A beautiful, heart-rending service in remembrance of Louise Nevelson took place in the Weill Recital Hall, at Carnegie Hall, on March 28, 1989. Invited by Bill Katz, Diana MacKown, and Jasper Johns, guests were ushered to their places and heard “An Hour of Song.” Jessye Norman sang, James Levine played the piano, and Linda Chesis played flute for a program of music by Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel. Looking at the photograph in the program of Louise’s precise, angular profile above a brocaded robe still gives me gooseflesh. A remarkable artist, a vibrant person; I remembered the times we’d been together, especially the evening Louise had led Sydney and me through her palace. One room held her black-painted constructions, looming against black walls like the shuttered structures of a wartime city; another glowed richly gold like a fabled El Dorado; another was all moonlight, bridal, mysterious white shapes melting into one another. Black cats raced by us in rooms hung with the richly embroidered robes Louise loved to wear; in them, she looked as queenly as Nefertiti or Cleopatra. Then, suddenly, we emerged into a high-ceilinged space and, as we sat drinking and talking, it suddenly filled with men bearing delicious dishes of beans, greens, rice, squashes, turnips, breads. Then, astonished, we realized who they were: Bill Katz, John Cage, Merce Cunningham. Memorable, wonderful, as magical as Louise herself, with her furry eyebrows, long lashes, kohl-rimmed, piercing eyes, and the deep melodic voice with which she spoke riddles and tales.
Listening to Jessye Norman’s deep swelling voice, I mourned those I’d loved and those I’d only admired from afar. The darkness and finality of death, the separation no one can repair, were communally in that room, in that hour. And also their converse, the creativity that held us all together.
May, and it was national committee time. This year, another theme: the jungle. Appropriate, in view of events to come. Tom made sure each member’s packet contained a length of colorful jungle-patterned cotton, with instructions to incorporate it into their outfits for the Saturday dance at the Museum.
On Sunday, the last day of the meeting, we lunched at Mrs. John Hay Whitney’s house in Manhasset, Long Island. Betsy Whitney, the widow of Mum’s first cousin Jock and a former Whitney trustee, welcomed us warmly and showed us everything: gardens, greenhouses, pool, tennis court, the Impressionist paintings. Filled with English furniture and silver and downy chintz sofas, the house had the unmistakable casual, insouciant ambiance Sister Parish had created with her new partner, my talented daughter-in-law, Libby Cameron. It was all comfort and style. Perfect maintenance! Gleaming brasses! Flowers, at their peak, in profusion, delicately scenting the whole house!
But to others, mostly trustees, Tom was becoming more willful; he was playing the clown and playing favorites. Inseparable from the Whitney, he was unbearable to those who scoffed at him.
Tom and I continued our memos to Bill, including an update on trustee contributions, with a note from the development office: “Tom is concerned about two main issues: Are we taking care of those who are being very generous and are we addressing the problem of those who are not?”
These were serious problems, demanding attention. Most trustees need nurturing in order to feel involved and appreciated, and a board needs weeding out — for obvious reasons, but also to ensure that active members don’t resent the inactivity of others. In a continuing effort to make up for Bill’s inaction, Sydney and I gave a party for Emily Fisher Landau, to thank her for her latest generosity: the sponsorship of “Art in Place, Fifteen Years of Acquisitions.” This show summed up Tom’s first fifteen years as director of the Whitney. A spectacular installation, a magnificent affirmation of his emphasis on acquiring the highest quality works of art, the show was praised by trustees and, this time, even by the media.
The catalogue reminds me anew of Tom’s convictions about the Museum, his interpretation of its history, and his vision for it. Especially of his deep commitment to it.
When I became director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974, my first priority was to determine the true nature of the institution: how it reflected the ambitions of the founder and the leadership which had guided it through its history, a period when American art had achieved international preeminence. It was the permanent collection of twentieth-century art that had attracted my attention when I was offered the job, and so I decided to attempt to unravel the mysteries of how it had been formed.
