Thomas P.F. Hoving attends a party in New York in January 1967, shortly after becoming director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hoving, 78, died Thursday of cancer at his Manhattan home. (Marty Lederhandler/Associated Press)

Thomas Hoving, who in the late 1960s and 1970s helped invigorate New York's venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art with blockbuster exhibits and by adding bold art and antiquities to its collection, has died at the age of 78.

Hoving, 78, died at his Manhattan home Thursday after being diagnosed with lung cancer in the spring, his family announced.

"I'm a goner," Hoving told art historian and author Michael Gross in July.

"But I have no regrets. I've had a terrific life."

Born in New York, Hoving was the son of Swedish-born Walter Hoving, the savvy businessman who turned Tiffany and Co. into an arbiter of style and a jewelry and silverware powerhouse.

After graduating from Princeton and earning a PhD in art, Hoving started at the Met in 1959, working in its medieval department. He later became New York's parks commissioner.

Hoving returned to the Met in 1967 as its director and, at age 35, he was the museum's youngest ever. He described the institution as "dying" and created shockwaves with his decisions to enliven the museum.

Under his direction, which ran through 1977, Hoving's initiatives included:

• Creating a contemporary art department, which displayed work by artists such as Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns.
• Expanding the museum's entrance into the broad staircase and plaza on Fifth Avenue as well as pushing its gallery space into Central Park. He enlarged the Egyptian wing and introduced the much-celebrated Temple of Dendur (which had been in danger of being submerged by an Egyptian dam project).
• Widening the museum's focus globally, acquiring vast numbers of Islamic, African, Latin American and Asian art and artifacts — and treating these works with the same respect given to European art.
• Championing blockbuster exhibits to draw in crowds, including the treasures from King Tutankhamun's tomb — the museum's most popular exhibit ever.
• Advertising these high-profile shows by hanging massive banners outside the museum.

Hoving drew fire for some of his bold decisions, such as the banners and the sale of works by Van Gogh and others to fund a then record $5.5 million US purchase of the Diego Velazquez masterpiece Juan de Pareja in 1971.

While some blasted him for commercializing a venerable museum, others praised him for democratizing it.

He "really wanted to open up the museum, to make it a more dynamic, welcoming institution," former Met director Philippe de Montebello, groomed by Hoving as his successor, said in an interview on Thursday.

"He was exhilarating, scintillating, brilliant."

Hoving, who later worked as a museums consultant, arts correspondent and magazine editor, also wrote a number of art-related tomes, including his biography Making the Mummies Dance and the Art For Dummies title in the popular series.

With files from The Associated Press