Another feature of the Museum is the generous wall space devoted to each picture. Instead of the crowded walls characteristic of many museums, the visitor finds here each picture isolated from its neighbor by sufficient space to give the effect almost of pictures in a residence rather than a public institution.
Throughout, the Museum reflects the personal taste of Mrs. Whitney. In each case final choice of a work of art depended on her, since there is no board of trustees. This is a Museum founded, maintained and managed by artists, since Mrs. Whitney, the curator, and his assistants are sculptors or painters.
I felt at home there right away. Gamoo’s own studio adjoining the Museum impressed me; its immense ropes and tackles, the rich, oily smells of plasticine, paint, and turpentine, the tall stands holding shrouded clay forms, a handsome model to one side of a raised platform, and, to the other, a studio assistant preparing a spiky metal armature.
My grandmother looked much as she had when the sculptor Daniel Chester French dropped by to see her statue of Buffalo Bill Cody: “She herself was more striking than the statue, in a gown of orange and dark blue flowered stripes, brilliant beyond reason. With her dark hair and white skin and crimson lips, she was by far the brightest thing on the landscape and very attractive as usual.”
Juliana Force, the Museum director, was a decisive, vibrant woman with pretty clothes and red hair, who made up for her lack of training in art history with her intelligence, informed opinions, steely will, and wit. Gertrude had chosen her to run the Whitney Studio Club (1918–1928) and the Whitney Studio Galleries (1928–1930), antecedents of the Museum, and then to be first director of the Whitney Museum. Juliana admired, respected, and loved her “boss.” As she carried out Gertrude’s wishes, she too contributed to the Museum’s distinctive personality. Fascinated by Mrs. Force’s compelling presence, I was delighted when, on that first visit, she took me to see her exotic apartment upstairs. We walked along a carpet strewn with colorful woven flowers, arriving at a room with sofas and chairs covered in velvet and brocade with silken fringes, and tasseled curtains in deep, rich tones of gold and red. Folk art, animal ceramics, sculptures, paintings on every wall.
Back downstairs, Mrs. Force showed me the library for artists, with its Ouija board and easy chairs, then offered me sandwiches and sugar cookies from the varied supply always available at openings for hungry artists, along with drinks of every kind. She introduced me to her curatorial staff, artists Edmund Archer, Karl Free, and Hermon More.
Artists were very much at home there. Isabel Bishop once told me that they thought the Whitney was their place, a place where they felt relaxed, comfortable, and welcome. In fact, the Whitney was their place, formed mostly by and for artists, artists always at the very center — once they’d been asked to be in an “Annual,” for example, they even chose the work to be exhibited.
A Ouija board for the Museum! Imagine! A metaphor, as I see it now, for that certain moment, for that faith that anything could happen. Who could really believe the scrawls on that magic block, and translate them to potency, glory, and happiness ever after?
Innocence and trust were not everywhere at that time, to be sure — Gertrude faced plenty of stupidity and prejudice in her life — but in the safe, soft ambiance of the Whitney Studio Club and the Whitney Museum the artist reigned, and my grandmother and her helpers placed supreme faith in that artist, and in his or her art. Gertrude’s impact was tremendous, in proportion to these artists’ acceptance at the time. As an artist herself, she understood and could assist with both their dreams and their problems. She encouraged them by showing and buying their work, and she helped with their personal problems. She was convinced of their talent and importance. She and Juliana Force were in the very midst of the then-tiny art world of Greenwich Village.
My grandmother’s death in 1942 left my mother grief-stricken. It had been unexpected. Gertrude was working on a play; she had enrolled again in a writing class with Helen Hull at Columbia; she was planning sculptures — but after the death of her last remaining brother, Cornelius, in March 1942, she was sad, weak, and very thin. A persistent cough worried her doctors enough that they insisted she enter New York Hospital for tests in early April. Her condition was diagnosed as bacterial endocarditis, an infection of the heart glands that causes fatal clotting. Gertrude died on Saturday, April 18.
