“It’s as if Hitler and Michelangelo collaborated to make a masterpiece.” Cross of Shame. “In 1981 Thomas Hoving wrote King of the Confessors, a rippling narrative of his pursuit and purchase of the Bury St. Edmunds Cross, a masterpiece of medieval sculpture for the

Cloisters Museum in upper Manhattan. Now, having uncovered new information, Hoving has rewritten his original book to reveal the controversial and disturbing truths about the history

of the cross. Hoving is no stranger to controversy. The former enfant terrible of the New York museum world, Hoving became head curator of the Cloisters in 1965 at the age of 34. By 1967 he

became the youngest director in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is today a world-renowned expert on the international art market.

“…I wrote the original book in part,” he says, “because I wanted to show people the

real art world, a world of backstabbers, sharks and con artists–not the salon world of tea-drinking esthetes.” What he didn’t realize at the time was that the Bury St. Edmunds Cross

was controversial on so many levels. More than a pretty pawn in the international chess match played between wealthy and occasionally unscrupulous acquisitors, it was a object full

of hate. Beneath its pious beauty, it is inscribed with fiery anti-Semitic invective…

Today, the cross remains in the possession of the Cloisters, which, according to Hoving, is aware of its anti-Semitic inscription but refuses to acknowledge it. ” Forbes