In its latest genuflection before the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Arts section of The New York Times has ignored the newspaper’s history as well as the museum’s. In today’s lead article on repairs to damaged art, reporter Randy Kennedy writes that such restorations are conducted in “a kind of seclusion unusual for the museum.” The italic emphasis is mine, for in truth, operating in seclusion is business as usual there — as any Times reporter or editor with access to its archives should know. The Met’s long history of willful obfuscation, opacity and disingenuousness verging on mendacity emerged as one of the key narrative threads in Rogues Gallery. Academics, authors, art historians and New York Times reporters alike have hit the brick wall of the Met’s fear of exposure. It only cooperates with those it can control, as its chief flack blithely admits. In that, at least, he, for one, is transparently honest.