The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made

by Flora Miller Biddle

  Sydney and Frances were major collectors of contemporary art, architecture, furniture, and art nouveau. They had started their own business and watched it grow as they commissioned avant-garde architects to build their many warehouses — the one in Richmond, by SITE Inc., looked as if it were falling down, or else just being built. People attracted by its looks stopped, then stayed on to buy. Friendly with most of the artists they collected, the Lewises lived in the heart of Richmond in a landmark Federal-style house built in the ’50s, surrounded by very contemporary works of art and extraordinary art nouveau furniture. Their hearts were as big as their intellects. They’d send a plane for their New York friends to come for a magnificent lunch in Richmond, with cakes and pastries baked in the shapes of art pieces. Once, they invited us to their Virginia Beach house, right on the water, with a group of architects and artists for a weekend of swimming, lively conversation, and many laughs. However, despite their generosity, they were unable to find like-minded spirits in their conservative community to share their interests. Richmond society and the Richmond museum snubbed them. Only after becoming figures in the New York art world, and Whitney patrons, did such generous souls as the Lewises become acceptable to their own museums.

  Tom and the Lewises were close friends, and they soon became our friends, too. One of the first major gifts Tom obtained for the Whitney came from Sydney and Frances: $250,000 to buy contemporary art, the largest single purchase fund in the Museum’s history. Frances joined our board in 1976; she was a thoughtful trustee with provocative, stimulating ideas and firm budgetary principles.

  Thirteen

  By the end of 1973, David Solinger had been president for seven years. There was nothing in the Museum’s bylaws about the length of a term for presidents, so Mike and I visited David in his office to talk about that. I’d recently stopped coloring my hair, and it looked like a Rothko gone wrong — gray, red, and brown stripes — so I wore a black wig. “You have a new hairdo, I like it,” said David. I let the compliment pass and told him what a great job he’d done. That originally we’d asked him to take the presidency for three or four years (no, he didn’t think so, he interrupted) but since he’d done so well, no one had wanted him to go. He smiled.

  And then I became so outspoken I surprised myself. Change was necessary. We had always intended that the presidency rotate. Seven years was a long time. We must discuss a successor.

  But David had no memory of our original proposal. He saw no reason for a change. (Especially, I imagine, one initiated by me.) The Museum was in fine shape. The budget was balanced. I thought about, but didn’t mention, the lack of money, which meant we could neither make acquisitions, nor start the education programs Jack had planned. When I suggested Howard Lipman as president, David bristled. “David,” I answered firmly, “except for my grandmother, Howard is the greatest patron we’ve ever had. Howard deserves the honor. He’d be a fine president.”

  In the end, David agreed.

  But Howard didn’t want to be president!

  Today, twenty-five years later, I understand. Howard loved the niche he had carved for himself at the Whitney. Spending lots of time with art and artists, with Jack and the curators. Molding the sculpture collection, thinking about it as a whole. Buying the perfect Calder or David Smith. Searching through Louise Nevelson’s black palace for the most beautiful wall. Trusting Lucas Samaras to call him when he’d made a breakthrough. Still at Neuberger and Berman, he knew that becoming president of the Whitney would mean retiring as an active partner of his firm and would involve lots of fund-raising. Also, lots of time.

  Barklie and I visited Howard in his office. Eloquently, persuasively, Barklie argued with Howard. He had our grandmother’s spirit. He understood the Whitney. He had identified Tom, he could work with him better than anyone. Only Howard could steadfastly remind us of the Whitney’s purpose, only he could lead us through the years of change ahead and inspire us to make the right decisions. Balancing the old with the new, keeping the best of the past.

  Finally, we both pleaded, the Whitney needed him.

  Finally, Howard agreed. He would take on the presidency, but only for a limited time.

  Barklie and I left happy, feeling we were on the right track. Despite the need for money, we would be an institution open to new ideas, new art, and new people.

  In May 1974 Howard became president of the Whitney.

