Thomas Hoving

A trio of articles about Thomas Hoving's contributions to museums and civic life:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/arts/design/12hoving.html
"Mr. Hoving also believed that art museums were public repositories of wonderment, and in a sense his most revolutionary idea was that everybody should be able to see what he thought was great art, as he saw it... It was about somehow democratizing knowledge and feeling, which remains the big difference between him and so many of the bean-counting bureaucrats who have turned our art museums into malls."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/arts/design/11hoving.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13prochnik.html?ref=opinion
The lovebird sign is a great detail.