FRANCE HONORS GARY TINTEROW WITH THE ORDER OF ARTS AND LETTERS

Dallas Art News reports that Antonin Baudry, cultural counselor of the French embassy, will be honoring museum director Gary Tinterow with the insignia of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters. Tinterow recently began his position as director at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Prior to that, he served as the chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of nineteenth-century, modern, and contemporary art—a department that, notably, the Met’s director Thomas P. Campbell recently began reorganizing, moving the nineteenth-century works back to the department of European painting.

Tinterow’s tenure at the Metropolitan Museum of Art included well-received blockbusters ranging from “Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch,” 1999, to “Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” 2010. The International Association of Art Critics awarded him their Best Exhibition Prize twice, for “Origins of Impressionism,” 1995, and “The Private Collection of Edgar Degas,” 1997.

Created in 1957, the Order of Arts and Letters recognizes individuals who have furthered the arts in France and around the world. Previous American recipients include Paul Auster, Ornette Coleman, Jim Jarmusch, and Meryl Streep.