Last night, I attended a Fifth Avenue book club that had read Rogues’ Gallery, and I was asked about the future leadership of the Metropolitan Museum. A good question. Jamie Houghton, the museum’s chairman, shed his second most important title last month when the 74-year old confirmed he would step down as the senior fellow and longest serving member of the governing board of the Harvard Corporation in June (a resident of Corning, New York, Houghton sold his apartment at the Majestic in February 2008 and no longer maintains a home in New York City). His vice chairmen are Henry B. Schact, also 74, a managing director of Warburg Pincus, the private equity firm (he used to run Lucent), S. Parker Gilbert, now about 77, who retired as chairman of Morgan Stanley in 1990, and the youngster of the bunch, Annette de la Renta, who turned a spry 70 on Christmas eve, shortly after getting a hip replacement. Each chairs one or more of the museum’s most powerful committees — Nominating, Acquisitions, Investment and Finance — and serves on the all-powerful executive committee, which has few other members with the stature to equal past museum chairmen like Robert Lehman, Arthur Houghton, Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger and C. Douglas Dillon. Too bad Las Vegas doesn’t lay odds on such things. Gripebox will watch developments closely and hereby solicits any and all information about potential candidates, favorites and dark horses for the almost-sure-to-be-open-soon top job.