Our Man At The Met.(Thomas Campbell at the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Byline: Dodie Kazanjian. Portrait by Annie Leibovitz

"Tapestry Tom" Campbell quietly brought his dazzling scholarship to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then he got the biggest job in the art world: as its director.

Tom Campbell could happily have lived out the rest of his days as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the relatively young age of 46, he had already organized two huge, brilliant, and eye-opening exhibitions of medieval and Renaissance tapestries, exhibitions that altered forever the way we see and understand these formidable artworks. He had become a leading scholar in his chosen field, with a career's worth of research and discovery ahead of him. Then, quite suddenly, he found himself in line for the biggest job in the museum world. Sitting in a corner banquette at the Carlyle over an early breakfast in November, the boyish-looking British scholar reflects on the months-long process that led up to his surprising selection as the Metropolitan Museum's new director.

"Back in April, when I was invited to become a candidate in the search process," he says, "I was about to go to England for a month of research. At first I thought, Can they be serious?" He was traveling alone, in a rented car, without his wife and two young children. "I drove all over the countryside, looking at tapestries and listening to English pop music on the radio, and I had a lot of time to think about what it would be like if I did take on this role. What could I bring to it? My chances of getting it must be fairly slim, I thought, but I just got more and more excited. It wasn't until very late in the interview process, though, that I realized this could actually be me."

Philippe de Montebello, Campbell's monarchical predecessor, is finishing a breakfast meeting across the room with Mahrukh Tarapor, the museum's associate director for exhibitions. He sees us and comes over. "People say he's so young," de Montebello quips in his sonorous baritone. "I say he's a late starterfive years older than I was when I became director." Since the announcement in September, Campbell has been on a crash course with de Montebello, sitting in on his meetings, learning all he can before he takes over on January 1.

Campbell picks up his story near its denouement, saying that, as usual, he prepared for disappointment by assuming the worst. "About six days before the announcement, I got a midafternoon call, asking me to come down to the club where some of the interviews had taken place for 'a last couple of questions.' I thought, Oh, God. Has some secret come out of my dim and distant past? I had to wait a certain amount of time in this august setting, with the clock ticking, before going into the room where the whole search committee and the president of the museum were waiting. 'We have one last question for you: Do you still want to be the director of the Metropolitan Museum?' "

"Tapestry was the most important figurative medium for he great courts of Europeand no one was looking at it"