Daniel H. Weiss, who earned an M.A. and Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and went on to become dean of Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at JHU, has been named the next president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Newark, N.J.-born, Long Island-raised Weiss, 57, will succeed Emily Kernan Rafferty, who will retire from the post at the end of March after 10 years on the job.
Weiss told the New York Times that the Met offer "really came out of the blue" and "was a once in a lifetime opportunity."
Weiss will oversee one of the world's most famed museums, which drew more than 6 million visitors last year (another 40 million or so to its Web site) and has an annual budget of $300 million-plus, an endowment of about $3 billion and more than 2,000 employees.
After earning his Ph.D. in western medieval and Byzantine art at Hopkins in 1992, Weiss joined the art history faculty at the Krieger School and was dean from 2002 to 2005. He went on to serve as president and professor of art history at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. from 2005 to 2013, when he became president of Haverford College outside Philadelphia.
The author of "Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis" (1998) and "The Morgan Crusader Bible" (1999), Weiss is also a former board member of the Walters Art Museum and the Park School.