From Presidencies of Liberal Arts Colleges to Leading Iconic NYC Cultural Institutions - Those School Ties

I was absolutely delighted to hear the announcement yesterday in The New York Times that the former President of Lafayette College (my husband's undergraduate alma mater), Dr. Dan Weiss, who is an art historian, with an MBA from Yale, was selected to be the next President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

Dr. Weiss had served as Lafayette's President from 2005 - 2013 and I had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife at the college at a lovely event hosted by them in the Fall of 2012 at Lafayette. It was a pleasure to chat with them. They were so personable and pleasant and the conversations just flowed. The new college arts theater will be named after him and his wife, Sandra.

Weiss has been the President of Haverford College, another liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, since 2013,  and will be leaving after less than 2 years to become President of the Met, probably the top job for an art historian on our planet, so congratulations are in order!

In addition, the NYC Public Library is headed by Dr. Tony Marx, the former President of Amherst College, located  in the town that I live in. I last saw Dr. Marx when he gave the commencement speech at the Deerfield Academy graduation on May 27, 2012. Both his son and my daughter graduated Deerfield that day and the ceremonies were truly special and elegant.  Dr. Marx was part of the carpool on our block - impressive. And he did the driving when he was President of Amherst College, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country!

Both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the NYC Public Library, two iconic NYC institutions, are located on 5th Avenue about 40 blocks apart.

As Weiss said in The New York Times interview, he began going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when he was a teenager and fell in love with it and so did I. The same holds for the NYC Public Library where I spent many a winter break from Brown University doing research and writing papers, as an undergraduate.

And, speaking of Lafayette, it has been quite the year for not only arts but also sports with the 150th anniversary football game played against Lehigh University at Yankee Stadium (Lafayette won) plus Lafayette's win last night in men's basketball against American University so now they are off to the big dance of the NCAA and garnered the Patriot League Championship. Congratulations!