Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum by Michael Gross.
This dishy page-turner chronicles more than a century’s worth of rich-people scoop and intrigue at the Met (including an entertaining account of how the venerable institution was built upon the private collection of a fake general with a warehouse full of pillaged Cypriot artifacts). I’m still reading the sucker, which checks in at 486 pages, but thus far one of my favorite quotes comes from a museum annual report that details what went down the first day the museum opened its doors to the unclean masses on Sunday in 1889:
Many visitors took the liberty of handling every object within reach; some went to the length of marring, scratching, and breaking articles unprotected by glass; a few proved to be pickpockets, and other brought with them peculiar habits, which were repulsive and unclean.