and interesting stories under one roof! If I was Gross I would hire a bodyguard

GREAT, RIVETING BOOK!!

ROGUE'S GALLERY is a tour de force - and a wonderful read. It is the definitive history of America's most important museum, the Metropolitan, and therefore deserves a place on everybody's bookshelf. The story of the museum's beginnings is rife with fascinating intrigue and moneyed players jockeying for position. The more recent stories are just as entertaining and make for non-stop reading all the way through until the end of the book.

Witty, Glamorous and Educational

Whether its an apartment building (on Park Avenue), a glamorous industry or a museum, Michael makes it come alive. Not just the mummies are dancing. A thoroughly enjoyable and educational "museum tour" with a witty and well informed guide.

A Wonderful Peak Inside The Met

This is an extraordinary book from an extraordinary writer. I grew up ten blocks from the Met and spent my childhood being dragged there against my will, but I was still in awe of the building, the collection, and the many countries and cultures I was exposed to through art. The solid exterior of Hunt's main building gives the appearance of order, quiet, perfection and harmony, yet inside there is a fascinating world of great egos, money, power, and hundreds of ghosts, not all of them nice ones. Gross takes us through the ages, from the post civil war moguls who founded the museum, to the new tycoons of the present age. It is a vast tale, but one which Gross weaves with his usual clipped style, throwing in colorful tidbits along the way. This is a scholarly book which does not read like one. That is its greatest asset. I now know a great deal about this mysterious institution, and I'm happy to have learned so much in so short a time, and in such a pleasant way. Charles Avery Fisher New York, NY