  Things started happening right away. New people, for instance. From 1965 to 1969, no new trustees had been appointed; in the next two years only two were, and one was Howard, himself. By comparison, in 1975, the first year Tom was director, seven trustees joined the board. (Could we absorb them? Adjust to such sudden growth?) It was David, however, who, as a trustee of the Johnson Museum at Cornell, had known Steve Muller when he was a trustee of Cornell, and who had persuaded him to join the Whitney’s board. Steve, a brilliant young man who had escaped from Nazi Germany and settled with his parents in Los Angeles, was then president of Johns Hopkins University, including the medical school. (He’d also been a successful child actor in Hollywood, and was embarrassed when I told him we’d seen one of his movies on TV. But he’d made enough money that way to finance his education.)

  I quickly came to admire him, to like him a lot. Howard now picked him to head the new long range planning committee.

  Howard and Tom thought that the Museum needed a hard look from creative, intelligent outsiders. The committee would meet over convivial dinners, discuss the Whitney’s place in today’s world, and recommend a plan for the future. Tom was the only board member, and the final report was really his. Howard, as president, attended all meetings ex officio.

  The others were:

  Wilder Green, an art historian, then head of the American Federation of Arts.

  Philip C. Johnson, outstanding architect. With incisive wit and the eye of a true connoisseur, he has an insider’s knowledge of art, artists, and the art world.

  W. Barnabas McHenry, head of the Reader’s Digest Foundation.

  Barbara Novak, artist, writer, professor of art history at Barnard College.

  Jules D. Prown, Professor, founder of the Department of American Studies at Yale, art historian with a special interest in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century American art. A trustee of the Whitney from 1975 to 1994.

  Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., museum curator and director.

  Martha R. Wallace, businesswoman, head of the Luce Fundation.

  Their report was given the following year, considered by a board committee, debated at length, and finally adopted as board policy in 1978. This report was key to most of what subsequently happened.

  One of Tom’s mentors, the art historian E. P. Richardson, wrote widely on American art and on the need for more study and understanding of our culture. His thinking influenced Tom. Here’s an example from the Archives of American Art Journal, in 1977:

  “The Americans are today the least known of all the world’s great peoples. Their imaginative and cultural life is unknown to the world at large, because it is only partially known to themselves. This lack of attention by our so-called educated classes is a form of betrayal of their function, which is not merely to interpret the rest of the world to this continent, but to understand, to clarify, and to render articulate the vast, potent, deep-rooted, mysterious, and creative life of the people to which they belong.”

  Tom agreed.

  His vision for the Museum was far reaching. The Whitney, a great public institution, well-funded for its ambitious program, would become the conduit for this awakening. To quote the long range planning committee report, the Whitney would now “give added priority to interpreting the art it has collected and preserved.” In moving “systematically and purposefully toward the collection and exhibition of twentieth-century American art,” some of the permanent collection would always be on view. A curator for the collection would be necessary.

  “The primary criterion for selection in all exhibitions should be quality.” Not
only was this a reference to the old practice of occasionally showing artists for reasons having little to do with art, such as need or tradition, it signaled a change in the present philosophy for exhibitions and purchases. The Whitney, especially in the Biennials, was known for showing “emerging” artists. Curators were champions of the new and untested. This sentence, then, was a red flag, to them, and to me, as well. Why should the Whitney change its nature so drastically? Become a conservative institution like the Metropolitan Museum?

  The education department, the report continued, would be expanded and better integrated with the curatorial staff, instead of operating far downtown in an independent fashion.

  For trustees, the most ambitious aspect of the report was the physical and budgetary expansion it mandated. Space was “inadequate … the building … too small to function as the major center for the permanent exhibition of American art of the twentieth century, as a showcase for temporary exhibitions, and as an educational center … these policies will require significant expansion of the annual budget of the Museum, as well as the possibility of new capital funds for construction. Above all, the Museum needs a professional staff of the highest quality. …”

  More building, already? Yes, we clearly needed more space. But could we raise the money?

  Yet the idea that the Whitney might well become a great international museum of American art was heady, and, despite the difficulties, I was all for it.

