Thomas W. Lentz, Cabot director of the Harvard Art Museums, today announced that he would step down at the end of the academic year — a surprising and apparently unexpected development that comes less than three months after the November 16 gala reopening of the wholly renovated, reconfigured museums complex. The more than decade-long reconstruction and consolidation of the collections in a new space built in, around, and above the original Fogg structure, with extensive teaching and conservation facilities included, was the focus of Lentz’s work since his arrival in late 2003. An expert on Islamic art (specifically, Persian painting), he earned his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1985, and immediately before returning to Cambridge to assume the museums’ directorship had served as director of the Smithsonian Institution’s international art museums, including the Freer and Sackler galleries and the National Museum of African Art.

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