I marveled at my good fortune. How, by some genetic fluke, because I happened to have been born to a particular family at a particular time, I now held a position of power and influence. I could meet and talk with Jasper Johns, for me the best and most emotionally moving artist of our day. I could waltz around the world, meeting anyone I wished to, wining and dining, despite my own deficiencies. Today, I represented the Whitney Museum of American Art just as my grandmother had. And the immediate future of the Museum now depended on me. As I reflected on all this, a tremendous pride and sense of mission overtook me.
Before leaving for a family sailing vacation, concerned about the Museum’s finances, I wrote to Palmer Wald, urging him to prepare carefully for the September trustees meeting, which would focus on the budget. “It’s very important to present the budget vividly, dramatically — flamboyantly? Song and dance — belly dancers to portray the different lines on the budget — below the line, the bottom line — all kinds of things come to mind.”
Far from the Whitney, I looked back on the past year.
I had urged Tom to work more closely with trustees, to use them as advisors in their areas of expertise, and to make his staff more available to them, in the hope of bringing them closer to the Museum, so they’d better understand our plans and support them. Tom had been concerned that trustees might take advantage of the staff — by asking for their help in identifying and buying works of art for their own collections, for instance, or using curators’ powerful influence with dealers or artists. These trustees might unknowingly cause competition and divisions among curators by offering favors in exchange for their help. The commercial art world can be complex and devious — like any world — and Tom wanted to protect his curators.
I wrote Tom about some of the things on my mind:
Affection; I enjoy being with you, having some good laughs, working together. I recognize that you have made a big effort to adjust to the changes implicit in working with me rather than Howard — for instance, in such delicate areas as staff participation in trustees’ meetings or committee meetings, and of trustee help in borderline areas, or accessibility of staff other than yourself to trustees. I appreciate this a very great deal.
Respect: for many reasons. Your complete commitment and dedication; your talents with people, which I’ve now observed at close hand; your intelligence; such details as your careful consideration before reaching a decision and taking action. Your strong leadership. And more.
I am extremely impressed by the way the Whitney has looked in the past year.
Obviously, much remains to be done. As you know, I think, as does Howard, that the right “senior” curator would be an important asset, in helping us to maintain a position of leadership and boldness in terms of contemporary American art. Because it is necessary to be bold, to have the courage to exhibit what we think is important, now. And I must do much more in terms of developing our board, and other funding sources. But I really believe we can accomplish a great deal, if we take care to communicate with each other about all matters of importance to the Museum. For me, the adjustment to a new leader was also difficult at times, and the struggle to see clearly what was in the best interests of the Museum was often unsuccessful. But now it seems easier, and one reason is obvious: we are really working together, and this is increasingly satisfying to me. I hope it is to you.
I see today that I was groping toward a performance review process, now a more formal part of the institution, and necessary for both board and director. It’s necessary to assess both positive and negative aspects of the job a director is doing, to give that director a chance to respond and to comment in turn on the board’s performance. We didn’t do that. I wish we had.
In my first report for the Whitney Review, our annual publication, I expressed optimism about the future, gratitude to all who had helped make my first year successful, and pride that, through a combination of various grants and policy decisions, the Museum’s activities were now free to 40 percent of our audience, including senior citizens, students, artists, and all who visited on free Tuesday evenings, thus approaching the original ideal of free attendance. I wrote of new committees, new membership categories, and the need for new funds; of the Jasper Johns and Saul Steinberg exhibitions, now traveling around the world. This was my most heartfelt sentence: “It must always be stressed, however, that all our activities are based on the integrity and accomplishments of artists.”
Nineteen
In September 1978 Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s biography was published.
Bob had designed a beautiful pendant for me — a gold image of the Whitney, with a ruby as the window on Madison Avenue, his thanks for my collaboration. I treasured it and wore it often until, a few years later, it was stolen or lost. I miss it still.
The Times was on strike and so we couldn’t expect the book to be reviewed there. Other publications, though, either did review it or wrote articles about Bob and me. Depending on what we read, we went from euphoria to depression. Here are a few excerpts, first, from a prepublication squib in Publisher’s Weekly:
Friedman, with the able research collaboration of Whitney’s granddaughter, Flora Miller Irving, has recreated a woman’s life and an era in this long, rich, full biography. Whitney left journals that record the tensions through which she lived, detail the burdens and privileges of wealth, the conflict between public and private worlds, between the ideal and the real. The authors have brought this remarkable woman to life again as they follow her through the years of girlhood, marriage and after, reveal bit by bit (often in her own words) what she made of herself and her circumstances, her searchings through love and sculpture, and describe her finest achievement as patron of contemporary American art.
This first review arrived together with a note from my cousin Nancy Tuckerman at Doubleday, who had been immensely helpful and encouraging during the publication process.
“I really became very emotional myself when I read the review as I saw in front of my eyes that all the caring and devotion you put into the book … has come to light and now your grandmother will be read about as she really was. …”
Frances Taliaferro’s article in Harper’s typified the numerous criticisms of the mass of detail in the book, although she also wrote that Gertrude’s journals and correspondence provided remarkable documentation, and found her story “fascinating.”
