“I shed no tears on behalf of these woebegone orphans,” said Brendan Gill at that hearing.
A distinguished professional group spoke in favor of demolition: Ulrich Franzen, William Pederson, Cesar Pelli, Helen Searing, and Peter Eisenman. I spoke last, hoping to stir the souls of these cool judges by reminding them of our glorious heritage of American art, of far greater benefit to our citizens than these ugly brownstones. Probably, I sounded like a broken record.
Months of indecision by the Commission followed, then a mixed bag of publicity. Connie Breuer signed another letter to the Times, ending, “Having seen the revised model, I continue to believe that Marcel Breuer would have preferred to see his building razed rather than have it subjected to this kind of arrogant encroachment.”
But the Times’ lead editorial came out strongly in favor of both our plan and that of the Guggenheim.
At a special meeting of the board on November 9, 1988, trustees unanimously approved Michael’s third design. Some liked it better. Some didn’t. Some only said they did. Among the first group, Leonard called the new design excellent and said it represented “a significant improvement over the first two, in part because it is the work of an architect who has matured and gained self-confidence over the past few years.” Elizabeth Petrie, Brendan, Tom, and I still loved design #1, but none of us said so in public, then. We knew this scaled-down scheme was our only chance to get any expansion at all, and even this seemed unlikely, given all the approvals we must seek all over again and changes in the staff and membership of Landmarks.
“Multiculturalism” was in the air. Already in the ’70s urban sociologist Herbert Gans, castigating the preservation movement’s “patriarchal” policies, charged that the Landmarks Preservation Commission was favoring the stately mansions of the rich while neglecting common buildings. The shift was beginning. The Whitney, in addition to its inner stresses, was being ground between the tectonic plates of modernism, postmodernism, and multiculturalism.
After becoming a docent and organizing a series of art-oriented trips abroad for high-level members, generous businesswoman Adriana Mnuchin had joined the board in 1986. She had new ideas and put them into effect: for example, she invited trustees, their spouses, and curators to the house she and her husband Bob had filled with twentieth-century masterpieces of American art. Dinner at the Whitney followed, in one of the galleries, with a curator leading serious discussion at each table. As a toast I recited a long poem of praise, with a verse for each trustee present, starting:
I sing a song of trustees true
of followed up leads
of recognized needs
of planted seeds
of generous deeds
of an institution’s glue —
YOU!
I felt trustees needed bucking up, and I wanted to express appreciation to each one. They seemed to like the intimacy of the dinner.
One subject we discussed that evening was the relationship of art and money, perennially talked of, but never more than in the late ’80s, when van Gogh’s Irises sold at auction for $53.9 million, when about 150 galleries existed in Soho alone, when works of “emerging” artists were priced at $20,000 or more in their first shows, and some artists talked seriously of their career choices. Minimalism, conceptual art, and site-specific earthworks, despite dire prophecies, had not discouraged collectors, who snapped them up. These presumably empty, unwieldy, uncollectible works were now extraordinarily popular, selling sometimes for hundreds of thousands.
Was the marriage of art and money new? Undesirable? Wicked? Immoral?
American artists hadn’t expected to make a go of their profession, financially, until the explosion of Pop Art in the ’50s. I felt happy that some artists could now make their living without having to wait on tables, or work in a bank or a carpenter shop, or even teach. The marriage of art and money was nothing new, as Carter Ratcliff wrote in Art in America:
“We still assume that a price tag is one thing and a critical evaluation is another thing entirely. They are not. … Western art gains its entrepreneurial flavor from the Western self. … The esthetic is an aspect of the economic, as the economic is an aspect of the esthetic. So to carry on — as some still do, in however desultory a way — the project of isolating the market value of an art work in the hope of excluding that supposedly crass, vulgar consideration from the realm of the esthetic is as misconceived a procedure as the formalist protocol that tried to banish content from the realm of form. …”
Seeing the entangled relationships and complex forces of the art world, however, some powerful people were criticizing collectors, dealers, museums, artists, and auction houses, saying they were manipulating the market. As we brought many formidable members of these groups together, some came to believe they knew a great deal. Listening to people who had their own agendas, which did not include the betterment of the Whitney Museum, they made assumptions that we gave preferential treatment to artists represented by certain galleries. That our curators only visited certain galleries. That there was collusion between dealers and the Museum. Nasty rumors, harmful to the Whitney.
The Whitney’s delicate balance — between trustees and staff, between the need for money and the need for integrity, between its mission and its fund-raising — was at risk. Large sums of money and costly works of art were changing hands. The power that accrues from owning a superb painting is extraordinary. And if you can meet the artist, too — what a fine fellow you are! You, too, can be immortal! It surely follows that you know what’s best for your Museum, and you should be making the decisions.
