Mark Polizzotti has been appointed Publisher and Editor in Chief at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he will oversee all aspects of the Museum’s scholarly publishing program, it was announced today by Director Thomas P. Campbell.  Mr. Polizzotti is currently Director of Intellectual Property and Publisher at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He will begin work at the Metropolitan Museum on November 15.

“I am delighted that Mark Polizzotti has agreed to join the Met, to lead and develop our publishing program and to sustain the Museum’s role as the leading art book publisher in the world,” stated Thomas Campbell.  “The Met has a tradition of producing publications of extremely high quality, written by its superb curatorial staff and by scholars from around the world.  I am certain that Mark has the vision and experience to maintain this standard of excellence while setting the future course of the Met’s publishing activity.  Publications of all kinds are key to our mission to stimulate appreciation for and advance knowledge of works of art representing the breadth of human artistic achievement.  We all look forward to working with him.”

Since 1999, Mark Polizzotti has overseen publications and digital image resources in his role as Director of Intellectual Property and Publisher of MFA Publications at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.   MFA Publications publishes 10-12 new book titles per year, as well as e-books and digital publications (including electronic editions of MFA books and an online journal).  He also supervises the museum’s digital-imaging photography studios, rights and licensing operations, and image and data archiving and storage.  Prior to his work at the Museum of Fine Arts, he was Editorial Director at David R. Godine, Publisher (1993-1999), Senior Editor at Grove Weidenfeld (1985-1990), and Assistant Editor at Random House (1983-85). 

Since 1995 he has also worked as a freelance translator (from French) and editor for the Metropolitan Museum on such major exhibition catalogues as The Private Collection of Edgar Degas (1997), Cézanne to Van Gogh: The Collection of Doctor Gachet (1999), Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard (2006), and Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (2009).  He is the author of six books, including Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1995; revised edition 2009), and the translator of more than 30 books including works by Gustave Flaubert, Marguerite Duras, Jean Echenoz, and Maurice Roche.

John O’Neill, who most recently held the position of Publisher and Editor in Chief at the Metropolitan Museum, passed away in February.  Gwen Roginsky, who has served as interim publisher since then, will now become Associate Publisher and General Manager.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a large and vital publishing program, producing 20-25 books per year, including scholarly books and exhibition catalogues.  The Editorial Department—consisting of an in-house team of editors, designers, and production specialists, working in tandem with skilled freelancers—also produces all gallery and exhibition wall texts and works with individual authors from the Met’s curatorial and conservation departments to develop and publish the annual Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal and quarterly Bulletin, which is distributed to members.

The Museum’s publications are offered for sale in its bookstores and satellite shops, through its mail-order program, and online.  Since 2000, Yale University Press has been the Museum’s distribution partner to bookstores and libraries internationally.