September 20, 1978.
Although private celebratory events generally weren’t permitted, Tom decided, considering the book’s subject and its authors, to have the book party at the Museum.
Fiona helped me find the perfect dress. It was simply designed, like a robe. Silk, striated in black and purple. Elegant. At 5:30, the Friedmans picked me up in a cab.
The fourth floor of the Museum was a visual paean to my grandmother. We had reproduced on the cover of our book Robert Henri’s vivid portrait of her, stretched out on a sofa in peacock blue, green, and chartreuse silk pyjamas. Now, as we emerged from the blue-carpeted elevator, we saw the painting itself. About twenty of Gertrude’s World War I sketches were mounted on either side of it. Two blown-up photographs, the rather severe 1930 portrait taken by Steichen when the Whitney opened and the one of Gertrude working on her last big commission, To the Morrow, for the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing, bracketed her sculptures. In front, flowers cascaded from her 1913 fountain with caryatids. On two nearby walls a continuous slide show of photographs played, some from the book, others by Tom of her studio in Long Island, and others still of works from the Whitney’s collection acquired in her time. There was a piano player. There were small tables and chairs and drinks and hors d’oeuvres. The whole fourth floor looked like a wonderful café.
Abby, Bob Friedman’s wife, and I took off our high-heeled party shoes and walked comfortably barefoot around the transformed space gawking at all of it, until suddenly, as we hastily put on our shoes, people began to flow in, more and more until the biggest floor in the Museum was filled. People hugged, ate, drank, ta
lked, looked. Bob and I tried to speak with everyone, those from the art world, book world, friends, family. People waited in line to speak with Mum, sparkling in black sequins, as she sat at a table like a queen. My grandson Anthony, who’d come from California with my daughter Michelle, ran all around the floor in his blue velvet “rock” jacket with diamond buttons and a fresh carnation, helping the caterers and delighting everyone. When questioned about his beautiful jacket, he said proudly, “My mom made it, have you heard of her?” Among the guests were the Christos, Diana Vreeland, John Fairchild, Cleve and Francine du Plessis Gray, Brendan Gill, and even Hilton Kramer, who stayed for two hours.
Why had we given five years of our lives to do this task, this gargantuan sorting-out of reams of paper? What, now, did it mean?
Well, the book definitely said something. It held 668 pages of information, documentation, photographs, and analysis, and a lot of good writing. Bob had the satisfaction of having written a fine biography, the only serious one about Gertrude and the Whitney, to date.
For me, those five years had been transforming. I had discovered a different kind of fulfillment in a new kind of accomplishment. I was good at research! And I enjoyed doing it.
Also in those years, I did well in college. All this was surprising and fulfilling. I came to realize that exploring Gertrude’s life had unearthed not only her roots, her character, her faults, her virtues, but also my own. I ruminated on the process in a letter to Clare Forster:
I was moved by Gertrude’s intense struggle to be herself, to free herself from the constricting traditions she grew up with, to become an artist, and a friend to different kinds of people … we all have to do this, but I felt she had further to go than most with less support from others and less of a clear idea of where to go or how to get there. In some ways, the money, name, etc. made it easier — but in most I think it was a handicap. … I have learned so much about myself from all this. … So many of the characteristics of my mother, my aunt and uncle, my own cousins and siblings, myself, have become clearer. Our hangups, our unwillingness to confront problems, our anxiety for approval or to be loved, our attempts to be creative, our tendencies to alcoholism or other addictions, our extremes of emotions, moods, and much more, can be explained to some extent in the context of Gertrude and Harry. But it’s dangerous to generalize too much. …
Gertrude became so alive to both of us, as we discovered her, that I really think of her as a very good friend now — someone whose work I am trying to carry on, in some way or other, yet, although I’m devoted to her, I’m also independent of her. Oddly, the book freed me of my last remaining fetters to the past — not its positive aspects, just the stultifying, fearsome, binding ones. I feel free. It’s great, but sometimes scary, too — it has led me to new friends, new work, and a whole other way of life. I don’t know what will come of it all. …
We’d been intent upon discovering every detail of her life and her emotions.
Both Bob and I had identified closely with Gertrude. When she received a commission, when she successfully completed a sculpture, we rejoiced. When she wrote desperate, unmailed letters to her husband, Harry, we longed so fervently for her to mail them, or to talk to him directly, that our stomachs knotted. When she was sick, we sometimes fell ill, too. I remember suffering a violent toothache for which my dentist could find no physical cause, at the time in the writing that Gertrude, toward the end of her life, became very ill with, among other things, a bad tooth infection.
Although my work with the book was over, the knowledge and understanding I’d gained during these years made my efforts to maintain Gertrude’s most enduring accomplishment seem all the more important. At last, I felt able to make a real contribution to this end. Through the book, through college, through new friends and associates, and through day-to-day work at the Whitney, my confidence grew. Eager to test it, I plunged even more deeply into my “Museum” life. Leaving — and perhaps hurting — some old friends in my rush toward the new, I was as stubborn as any of my ancestors, determined that nothing would deflect me from my course.
Twenty
We’re all products of our own time and place. Tom was, too — but more so.
Tom’s extraordinary foresight told him what the Whitney might become, although he couldn’t always communicate it clearly. So, all at the same time, he searched and dreamed and directed, while others sometimes found his behavior oblique, his purposes mysterious.
Tom was a visionary, often way ahead of the rest of us. He deserved a board that matched his own faith in the Museum, in himself. Perhaps this was too much to expect from a large group made up in part of cautious businessmen who expected more hard facts and details than they received from Tom. And more accountability.
I’ve described Tom. Did I say he wore bow ties? Plain, polka-dotted, or striped; occasionally gaudy, splashy; for very special occasions, huge floppy caricatures of themselves, sometimes concealing flashing lights. His signature black-framed glasses intensified his gaze, accentuating the intense concentration he brought to bear — if he was interested — on whomever he was facing, whether a person, a work of art, an idea, or a project. With his lack of pretension and his humor he could lull the unwary into thinking he lacked intelligence, but that would be foolish, indeed.
The Museum seemed to touch Tom’s whole life.
Paintings and sculptures borrowed from the Whitney filled Tom and Bunty’s beautiful apartment, used again and again for Museum affairs. The Armstrongs gave spiffy seated dinners or amusing parties with lively music for the young Lobby Gallery Associates, and always a big Christmas party, with shepherd’s pie, mostly for artists. That party became a beloved and much talked-of tradition in the art world. Tom’s tall tree was beautifully decorated, and glazed cookies made by an artist in special shapes (a work of art, a building, a book) were piled near the door as parting favors. Sometimes, the Armstrongs would also invite a few trustees, leaving out, and thus offending, other big supporters.
He often made turkey soup, and walked it in a big pot the few blocks from his home to the Museum, to share with his staff. Someone named it “Tom’s Terrific Tasty Turkey Soup,” and it was.
Tom loves gardens. He thought the terrace outside his office looked perfect for growing something, but what? One year, big tubs of flowers; the next, a competition with Jennifer Russell, to see who could grow the best tomatoes. Those half barrels produced so many fat, ripe tomatoes that Tom took to selling them on the street on Thursdays for the benefit of the Annual Fund. I still smile to think of Tom’s big balding head turning pink in the August sun, at his tomato stand. And the art world came from far and near — from Soho, from New Jersey, from Brooklyn, from Harlem — to gather around that little stand right on Madison and Seventy-fifth Street.
Most trustees loved it. Some, though, found it demeaning. Their director, the Whitney Museum’s director, out on the street selling tomatoes??
Tom loves to drink vodka, straight, on ice. Sometimes this led him into deep waters. Once he had a long and bibulous lunch with a trustee just before a major executive committee meeting. The two of them enjoyed the meeting a lot more than some other members, who took offense at Tom’s giddiness, especially when, criticized for overspending, he responded from the depth of his heart, “We wouldn’t have such a big deficit if trustees gave more money. That’s what you’re here for!”
Trustees, especially those he’d had in mind, didn’t hesitate to complain to me. But I knew that Tom had been trying, at that lunch, to establish a friendship with this trustee, which would allow him to ask for a major gift to the building we were then planning, that Tom had decided this was the way to do it. When the gift indeed materialized, years later, I wished I could have pointed out the value of that lunch to the doubters — but it was too late.
Tom’s private life was private. Never did he bring it to the office. I didn’t bring mine, either. And we respected each other’s privacy. Our relationship was close, in the most professional sense
. Occasionally, we’d have lunch alone together and talk a little about our families — about his four children and my four, about his beloved mother, about our childhood summers when we’d each worked on a farm, about Tom’s striving at Cornell, long ago, to become an artist — and I would realize again how little most of us really knew about him. The understanding and love of art and artists fueling his energy often remained hidden, while one or another trustee would question his big plans, and criticize his ambition, and pick away at his style.
Tom never got sick — that always impressed me. He seemed absolutely impervious to ordinary ailments, to flu, colds, backaches, and any other miseries. He had too much to do to let illness interfere. Once, arriving to meet him, I found him feverish, flushed, and sweating. Jennifer and I finally persuaded him to go home only after he’d finished the most important business of the day. We later heard he’d had a temperature of 104.
In his social dealings, many trustees thought him a snob. For the Museum, he certainly tried to find and befriend everyone he could. Expecting exclusive generosity from those who’d committed themselves to the Whitney, he resented any whiff of disloyalty. He and Bunty had a wide range of friends, from Andy Warhol, to CEOs of banks and businesses, to an intellectual, artistic, and social elite. The Armstrongs made a herculean effort to keep themselves available. They were out every night; people enjoyed them as hosts or guests. Especially if they were on Tom’s wavelength. Some of our trustees were not. I remember seeing Patsy, a Museum guard, dancing with Tom at a staff Christmas party; I also remember the tears in her eyes when Tom left for good. His “snobbery,” if it existed at all, wasn’t about class or ethnicity or wealth, it was about human quality.
Roughly, Tom’s work, and also our work together, covered three primary areas: art, artists, and the permanent collection; physical expansion; attracting patrons to support the first two.
The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made Page 30
