The first painting of any consequence we bought was a portrait of a handsome young gentleman, attributed (falsely, as it turned out) to Thomas Sully. We paid $10,000 for it in 1946, which was a great deal of money for us at the time. We liked it very much, and for many years it hung over the living room mantel in New York. At about the same time, because they were reasonably priced, we bought other minor eighteenth-century English portraits, two featuring men in bright red coats and one of a girl, vaguely—and inaccurately—ascribed to Thomas Gainsborough. They at least filled blank spaces on our walls, and we found them agreeable.
Shortly after I joined the museum board, we invited Alfred and his wife, Marga, to see our new house on Manhattan’s East Side. While we were having tea, Marga looked around the living room, clearly dismayed at what she considered an extremely banal collection of paintings. “How can you stand to be surrounded by so many little men in red coats?” she asked. Peggy and I were taken aback by her bluntness and more than a little annoyed but, upon reflection, had to admit the art on our walls wasn’t of great caliber. We decided then and there to place more emphasis on quality in our purchases even if we could not afford anything approaching a masterwork. In this endeavor we frequently sought Alfred’s advice.
Over a decade or more, Alfred brought to our attention works of high quality. Peggy and I were drawn to the French Impressionists and Postimpressionists, and the first significant painting we bought under Alfred’s tutelage was a beautiful Pierre Bonnard flower painting. This was followed by a Matisse still life and, in 1951, Renoir’s stunning nude Gabrielle at the Mirror, for $50,000. It was our first important Impressionist painting and by far the most expensive. We hung it proudly in our living room in the City, although some of Peggy’s conservative relatives were scandalized at the sight of a nude woman so prominently displayed!
Alfred introduced us to several dealers from whom we bought Impressionists, including Sam Salz, Justin Thannhauser, and Dalzell Hatfield of Los Angeles. We also became active clients at the Wildenstein and Knoedler galleries.
In 1955, Alfred learned that the French dealer Paul Rosenburg had acquired a substantial part of Mrs. A. Chester Beatty’s collection of Impressionist paintings, reputed to be one of the finest in England. Among its treasures was Paul Cézanne’s Boy with a Red Vest. Alfred considered it one of Cézanne’s masterpieces and was anxious to acquire it for MoMA. Since the museum did not have the funds to purchase it, Alfred made us a proposal: If we would buy it and agree to leave it to the museum, he would ask Rosenburg to give us the first opportunity to see the entire collection. We accepted his proposal and ended up buying not only the Cézanne but also Georges-Pierre Seurat’s The Roadstead at Grandcamp and Edouard Manet’s magnificent still life La Brioche. We were so impressed by the quality of the paintings in the Beatty collection that had we been able to afford it, we would gladly have purchased them all. Nonetheless, the three we did buy are without doubt among the finest paintings in our collection.*
EMERGING AS SERIOUS COLLECTORS
The following year we acquired two of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. Monet’s later works were considered inferior at the time, but Alfred Barr strongly encouraged us to buy them.
The large mural-sized landscapes Monet painted during his later years depicting sedges, reeds, and water lilies floating on the surface of the pond that he created near his home at Giverny on a tributary of the Seine were initially regarded by critics as inferior to his earlier, more representational studies of railway stations, haystacks, and other familiar scenes. In his mid-seventies and nearly blind when he began his final Giverny Water Lilies cycle, Monet painted with his brushes fastened to the end of long sticks. The massive canvases—some of them twenty or more feet in length—were almost abstract in design. When they were exhibited in 1925, the reaction was strongly negative. Only the intervention of Monet’s friend Premier Georges Clemenceau, the “Tiger of France,” prevented the artist from destroying them. For years these canvases were locked away in a barn at Giverny, all but forgotten.
In the early 1950s, Michel Monet sold thirty of his father’s Giverny paintings to Madame Katia Granoff, a Paris dealer. Alfred Barr saw them and recognized what most art historians had missed: Monet’s anticipation of abstraction in modern art. The connection between Monet’s later works and the overpowering canvases of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism—exemplified by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning—seemed startlingly suggestive to Alfred. In 1955, with funds provided by Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, Alfred purchased a large Water Lilies canvas and had it displayed prominently at MoMA. Critics soon recast Monet’s last Giverny paintings as an extraordinary advance in the history of art.
Peggy and I saw and admired the painting at MoMA, and before we left for Paris in June 1956, Alfred informed us that Katia Granoff still had several Water Lilies canvases and encouraged us to visit her gallery. As we entered, one painting—white lilies floating on the indigo surface of Monet’s luminous pond—immediately caught our attention. We bought it and one other on the spot. In 1961 we purchased a third canvas from the Wildenstein Gallery in New York. Although too large for most of our walls, we finally found an excellent place to hang all three in the stairwell at Hudson Pines.
Peggy and I were now fully launched into the exciting world of collecting, and for the next three decades we continued to expand the scope and deepen the quality of our collection.
