The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made

by Flora Miller Biddle

  Who was qualified, able, and willing?

  We needed a political and financial powerhouse.

  We needed time.

  I was ready to step down, but since there was no one to take my place, I agreed to stay on.

  At the April trustees meeting, I asked Joel to take the chair, and I left the room. The sentence limiting terms for presidents was deleted by unanimous vote.

  When I criticize compromises the Museum makes today, I should remember those we made in the ’80s. Our bedfellows included some whose principles I questioned to myself, but kept quiet about in public, persuading myself and others that the end justified the means. But does it ever? Were we justified, for instance, in our relationship with a corporation dedicated to smoking? Philip Morris was public-spirited, the leader among companies supporting the arts. With Philip Morris as exhibition sponsor and host to our branch museum, and its CEO, George Weissman, an influential Whitney trustee, did we help it to sell cigarettes by allowing it to identify with us so fully? At the time, I thought it unfair to condemn one source of funds more than another, since negative qualities existed in most corporations and in most people, too.

  Now, I wonder. Along with millions of others, both my mother and my father had smoking-related problems that contributed to their deaths. Although the worst effects of smoking weren’t known when my parents had started to smoke, these facts have been public knowledge at least since the early ’60s.

  In April 1983, our branch museum was ready in Rick Franzen’s new Philip Morris building at Forty-second Street and Park: a 5,200-square-foot sculpture court in the lobby, and an adjacent exhibition gallery of about 1,100 square feet, both operated by Museum staff. Mayor Koch came to the festive opening party; coverage was extensive and positive. Paul Goldberger wrote in the Times:

  … the Whitney Museum branch … seems likely to become one of Mid-town’s most appealing spots, … at once a refuge and a center of energy, a place where the city seems to swirl around you, yet is held enticingly at bay. The architect, Ulrich Franzen, is one of New York’s most respected practitioners, and he has created a space, that is lively in itself yet respectful of the demands of different kinds of art.

  The space was filled with invited guests, including many reporters — I especially remember one, very persistent, who kept asking me how I felt about smoking. She pursued me, and, to my horror, the photograph of George and me in the Times the next day was accompanied by the following article:

  Flora Miller Biddle … who wore a black velvet suit and carved jade earrings, said she thought her grandmother would be “absolutely thrilled” with the branch museum. …

  Philip Morris, long a supporter of the arts, is a corporation that produces cigarettes, beer and soft drinks. Asked whether she was troubled about cigarettes and beer being the source of some of the money for the museum, Mrs. Biddle said: That doesn’t bother me at all. In art and in life, there are positive and negative aspects to almost everything. One has to accept the duality of life.

  Besides, she added with a smile, this doesn’t mean I’m going to encourage people to smoke.

  George Weissman was understandably upset, as he made clear on the phone and at the trustees meeting the following week. But, despite my loyalty to the Museum and, by extension, to Philip Morris, my true feelings had emerged.

  Should I have articulated them? Should I have tried to establish moral standards in our money-raising?

  It would have been moralistic rather than moral to even try to do that. Who could cast the first stone?

  The Museum — all museums, all institutions — were caught up in the same dilemma. How could we survive without money? How could we serve the public unless we accepted money from whomever was inclined to give it? How could we criticize the source of the generosity and be extremely grateful at the same time?

  Our branches were free to the public, entirely funded by their host corporations, and extremely well attended by new audiences. We were proud of our initiative, and felt it was a splendid expansion of our mission: to show American art to the broadest possible audience.

  We were planning a branch in the Equitable Life Assurance Corporation’s new building on the West Side, to reach yet another, different audience, and to advise this corporation on many purchases of art for their lobby and offices. One three-thousand-foot gallery would show our permanent collection, another would have temporary exhibitions, and both were right off the lobby and right on the street. Joel Ehrenkranz negotiated stringent requirements: Equitable would pay all expenses, give 5 percent of the budget for any art purchased or commissioned through the Museum, and fund a major Museum exhibition every three years. We were grateful to Joel for ensuring that the Museum wouldn’t be at risk in this venture, especially since we were again facing terrible budgetary problems.

  At the trustees meeting in February 1983, Joel reported that the deficit approved for fiscal year 1982–83 was $266,000. Now, he said, it would be significantly higher, approximately $1.3 million, and he was still unsure that the situation was under control. There was no question of fraud or misappropriation of funds, but he was not receiving correct and timely information. One exhibition was not funded. Admissions income was down. Tom was told to make programmatic cuts.

  Very disturbing news, especially with a campaign ahead. The confidence of the board was essential to their generosity. Troubled, I realized this was another reason for a new president: many board members surely thought I was incapable of understanding and enforcing budgetary discipline, of controlling Tom’s spending. I tried, but essentially, they were right.

  The good news six months later: Bob Wilson, as head of the investment committee, said that as of June 30, 1983, the value of the investment fund was $18,262,000, up from $11,543,000 a year before. His choices of investment advisors were working, and the stock market was a big bull.