  Tom and Howard established a modus operandi, a model for the undefined, complex relationship between a salaried chief executive of a not-for-profit institution and the part-time volunteer who’s the boss. The institution’s health depends on this delicate balance. Happily for the Museum, in this instance Tom and Howard trusted each other. They discussed things. And, although Howard didn’t interfere with Tom’s handling of staff and Museum affairs, they made decisions together. Moreover, they shared an unshakable love for art and for the Whitney. As a result, their standards, both of dedication and hard work, were kept high.

  I was pleased to be included in some of their talks and meetings. As expansion became likely, we explored its possible financing and thought about acquiring the brownstones adjacent to the Whitney as a necessary first step. We strengthened our board with members who could help.

  We included major collectors:

  Lawrence Bloedel, of the big Western and Canadian lumber company, an old-time Friend now living in Williamstown, Massachusetts, who willed the Whitney half his collection. Kind and gentlemanly, Larry loved his art and his garden.

  Frances Lewis, already mentioned, of Richmond, Virginia, whose love of art was balanced by her remarkable financial sense, both qualities important to the Museum.

  Edwin Bergman, of Chicago, a committed trustee until his death. Most of his magnificent Surrealist-oriented collection is now at the Chicago Art Institute, which, as with the Lewises and the Richmond Museum, had largely ignored the Bergmans until the Whitney recruited him.

  Sondra Gilman (now Gonzalez-Falla), early and prescient collector of high-quality photographs as well as paintings. A loyal trustee to this very day, she became chairman of the painting and sculpture acquisitions committee during its ’80s heyday.

  Important businessmen who were also collectors joined us, too:

  Charles Simon, bond trader extraordinaire of Salomon Bros., who became treasurer of the Museum. Open-hearted, overweight, moody, and lovable, Charles was one of our most idiosyncratic, opinionated, and generous trustees.

  Daniel Childs, private investor, married to Margaret, one of my Burden cousins. While he did not stay long on the board, he was helpful on our budget and finance committees.

  Joel Ehrenkranz, successful lawyer, partner in Ehrenkranz, Ehrenkranz and Schultz, a firm specializing in taxes. When I became president, he became my vice president, and chairman of the budget and operations committee — a key position.

  William A. Marsteller, head of the big advertising agency Marsteller and Burson. He led our first development committee, which expanded our membership category — the original Friends — both upward and downward, giving us sources of income and a pool of people we could draw on, both of which we needed.

  Norborne (Bunny) Berkeley Jr., chairman of the Chemical Bank and a personal friend of Mike’s and mine.

  Robert Greenhill, an officer at Morgan Stanley.

  Geanie Faulkner, opera singer, community leader, director of the Harlem Cultural Council, and our first African-American trustee — although her interest was mainly in music and she didn’t become as involved as we’d hoped she would.

  Leonard Lauder, head of his family’s cosmetic empire, who would become an extremely important Whitney leader. One of his first proposals, which Tom eagerly accepted, asked for a new drawing committee. The Museum, they both felt, should specialize in areas other museums had more or less ignored. Drawings are especially appropriate for a Museum with an outstanding sculpture collection, and many of the Whitney’s best drawings have been done by sculptors. This new committee would embody Tom’s ideal: trustee committees would enable the Museum to increase the quality and number of purchases in all areas. Tom hired an adjunct curator with a quality-oriented, fine personal taste, Paul Cummings, and invited a group of connoisseurs to come together to talk about the drawings Paul would find, and to acquire significant examples for the Whitney. Jules Prown became chairman of this lively group. His skill at eliciting members’ often divergent opinions, encouraging debates, and ultimately reaching a consensus was extraordinary. It’s a skill I tried to learn and emulate, but I never did as well as he. Paul presented us with a wide choice of drawings, testing our connoisseurship to the utmost. He summarized the committee’s work in his publication DRAWING, March-April 1985:

