Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  After the President left, Fortas said, “You don’t have to worry about this, Joe. Just do as the President says.” Harris was angered. “To hell with that, Abe!” Although Johnson had just won a great election victory, Presidents lose power, become ill, or die. “Over my dead body are you going to get this collection without the conditions written into the contract and a statute passed.”

  The negotiation of the agreement took about a year. Lerner had to prepare a precise inventory of all the works that would be turned over, and Ripley carefully reviewed the Freer and Mellon contracts. During this period Fortas was named to the Supreme Court and Harry McPherson replaced him for the White House.

  The agreement was signed on May 17, 1966, by Hirshhorn, Harris, and Ripley. The significant terms were as follows: Congress would enact and the President would approve “no later than ten days after the close of the 90th Congress” [January 1969] legislation providing: The site bounded by Seventh Street, Independence Avenue, Ninth Street, and Madison Drive would be occupied solely by the museum and sculpture garden and the existing structure would be torn down. The new edifice would be called the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, would be free to the public, and would be administered by the Smithsonian. The United States pledged to provide funds for “upkeep, operation, and maintenance.” The museum would be administered by a board of trustees of ten members, two ex officio, the Chief Justice of the United States and the secretary of the Smithsonian, and eight named by the President from lists of four nominated by Hirshhorn and four by the Smithsonian.

  Hirshhorn and Ripley jointly would select the architects and would approve their plans. The $1 million gift would be used for the acquisition of art. The first director would be chosen by Hirshhorn and approved by Ripley. (Abram Lerner would hold that position.) In the event that the legislation was not enacted in time or the museum was not built within five years thereafter, “this Agreement shall be null and void and the proposed gifts … shall not be consummated.”

  On November 7, 1966, the Congress by resolution accepted the Hirshhorn gift and approved the site on the Mall. The time requirements fixed by the agreement and their potential sanctions put pressure on the Johnson administration. It had to remove two large obstacles before construction could begin. The first was the red-brick Victorian monstrosity called the Armed Forces Museum of Pathology, which McPherson considered “a strong candidate for ugliest-in-Washington.” It was at 7th Street and Independence Avenue, smack inside the Hirshhorn site. It had been built in 1887 and for many years had been the headquarters of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, a medical library, and a museum. The headquarters had moved to Walter Reed Hospital in 1955 and the library to the Public Health Service in 1956. Only the museum remained on the Mall and it occupied half the building; the remainder was used for offices. Ripley thought the collection almost worthless except for a notable group of microscopes, which many museums would be glad to have. The Bureau of the Budget considered the pathology specimens of “morbid interest only.”

  But the pathologists refused to move, rejecting several attractive offers the White House made, including three buildings at the Bureau of Standards. They generated a big letter-writing campaign that seriously damped support for the Hirshhorn in the House. The long-range plan was to give them a new museum-laboratory at Walter Reed and they demanded that Congress package it with the art museum. The price for construction was $7.5 million. Due to the budgetary slowdown on construction, McNamara was reluctant to act, but the White House pushed him to ask for an appropriation. In October 1967 the House Appropriations Committee made life more difficult by eliminating the Hirshhorn appropriation. The administration asked for its restoration. McPherson wrote to Budget Director Schultze, “I’ve talked to the boss about this. He is determined that nothing be left undone that will help us secure the Hirshhorn bequest.” The President and Mrs. Johnson talked to Appropriations Committee chairman George Mahon of Texas and he agreed to restore the funds. McPherson’s summary: “The arithmetic is that in exchange for a $30 million art collection, we build a $10–12 million gallery and a $7.5 million museum-laboratory at Walter Reed that we would have in any event constructed in a few years.” He thought the deal a bargain for the government.

