ELEVEN
Southland Patrician
HOWARD AHMANSON SENT a cryptic letter to painter and sometime architect Millard Sheets in 1953. According to Sheets, it was almost like a telegram:1
Dear Sheets. Saw photograph building you designed, L.A. Times. Liked it. I have two valuable properties, Wilshire Boulevard, need buildings. Have driven Wilshire Boulevard twenty-six years, know year every building built, names of most architects, bored. If interested in doing a building that will look good thirty-five or forty years from now when I'm not here, call me.
Sheets didn't know what to make of the letter or the sender. The two men had met on a number of occasions.2 Sheets's wife, Mary Baskerville, who had studied art at UCLA, had been in the same sorority as Dottie, but the two had not remained close.3 For several years, Home Savings and Loan had been a sponsor of the annual city art show, and Ahmanson had frequently presented the awards to the prize winners. Despite these connections, the letter came out of the blue.
When Sheets called the office, Ahmanson was characteristically abrupt. “Interested?” he asked.
“Well, it certainly sounds interesting,” Sheets responded.
“Do you ever get hungry?”
“Well, yes, normally about noon.”
“Lunch tomorrow?” Ahmanson asked.
Sheets agreed, but when he arrived at National American Fire Insurance's offices on South Spring Street, he briefly regretted his decision. He rode to the building's top floor in “the most rickety elevator I have ever seen.” Stepping out, he faced “a sea of desks and confusion.” It was “the worst sweatshop I have ever seen in my life.”4 A woman led him weaving past desks, turning sideways at times to get through, to reach Howard's office.
Reclined in his chair with his feet up on the desk, Ahmanson was talking on the phone. With a cigarette between his fingers, he gestured for Sheets to sit on an old sofa. Sheets sank through the cushion and landed hard on the wood underneath. For thirty minutes, the artist waited as Ahmanson talked. In the meantime, he noted the unpainted sherbet-green plaster. “The lighting in the room was ghastly, and the drapes were terrible. . . . I thought, ‘What kind of a gooney bird have I gotten myself with here?'”
Ahmanson talked on. When he finally hung up, he stood, reached back to an old coatrack, snagged his jacket, and put it on. Without greeting Sheets or shaking his hand, he said, “Let's go.”
Sheets expected to walk to a lunch joint. Instead, Ahmanson led him through the parking lot to “the most beautiful, big, overgrown Cadillac I had ever seen,” next to which a chauffeur stood waiting. The two men climbed into the back seat and the driver pulled away.
Howard had a table at the Beverly Hills Club, where TV host Ed Sullivan, famed newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, and other Hollywood stars and L.A. luminaries frequently dined on the patio amid a riot of flowers.5 Over lunch, Sheets and Ahmanson engaged in an animated conversation. On the face of it, they were very different in temperament and background. Only a few months younger than Ahmanson, Sheets was a handsome, round-faced man with an open forehead, deep eyes, and big hands. He had been born in 1907 in Pomona. His mother had died as a result of the birth, and his father had given him to his maternal grandparents to raise. He grew up with four aunts for sisters. Like Ahmanson, he was spoiled by the man of the house. His grandfather raised, bred, and raced thoroughbreds. For years, Sheets rose at six in the morning to ride with his grandfather. He launched his art career at the age of sixteen when he had a painting accepted for a show at a gallery in Laguna Beach. After graduating from Pomona High School, he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and then traveled and painted in Europe. Returning to Los Angeles in 1929 to get married, he continued to paint and taught at Chouinard during the Depression. His regionalist paintings attracted national attention and he became a leader in the California Style watercolor movement. In 1932, he was hired as an art professor at Scripps College in Claremont. He also worked with the Public Works of Art Project. During the war, he was an artist-correspondent for Life and the U.S. Army Air Forces in India and Burma.6
Over lunch, the conversation ranged widely. “It was like hundreds of conversations I had with Howard,” Sheets later recalled. “He was one of the best-read men I've ever known. He read every night until two or three in the morning because he couldn't sleep.” Sheets lost track of the time. When he looked at his watch, it was nearly five o'clock and he had completely missed a three o'clock appointment. As it turned out, Ahmanson had also missed an afternoon meeting. Still, Ahmanson had never once mentioned the projects he had in mind.
Back in the chauffeur-driven car headed east on Wilshire Boulevard, Ahmanson suddenly pointed to a block and said “That's one of them.” Farther along Wilshire, he pointed again and said, “That's another one.” That was all he said about the project until the Cadillac pulled into the parking lot off South Spring Street.
“Do you think you could put up with me?” Ahmanson asked.
“I don't know what you mean,” Sheets responded.