In late 1959 we were guests of Stavros and Eugenie Niarchos for a week’s sail through the Aegean aboard their three-masted schooner, The Creole. Owner of one of the world’s great shipping fleets, Stavros along with a few other Greek magnates—Aristotle Onassis, future husband of Jacqueline Kennedy, was another—dominated the global maritime industry. Widely considered one of the world’s wealthiest men, Stavros had homes scattered across the globe, a stable of thoroughbreds in England, and a superb collection of modern art. I had met Stavros six years earlier when he came to Chase’s headquarters for a business meeting. I found him to be an extremely shrewd and talented businessman who had already begun to expand his corporate empire. Peggy thought him witty and entertaining, although she was put off by his racy lifestyle. Even though Stavros and I had little in common, we developed a good personal relationship and became business partners in many real estate deals in the United States, including the purchase of Rockefeller Center.
Our friends Jack and Drue Heinz of Pittsburgh were also on that 1959 voyage, as were Hans (Heini) Heinrich and Fiona Thyssen-Bornemisza, whom we met for the first time. Heini was the grandson of the famous August Thyssen, the “Rockefeller of the Ruhr,” founder of Germany’s Vereinigte Stahlwerke, for many years the world’s largest mining and steel cartel. Our cruise brought out the fact that we were all interested in art.
The following May, Peggy and I dined with Stavros and Eugenie Niarchos at their home on the Rive Gauche, built originally by Napoleon for his mistress Madame Tallien. We then all flew to Lugano to spend the weekend with the Thyssens. Heini’s father, Heinrich, had devoted himself to art rather than the family business and had assembled one of the world’s greatest collections of Renaissance art. We had heard much about it but had never seen it. When we arrived at Heini’s home, the Villa Favorita, we were awestruck. Heini had greatly expanded his father’s collection by adding both old masters and fine examples of twentieth-century artists. It was the most comprehensive and beautiful private collection we have ever seen.*
While in Lugano, Heini told us there was to be an auction of twentieth-century art in Stuttgart. Stavros convinced the group to fly there on his plane to take a look at the objects being offered. Peggy and I went along largely to have a good time with our more daring friends. When we arrived, we saw a number of items that appealed to us and were emboldened to place bids on several of them. After returning to New York we learned to our pleasant surprise we had acquired a Paul Klee painting; watercolors by George Grosz, Lyonel Fenninger, Emil Nolde, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Wasily Ka
ndinsky; and a sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz, none of whom were represented in our collection.
BECOMING ENGAGED AT MOMA
In 1958, after a decade of relatively inactive board membership, I suddenly found myself thrust to the center of MoMA’s affairs when Nelson resigned from the chairmanship to run for governor of New York. My sister-in-law Blanchette was the logical choice to replace him because of the vital role she was already playing as a trustee, but my brother John, who felt much the same way about modern art as Father had, was opposed to her doing so. Therefore, I agreed, with some reluctance, to serve as chairman on an interim basis. Fortunately, Blanchette overcame John’s opposition and was duly elected to relieve me as chair of the board after about six months.
In 1962 I was elected to a full term as MoMA’s chairman. Despite my heavy responsibilities at Chase, I felt able to accept because the chairmanship is largely honorific, and the president is the senior trustee position. I also knew the museum’s operations were in René d’Harnoncourt’s capable hands. But René retired in 1968, and Eliza Parkinson, the president, indicated that she, too, wanted to relinquish her post. Quite unexpectedly, MoMA needed a new top management team, and as chairman I had to lead the effort to find their replacements.
I was convinced that MoMA needed a president with business experience as well as recognized competence in the arts. William Paley was the best candidate. A trustee since the 1930s, Bill had an outstanding collection of modern art and, as the founder and chairman of CBS, had been an innovator in the communications industry. Bill was an extremely busy man, however, and it was not clear he would accept. After considerable persuasion by Blanchette and me, he agreed to take on the job. This was a godsend for MoMA, if not for Bill, as the next four years proved to be the most turbulent in the museum’s history.
RUMBLINGS BENEATH THE SURFACE
In the late 1960s, after forty years of operations, MoMA had become the citadel, sanctuary, and principal testing ground for modern art in the United States. Attendance had grown dramatically from year to year, as had membership. Our broadly diversified collections of paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, film, and the other artifacts of modern art—including a helicopter dangling from the rafters of the fourth floor—had also grown exponentially. MoMA’s staff developed and dispatched exhibitions across the nation and around the world. And we had just completed the first expansion of the museum since the late 1930s with the completion of the East Wing and the incorporation of the old Whitney Museum into our new West Wing in 1964. This was all positive and heartening.
Below the surface, however, two critical business problems threatened the institution: money and management. The recurring operating deficit approached $1 million a year and was worsening. Our thirtieth anniversary endowment campaign had raised $25.6 million, but the annual deficits quickly eroded this reserve. In addition, the finance committee had invested in a portfolio of then fashionable high-technology “go-go” stocks that turned out to be a disaster, wiping out one-third of our all too meager endowment.
