Obituary: Thomas Hoving, 78, Influential Former Head of Metropolitan Museum

Thomas Hoving, whose 10-year stewardship of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is credited with remaking that New York institution and major art museums nationwide, died Thursday of lung cancer at his Manhattan home, The New York Times reports.

Appointed as the Met’s seventh and youngest-ever director in 1967, Mr. Hoving cut a brash, buccaneering figure as he transformed the staid museum — creating a contemporary art department, opening new wings and galleries dedicated to non-Western cultures, and aggressively pursuing famed antiquities, the newspaper says. He also helped usher in the era of blockbuster exhibitions.

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