In the introduction to that volume, the eminent museum curator Gary Tinterow writes that "the Metropolitan's collection developed by happenstance rather than by design.
WASHINGTON, June 26 — When two of the Smithsonian Institution's pre-eminent museums reopen on Saturday after six years of renovation, visitors may be stunned to learn that they were once competing installations with little more in common than the subdued building that housed them.
Founded 99 years ago, it's the pre-eminent museum devoted to the global business that was Big Oil before the Big Oil we know today.
When he first arrived at the Cooper-Hewitt Natiover Design Museum just over a year ago, Paul W. Thompson sent out clear signals that the country's pre-eminent museum of design -- part of the Smithsonian Institution -- badly needed a makeover.
One of the country's pre-eminent historical museums, it offers interactive exhibits and family activities as well as Cafe Minnesota, one of the best luncheon stops in town.
During his tenure the seaport became recognized as the nation's pre-eminent maritime museum.
When the Whitney acquired one of Caio Fonseca Caio Fonseca 's paintings for $125,000 last year, he joined one of the most elite clubs in the world: living artists whose works have been added to the permanent collection of the nation's pre-eminent contemporary museum of American art.
The Dali show is at the world's pre-eminent modern art museum, the Centre Pompidou in Paris -- while a new set of Cocteau's artistic remains are entering their second year exposition at the magnificent Cocteau Museum at Menton on the Côte d'Azur in southern France.
The show's insiderish self-regard, radiant with the leisurely delectations of an eminent curatorial team, including the museum's former chief curator of painting and sculpture Kirk Varnedoe, is unlikely to charm ordinary viewers, who, clutching their twenty-dollar, timed tickets, must elbow through packed rooms for disjointed encounters with the works.
It was the museum's first superintendent, the eminent anatomist Richard Owen, who after the publication of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Section the previous November, had provided Samuel Wilberforce with the arguments to try and oppose "Darwin's bulldog," Thomas H. Huxley, at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Oxford in 1860.