The permanent collection of a museum is an extension of the intellectual and aesthetic concerns of the institution’s leaders. The Whitney Museum was totally supported by its founder, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, from 1930 until 1942. Since her death, her daughter, Flora Whitney Miller, and then her granddaughter, Flora Miller Biddle, have played the major leadership roles as trustees. Outside trustees were not invited to join the board until 1961. The professional leadership, until 1974, was always selected from long-term staff members who perpetuated Mrs. Whitney’s concerns, as reinforced by her daughter and granddaughter. For forty-four years, from 1930 until 1974, these circumstances assured that the Whitney Museum was guided by the spirit of its founder, who believed that the Museum’s primary function was to assist American artists.
After summarizing the Museum’s history, Tom concluded:
“The works in this book attest to our attention and loyalty to the history and established strengths of the Museum, to our acknowledgment of past omissions, and our effort to recognize quality in our own time.”
Some of the anecdotal pieces that follow are scattered throughout this memoir, since Tom and I worked together on many of the acquisitions. Each was an old friend, bringing its own, often sweet memories — of an artist, of a dedicated collector, of a conversation or a trip — or even a tussle — and also of the many hours Tom and I spent working out ways and means to accomplish our goals. There, for example, is Claus Oldenburg’s Soft Toilet, 1966, a gift from Sally and Victor Ganz, who remembered even Alfred Barr, great connoisseur though he was, asking Sally, “Is Victor really going to keep it there?” He was standing in their dining room, elegantly designed by Robsjohn-Gibbings, where a large, gleaming vinyl toilet in white and blue was the focal point. As Tom wrote in his essay about the piece,
“It is a regrettable situation that there are so few people with the necessary knowledge, experience, generosity, and integrity to advise public institutions in the way Victor Ganz did. As a private collector he was motivated by a desire to assemble objects and understand them. As a patron, he had one agenda in our long association, the Whitney Museum and its relationship to the art of our times.”
Tom invited trustees and spouses to walk through the exhibition with him, and as we toured through the rooms he recounted some of the livelier stories about individual works. Revved up by the high quality of the art, either given or bought within their time at the Whitney, often with their money, trustees were on a high, as we took the big blue elevator down to the Lower Gallery for a candlelit dinner. I felt a surge of enthusiasm from the entire group. At each table, a curator led us through a conversation about the Museum, the collection, the addition. The dream.
And then, and then …
Tom got up to make a toast, saying, incredibly, “We don’t know where we’re going.”
Then he expanded on that assertion. Disappointments during the building project, leadership we lacked, art we hadn’t bought, faith we didn’t have, all, all, came out, at the most inappropriate possible moment.
It was honest, yes. Perhaps too honest. Tom had exposed his deepest fears, for all to see — just as trustees were particularly aware of his most significant accomplishments. Why, at that moment, was he so self-destructive? I have so often wondered.
The curators were aghast.
The trustees were absolutely crushed.
In mid-August, Sydney and I traveled to France, to an ancient stone house whose foundations held Roman building blocks, from whose garden we looked across the lavender fields and vineyards of Provence to Mount Ventoux’s craggy peak. We walked along village streets in the sp
arkling early mornings, to pick bursting purple figs and buy buttery croissants. In the soft, misty evenings, we walked again, to smell the harvested grapes, to see what artist Joe Downing had painted in the lofty studio where his feathery brush strokes covered old terracotta roof tiles, a weathered door from a crumbling barn, or a large, hand-woven linen sheet. Sundays, we heard the church bells toll from our high white bed. Cooking pistou in the warm buzz of bees flying in and out the kitchen window, walking ancient paths, exploring fields and forests, abbeys and castles, we felt so far away from Museum problems, from the worry over possibly not being able to sell our home in New York and pay my brother Leverett his share. From the dailiness of life.
