I am very pleased indeed to welcome to GEI Thomas P. Campbell, who became the Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 1, 2009.
Born and raised in Cambridge, England, Mr. Campbell received a B.A. in English language and literature from the University of Oxford in 1984, followed by a Master’s degree in 1987 and a Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute in1999.
In the period 1987 – 1994 he created the Franses Tapestry Archive in London which, with more than 120,000 images, is the largest and most up-to-date information resource on European tapestries and figurative textiles in the world.
Mr. Campbell had worked in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts for fourteen years, rising steadily through the curatorial ranks.
During this time, he conceived and organized the major exhibitions Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002) and Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor (New York, 2007; Palacio Real, Madrid, spring 2008), both of which incorporated drawings, paintings, and prints, as well as tapestries, and received widespread acclaim.
The 2002 exhibition was named “Exhibition of the Year” by Apollo magazine and its catalogue won the Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Award for distinguished exhibition catalogue in the history of art (2003).
Since shortly after his arrival at the Museum, he also served as Supervising Curator of The Antonio Ratti Textile Center, which houses the Museum’s encyclopedic collection of 36,000 textiles and is one of the preeminent centers of textile studies in the world.
He has lectured and taught extensively on European court patronage and the relation of tapestries to the other arts in the United States and abroad.
He has also published extensively on the subject of historic European textiles.
His most recent book publication is Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court, and his articles have appeared in leading scholarly journals. He has been the recipient of awards and fellowships, including the Iris Foundation Award for a scholar in mid-career deserving of recognition for outstanding contributions to the study of the decorative arts (2003).
GEI has a long relationship with the Metropolitan Museum and it is with great personal pleasure that I present to his new Director, Mr. Thomas P. Campbell, with the GEI Friendship Award in recognition of his many accomplishments.
The luncheon was held on January 15, 2010 in the Stella Private Room of Le Cirque restaurant in New York City.