My mother found it extremely difficult to face the many necessary decisions. Her sister Barbara was ill, and her brother Sonny was in the Air Force in Africa. There was no one in the family to help her make financial judgments. She had never held a position of responsibility in the Museum, and taking the helm now seemed overwhelming. In the late summer Flora wrote to Sonny asking for help with the Museum, telling him of her distress:
“This year has been heart-breaking for me in many ways. Mama was not only my mother but my best friend. Her illness, her own tragedies were all things I had lived through with her and there was very little we had not discussed together. I will always miss her. We not only had the tragedies together but we had fun together — more fun than I have ever had with anyone else.
“This is the time of year I most enjoyed with Mama. We spent hours, nearly every day, sitting on her porch talking and laughing.”
No help was forthcoming, however.
The Museum closed briefly, then reopened while my mother and Juliana Force continued for several years to discuss the possibility of a merger with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, initiated in 1940. According to Roland Redmond, the Met’s president in 1948, Francis Henry Taylor, president in 1940, had visited Gertrude in her studio to plan a merger, encouraged at that time by Gertrude, who feared for the Museum’s survival and was already concerned about its finances. But according to Juliana Force, who had been present at the meeting, Mr. Taylor had unsuccessfully endeavored to persuade my grandmother to merge the activities of the two museums. Gertrude had told him she was not interested in such a proposal, although she did not preclude its possibility at some future time. Mrs. Force insisted that Gertrude had never considered seriously the merger.
The newspapers announced the proposed coalition in 1943. During several years of meetings between representatives of the two museums, however, my mother came to realize how much the Whitney meant to the artists it had shown, bought, and supported. On February 3, 1944, she received this letter:
Dear Mrs. Miller,
A short while ago a group of us met to talk about the Whitney Museum. We all felt the deepest interest in its future as some of us literally grew up with it ever since the Whitney Studio Club days. We decided to form a committee of a few representative artists consisting of Peter Blume, Louis Bouche, Jo Davidson, Stuart Davis, Philip Evergood, Leon Kroll, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Julian Levi, Reginald Marsh, George Picken, Katherine Schmidt, Henry Schnakenberg, Raphael Soyer, Eugene Speicher and William Zorach to discuss the matter further.
The result has been that the enclosed letter was composed by the committee and it has been heartily endorsed by over one hundred and sixty artists. …
Very sincerely yours,
Henry Schnakenberg, Secretary
The letter they enclosed, printed in the Times, shows how these artists perceived the Museum.
Dear Mrs. Miller,
When the announcement came last year of the closing of the Whitney Museum of American Art each of us experienced a deep sense of disappointment and loss. The unexpected reopening of the Museum last fall brought back to us a renewed realization of the Whitney’s significance, and it was marked by an extraordinary feeling of sentiment and affection, as though we found ourselves back in a home which we thought we had lost.
The tie between most museums and the artist is usually a tenuous and impersonal one. The traditional role of the museum has so long been that of a repository for the art of the past that the existence of the living artist has been recognized only with seeming reluctance or not at all. Museums now exhibit his work, sometimes award him a prize, more rarely make a purchase. B
ut the pervasive feeling which the average museum has tended to communicate to the artist has been one of aloofness and relative lack of interest.
With the Whitney this has never been the case, and to the Whitney belongs the major share of credit for the more liberal treatment which contemporary American art has received from most other American museums. Since its opening the Whitney has set the pattern in this country for what a museum can do for the art of its own period. From its Whitney Studio Club days, through the various developments up to the present, it has been the greatest single force in support of support of living art in the United States.
The Whitney has always treated the artist with sincerity and respect. It did not award prizes. Instead, it has set aside a fund each year, within the limits of its resources, to buy as many works of art from its exhibitions and outside its exhibitions as possible. No living American artist was excluded from participation in its activities because of his esthetic direction, and all schools shared its advantages without discrimination. This democratic policy, wherein merit alone was the consideration, has had an inspiring effect on the young artists and an invigorating effect on American art as a whole.