We spoke, too, of the exhibitions then in the Museum, including “Elizabeth Murray: Paintings and Drawings,” sponsored by Emily Fisher Landau, one of our most committed trustees. We discussed Murray’s eccentrically shaped or fragmented canvases, with household objects of offbeat, beautiful colors changing before our eyes into abstractions, work that moved me by its beauty and strength, as well as by the associations I made with life at home — the dailiness of babies, food, drink, clothes.
Tom suggested, in November, with my enthusiastic approval, that small groups of Trustees and staff be established to discuss specific topics. They would meet once or twice for extended discussions and report to the board. Topics and their descriptions included:
Collections: Private collectors are not donating masterworks to the Whitney Museum of American Art, and our acquisition funds do not allow the purchase of major works. Under these restraints, what should guide the staff in acquisition programs and how can these difficulties be overcome?
Audience, hours, food: Museums have a particular audience whose habits are constantly changing because of the dynamics of the work force of the United States, better levels of education of the population, and increased interest in American art. Do our hours of operation accommodate the available time of our audiences? How can our food service and opportunities for relaxation within the Museum best accommodate the needs of our audience?
Future options: If difficulties in expanding the Whitney Museum of American Art are not overcome, what is the future of the Museum in terms of temporary exhibitions, permanent collection, acquisitions, and other aspects of operations? Should attention be focused on a time limit for pursuing the expansion project before considering other options for operations?
Compensation: New York City is among the most expensive cities in the United States in which to live. The levels of compensation at the Whitney Museum of American Art make it extremely difficult to hire individuals with family responsibilities and individuals not currently living in the city. How should the issue of compensation at the Museum be addressed in relation to the cost of living and needs of employees in New York City?
We assigned specific and appropriate trustees and staff to each discussion group. I thought this a wonderful idea. It would refocus board members on real issues, bring them together, and give them a much-needed assurance of active participation in the Museum. Of moving ahead, desp
ite our expansion woes. Even Bill, I hoped, would be caught up in this. But despite my calls to his office, the November trustees meeting, at which we had planned to announce the discussions, including the chairs of each group, passed with no response from Bill. Weeks more, then months, went by. In January 1989, Joan Weakley nudged Bill with a memo to his secretary, asking her to remind him to call the projected chairmen. But nothing happened.
Apathy was growing.
Thirty
1989
In Beijing, a thousand dissident students were killed in Tiananmen Square.
The Ayatollah Khomeini announced a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for “blasphemy” in The Satanic Verses.
The Berlin Wall was demolished.
Václav Havel, after being jailed in February, became president of Czechoslovakia in December.
The Whitney reported an operating surplus for the third consecutive year. “This success is a source of pride to the trustees and staff and a reflection of loyal, sustained patronage. But should we judge a museum by its financial solvency? No. It is a museum’s programs, which contribute to the understanding and enjoyment of art, that should capture our attention,” Tom wrote in the Whitney Bulletin. He was right, and he was defining his clear responsibility. But the board, besides fulfilling their mandate to insure fiscal stability, needed to be familiar with those programs in order to support them intellectually, as well as financially. Otherwise, their enthusiasm and therefore their contributions would decline.
I saw that familiarity, that enthusiasm, waning.
January 1, 1989, a headline in the Arts & Leisure section of the Times awakened us rudely to the new year.
THE WHITNEY TODAY: FASHIONABLE TO A FAULT
Calling new art seductive, dangerous, and sinister, Michael Brenson spoke of it as a force that gave a privileged elite “the authority to decide what is good and bad, what is in and out, who belongs and who doesn’t, what is mainstream and what is provincial.” The Whitney had made the new itself a value, he claimed, saying, “No New York museum seems more trendy and hip, and none is more at sea.” The Whitney’s curators lacked art history credentials and were too young. The Museum placed too much emphasis on the Biennial; blurred the distinction between gallery shows and museum shows; showed “hot” or mainstream artists; conceived of and installed exhibitions badly; and produced catalogues lacking, according to him, “independent and scholarly perspective.”
Brenson ended his article by saying, “It would be nice if the most important museum of American art in the world would stand for something that matters.”
I was desolate. I knew the respect many of our trustees had for Michael Brenson. We ourselves had invited him for dinner several times, liking him, feeling his was an intelligent voice, and wanting him to understand the Whitney, its background and history, as well as its present. I still believe this article influenced all the events of that ill-starred year. It appealed to those who didn’t have the security to trust either in their own opinions, in the Whitney — both as it was and as it was changing — or in its traditional and new goals and ideals.
To Brenson’s criticisms that we were only interested in the new, we could point to a number of distinguished historical exhibitions we’d had, and continued to have. With our emphasis on the Biennial and other contemporary shows, we were following our tradition — respecting our particular history. We could point out the scholarly excellence of Barbara Haskell’s catalogues and exhibitions of such artists as Milton Avery and Marsden Hartley, among others. As to “hot” artists, were they not, often, the best artists of a given time? Was it not the Whitney’s obligation and traditional role to show these artists, in a more extended way than a gallery could, and to a different, wider audience? There was no doubt in my mind that the gallery audience was a small, “in” group of the art world, whereas museums welcomed a bigger, more diverse populace.