  The other problem was the constriction of the federal budget resulting from the Vietnam War and the Great Inflation, which threatened the funds for the Hirshhorn. Ripley had little trouble lobbying through an appropriation of $803,000 for the architects in the fiscal 1968 budget. The contract was awarded to Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, with Gordon Bunshaft as principal architect. His bold and striking design gained the approval of the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission. The plans were ready for construction in July 1968. But the cost with inflation had now risen to $14,197,000. Hirshhorn agreed to amend the agreement to defer the date of completion.

  The congressional subcommittees, Ripley wrote, are “very nervous about defending this on the floor” because it would represent a 66 percent increase in the Smithsonian’s budget. It would look “horrendous” in an “appallingly austere year.” He had another idea: the installment plan. Since construction costs in the first year would be lower than they would become later, he suggested limiting the fiscal 1969 request to $2 million, “a very attractive reduction.” The Bureau of the Budget approved and he persuaded Congress to go along.

  Ground was broken on January 8, 1969, in a ceremony featuring Chief Justice Warren, President Johnson, and Dillon Ripley, all very large men, and Joe Hirshhorn, barely more than five feet tall. The photographs show that all enjoyed themselves, particularly the donor.

  The museum and sculpture garden opened on October 1, 1974. Hirshhorn was now 75. Lyndon Johnson was no longer alive. The dignitaries present at the ceremony were Lady Bird Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Senator Fulbright, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the ambassador to India. Bunshaft’s radical design was encased in a four-story hollow concrete cylinder sheathed in pink granite. The galleries opened onto a central court. The museum was set in a garden filled with sculpture. Many considered the structure stunning and a fitting showplace for modern art. Others were critical because it deviated markedly from the nearby neo-classical National Gallery and the red brick of the Victorian Smithsonian. Critics called it a “gargantuan bagel” or the “world’s largest doughnut.”

  The museum opened on a bright and warm autumn day. Only 900 of the more than 6000 works contributed were on display. It proved an immense success with the public. Within a year it ranked sixth in the nation in attendance. By 1976 it was drawing 25,000 visitors a day and had passed the Museum of Modern Art and the Chicago Art Institute, surpassed only by the Metropolitan, the National Gallery, and the Los Angeles County Art Museum. Joe Hirshhorn sold his estate in Connecticut and moved to Washington to be near “his” museum. “The intercession of President Lyndon B. Johnson,” Abram Lerner wrote, “made Mr. Hirshhorn’s choice inevitable.”4

  On October 26, 1967 Chief Justice Warren in his capacity as chairman of the trustees of the National Gallery of Art wrote the President that in 1937 Andrew Mellon had given to the nation his collection and the funds to build the National Gallery. The congressional resolution of acceptance provided that an adjoining area bounded by Fourth Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, Third Street, and North Mall Drive shall be “reserved as a site for future additions to the National Gallery. … “ The trustees had now decided that this site should be used for a new building to provide for exhibition space, expansion of the gallery’s extension program, now serving 3000 communities in all 50 states, and educational and cultural programs. Mellon’s son Paul, who was president of the gallery, and Paul’s sister, Mrs. Ailsa Mellon Bruce, had just contributed securities and cash “to the value of approximately $20,000,000.” With other funds available, this would cover all costs. Legislation had been proposed for Congress to authorize the new building. The Chief Justice asked for the President’s support.

  Douglas Cater
of the White House staff called John Walker, director of the gallery, who said no federal funds would be needed until the building was completed, hopefully in 1972, and they would be for operating expenses. He suggested a small ceremony to express gratitude to the Mellons. But Paul Mellon was abroad.

  Thus, the President merely issued a statement on November 6 expressing gratitude on behalf of the nation to the Mellons and urging Congress to authorize the addition. He pointed out that this structure would contribute to the “enrichment and beautification of the Nation’s Capital.” The architect, I. M. Pei, was widely acclaimed for his neo-classical design. The new wing, in fact, cost $94.4 million, all of it contributed by the Mellons, and opened in July 1978.

