Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art

As director of Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1967 to 1977, brash, energetic Hoving transformed a stodgy, elitist institution into a bottom-line-oriented business enterprise, a modernized, expansive museum that actively engages the public. In this ebullient memoir, Hoving, who is preening and amusingly self-deprecating at once, provides a rare behind-the-scenes peek at turf wars, intrigues, fabulous acquisitions and stormy managerial battles. A highly cultivated man with wide-ranging tastes, this self-described publicity hound copes with eccentric, unpredictable donors, ostrich-like curators and angry protestors; he clashes with Robert Lehman, Edward Koch, J. Paul Getty and Jacqueline Kennedy. Hopping from Paris to Moscow to Cairo, he describes the internal controversies that have erupted over major exhibitions, giving former colleagues and critics their comeuppance. A hectic, entertaining tour of a rarefied world. Photos. Author tour. (Jan.)