Upset and hurt, we pondered a response: Who should write it, one of us, or an outsider? We finally decided that arguing with the media was no use. I now believe we were wrong. Even if the Times had never printed it, we could have mailed copies to the trustees, many of whom were distressed and didn’t have the information necessary to counter the attack — either to themselves or others. At least we would have gone on record.
Looking back at that year, I see we had eleven exhibitions, which seemed to provide the kind of balanced programming Michael Brenson denied we tried for. Three are historical:.
“Frederick Kiesler,” 1892–1965, visionary artist and theoretician from Vienna, best known for his innovative architecture and stage designs, who brought twentieth-century European movements such as Constructivism, Futurism, and de Stijl to the attention of the American public.
“Treasures of American Folk Art from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center.” The finest examples from the preeminent collection of American folk art in the world.
“Thomas Hart Benton,” tracing his career from his early explorations of Impressionism, Cubism, and Synchronism through the evolution of his epic representational style.
Two one-artist exhibitions:
“David Park,” a California artist, now dead, who moved from early quasi-abstract gestural painting toward figurai and representational work.
“Yoko Ono,” a central figure within the vanguard aesthetic of Fluxus, a loosely affiliated group of musicians, painters, dancers, and visual artists. She initiated an interdisciplinary mode of performance and object art that used chance and audience participation to blur the distinction between art and life.
Two survey shows:
“The Biennial,” the Whitney’s invitational survey of recent developments in American painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and mixed-media installations.
“Image World” explored the ways in which the mass media have influenced American art of the past thirty years.
Four exhibitions from the permanent collection:
“3-Dimensional Narratives,” an exhibition of sculpture that creates the conditions of mystery and inaccessibility.
“Twentieth Century Art: Highlights of the Permanent Collection.”
“Edward Hopper.”
“Art in Place: Fifteen Years of Acquisitions,” with nearly three hundred of the finest works to enter the collection under Tom’s directorship.
This list excludes the many Branch Museum exhibitions, eleven traveling exhibitions from the permanent collection, the forty-week “New American Film and Video” series, and a wide range of other programs.
At the February trustees meeting, Tom stated his view: The article was primarily an opportunity for Michael Brenson to express resentment about current conditions in the art world. Paul Goldberger’s piece in the Times about Michael Graves’s third design, he reminded trustees, had been positive. Discussing the issue of criticism in general, Tom said it was difficult to be a trustee of the Whitney because of the controversial nature of its programs, and urged trustees to attend educational events at the Museum, the best possible way to understand those programs, and enable them to better respond to questions about the Whitney. He went on to quote from several negative articles by Hilton Kramer, remarking Brenson wasn’t the first critic to attack the Museum nor would he be the last.
Ray Learsy said he felt the staff should seriously consider Brenson’s criticism about scholarship in the presentation and installation of exhibitions and in catalogues. Coming from a trustee, this was a worrisome view, a signal that trouble was brewing. As a member of the National Council on the Arts and a serious collector, Ray’s opinions were respected. Tom responded by suggesting a discussion group for trustees, led by outside scholars, on the nature of scholarship in contemporary art and the role of scholarship in a museum.
When Tom announced that trustee giving for fiscal year 1989 had reached $1.5 million, a new record, I was somewhat reassured about the bad effects of the article.
The Museum must now file new applications for demolition of the brownstones, based on
hardship; and also must occupy some portion of each building, so they would be tax-exempt. This required some construction and repairs. More money, more time. Despite the stalled project, Bill remained optimistic — at least, in public — about a successful expansion.
In early March, Sally Ganz, Sydney, and I went to Anguilla for a week of sketching and writing. In the mornings, Sally and I wrote on our verandas by the sea while Sydney sketched. One day, Jasper Johns invited us to St. Maartens, just a short ferry-ride away, and we set off gaily to his house in a surprising downpour. Jasper had prepared lunch: a bowl of icy gazpacho; shrimps sent by his mother from South Carolina, arranged on a big platter with lettuce, sliced potatoes with yogurt, chopped red hot peppers, and parsley; and for dessert, sherbet he’d made with local fruit, tart and wonderful. After lunch, Jasper walked me through his garden — tiny purple orchids growing in trees, masses of blue flowers on tall bushes, loblolly pines whose name I happily rolled around my tongue, sea grapes, and thunbergia — vines with vivid blue or pink flowers.
Jasper’s South Carolina shrimps had whirled me back to a small pink house on the Inland Waterway north of Charleston, where my parents went to shoot ducks. In the little village of McClellanville, shrimp boats chugged through the inlet and unloaded their tasty cargo. We’d bring home a bucketful for dinner, and exclaim with delight at the fresh briny morsels. I’d felt so close to my parents, then. Far from the bigger world of friends and activities, they’d seemed so happy — and they’d had plenty of time for me.
The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made Page 45
