Peter Selz

by Paul J. Karlstrom

  Rico went off to Yale and then to the Academy in Rome, where he developed the design for Genesis. There were still problems involved, such as his own idea of competing with, or being in the same building with, Orozco. But he wanted the challenge. He decided that the mural should be painted in black and gray. The powerful result is a departure from the expected in mural tradition, and Millard Sheets, who considered Rico a competitor, an interloper in his home territory, predictably hated the design and vociferously campaigned against it. With the ongoing support of Donald and Elizabeth Winston, however, Selz prevailed and the Lebrun mural was installed at Pomona.

  At the same time, Peter continued to cast his gaze westward toward Los Angeles, where he had become aware of—or as he put it, “close to”— the Ferus Gallery artists. Perhaps as early as 1957, the year of the gallery’s opening, but certainly with the benefit of hindsight, he recognized Ed Kienholz, Walter Hopps, and the Ferus Gallery as driving some of the most exciting art in Southern California. Although in the end Peter hitched his wagon to the more formalist, polite work of the Abstract Classicists, his natural instincts might have been expected to draw him to the irreverent, antitraditional bohemians—notably Kienholz, Foulkes, and Berman—who constituted the Ferus circle.

  In some respects, again drawing upon his earliest exposure to American modern art under the tutelage of Alfred Stieglitz, Peter’s grand finale exhibition at Pomona was the most important. More than any other show, Stieglitz Circle demonstrated how his individual view of modernist art was shaped and what it meant:

  That was in 1958 and people paid very, very little attention to that [modern] aspect of American art. Now, [in 1982,] O’Keeffe has become the great culture heroine. At that time, she was considered some kind of sentimental flower painter. That was really the attitude in the late 1950s about this kind of American painting, and I felt strongly that this had to be reexamined. Nobody had paid serious attention to these artists for fifteen, even twenty years. For the opening of the new Pomona facility I did this show called Stieglitz Circle, which included O’Keeffe, Marin, Dove, and Hartley. And the early work of Max Weber and Demuth. While I was working on the show I had to go to New York to borrow important pictures, which at the time were fairly easy to get because nobody was paying attention to this group. So we could get the very best examples. My main sources were Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery, the Whitney, and the Museum of Modern Art.45

  At the Museum of Modern Art, Peter was talking to Alfred Barr, then director of the museum collection, about borrowing pictures, and Peter reports that Barr said, “If you have this kind of vision, if you do this kind of show now, well, this is interesting.” Barr had seen Peter’s recently published German Expressionist Painting, and he commented on its superiority to the catalogue they had just published for their German show, saying, “This is what we should have done.” And then he said, “Why don’t you come and take over the painting and sculpture exhibitions department?”46

  By the time the Pomona show opened, Selz was in fact on his way to his new job at the Museum of Modern Art. Stieglitz Circle constituted a major statement about Selz’s approach, his vision, and his ability to make the right modernist connections, and virtually announced what he would do at MoMA. His vision for the future is contained in his retrospective appraisal of the show and its reception: “The comments were positive, but it was still too early. America wasn’t ready for this kind of evaluation. It took a few more years. Everybody was totally involved in Abstract Expressionism. They were interested in the earlier American modernists as a nostalgia kind of thing. Nobody saw the connections between Dove, or Marin, and the new kind of painting. But some New York artists got it.”47

  Peter Selz was now prepared to make his mark on the modern art world from the most effective bully pulpit available, the Museum of Modern Art. With the preparation provided by Chicago and Pomona, he was fully equipped to establish a singular intellectual position and an international reputation.

  FOUR Back in New York

  INSIDE MOMA

  Peter’s personal relationship to the Museum of Modern Art reaches back to the 1930s; he recalls visiting it regularly and wishing he could get a job there selling postcards. He could not then have imagined the realization of that youthful dream, but the day after the 1958 dedication of the new gallery at Pomona, he went directly to New York—“I could postpone it no longer”1—to begin his new job as curator of modern painting and sculpture exhibitions at MoMA.

