June 3 (Bloomberg) -- A horned demon made of copper in about 3,000 B.C., a stunning portrait by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and Jasper Johns's ``White Flag'' are among the 300 artworks to be featured in an exhibition celebrating Philippe de Montebello's 31-year tenure as director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

``The Philippe de Montebello Years,'' assembled by Met curators from the more than 84,000 works acquired during his directorship, will open Oct. 24 and run through Feb. 1, 2009. The works range from prehistory to the present and represent cultures in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, said Helen Evans, the museum's Jaharis curator of Byzantine art and overseer of the tribute, at a press conference yesterday.

The ``transformative'' works to be shown include a fifth- century standing Buddha in mottled red sandstone from India; ``Tahitian Faces,'' a charcoal on paper work by Paul Gauguin; and a guitar made in 1937 by Hermann Hauser. Evans said the show documents de Montebello's ``stellar leadership'' and ``excellence of the collections'' representing 5,000 years of artistic achievement.

``There is no greater accolade that a museum director can receive than that from his curators,'' said de Montebello, the museum's eighth and longest-serving director. ``You have to understand that museum directors, in a place such as this, we tend to be in awe of curators.''

The 72-year-old de Montebello, who announced his retirement in January, said he will remain at the Met through the end of the year or until his yet-to-be-chosen successor arrives. After stepping down, he will be a professor of the history and culture of museums at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.

Chinese Paintings

As de Montebello winds down his tenure, the museum will open an exhibition of 17th-century Chinese painter Wang Hui on Sept. 9. The show will include 27 masterworks from the Met's collection and others in North America, as well as museums in Taipei, Beijing and Shanghai.

Other highlights of the fall season include about 110 works by 20th-century still-life and landscape painter Giorgio Morandi and a survey of royal porcelain made from 1800 to 1850 in Berlin, Sevres and Vienna. The Morandi retrospective is the first comprehensive show of the artist to be held in the U.S., the museum said.

Since de Montebello become director in 1977, the French- born, Harvard- and NYU-educated art historian has doubled the museum's size with the addition of new wings and gallery space for European sculpture. It attracted more than 4.6 million visitors in its fiscal year ended June 2007, making it New York's leading tourist attraction.

Photos, Carvings, Turners

The major exhibitions slated for the rest of the year, like the Met's vast permanent collection, are eclectic: a survey of master photographers from 1840 to 1940, opening this week and running through Sept. 1; ``Art of the Royal Court,'' featuring 170 works of carved stone from European palaces, from July 1 to Sept. 21; a retrospective of 140 paintings and watercolors by British artist J.M.W. Turner, July 1 to Sept. 21; and a survey of African textiles, Sept. 30 to March 29, 2009.

``While I shall miss the many great works of art coming next year, I will very well miss all the personal and professional friendships that I leave behind,'' de Montebello said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 3, 2008 00:01 EDT