  Joel reported that the operating deficit (excluding depreciation) would be approximately $600,000, much lower than projected in February. Not from making cuts, as he had recommended, though, but from higher income from admissions, memberships, sales. Making those hard cuts had seemed impossible, when Tom was trying to present the Museum in the best possible light, to show how deserving it was of expansion.

  At the executive committee meeting later that year, Joel resigned from the budget and operations committee, saying, “It isn’t fun any more.” Distressed, unable to conceive why such a committee should be “fun,” I imagined he was referring to the whole job of trusteeship in an inadequately funded and overspending museum. Tom thought trustees should raise more money to cover deficits, but, in fact, trustees were already being extremely generous, and would become more so, in this difficult year. Joel resigned from the drawing committee, also, and I wondered: was he that worried about the Museum’s finances? That upset with Tom? With me?

  Today, I can see why he was annoyed. As head of the budget and operations committee, he had demanded hard programmatic cuts to bring the budget closer to its approved deficit of $266,000. Instead of supporting his view, as I should have, I’d sided publicly with Tom against Joel, arguing in favor of keeping all the programs Tom had planned for that year. It was a costly mistake for the Museum and for Tom.

  Sydney and I went to Italy, that summer, to a little stone pigsty-turned-into-cottage our friends Shirley and François Carraciolo had given us for a month. Fields of grapes, olives, and sunflowers lay before us in the valley below, with Bramante’s octagonal church, the Consolazione, and the hilltown of Todi in the distance. We read Dante in Italian and English, we explored the lovely countryside, we bought eggs from a farm woman walking her large pig on a leash, who dove headfirst into a haystack to retrieve them. We followed the Piero della Francesca trail of churches and paintings all through Arezzo, Sansepolcro, and Urbino, and discovered our favorite pregnant Madonna in a cemetery at Monterchi. When Fiona visited for a few days, we drove through medieval villages and landscapes to exult in Giotto and Cimabue at Assisi.

 
And then, one day, Tom called.

  “Do you think,” he said, from across the ocean, “we should give it all up? Alfred talked to me for a long time, he doesn’t think it’s possible. It was discouraging. What do you think?”

  In the midst of my euphoric Italian summer, I refused to be discouraged. “But why now?” I said. “The redesign seems to be going well. And we haven’t even asked trustees for written pledges yet. Has anything else happened? Why give up all we’ve planned, all we’ve worked for?”

  “I just needed to hear you say that.”

  And we agreed to continue, for the moment.

  I should have listened better to the underlying uncertainty in Tom’s voice. I should have paid attention to Alfred, and especially to Leonard, who, while supporting the expansion plans at meetings, in private was telling me it was too big, too ambitious. I wouldn’t necessarily have changed my mind, nor Tom’s, but I would have been better prepared for what eventually happened.

  We agonized over the budget at meeting after meeting, formal and informal. Both Elizabeth Petrie and Elizabeth McCormack, a trustee who was chief advisor to the Rockefellers on their charitable giving, and who had been head of Manhattanville College when I was a student there in the ’70s, encouraged me to push hard for less spending. They met with Tom, Jennifer, and me to warn us of the perils we faced, if Tom didn’t decrease the deficit. A new era was upon us. We must economize. The whole expansion project was in jeopardy — the whole Museum.

  Still wrestling with deficits and morale, I announced at the January 1984 executive committee meeting that trustees had given more to the Annual Fund drive than ever before. This seemed to indicate continuing support, despite our problems. Like the boy putting his finger in the dike, I wanted to be optimistic and proactive, but we just couldn’t seem to keep up with financial needs. For instance, we had long since run out of storage space in the Museum itself, and it was costing almost twice as much as expected to prepare our leased space on the West Side to store the collection.

  In response to Elizabeth McCormack’s concerns, our financial officer wrote her a long letter with figures showing that the branch museums were paying their way, but that large deficits were bound to continue unless income was raised substantially, or whole programs and exhibitions cut. Finally, the executive committee approved the budget Martin Gruss, new chairman of the budget and operations committee, had presented, with a deficit of $700,000. Leonard suggested that the Museum schedule show at least one “blockbuster” exhibition each year, to which Tom answered that it was virtually impossible to predict which exhibitions would be enthusiastically received by the public. I doubt that Leonard believed him.

  At a special board meeting to approve the budget, Joel emphasized that staff had raised income projections without significantly reducing expenses. With such a high deficit, trustees must be willing to immediately increase their financial support of the Museum if they approved this budget. Bob Wilson, head of the investment committee, added they would be in effect authorizing the further depletion of the investment fund and the continuation of major deficits. When I said that I, too, was distressed by the deficits but felt the vitality of the Museum was at stake, Bob responded that it was the duty of the management of an institution to maintain its vitality within the funds available. Leonard said — very helpfully — that a zero deficit was neither feasible nor beneficial to a cultural institution and suggested that a reasonable deficit level be established, within which the Museum must operate. But Bob asked that $700,000 in expenses be eliminated from the present budget, saying this would still result in a small deficit, as he didn’t believe income projections would be realized.