  A year earlier the former curator, Andrew Ritchie, had departed to become director of the Yale Art Gallery, which created the fortuitous vacancy that Selz was hired to fill. Ritchie’s associate curator, Sam Hunter, was not being considered for promotion. Selz recalls that there were about half a dozen people vying for the position, “people who have become prominent in the American art world.”2 But it was Peter who got the nod. This appointment took him back to New York for what surely must have been considered the top museum job in the modern art field.

  It looked as though Peter’s art career was unfolding exactly on schedule—though he did not actually expect to get the job, considering the competition: “I was very much surprised. I thought the offer would go to somebody older and much more established. The only museum experience I had was running a little college gallery on a shoestring, so I was amazed. . . . I think the job was offered to one other person, who turned it down. I’m not sure, but I believe it was offered to [art critic and art historian] Leo Steinberg—who also had no museum experience at all.”3 After acknowledging the obvious fact that, surprisingly, experience working in a museum was not a priority or even a requirement for the job, Selz went on to acknowledge the support of founding director Alfred Barr. Whereas the final decision was made by director René d’Harnoncourt, it was Barr who first raised the possibility of Selz’s fitness for the job. Peter described in a few sentences the qualities that made Barr an art legend as the architect of MoMA’s identity and, at the time, clarity of purpose:

  My first wife [Thalia] said to me . . ., “You always wanted to show you could do this kind of thing”—to have the chance to do it in a place which at that time was much more important than it is now, because it really was the only place, it was the place that called the tune. . . . Barr . . . was our mentor. I’ve had students who are doing all kinds of things now to break down the canon, but he established the canon [the accepted measure of modernist importance based upon French art]. He did all these marvelous things in bringing the different aspects of modernism together in one museum, and we admired that enormously.4

  Barr’s role in creating what is often erroneously described as the “first” and greatest museum of modern art was huge,5 but he did not accomplish this extraordinary feat on his own. As it happened, he was selected in a seemingly arbitrary manner by three motivated and determined female fans of modern art, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Sullivan. These three New York collectors of modern art, with a shared interest in contemporary American art (Rockefeller had been collecting since the mid-1920s), met while traveling abroad in the winter of 1928–29. Rockefeller and Bliss each were delighted to discover a kindred spirit as they were examining the pyramids in Egypt. Aboard ship on the voyage home, they—and eventually museum history—enjoyed the good fortune of meeting another enthusiast, Sullivan, with whom they bemoaned the lack of a museum in New York devoted to their modernist interests. Back at home these informal conversations continued over tea, culminating in an invitation to Buffalo businessman and art collector A. Conger Goodyear to join them for lunch at Mrs. Rockefeller’s home. Unaware of what they had in mind, Goodyear accepted solely to see his hostess’s house and art collection. When asked to head a committee to establish the new museum (social protocol indicated a chairman), he asked for a week to consider the matter. He accepted the next day.6

  Paul Sachs, associate director of Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, was empowered to find a director for the new museum. In 1929, he shocked the organizing
committee by recommending his former student Alfred H. Barr Jr., “a callow and often tactlessly outspoken twenty-seven-year-old professor with less than two years’ experience in teaching modern art to Wellesley girls.”7 Barr was reportedly charismatic when he spoke with excitement about art, however, and he impressed Abby Rockefeller in his interview with her. Thus the Museum of Modern Art was launched. A big part of the story was Barr’s ability to work with what he referred to as his “adamantines,” the women whose brainchild the museum in fact was. MoMA was not Alfred Barr’s inspiration; it was theirs. But he proceeded to take the idea and run, mostly with their support, especially (although not unconditionally) that of Abby Rockefeller.

