A life-change. Departing The Met.
Dear Friends + Colleagues.
It is with mixed emotions that I share with you the news that I have decided to leave my job as Chief Digital Officer @ The Met.
My incredible wife has been offered an exceptional job @ Netflix in Amsterdam. Whilst I do not have a new job lined-up, having lived in Holland when I was a child, it is a country for which I have a strong affinity. We have decided that this is an exciting moment to make a life change and raise our family in Europe.
This is a bittersweet decision: I love my job and I love The Met.
I am incredibly proud of the culture and purpose we have developed in the Digital department @ The Met. The last few years have had their turbulence, but we achieved so much. We introduced product management and Agile methodologies into our everyday practices. We put the user-first and re-designed the home Page, eComm experience, object page and our template-set to better respond to their needs. We re-engineered our product portfolio to align with clear business goals and increase our velocity. We launched the Open Access program, extended our audience, and built far-reaching new partnerships with Wikimedia, Google, Microsoft and MIT. We transformed how The Met thinks about digital and how we measure success.
Most importantly, we built a department of talented, forward-thinking leaders and specialists. With the continued vision and support the museum leadership provides for digital, there are few limits on what this team can achieve: I will be cheering every new milestone, albeit now from the sideline.
My five and a half years working at The Met have been a privilege and rich learning experience. I will miss it, and the incredible community of colleagues. I will be working closely with The Met leadership team over the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition.
On the personal front, in Amsterdam I will be on the look-out for new opportunities to develop my learning around institutional strategy and culture change, embedding digital across an organization, designing agile practices, building teams and open data practices. I welcome any recommendations or introductions to colleagues in these areas working out of Amsterdam. I am excited to see where this will take me.
So many people have inspired, contributed to and supported my work at The Met. I want to thank you all for the confidence and generosity you have shown towards me.
To my New York City community; I welcome seeing as many of you as possible before I depart.
And to everyone else, Amsterdam is a glorious city: come visit!
Best wishes, Loic.
The following email was sent by Max Hollein, Director of The Met, to all-staff at the museum on Friday February 8, 2019 announcing my departure.
From: “Hollein, Max”
Date: Friday, February 8, 2019 at 10:02 AM
To: All Staff
Subject: Loic Tallon
Dear Colleagues,
I write to share the bittersweet news that Loic Tallon will be leaving The Met. His wife was offered a wonderful professional opportunity in Amsterdam and they will be moving there with their young son.
Loic’s tenure is marked by significant accomplishments while managing through a period of continued and dramatic change in the digital world, and also change in the museum field and here at The Met. He arrived over six years ago as a consultant to build The Met’s first visitor app. Loic joined full time in September 2013 and went on to lead the department in 2016. Among the highest profile work Loic led was the Open Access initiative, through which the Museum has released over 400,000 images of artworks in the collection for unrestricted use by any individual around the world. The work has transformed how The Met connects with audiences, and was greatly amplified through building strong partnerships, with Wikipedia, MIT, Microsoft, Google Arts and Culture, and others. The Digital department also continued to update and improve MetMuseum.org, to better serve our users, most recently with a refreshed home page, a new Advanced Collection Search feature, and the re-designed Object Page, which launched this week.
We are very appreciative that the Digital department has a strong leadership team. Loic will be with us until mid-March, and in the upcoming weeks we will share a plan for this transition. The digital transformation our society is undergoing provides breathtaking opportunities — as it enables The Met to reach manifold more audiences in an educational fashion that can truly advance our mission. This work requires equal measures of strategy, change-management, perseverance and collaboration — and our entire Digital team excels in this. Dan and I congratulate Loic on the accomplishments of the Digital team during his time here. And we greatly look forward to continuing the momentum.
We’ll find time to raise a glass to Loic here at The Met soon (who will, like every other day, impressively bike to work regardless of the weather — which I guess is the real reason why he wants to move to the number one bicycle nation in the world).
Max
—
Max Hollein
Director
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
