of Hoving's tenure. At one point, he even floated a plan to remove the Met's "great staircase" leading from the central lobby to the second-floor galleries. That particular project remains unrealized. Hoving described the negotiations between the Metropolitan Museum, the Cairo Museum, Egypt's Organization of Antiquities, and the U.S. State Department to bring the exhibition The Treasures of Tutankhamun to the Met as "the high point of my Metropolitan career." The exhibition was the result of years of negotiations, including plans for a variety of cross-cultural collaborations, galvanized by President Richard M. Nixon's June 1974 trip to Egypt and finalized in an accord signed by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmi in October 1975. In July 1976, Hoving visited Egypt to negotiate terms of the traveling exhibition and finalize details of the Museum's collaboration with officials there. Hoving was the director of the controversial "Harlem On My Mind" exhibit, curated by Allon Schoener, which garnered significant protests from local activists and artists for its exclusion of black artists, as well as for the inclusion of an anti-Semitic essay in the catalogue. Hoving apologized and included disclaimers before the essay in the catalogue, but did not remove it. In his memoirs he revealed 2009 that Leonardo da Vincis masterpiece Mona Lisa was sprinkled for several hours inside the Metropolitan Museum. Later career He left the Met on June 30, 1977, to start an independent consulting firm for museums, Hoving Associates. From 1978 to 1984 he was an arts correspondent for the ABC newsmagazine 20/20. In 1978, he published Tutankhamun. The Untold Story, a non-fiction book about the discovery of the Egyptian tomb, with particular attention to its discoverer, Howard Carter. He edited Connoisseur Magazine from 1981 to 1991; along with his memoirs of his time at the Met, he is also the author of books on a number of art-related subjects, including art forgeries, Grant Wood, Andrew Wyeth, Tutankhamen, and the 12th-century walrus ivory crucifix known as the Bury St. Edmunds Cross. Additionally, in 1999, he wrote the text for the Art For Dummies book in the "...For Dummies" series. Personal life In 1953, Hoving was married to Nancy Bell, a Vassar College graduate whom he met at a house party in Princeton. She was the daughter of Elliott V. Bell (1902–1983), a writer for The New York Times who managed the two successful gubernatorial campaigns