  Walter Hopps, curator of the National Collection of Fine Arts, said, “Symbolically, I think, it’s marvelous that juxtaposed to Mr. Mellon’s institution there will be Mr. Hirshhorn’s. It is altogether fitting and proper. Both were great; both had the morality of the Great White Shark; and the only thing that differentiates them was their taste and sensibility.”5

  In the 1930s radio was the sole medium of broadcasting and was dominated by three networks—the Red, the Blue—both owned by the National Broadcasting Company—and the Columbia Broadcasting System. During World War II the Federal Communications System ordered NBC to spin off one of its networks in order to increase competition. The Blue Network, the weaker, became the American Broadcasting Company.

  Television broadcasting had become technically feasible on the eve of the war and the FCC issued transmission standards in 1941. NBC and CBS immediately established anchor stations in New York. But the war prevented development. In the U.S. in 1944 there were only 7000 receivers for six stations that broadcast four hours a week.

  At the end of hostilities the FCC imposed a freeze on the industry to give itself time to study broadcast standards, particularly the use of very high frequency (VHF) as against ultra high frequency (UHF). It selected VHF. Since that part of the spectrum provided only 13 channels and 6 were reserved for noncommercial purposes, only 7 were available. This created a continuing shortage of stations. Nevertheless, the industry developed with phenomenal speed. By 1959 there were 50 million receivers in 86 percent of U.S. homes served by over 500 stations. Since the FCC multiple ownership rule limited an owner to five VHF and two UHF stations, virtually all outlets were owned by persons other than the networks. But almost all the stations became affiliates of one or several of the networks to gain access to national programming.

  This system depended upon advertising for its income. The program attracted viewers who did not pay to watch it; the advertiser paid for the program in order to attract an audience for his commercial message. Thus, the bigger the audience, the more the advertiser shelled out to the network and the stations. The network was shaped to reach virtually every receiver in the U.S. and programs were produced to maximize audience size on the ridiculous assumption that everyone had the same tastes and that no part of the audience should be lost because it objected to the show. Thus, the programs became stereotyped and inoffensive—westerns, mysteries, sitcoms, and so on—and were “lowbrow” at best. Since TV was a very effective advertising medium, networks and stations became extremely profitable. Many members of Congress received FCC licenses for stations, Lyndon Johnson among them—he and his wife owned KTBC-TV, the only station in Austin, an affiliate of all three networks.

  During the era of radio a number of universities, mainly land-grant institutions in the Midwest and the West, had established educational stations. But they had extremely limited funds, broadcast on very low power, and had difficulty surviving. In 1951, when there were 2200 AM stations, only 37 were educational. FM brought in another 170, which were also weak. They banded together in the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, which looked hopefully to a brighter future in TV. During the FCC freeze NAEB lobbied to reserve channels for noncommercial broadcasting and found a champion in Commissioner Frieda Hennock. In 1951 a financial savior appeared in the Ford Foundation’s Fund for Adult Education, which, as part of a comprehensive program to support noncommercial TV, pledged $12 million to provide equipment and programming for stations. The next year the FCC held aside parts of both the VHF and UHF spectrums for educational broadcasting.

  The first educational station went on the air in 1953; by 1966 there were 124, mainly VHF, but shifting increasingly to UHF. Of this number, 41 were community stations, 35 were run by universities, 27 by state boards of education, and 21 by school districts. These stations were linked together by National Educational Television, which supplied half the programming—five hours a week of cultural and public affairs shows either produced by NET itself or rented from abroad, largely from the BBC. NET duplicated programs and distributed them by mail. Electronic interconnection, which was far superior, was too expensive for simultaneous nationwide broadcasting, but was used locally in the Northeast, California, and Oklahoma. Despite a total Ford subvention of $120 million, supplemented by governments at all levels, as well as industry and subscriber support, the system was seriously underfunded and its future was in great doubt.6

  In December 1964 a conference of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters in Washington unanimously proposed a presidential commission to study the financial needs of their system and recommend a national policy. Shortly NAEB leaders met with White House aide Douglas Cater, the HEW leadership—Gardner, Cohen, and Keppel—and FCC Chairman E. William Henry. They agreed on the desirability of a commission, but disagreed over whether it should be appointed by the President or by a private body, a responsibility the Carnegie Corporation was willing to assume. The President, because of his station in Austin, insisted that there should be no conflict of interest, real or apparent. Carnegie won by default.

