by Jon Lackman | 29 November 2010 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Renaissance
The final issue of Decorative Arts includes reviews of two recent books by the new Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell.
Hans Hubach considers the exhibition catalogue to Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor:
Following the great success of his Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002), Thomas Campbell has once again succeeded in satisfying the high level of aspiration and great expectations of the professional world … Campbell was able to enlist the most renowned international experts … [The] texts represented the current state of research, and even partly defined research in a new way … [This is] an excellent example of how public appeal and a high academic standard need not be mutually exclusive.
Nello Forti Grazzini considers Campbell’s Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court:
The book under review, excellent for its content and sumptuous graphics, represents a mature synthesis and, for the moment, a provision conclusion to an extremely fruitful period of research … The result is extraordinary, and Campbell’s book, which is among the most beautiful ever written on the subject of antique tapestries, ends by offering much more than its title promises.
When The New Yorker‘s Rebecca Mead asked Campbell last year if he’d miss doing scholarship, he replied, “I’ll get back to it eventually.”