  Trustees then voted to send the budget back to the operations and budget committee, which, with the staff, would identify the areas to be affected by a $700,000 reduction in expenses and then present these cuts to the board.

  At another special meeting, the deficit was now projected at a more manageable $250,000. Reductions in all areas of Museum operations had been necessary, and one exhibition would be cancelled unless funding was received by July 1. Tom said the $450,000 cut from the original budget required the Museum to close on most national holidays and to decrease public hours, and described other major changes in the Museum’s operation. Bob Wilson suggested approving the budget but asked that tighter controls be implemented. And approved it was, marking a significant moment in the Museum’s history.

  A consequential decrease in services to the public, the threat of canceling non-funded exhibitions, and a general down-scaling at a time when we were planning a major expansion! At a time when the American Association of Museum’s reaccreditation committee was immensely enthusiastic about our management and programs! What discrepancies! I was fearful, not only about the financial survival of the Whitney, but about the increased volume of concerns expressed by some trustees about our leadership and about our lack of fiscal responsibility.

  Our efforts to inform and inspire trustees about the building were cresting: all spring, Michael Graves had presented preliminary schematic plans and elevations to small groups of trustees and to other major supporters. For these, Tom and I led a three-day trip to Los Angeles in February to visit the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, Michael’s most recent building. Enthusiasm for Michael’s library was high. And yet, and yet … there was this nagging problem, always unresolved, about our finances.

  Marcel Breuer’s widow, Connie, and a number of architects had banded together to protest our expansion, based on our choice of architect, although they hadn’t seen the plans. I felt they couldn’t speak for Breuer, had no idea what he would have thought, and shouldn’t interfere with our project.

  The Whitney was becoming a cause célèbre — all over the country, architectural schools were giving “an addition to the Whitney” as a design problem. Invited to a critique at Columbia, I remember the astonishing variety of elevations proposed by the students. And the media was starting to write about it before final designs had even been determined.

  Then Tom’s firing of Gail Levin, associate curator, Hopper collection, had far-reaching repercussions.

  Gail was the Museum’s only curator with a Ph.D. in art history, as she made quite clear, telling her colleagues that they could refer to her as Dr. Levin. “Is the doc here yet?” Tom would ask ironically. Because she was tall, thin, and wore a white fur hat, staff members referred to her instead as “the giant Q-tip”— but never in her hearing, as her sense of humor was minimal, her rages mighty and unpredictable.

  Gail was becoming a Hopper expert. In November 1982, she had asked Tom if she could write an essay for a book about Edward Hopper to be distributed in the United States by Crown Publishers. Tom forbade her to do so, knowing she’d be using the Whitney’s material, and knowing, too, that she was already behind schedule with the Hopper catalogue raisonné she was committed to doing for the Whitney. Like other curators with access to confidential or unpublished materials, Gail was in a position of trust and was given considerable discretion in the handling of these materials. In this case, Museum administrator Palmer Wald notified her in writing that she could not participate in any outside activities of this sort until she had finished the catalogue raisonné. But Gail went ahead. Besides this essay, Tom reported to the executive committee, “again without my knowledge or authorization, Gail worked for other institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, and at least one European museum, and had used Museum staff and time to prepare material competitive with Museum programs.” When he found out, Tom was furious and fired her.

  Leonard agreed that her dismissal was necessary. He warned, though, that the Museum, as a public institution, must be especially concerned about potential damage from the suit Gail was threatening to bring, alleging discrimination. Trustees, he said, must support and protect the director of the Museum, and negotiations should be directed toward avoiding a lawsuit without compromising the director’s position. Tom felt that the important issue was not prot
ecting him, but rather protecting the integrity of the Museum.

  There lay one of the big differences between them. For Leonard, as for many in public life, appearances are all-important. “Perception”—how many times have I heard that word applied to the making of a policy or a decision! Of course, this issue was extremely dangerous: for Leonard to be a trustee of a museum whose director was publicly accused of anti-Semitism would be impossible. Tom, on the other hand, had less interest in how things seemed and more in how they actually were.

  As usual, I came down somewhere in between. In this case, we instructed our lawyer to begin negotiating with Gail’s lawyer. I sent a memo to trustees informing them of the general situation, asking them not to communicate with Gail about the matter.

  Gail’s fury knew no bounds. Staff members thought she might have taken with her Museum documents relating to Hopper and other artists. She probably initiated an investigation by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith based on her accusation that Tom was anti-Semitic and sexist. When I met her at an opening soon after, she flew at me, saying she’d drag the Whitney’s name into the mud, and mine and my family’s. Shades of Larry Tisch! I didn’t take her seriously, thinking her quite mad, but I probably should have.

  Around this time, Tom also fired our development officer, Jane Heffner, who also accused Tom of sexism and anti-Semitism, and made her feelings known to others who disliked Tom. Tom, in fact, wanted to give added priority to fund-raising, and felt Jane wasn’t the right person for the job. By giving her successor, James Kraft, the title of Assistant Director, Development and Membership, Tom gave the position more importance.