Our financial woes were exacerbated by a poor management structure, a result of a decentralized system in which each department enjoyed considerable autonomy in terms of exhibitions, acquisitions, and program. Furthermore, influential trustees often aligned themselves with the curators of departments in which they had a special interest and for which they became strong advocates and financial backers. Since no one wanted to antagonize important trustees, exhibitions and acquisitions were often approved without regard for overall policy guidelines or the museum’s fragile financial condition. There was no museum-wide budget process, and curators and exhibition planners rarely allowed cost to figure adequately into their calculations; they assumed the trustees would find ways to cover the bill.
This unbusinesslike process was symptomatic of a deeper problem: the lack of consensus about the composition of MoMA’s permanent collection and the direction our collecting should take in the future. Some trustees strongly advocated continuing to collect the work of emerging contemporary artists while carefully culling the collection of its less outstanding holdings to finance new acquisitions. Many others preferred that the collection be limited to the “golden age” of modernism: from the 1880s, when the Postimpressionists first emerged, to the 1950s with the advent of the New York School. I was in the camp favoring a “pioneering spirit” in our acquisitions, as originally defined by Mother and her collaborators, that would not restrict the collection to a specific period but instead would continue to identify, purchase, and exhibit works of the avant-garde. Bill Paley and I agreed this course required strengthening our fund-raising capacity and correcting our financial and administrative problems. This was MoMA’s principal challenge as we headed into the last quarter of the twentieth century.
MANAGEMENT TURBULENCE
Our first task was to find a suitable replacement for René d’Harnoncourt. For almost twenty years, René had been a tower of strength and a skillful diplomat who harmonized the talented but temperamental curators working under him. He also found a way to utilize Alfred Barr’s genius in developing the museum’s permanent collection, while relieving him of management responsibility, at which he was not proficient. René was also extremely adept at dealing with the trustees and integrating their varied abilities and interests for the benefit of the museum. In retrospect, however, René had created a management structure that depended far too much on his own personal abilities. Because he had not delegated sufficient authority, that structure began to fall apart soon after his retirement.
Bates Lowry, our choice as René’s successor, was a well-respected art historian. He seemed the ideal choice, but his honeymoon was short-lived. Shortly after he became director, Bates announced he would also become curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA’s most important curatorial position and a full-time job in itself. The other curators saw this as a power grab and believed their departments would get short shrift in the future. Bates also alienated the trustees by insisting we provide him with “suitable” housing so that he could entertain on behalf of the museum. But after we did what he asked, he refused to entertain because, he said, it was his home! He renovated his office suite at the museum without getting board approval for the expense. When Bill Paley saw the bill, he was furious and fired Bates on the spot, after only ten months on the job. Bill’s unilateral action upset a lot of people, but I thought it was necessary under the circumstances even though we were left without a director.
It was not until a year later that our search committee proposed John Hightower as director. As executive director of the New York State Council on the Arts, John had generated strong financial support for the arts throughout New York State and was considered a man who understood the importance of the bottom line. More important, John was not an art historian, so, unlike Bates Lowry, he posed no threat to the museum’s curatorial staff. John came to the museum full of enthusiasm, and initially we were optimistic about his appointment.
John soon ran into trouble. He believed museums had an obligation to help society resolve its problems. Since Vietnam was one of the principal societal problems of the day, John thought MoMA should participate in the national debate. Before long the museum’s lobby resembled an antiwar protest headquarters. He allowed the bookshop to sell a poster of the infamous My Lai massacre, with the caption “And babies too …” and “The Museum of Modern Art” emblazoned in bold letters along the bottom. When President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia provoked widespread unrest on the nation’s college campuses, Hightower dropped the museum’s admission fee, ran continuous showings of antiwar films, and permitted MoMA staff members to stand outside distributing antiwar pamphlets.
This was followed by the infamous “information” exhibition in the summer of 1970. John had a black flag flown outside the museum. Inside, museum-goers were asked to vote on the question: “Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon’s Indochina policy be a reason for y
ou not to vote for him in November?” They were also invited to “dial a revolutionary” and hear recorded messages from Black Panther Bobby Seale and Yippie Jerry Rubin that exhorted them to action. To accommodate the “sexual revolution” there were burlap-draped cubicles within which couples could romp about. It was all quite outrageous.
John was entitled to voice his opinions, but he had no right to turn the museum into a forum for antiwar activism and sexual liberation. In response to questions about the artistic validity of the show, John responded by saying, “There are a lot of things individually and collectively that affect my existence: the war, J. Edgar Hoover, the Establishment, the Rockefellers, the Defense Department.” He continued, “Artists are bound and determined to bite the hand that feeds them, especially when the integrity of art is revered in the evening and dismissed during the day.” I found his statement personally insulting, and so did other trustees.
When MoMA’s professional and curatorial staff went on strike in 1971, John immediately yielded to their demands to form a union. With the staff in disarray, contributions drying up, and the trustees in open revolt, Bill Paley, with my full support, fired Hightower in early 1972.
Memoirs Page 58