A month later, Joan Clark stepped off the train in Avignon and we drove her to our house. Seeing Joan was wonderful — she’s like rays of light in her beauty and lively, warm spirit. We showed her our favorite things; on her last day, we visited the Cistercian abbey of Senanque, all three of us moved by its austere beauty. Suddenly, as we stood alone in the grey stone church, we thought we heard choirs of angels. We hadn’t noticed a lone singer standing in the middle of the sanctuary, producing the music of both organ and choir, swelling, filling the whole space. “Organum,” he called it, but it seemed like magic to us.
Reluctantly, Joan brought us back to earth. She had had a call from Leonard Lauder. Many trustees were dissatisfied, he’d said. They thought Tom should resign. Did she agree?.
Joan had asked Leonard, “What does Flora think?”
“She’ll go along with it, for the good of the Museum.”
Of course, I had said no such thing. It was an assumption of others and I would certainly have denied it. But everyone at the Museum knew we were abroad until the end of September.
What was going on?
On the plane from Lyons, having lunch and eating the fruit Joe Downing had picked from his jujube tree for us, I started to cry. Why did I mind leaving so much? Was it Menerbes? Our village life? Or was it the prospect of going home to everyday business once more, to Museum problems, to selling our house — or to not selling it?
Menerbes had seemed like home, warm and secure, beautiful. “People care about each other in the village,” artist Jane Eakin had said. “I know everyone in the village. Come back and live here.”
Soon after our return to New York, Bill Woodside asked me to meet him for breakfast at the Carlyle. I noticed Tom sitting across the room from us, waiting for a guest who never arrived, as Bill spoke to me calmly, as if about a routine matter. Listening, appalled, I kept glancing at Tom, isolated like a figure in a Hopper painting, an eerie backdrop to Bill’s words.
He planned to ask Tom to resign as director, as of June 30. To give him one year’s salary; to start the search for a new director immediately. To halt the building project right away. Although, Bill insisted, he himself had never brought up this idea, an overwhelming consensus of the board showed they were dissatisfied with Tom’s leadership. The subject had came up spontaneously, as he’d spoken with each member in the past weeks.
Trying also to remain calm, I answered that the Museum stood for continuity and stability. Order, not disorder. We’d had only five directors in the Museum’s history, and had never fired one; each had led to the next in an easy transition. Finally, I said that Bill himself, not Tom, was the problem, because he hadn’t formed the good working relationship with his director so necessary for board and staff relations, had never taken the time required to be a good president.
Bill barely reacted. He seemed singly determined, untroubled by the turmoil he would set in motion. Maybe, I thought, he’s acting out the anger he’d felt when his chosen successor, Jerry Sigh, had decimated American Can earlier that same year, destroying the company Bill had led over the years he’d been chairman.
“I’m afraid I’m somewhat emotional about this, Bill,” I said, as we left, and he answered with a hug and words that caught me by surprise: “But all these things are emotional issues, I know that.”
Nevertheless, he didn’t seem to care.
All this time, I could see Tom waiting. A bizarre situation for me — looking right at Tom, listening to Bill’s plan.
Heading straight for the Museum, when Tom returned I asked him and Jennifer Russell, now the Whitney’s associate director with a leading role in running the Museum, to meet me in the trustees room, and tried to warn them. Tom, though, didn’t seem to realize the seriousness of what I was saying — that Bill was blaming him for the dissatisfactions of trustees, that, for Tom, it was a dangerous situation. We agreed that trustees were frustrated — they didn’t understand the lack of action, the loss of momentum. All that seemed obvious to us. Perhaps that was why Jennifer and Tom didn’t react, didn’t really believe the serious threat I was describing. I couldn’t figure it out. I saw disaster ahead. I could hardly sleep, that night, and for many to come.
On a brilliant Indian summer morning, Bill came to 110 for a breakfast of croissants and coffee.
I argued for Tom.
He said the board was determined and so was he.
Why?
Tom has been director long enough. He’s getting older. His energy seems diminished. We need a new vision. The new building seems stalled.
