The great- although sometimes controversial- former director of the Metropolitan Museum died this past week.  Thomas Hoving was best known for making the Met a more nimble, forward thinking, and flexible institution.

From our angle and of note to our readers are Hoving’s boarding school experiences. I first learned of his boarding school background in the early 1980’s when he spoke at Eaglebrook School.

“…Mr. Hoving’s early academic career was checkered. He was eased out of the Buckley School on the Upper East Side in the fourth grade and spent the next five years at Eaglebrook School in western Massachusetts. From there he went to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he lasted only six months, leaving after an incident in which he punched a Latin teacher.

He graduated from Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, then worked a summer as a copy boy for the columnist Sidney Fields of the New York newspaper The Daily Mirror, a job that seemed to jump-start a lifelong, and sometimes ill-advised, affection for media attention. (He joked that his middle initials stood for Publicity Forever.)

During his sophomore year at Princeton, he found his calling when he took an art history course. Princeton is also where he found his wife, Nancy Bell, a Vassar student whom he met at a house party, where they were both trying to avoid their dates…” (Thomas Hoving, Remaker of the Met, Dies at 78, NYT)

Despite his academic struggles, Hoving seemed to value his boarding school experiences throughout his life. It’s just my sneaking suspicion that encountered an art history class in there somewhere.