In this way Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force did more than found a Museum. They helped to build faith in living American art. Mrs. Whitney’s love of art and the wisdom shown in the form taken by her patronage have had incalculable results for the present and future of our esthetic culture. The country has made great strides forward since the days which marked the beginning of the work of Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force. We artists understand the large debt which the country owes to the Whitney for this advance. … We sincerely hope that whatever changes are deemed necessary to guarantee the continuance of the Museum, they may never interfere with its unique functions and the ideals established and carried on by Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force.
The signatures of 172 artists are appended.
My mother sympathized with the ideas they articulated. Under pressure from her financial advisors and her lawyer, however, she had to consider the expense of maintaining the Museum as an independent institution. Still mourning her mother, still wearing the customary black (she even had her shoes and veiled hats dyed black, even wore black jewelry), still struggling with the estate alone, her brother still overseas, she agonized over her decision. More and more, she realized that the Met had little interest in American art. But, if a proper agreement were reached, the Met’s vast resources held the potential for expanding the Whitney’s ideals.
The Met could guarantee the Whitney’s future.
Nevertheless, in 1948, my mother decided to break off negotiations with the Met and to keep the Whitney going herself. Minutes of the trustees’ meeting of July 1, 1948, say, “It became evident to the trustees of the Whitney Museum that their primary objects were so divergent that the eventual merger would ultimately destroy Mrs. Whitney’s original and dominant purpose in founding the Whitney Museum.”
Lloyd Goodrich, director of the Whitney from 1958 to 1968, has described a dinner he attended in the spring of 1948 at the Brook Club, with representatives of the Met, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney. During this dinner, he wrote, Roland Redmond and Francis Henry Taylor of the Met attacked modern art in general and the Whitney in particular in a “hammer-and-tongs discussion” that continued until two in the morning. Artists, Lloyd reminded us, were “still vulnerable, and attacks by established people like Taylor were tough things for them.” The Whitney’s philosophy, he went on, differed from the other two museums; it was more liberal than that of the Met, though more diversified, more “catholic” than MoMA, with its concentration on “advanced art,” i.e. European art, and American art that was directly influenced by Europe.
It was not the first time that such an arrangement had failed before it had begun. In 1929, Gertrude Whitney, through Juliana Force, had offered her collection of more than six hundred works of contemporary American art to the Metropolitan Museum. The then director of the Met, Dr. Edward Robinson, contemptuous of contemporary American art, flatly refused the gift before Juliana could even mention Gertrude’s offer to build and endow a wing for the collection. This led directly to the founding of the Whitney Museum in 1930, with Juliana Force as its fiery director. She and my grandmother were a fine team. As much as Gertrude avoided the limelight, Juliana enjoyed it. Carrying out the policies and programs that Gertrude initiated, Juliana often chose the art and the artists, but Gertrude always remained there as a steadying power and a financial angel. Juliana had a difficult time holding to a budget. I can well imagine how much, after 1942, she missed Gertrude’s guidance, her friendship, and her money. Besides, they had great fun together. As Juliana said, one of the cardinal rules of her job was “never bore the boss!”
Under their direction, the Whitney thrived.
My mother’s decision to keep the Museum was a bold one. With fewer resources than her mother had, and mounting costs, she would have to count on her brother Sonny’s and sister Barbara’s help. At the very least, they would have to contribute the money their mother had left specifically for charitable gifts. And my mother would have to provide leadership. Aiken had become home for our family, but that would change, as the Museum absorbed not only more of her money but more of her time. Identifying the Museum with the “Mamma” she idolized, striving to continue her mother’s stewardship of American art, she accepted a responsibility whose dimensions she couldn’t possibly have imagined.
And so, undaunted and energetic at about fifty years of age, my mother embarked upon a new career.
The Eighth Street building was inadequate. It was too small; fire proofing and temperature controls were out of date. Most commercial galleries had moved to Fifty-seventh Street. “Uptown” seemed the place to be. Lloyd Goodrich, then curator and associate director, remembered the moment when my mother called him in May 1949 to say, “I’ve got the most wonderful news!” The Museum of Modern Art, with no solicitation, had offered the Whitney land adjoining theirs on Fifty-fourth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. John Hay “Jock” Whitney, chairman of MoMA, my mother’s first cousin and close friend, had inspired this generous gesture. The Whitney quickly and gratefully accepted the offer.
It was in 1949, the same year the Museum decided to move and expand, that Lloyd Goodrich asked the consent of the trustees to sell the Museum’s collection of nineteenth-century paintings and sculptures. The former purchase fund of twenty thousand dollars a year had been reduced to a very inadequate ten thousand dollars, and he felt it was crucial for the Museum to be able to add significant works to the permanent collection. Relatively few museums, he felt, were devoted primarily to contemporary art, while interest in the American past had greatly increased, along with prices for the historic works that were becoming ever rarer. In his press release, Lloyd emphasized that the Whitney had always been primarily dedicated to the work of living American artists — “in accordance with the aims of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.” The Museum would, however, “continue to hold outstanding historical exhibitions.”
Knoedler’s sold the collection for $150,000; the Museum netted $120,000. When invested, this sum yielded about $8,000 a year. Still inadequate. And, as it turned out, the Museum had lost its greatest treasures. As Lloyd later wrote, “I’ve regretted the sale ever since. The Homer Bridle Path alone is worth at least twenty times what we received for the whole collection. … Advice to museums: never sell a good work of art.”
Auguste Noel, of Noel and Miller, the architectural firm he and my father had started, had remodeled the three Eighth Street brownstones into the first Museum building, and then in 1939 had added four new galleries, almost doubling its exhibition space, in the Whitney’s first expansion. Now he got busy designing the interiors and the Fifty-fourth Street facade of the new Museum. Philip Johnson designed the exterior of the garden side, which had to be approved by MoMA.
The new Whitney opened in 1954. Hermon More, director from 1948 to 1958, had written about the Museum whe
n it first opened, and his words in the Whitney’s first Catalogue of the Collection (1931), often quoted by subsequent directors, were as appropriate in 1954 as they still are today:
“It would be presumptuous to point out the road upon which art must travel. We must look to the artist to lead the way, permitting him the utmost liberty as to the direction in which he shall go. As a museum, we conceive it to be our duty to see that he is not hampered in his progress by lack of sympathy and support. It is not our intention to form a ‘school,’ our chief concern is with the individual artist who is working out his destiny in this country, believing that if he is truly expressing himself, his art will inevitably reflect the character of his environment.”
To put that time in a little context: 1954 was the year of the McCarthy hearings; the year of thermonuclear terror, with both Russia and the United States testing more and more powerful hydrogen bombs; the first year when a number of Americans — 154 — made a million dollars or more as their annual earnings.
In the Whitney’s first year on Fifty-fourth Street, attendance quadrupled.
And it was there on Fifty-fourth Street that I first became officially involved with the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Six
At that time I lived in Connecticut, in a wood and glass dream house designed by my husband Mike for us in New Canaan, by a waterfall, with airy spaces and an open plan, symbolizing the way we hoped to live. Mike and I had a full and happy life, and we adored our four children. After Columbia Architectural School and apprenticeship in New York, Mike had become a fine and busy architect, earning a good living. My mother, always extremely generous to her children, paid for all her grandchildren’s education, and also gave us gifts of money, making our lives so much easier — and depleting her fortune. (This we didn’t know until after her death.) Mum loved to help us, as her mother and father once had helped her. I’m sure she never dreamed that her money could ever run out.
The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made Page 11