  Over several decades, first as director and later in a curatorial capacity, Barr successfully crafted what MoMA became—and what it was when Peter Selz arrived. Barr, however, had a vision, an administrative style, and curatorial “quirks” that soon began to grate on the museum board. Although beloved by the curatorial staff and over time earning a reputation as the leading museum authority on modern art—some would say the “final word”—Barr managed eventually to alienate the museum board, even his patron Abby Rockefeller, and board chairman Stephen Clark fired him in 1943. Tenacious in the extreme, Barr refused to leave. His one full supporter was James Thrall Soby, appointed assistant director the same year to “further ease Barr’s position.” Soby finally arranged for a small office to be constructed in the library, where Barr could devote himself to researching and writing his long-promised history of modern art. In 1947 Clark partially recanted by appointing Barr director of collections, to be joined in that capacity by his loyal sidekick and trusted collaborator, Dorothy Miller.

  In retrospect, Barr came to regard what he initially viewed as “betrayal” by Abby as being in his best interests, for his new position allowed him to do the things he liked best without the administrative responsibilities. With typical modesty and admirable objectivity, Barr wrote, “I had some abilities as a writer, curator, showman . . . and perhaps a modicum of professional integrity, but I was inadequate as a fund raiser, general administrator and diplomat.”8 With the hiring of the far more diplomatic René d’Harnoncourt as director in 1944, the working team that ran the Modern that Selz joined was close to being established. D’Harnoncourt insisted on having Barr as a critical resource, and he frequently described his own “main duty” at MoMA as preserving and nourishing the “genius of Alfred Barr.”9

  When Peter joined MoMA’s staff, his primary responsibilities, made clear by his title, had to do with the exhibition program. Acquisitions were handled by Barr. This curatorial arrangement, separating collections and exhibitions, was in place before Peter’s arrival, and he heartily approved of it. In fact, MoMA was everything he could have hoped for— at the beginning, at least. His tenure there started on a high note:

  It seemed to be at that point to be a very good arrangement. I didn’t question it. I was on the acquisitions committee; I had a little voice— not a vote, but a voice. I thought the separation between collection and exhibitions made sense. I had a good staff. Alicia Legg was my number one assistant. I had this great welcome and, especially in the beginning . . . everybody was very cordial. But the marvelous thing was that I could do whatever I wanted. I would come to the curatorial meetings and propose some shows and they were generally accepted. It worked very, very well. Then after two years an associate curatorship was open, and I got Bill Seitz to work with me.10

  Peter’s account of the “acquisition” of William C. Seitz by MoMA in 1960 is well worth telling, for it reveals his disarming but ultimately damaging innocence regarding the internal dynamics of the museum. Peter truly believed that everyone, or almost everyone, liked him and wished him well. What he didn’t seem to grasp was that there was a competitive underbelly to the institution, and he had a small company of detractors, despite his “cordial” welcome. Nonetheless, he proceeded with an optimistic view of the place and the people, and his memories preserve that sanguine perspective. In the beginning, as when he brought Seitz in as his assistant, that optimism may have been justified:

  I was looking for somebody because I couldn’t do it all by myself. When I met Bill [the study of] modern art was a very new thing. . . . One reason I respected Barr so much was that he and Meyer Schapiro really made modern art into a scholarly discipline. Bill was an assistant professor at Princeton . . . when I met him. He had written his dissertation on Abstract Expressionism, and he had finished his book on Monet. He suggested that we do a Monet show—the Claude Monet: Seasons and Moments exhibition [1960]. I liked the idea very much, and he came in as an independent curator. We got along beautifully, I loved the way he did the show, and I liked the way he wrote the catalogue.

