Met set to sweat
AN upcoming Vanity Fair piece goes behind the scenes of the resignation of Met Museum director/ chief executive Thomas Campbell, with one insider claiming under Campbell, “the budgetary looseness, which had always existed in principle, just went berserk.” Campbell resigned weeks after a NY Times piece asked, “Is the Met Museum ‘a Great Institution in Decline?’ ” VF’s William D. Cohan reports an insider revealed, “The article was ‘like an atomic bomb.’ ” The piece cites museum sources who allege factors in Campbell’s exit included his attempts to make the Met “new and trendy,” and the politics behind a Leonard Lauder gift of $1 billion in art. One said, “The place is politically, totally insane.”