  Gardner handled the selection of the chairman and proposed James Killian, Jr., chairman of the MIT corporation. The secretary wanted the President’s approval. While Johnson would have preferred someone else, he did not oppose the choice. In fact, Killian did a masterful job. On October 28, 1965, the Carnegie Corporation announced the members of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television: Killian, chairman; James B. Conant, former president of Harvard; Lee DuBridge, president of Caltech; Ralph Ellison, the noted black writer; John Hays of the Washington Post; David Henry, president of the University of Illinois; Oveta Culp Hobby, president of the Houston Post; K. C. Kellam, president of Texas Broadcasting; Edwin Land, president of Polaroid; Joseph McConnell, president of Reynolds Metals; Terry Sanford, former governor of North Carolina; Rudolph Serkin, the famed pianist; and Leonard Woodcock, vice president of the UAW. Carnegie would finance the commission to the tune of $500,000.

  The commission’s study was comprehensive and thorough. It held 28 days of formal meetings and many others of smaller groups; it heard from 225 individuals and groups; it visited 92 stations in 35 states in addition to 7 foreign systems; and it employed Arthur D. Little, Inc., to prepare the cost estimates. Its report,Public Broadcasting: A Program for Action, was published in January 1967 and made a very big splash. Besides its recommendations, the title of the report transformed the discussion from the awkward and obsolete educational TV system to the new and exciting prospect for public television. Henceforth educational television would be narrowed to “instructional television, directed at students in the classroom.” Public television “includes all that is of human interest and importance which is not at the moment appropriate or suitable for support by advertising and which is not arranged for formal instruction.”

  The commission’s vision of the new system differed fundamentally from the network-dominated commercial system. It assumed diversity over uniformity of tastes. This argued for program production from several sources—a central authority to be called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the local stations, and independent producers.

  The corporation would play the leading role. To avoid congressional intervention, it should be a federally chartered, nonprofit, no
ngovernmental institution, but with members appointed by the President. It would be the major recipient of government and private funds, disbursing them to national program production agencies, to local stations both to improve their facilities and to produce programs, and for electronic interconnection.

  Interconnection could be used in two distinct ways—networking to transmit a single signal to all stations for simultaneous broadcast, as the commercial networks operated, or distribution of a program from a central point to stations which then had the option of playing it simultaneously or of recording it for later showing at the station’s discretion. On the diversity principle the commission anticipated that most programs would be broadcast at different times to fit the individual station’s schedule.

  A national system so constituted would be expensive. The commission’s recommendation for financing was on the European and Canadian examples, an excise tax on television receivers of between 2 and 5 percent. The receipts would be placed in a trust fund upon which the corporation could draw. This would insulate the corporation politically against the annual congressional appropriations process.

  Killian engaged Covington & Burling, the noted Washington law firm, to draft a bill. The Carnegie report was circulated widely within the government and received general approval. The key senators, John Pastore of Rhode Island and Warren Magnuson of Washington, were enthusiastic. The educational broadcasters, of course, were ecstatic. The Ford Foundation, now headed by McGeorge Bundy, was a strong supporter. So were the commercial networks, particularly CBS and NBC; ABC went along. In fact, Dr. Frank Stanton, president of CBS, promised a $1 million gift to the new system. He told Cater that he had concluded that the excise tax was the only way to go to get “reasonable insulation from Rooney’s world.” Thomas Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum, formed a citizens’ committee to back the report. But Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Stanley Surrey wrote that a tax on receivers would be “more regressive than any excise tax we have or have had, with the exception of the tax on smoking tobacco.”