  I asked him if he’d be interested in being the associate curator, and he said yes. Then I went to René and he said, “Well, we thought you’d hire somebody on a lower level for this job. Do you really want somebody on the same level as you are?” Coming from academe, I thought this would work very well. “Yes, I think we’d get along fine, and we respect [one another]. We don’t have exactly the same opinions . . . which is only a good thing.” And then we hired him. René was wrong because Bill and I worked out beautifully.11

  The interviewer, however, picked up from this anecdote something that Peter had missed. She pointed out that René seemed to be telling him something larger, something about staff interaction and the working environment at the museum in general. At this point Selz acknowledged that, in a way, he was “very, very innocent.” As an example, he talked about what he perceived as the background machinations of Porter McCray, the museum staff person attached to the international program of the International Council and one of the few colleagues Peter actively disliked. Although Selz was in charge of exhibitions, McCray was responsible for international exhibitions. Peter and Arthur Drexler (curator of the architecture and design department) protested what they saw as an artificial dichotomy, and eventually McCray had to give in. When asked about McCray’s presence at the museum, Selz responded, “I never liked him . . . and I didn’t quite know what to make of him. He was on a different wavelength from people like Alfred and René and Arthur and myself. We all got along very well.”12

  Porter McCray was a longtime and powerful presence at the Museum of Modern Art. His initial entrée was through Nelson Rockefeller, who in 1947, as chairman of the board, invited McCray to join the museum as director of circulating exhibitions. In November 1962 McCray arranged a “major” Mark Rothko exhibition for Paris. In fact, this was Peter’s Rothko show, on view at MoMA in 1961 (18 January–12 March) before touring the United States for a year. Three weeks before the scheduled Paris opening, French culture minister André Malraux canceled the exhibition with no convincing explanation. In recalling the incident, Peter speculates that Malraux was acting in a thinly disguised way to protect French art from the competition posed by the up-and-coming New York School of painting.13 In any event, McCray went to the mayor of Paris, who obligingly offered basement space at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, “shabby” rooms that managed to be refurbished in time for the opening date.14

  Selz reports that there was considerable friction caused by the bifurcated nature of the exhibition program, divided between the national and international arms, with the final authority apparently falling to the latter. Selz also volunteered that as a Rockefeller appointee and favorite, McCray had special authority and privileges, including board membership. Furthermore, there were rumors—unverified—that McCray worked for the CIA.15 Given the tenor of the cold war times and the government practice of deploying civilian cultural representatives abroad for various covert and intelligence-gathering purposes, such rumors were not surprising.

  Foreign venues for Peter’s exhibitions grew fewer and farther between. The first exhibition Selz organized after arriving at MoMA was a small one for the first Paris Biennial. Titled U.S. Representation: I Biennale de Paris, it was, Peter recalls, memorable for intro
ducing Robert Rauschenberg to Paris. But at that early point in his MoMA tenure he began to see that there were, in his words, “some strange things going on in the museum.” He and Drexler determined that this confused situation regarding international authority within their departments could not continue: “We didn’t want to have somebody else in charge of painting and sculpture or architecture and design. We felt that was what we had been hired for. Porter McCray ran his own institution [International Council], which we didn’t know much about; it was sort of like the CIA. He never told anybody what was going on. He had his own press office in the building next door, and we never knew what they were doing either.”16 More significant than the details of this organizational irregularity was the way René d’Harnoncourt dealt with it—or did not. Peter’s account of the McCray problem may provide some degree of insight into the director’s management style. After saying he never discussed the matter with Alfred Barr, Selz described his boss’s usual answer for such things: “You’d talk to René about it and [he’d say], ‘We’re going to work it out, everybody’s going to be happy.’ Any time you went to René about something he smoothed it over. . . . He was an extraordinary diplomat, and he tried to make everyone feel good. Every time you walked into his office with some kind of complaint, you walked out feeling good. [laughing] . . . But things did not really change.”17

  Having said this, Selz was eager to heap praise and admiration on the leading figures at MoMA, notably Barr and d’Harnoncourt. But he also had complimentary words for many others among his colleagues, in fact most of them. And his overall description of MoMA as an institution and of his experience working there was mainly positive, even enthusiastically so. He seemed most impressed, however, by the director, d’Harnoncourt: