With her energy and intelligence, her streaming dark hair, angular face, and slightly protruding eyes looking deep into painting, into life — into me — I still imagine Marcia Tucker flying away from the Whitney on a great black motorcycle into the night. She remains a close friend, who’s taught me so much about contemporary art and its sources. Once I was a guest at her women’s group, a new and consciousness-raising experience for me; I had never imagined such an intimate connection with a group of women or heard such open, trustful conversations. I found myself opening up, too, laughing and crying, recognizing the feelings women share. Before that, I hadn’t been aware of feminism, as it might apply to me. Now I felt the power and affection that movement could generate.
My grandmother had never identified with women in this way. While competing for her hard-won sculpture commissions, then maneuvering to complete them the way she envisioned them, she had often been faced with the condescension and arrogant demands of men. But she hadn’t bonded with women for support. And she’d never had to deal with powerful men within her Museum. My mother had never entered a competitive world. For her, men were delightful beings meant to beguile, to play with. Needing strength I didn’t yet have to deal with the powerful men now at the Whitney, I recognized in Marcia’s friends a possible source.
Despite a distance from the board provoked by David Solinger’s not wanting family involvement, I felt deeply committed to the Museum. I realize now that the experiences I had during those years with curators and artists were invaluable. I was learning more all the time about the nature of our “business,” our “product.” I was storing away my growing awareness of the intensity, beauty, unpredictability, passion, and chaos at the heart of the artistic experience. And I was learning, too, more about myself and my feelings, about how much I wanted to have friends in this world I was coming to love so well.
Twelve
In 1972, Jack told the board he had decided to retire early, in 1974. He wanted to use his skills to write and to curate special exhibitions about artists he admired rather than to continue as director, a job requiring more administrating and fund-raising than direct contact with art.
David Solinger had been president for six years. In a letter to my parents from that time, I see that Bob Friedman was in favor of asking Benno Schmidt to replace David as president: “He could put the Museum on a sound financial footing that would last for years.” But David’s inability to personally bring in more substantial contributors wouldn’t be addressed for another year. A big issue, now — most of my letter concerned money. Describing the recent trustees meeting, I wrote, “David was concerned about the level of trustee giving, which is very low compared to last year.” Since trustee gifts were, and still are, a principal source of income for the Whitney, and since they are the direct responsibility of the board president, we needed someone who could raise money. Bob himself, chairman of the acquisitions committee, had persuaded that group to give $40,000 worth of art, that year — “Incredible!” I wrote. With the Friends’ dues now needed for general operations, with no money in the budget for acquisitions, asking individuals for gifts was currently the only way to acquire art — despite the fact that those acquisitions were one of the Museum’s main functions.
David appointed a search committee to find a new director. Wisely, he chose Howard Lipman as its chairman. Howard identified candidates, arranged lunches, wrote letters to friends he respected in the art world, asking for suggestions, and added other members: Arthur Altschul, Jack Baur, and me. Howard did not share David’s views about family involvement. I was highly pleased to feel, once again, closer to the Museum.
For the first time, there wasn’t a natural progression within the institution — associate director moving up to become director — so we wrote a job description, a simple one:
Personal qualifications:
Approximate age: 35-40
Strong character to deal with:
A. staff, B. trustees, C. Public relations
Needed: Vitality, imagination, flexibility, awareness of rapid changes in current art world, relationship of Museum to community, awareness of extraordinary degree of change in the past decade in modes of creative expression.
Career Qualifications:
Depth of experience in 20th Century American art
Some experience in 19th Century American art
Some experience as director of a museum
Howard wanted a young and adventuresome museum, a museum like the art he loved so much. But he worried greatly about money, and this worry, I believe, leaked into the purity of his deepest instincts. For those people coming in to replace the family, the responsibility weighed heavily.
Within the Museum itself, two candidates emerged: Steve Weil and Marcia Tucker. Their letters on the functions of a director are interesting today, as, with a little perspective, I again look over the reasons for our eventual choice.
Steve listed three qualifications, adding “it is my feeling that an art historian is not necessarily the only type that can meet these requirements.” He described himself as a politician/statesman, whose functions would be:
1. To mediate the conflicting demands for space, budget, and personnel of his various department heads. No one can possibly be expert in all the fields in which the Museum today operates. … the role of the director is to harmonize their efforts and energy into an overall museum program.
2. To serve as conduit between the staff and the trustees. As such, he must be able to sympathetically interpret each to the other. He is the pivot around which policy is turned into program. …
3. Finally, he is the Museum’s chief representative to the outside world: donors, foundations, professional organizations, government and the general public. He must be able to articulate the Museum’s policies and program, understand its role in relation to the larger society and — as spokesman for them both — embody the aggregate decisions and desires of both his staff and his board.
Steve was David’s candidate but not Howard’s. Too much a manager, too little an artist, Howard felt. But Steven’s letter remains an excellent summary of the essential abilities a director needs, of the role itself.
Marcia’s letter reflected her own liberal ideals, as well as her experience, under Jack’s leadership, of the Museum. A few excerpts follow:
Jack Baur has been an ideal director, since he has in no way interfered with curatorial responsibility once the decision to do a show has been made by a consensus of opinion at our regular staff meetings. … the curatorial staff [should] continue to be granted complete freedom as to personal schedule, since much of our most important work is done outside the Museum and outside regular Museum hours. …
Someone who is a capable and experienced administrator, with some degree of art-historical training, would be ideal. If it is a matter of choice, I prefer a good administrator with little art background to a person without any administrative experience.
On a personal level, I prefer someone who is not temperamental, sexist, domineering or self-seeking, that is, someone who will devote himself to the interests of the Museum as a whole rather than to his own interests. I would also like to have a director who is non-monarchial, who will concern himself with the operation of the Museum at the “lowest” level and will familiarize himself with the problems of guards, secretaries, and art-handlers as well as those of the curatorial and administrative staff. I am, in short, asking for a democratic orientation toward the running of a museum, in order to facilitate communication among all employees and aspects of the institution.
Just as Jack hadn’t interfered with “curatorial responsibility,” so trustees, I thought, should not either: they should have no say in what art is shown, accepted as gifts, or bought.
Why not, one might ask, since it is they who provide the money to buy the art?
Because, I’d answer, that’s the way Gertrude set it up. So the staff would have autonomy. So her museum would be professional, not just a rich woman�
�s whim. Within the limits of available funds, the staff would decide on the program. Gertrude herself formed the original collection, with input from Juliana Force and her staff of artists after the formation of the Whitney Studio Club in 1918, but most of that collection was in place before the Whitney as museum was even conceived.
Today, one might give the current reasons: there should be no possible conflicts of interest between collector and public institution. If, say, Mrs. Jones owns ten paintings by emerging artist Roy Smith, for which she paid a thousand dollars each, and if she then gives one to the Whitney, its acceptance means the value of the painting will immediately double or triple. While it’s impossible, of course, to completely avoid such situations, it’s important to make the effort, to protect both Museum and patron. In acquisition committees, members choose from works brought before them by curators. Many museums have exhibition committees, but not the Whitney.
Marcia supported her deeply held principles by putting them into practice.
Members of the search committee admired and respected her, not only for the ideals she expressed in her letter but in her wish to show more “advanced” art than the Whitney had heretofore exhibited. But while her goals worked extremely well for her as curator, if she became director, they thought, those same goals put into practice might well prove too radical for the Whitney, always, heretofore, a middle-of-the-road “liberal” institution, trying to do justice to all aspects of art and politics.
What did I think? I loved Marcia and would have gladly supported her if the others had, but Jack and Howard strongly influenced me.
With hindsight, it’s obvious, judging from her letter, that Marcia would face problems with the next director. The museum she founded a few years later, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in Soho, embodies all she described in that letter. It’s an extraordinarily democratic institution, where all staff members have a voice in programming, and where trustees, too, are involved in the decision-making process.
Howard moved things along briskly, as I see in a letter he wrote to our committee in September 1972: “As you are aware, Tom Armstrong became director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts [a venerable museum in Philadelphia with an art school joined to it] less than a year ago. His board approved Tom inviting a group of seven consultants to study the Academy on a three day schedule in April of 1972. I was fortunate in being invited to join this consultants committee.
“I am sending you the enclosed as an indication of Tom’s executive capabilities in handling this group.”
There follows Tom’s summary of the Pennsylvania Academy’s history, collection, and school; his detailed program for the three-day visit, including seating diagrams for dinners and lunches; and requests for specific advice from the qualified experts Tom had invited as consultants, in order to plot the future of a venerable institution in need of renewal. Howard had been extremely impressed by both his ability and personality.
So, pretty soon, the search committee lunched at the Stanhope Hotel with Tom Armstrong, a tall, well-spoken young man with black-rimmed glasses and a high balding forehead who reached out to each of us, asking about our interests in art, gardens, architecture. His enthusiasm for the Whitney, his openness to new ideas and plans, pleased us.
A little later, Mike and I visited him at the Pennsylvania Academy. We enjoyed Tom’s sense of humor, and were especially impressed by the obvious familiarity he’d achieved so rapidly with the Academy’s collection. In the storage area, he pulled out painting after painting, extolling their virtues, describing their acquisition, subject, artist, and significance. His excitement about the paintings was infectious, and since I felt the Whitney’s collection was the keystone of our museum, I was especially captivated by this aspect of Tom. The plans he had initiated with such dispatch for his building and institution were ambitious and imaginative. He, in turn, was impressed by the knowledge and deep commitment he’d sensed in the Whitney trustees he’d met — never, he said, had he worked with a board that contributed so generously of themselves, as well as money.
Has my first impression of Tom — of his energy, intelligence, curiosity, and warmth — changed?
Time has left his assurance, his humor, his charm, unchanged. If anything, Tom seems more intelligent. Underneath, though, after all the battles there’s a new wariness, a hesitancy. A sadness in his eyes, the disillusionment of a wounded warrior. The contrast between the old Tom and the new clarifies my memory, at those first meetings, of a wonderfully self-confident, exuberant soul, marching to his own tune, ready to take on the world. Exactly the person we were looking for!
The search committee was quick to make a recommendation to the board, and, early in 1973, we presented Tom to the trustees and their spouses at a cocktail party, giving people a chance to talk informally with our candidate. (We always hoped and believed that being a trustee of the Museum was an involvement outside business hours, social in nature. It should be fun. So we tried to have many events that included spouses or “significant others.”)
Tom wrote the next day “on the metro”:
Dear Flora,
Bunty [Tom’s wife] and I had great fun at the Whitney last night and I want to tell you how encouraging it is to see members of a board really working enthusiastically for the success of an institution. … I am very excited about the future and anxious to get with Jack and learn how the Whitney works. …
Hope everything goes well at the meeting and that I get voted in — I’m looking forward to working with you and Mike to make the Whitney as great and effective as it can possibly be. …
He was unanimously approved at the April 1973 board meeting.
I wrote my mother, “The museum meeting went fine, and Tom Armstrong voted in with no apparent problems. I do so hope you’ll like him, and will have a chance to meet him soon. Really, I think you’ll take to him — he’s full of charm and vitality — he comes in September as associate director for a year.”
Associate director. A frustrating year for Tom, although he never complained, not to me, at least. I didn’t realize that Jack kept him very much on the outside, giving him little authority or responsibility Maybe Jack regretted our choice. Mostly, Tom waited.
But he didn’t even wait until September to begin working for the Whitney in his own way. Right after he was voted in, before the Whitney Gala in May, Tom gave a dinner at the Knickerbocker Club. I remember being surprised, because I’d thought of the “Knick” as a bastion of the “old days,” a place where I had to wear a skirt if my father, who had been a member, invited me for lunch. Even though I had pleasant memories of dining there with my father, I didn’t anticipate it being a welcoming place to my new friends. Not where I’d be spending much time now. But Tom, rather than rejecting his previous habits and lifestyle, enlarged and embellished them to encompass the events and friends of his Museum world. It’s one of the things I admire about Tom. Now he sent me a list, with detailed descriptions of each guest, their possible use to the Whitney, and a handwritten note in his usual breezy style: “Here we go — this should be fun — never mind all the heavy preparation. … met the staff yesterday — including lady in restaurant (got staff discount) and everything positive and good— see ya —”
Useful to the Whitney, elegant and lively, this dinner typified many more to come. One of the guests, Barbara Millhouse — who had founded an excellent museum of American art, Reynolda House, in her family home in Winston Salem, North Carolina — became an active, helpful trustee and is still a member of the national committee.
In September, the Armstrongs spent a weekend with Howard and Jean Lipman in their house in Connecticut, where they kept their folk-art collection and many sculptures. As we lived nearby, we gave a small dinner for the Armstrongs with friends we hoped might become patrons. Our guests were much taken with Tom and Bunty. Bunty was beautiful, glad to be moving to New York, and interested in everyone she met. Tom was the perfect guest, asking questions and really listening to the answe
rs, telling wonderful stories, wanting to know about everyone and everything, remembering it all, too — he even sent a packet of miniature daffodil bulbs to our neighbors, David and Penny Bergamini, after discussing horticulture with them. He charmed us with his informal ways and his compelling interest in the Whitney. In a prompt bread-and-butter letter he wrote: “Our weekend with you and the Lipmans will always be considered the start of our life with the Whitney. … Things begin officially on Monday and Bunty and I are very excited … we look forward to the future with great anticipation.”
In November, Tom invited us on a notable trip to Virginia, where he had previously worked as associate director of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center. He hoped to interest some of the many friends he and Bunty had made in the Whitney. We had never experienced such organization, such luxury, such sheer fun. The visit was a precursor of many national committee and trustee trips. The itinerary lists the people we met, showing the broad range of Tom’s friends — including those in the art world. His graphic notes told me everything I needed to know. For instance: among Tom’s guests the first night at the Commonwealth Club was Tennant Bryan, head of Media, Inc., whose newspaper had denigrated Sydney and Frances Lewis, our hosts, the following night. (Finally rising to Tennant’s bait — sarcastic criticism of northern “left-wingers” and inordinate praise of southern politicians I considered to be racist — on the very steps of his club, at midnight, I fear I snubbed his views with a succinct but definitely rude word, “Shit!” which apparently surprised that charming southern gentleman.) Seated by me was the president of the Virginia Museum’s board, a man who had also insulted the Lewises by not inviting them to join his board.
Who were these Lewises?
Tom’s notes: “Best Products — [the Lewises’] mail order business — give merchandise to artists in exchange for work — James Wines designed their showrooms — both work in the business as well as their children and Frances’ mother — support Blacks, etc. …” This capsule barely begins to describe the Lewises, a good example of the caliber of people Tom attracted to the Museum.
The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made Page 22