As I pondered to myself if I should call other trustees, thus risking a dangerous fight on the board, Bill said he hoped I’d agree.
I told him I never would.
The next week, Bill visited me again. He reiterated his determination to ask Tom to resign.
“I don’t agree, but you’re president,” I told him. “You have the power to do whatever you like.”
In my heart, I was confident the board would support Tom. Apparently, though, my words then were all he needed to act.
The Museum had never had a better week in terms of giving “perks” to its “family.” Tom’s imagination and energy were soaring.
On Monday, October 30, after a print committee meeting, he arranged a dinner at the Museum for trustees, their spouses, and Hopper collectors, in honor of the final day of the popular Hopper exhibit.
On Wednesday, a reception for the many new members and a dinner for the drawing committee and a few artists at collector David Supino’s apartment.
On Thursday, Tom invited trustees, acquisition committee members, and their significant others to the kind of evening he usually organized for the national committee, which some trustees envied. So this time, our most important patrons visited artist Terry Winters, whose retrospective exhibition was soon to be held at the Whitney, and his wife, art historian Hendel Teicher, in their Tribeca loft. The arrangements were perfect. Everyone seemed most appreciative. Afterward, at Barocco for dinner, with a number of artists scattered among the tables, we toasted Tom.
In the midst of all those happy events, once again Bill told me, sotto voce, that he planned to wait until they were over, then ask Tom to resign.
What if Tom did not accept his suggestion? I asked.
“I am sure he will, for his own sake, and for the sake of the institution. I will have a scenario ready by the time we talk.”
Why didn’t I call Leonard? Why didn’t I insist on the proper procedure? On informing trustees first, or at least the executive committee? Why did I become paralyzed?
Of course, I supposed Leonard was involved. And I had gone into a kind of denial, pretending it couldn’t really happen. I could have taken steps to prevent it. Or at least to have had it happen in a different way.
Friday, Bill called. He had asked Tom to resign. And Tom, he said, had taken it calmly, like the gentleman he was. He was thinking it over for the weekend and they would speak Monday.
I finally managed to reach Tom in his office early the next morning. He had decided to fight. Bill had told him he had an overwhelming consensus of the board, but after talking to a few trustees, Tom was already convinced that was untrue.
Now trustees, distressed, started to call. What did I think? For one thing, the process was wrong, I said. The direc
tor has done a great job, and should continue to do so. The board must meet, we must deal with this together.
At 4:00 on Monday, Bill came to 110. He was upset that Tom had been calling around. “Considering Tom’s personality, his strong leadership, how could he not?” I asked.
I would call a board meeting, I told him, but Bill wanted to keep the whole affair quiet.
Impossible, I told him; we must discuss it as a family.
While we were talking, Elizabeth Petrie called and made several points: that Woodside had made a mistake; he’d handled it terribly, insensitively. That Tom’s turning to trustees was self-destructive, selfish. That the total picture was very bad for the Museum.
A vote? she would probably vote against Tom.
What to do? Have a trustees meeting, deal first with the building project. If they decided to stop it, that would give Tom a shield to leave.
I listened, but I didn’t hear.
Elizabeth had always thought that the trustees’ frustration at the stalled expansion project had ballooned into anger at Tom. Her idea of linking them into a plan of action was brilliant. If we had followed her advice, we might have been spared a lot of grief and pain.
But Tom, besides fighting his own battle, was also protesting Bill’s unfair, unilateral action on behalf of the many museum directors who had recently been unjustly fired, but who, needing jobs to support their families, could neither afford to fight nor afford to risk the reputation of being “difficult.”
We set the trustees meeting for Wednesday.
“If Victor were here, it would never have happened,” Sally Ganz said sadly, as we were driving home one night.
On Tuesday I had another breakfast with Bill, at the Carlyle. I felt more confident, with Tom wanting to fight, and told Bill it was a question of him or Tom.
“Don’t you think we could work something out?” he asked.
The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made Page 46