  A specialized collection demands careful thought. Stylistic changes in drawing, the uneven nature of taste, the critical values that attempt to influence a brief given moment of history, and the paucity of quality literature on American art all combine to enhance the charming nature of the risks that animate this venture. Quality, that ever shifting conjectural aspect, which guides tough decisions, lurks in admonition after the fact. While regionalism, American surrealism, the numerous manifestations of abstraction, and figurative art in all its guises continue to play off one another, the collection has by now taken a form of its own against which each new acquisition must be judged. It is in the spirit of that challenging and stimulating ambiance that we continue, with our patrons’ aid and succor, to build the drawing collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

  Tom’s strong points were becoming more and more apparent. With Howard, he was starting to raise significant amounts of money for acquisitions of art or for annual giving. He enlivened the Museum with gala events — openings, talks, meetings — and he was a whiz at parties! Using their own apartment for the Whitney’s benefit, Tom and Bunty were out every night they weren’t giving a dinner themselves, meeting everyone of consequence in the city, talking to them about the Whitney, enlisting them if they could help. Completely involved with the Whitney and his job, Tom redressed the smallest deviations from perfection, in the building itself, in installations, catalogues, flowers, even in dinner seatings and place settings. And he arranged great trips to meet potential patrons in other cities.

  On one of these, in 1975, I went to Florida with Tom. The trip, filled with visits to collectors, ultimately led to a gift from Bob Friedman’s aunt, Mrs. Percy Uris, of major works from her collection.

  Tom signaled his abiding interest in the Whitney’s history with a wonderful exhibition curated by Lloyd Goodrich and Tom’s talented young assistant, Jennifer Russell: “The Whitney Studio Club and American Art 1900–1932.” Our family and many of the Whitney’s old friends were grateful for this renewed recognition of Gertrude and her accomplishments. The catalogue announced the show as “designed to chart the main currents of American art in the first three decades of our century, as represented by works mostly from the collection of the Whitney
Museum of American Art; and to show, through photographic and documentary material, the part played in these developments by the Museum and its predecessors, the Whitney Studio, the Whitney Studio Club, and the Whitney Studio Galleries.”

  Tom believed that this show bore witness to Gertrude’s seminal role in bringing about the recognition of American art by its own citizens and also by the larger world. By the mid-’70s this awareness had produced many more artists, galleries, and collectors. For the first time in America, artists could actually make a living by their art. Only a few, to be sure. But to be an artist had become newly respectable. And the Whitney Museum of American Art, through Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, was in large part responsible.

  Despite the many positive aspects of the new regime, difficulties were brewing.

  In Tom’s first Whitney Review, the 1975 issue, he reported a deficit of $310,000, calling it a “serious concern.”

  In the first big exhibition under Tom’s aegis, Mark di Suvero’s enormous metal and wood sculptures were installed in all five boroughs from November 1975 to February 1976, enabling a citywide public to see the work of this wonderful sculptor. The artist had preferred to postpone the exhibition, originally planned for 1972, because of his feelings of protest about the war in Vietnam.

  Di Suvero, whose parents were of French and Italian descent, was born and spent his childhood in China at an especially turbulent period of its history. The family escaped from China in 1941 and came to the United States, where Mark found his vocation for sculpture at the University of California at Santa Barbara — although he also continued to study philosophy after transferring to Berkeley. In 1960, doing odd jobs to make a living, he was moving lumber on top of an elevator when the elevator failed to stop in its ascent and Di Suvero was badly crushed. His survival was a miracle of spirit and physical constitution. Doctors said he’d never walk again. In a wheelchair for two years, he sculpted extraordinary small metal pieces in his lap, an asbesto apron covering the lower half of his body, using heavy pieces of steel and the traditional welder’s oxygen and acetylene tanks and cutting and welding torches. By 1965 he walked without crutches, and was once again making large abstract pieces, often weighing tons, with both fixed and moving parts. Di Suvero encourages people to climb in and through these sculptures, to swing in them and slide down them, and when a barrel-shaped element of Lady Day, installed in Battery Park, was inhabited for a time by a homeless man, Mark was pleased. He wants his work to be available to the widest possible public, and so it was especially appropriate for eleven pieces to be installed in parks all over New York. Although so very large, their forms are familiar and inviting. Irving Sandler has written of them: