Today’s announcement of a new head of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its in-house newsletter, er, sorry, the Arts section of the New York Times, was heavy on hand-fed detail but sorely lacking in context. The Met’s relationship to contemporary art has been contentious almost from the day the museum opened, and is an unlikely foundation for its emergence as “a Major Player,” as the C1 headline has it, yet art-world reporter Carol Vogel (who has gone far since her days as an assistant to caricature-quality fashion editor Carrie Donovan at the Times’ magazine) chose to concentrate on the Euro-centric board’s and (British) museum director Thomas Campbell‘s hiring of a (British) curator, Sheena Wagstaff, rather than the more serious and complex business of the museum’s highly fraught, century-plus hide-and-go-seek non-relationship with living artists. For more on that, I humbly suggest a look at my Rogues’ Gallery. Check the index for mentions of George Hearn, his Hearn Fund, the egregiously unsung Robert Beverly Hale, the extraordinary Henry Geldzhaler (pictured, who does rate a name-check from Vogel), and William S. Lieberman, to name but a few, for the context Vogel’s pals at the museum would probably prefer you forget. It’s a jungle at 1000 Fifth, Sheena. Make sure you bring your bug repellant.