Thomas Campbell has just been named the new director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, replacing the outgoing Philippe de Montebello. The Oxford educated Campbell is a museum insider — a curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts and the supervising curator of the Met’s Antonio Ratti Textile Center. He is the Met’s second British-born director (the first was Sir Caspar Purdon Clark who was installed by the museum’s then-president J, Pierpont Morgan almost exactly 100 years ago). My thanks to the board of directors for making their choice in time for it to be included in my forthcoming history of the museum. Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes has the most interesting comment I’ve seen so far: “Confident institutions hire lesser figures, confident that they’ll be able to help him/her grow into the job.”