During a quiet moment in the news cycle yesterday, we ducked up to the French Consulate on Fifth Avenue, where, in what must be one of the most beautiful salons in town, the French minister of culture was naming the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, an officer of the Legion of Honor. We’ve only met Mr. de Montebello once, but the longer we’ve worked the beat of culture in New York, the livelier has grown our appreciation for his achievement at the museum – not only in terms of the scale of what he has done (the museum, the French minister pointed out, has doubled in size in the past 30 years) but also the level of standards and taste he is maintaining. Mr. de Montebello started as a curatorial assistant in 1963 and is now the longest serving director in the museum’s history.

The French minister stressed Mr. de Montebello’s roots in France, which can be traced, he said, to the time of Napoleon. One of four brothers who went to Harvard, Philippe de Montebello stayed in America — a kind of Lafayette on fields of canvas. The French minister mentioned that bringing European art to American viewers has been one of his abiding ambitions. In recent years at the Metropolitan, major exhibitions of French art have included “Ruhlmann: Genius of Art Deco,” “Cézanne to Picasso,” and “Americans in Paris.” One of the things we like about art is its enduring quality and its ability to lift our thoughts and spirits above the temporal fray. Relations between France and America may have been strained in recent years, but all the more important has been the nursing of the cultural dimension of what France has to offer. Felicitations are in order.