“Well, do you think you could put up with me to do a building or two?”
Sheets said he didn't think it seemed like it would be that difficult.
“All right, that settles it.” Ahmanson said. Then he proceeded to explain the ground rules. “I want you to understand something now: I don't want you to telephone me ever. I do not wish to discuss these buildings with you. I'm going to let you do one, and if it's right then we'll do the other.”
Confused, Sheets responded, “Well, Mr. Ahmanson, we've got to discuss budgets. I haven't even discussed fees.”
Ahmanson cut him short. “You'll be fair with me, and I'll be fair with you. The budget—that's up to what you build. You build it like you were building it for yourself.”
“I can't take that responsibility,” Sheets protested. “No way can I do that.”
“Well then,” Ahmanson responded, “you're not going to do the job.”
“I don't even know anything about the function,” Sheets said. “I don't even know what kind of a building it is.”
“I have plenty of people who can give you that information,” Ahmanson said dismissively. “But don't you let them tell you how to design this building. If you want to know how many bodies there have to be in the room and what they do, fine. But don't you talk design to anyone. I haven't got a guy in my organization that knows anything about this. And I don't. I want it done the way you would do it if you were doing it for yourself.”
Driving back to Claremont, Sheets found himself trembling. “It was so utterly unusual,” he confessed years later. “I'd done several buildings for commercial people, and we'd always set budgets. I'd studied the problems and presented the solutions, and then we discussed whether we could do what they wanted within the budget.” Ahmanson didn't want any of that kind of conversation.
Yet, as Sheets discovered, Howard's attitude did not reflect alack of interest. Asked by the press why he had chosen Sheets, known for watercolors rather than architecture, to design the new headquarters building for H. F. Ahmanson & Co., Ahmanson said he wanted a designer “who could combine the art and flavor of California with the utilitarian needs of a savings and loan association.”7 He pointed out that Sheets had designed other buildings, including the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, and that during the war he had worked with the Army Air Forces on the development of fifteen schools and airfields.8 “When the building is completed and we have moved into our new quarters,” Howard said, “we know the public will agree with us that no better designer could have been selected.”9
To design the functional aspects of the building, Sheets met repeatedly with Ken Childs. When the drawings were ready, he offered to go over them with Ahmanson's chief lieutenant, but Childs demurred. “Don't you want to know anything about it?” Sheets asked.
“It wouldn't make any difference to me,” Childs answered. “It's what the boss wants.”10
Sheets took three sketches to Ahmanson. “I set them down on this godawful floor in this god-awful office.” Howard walked up and down the room for a long time looking over the drawings. Then, without a word, a frown, or a smile, he picked up the phone and called Dottie.
“I'm looking at the god-damnedest building,” he told her. “It's just going to be great. I can't wait for you to see it. It's going to be just exactly what I wanted.” While Sheets waited and listened, Howard gushed over the phone. When he finally hung up, he turned to Sheets and asked, “Well, could I borrow that sketch tonight, and I'll get it back to you tomorrow?”
Sheets had to ask which one he liked.
“That one,” Ahmanson pointed.
It was just like him, Sheets says. “He never hesitated over what he wanted.”
Art was a critical ingredient in Sheets's concept of the building. He wanted mosaics and sculpture done by local artists. But since the art was not a structural element of the project, he felt compelled to seek Ahmanson's specific approval for this portion of the project. When he called Ahmanson's office, Evelyn Barty put him through. Halfway into his conversation about the choices that needed to be made and the budget, however, Sheets heard the line go dead. He called back. Barty told him Ahmanson had hung up on him.
“Why the hell did he hang up?” Sheets asked.
“Because he told you it was your problem,” Barty said.
Sheets organized a studio of artists and commissioned sculpture to complete the project. When the building was almost done, Sheets was surprised one day. Ahmanson announced that he was coming over. He was nearly silent as Sheets showed him through the building, including Ahmanson's office with its enormous desk and fireplace. Finally, Ahmanson pronounced the entire thing to be exactly what he wanted.
Critics also liked the building. Jarvis Barlow, the former director of the Pasadena Art Museum and an art critic for the Pasadena Independent, called it “by far and away the handsomest structure on Wilshire” and hoped it was indicative of a new trend in architecture “away from the post and pseudo Bauhaus, from the beehive and fishbowl cubicle, from the stark and stripped, or, again, away from the Hansel und Gretel cake-and-candy house.” He praised Sheets's visual references to traditions in California architecture and history including the Mission, the Monterey style, and the Spanish California ranch. Barlow also grasped how important the client-designer relationship was to Sheets's work. He called the building “the most notable art achievement of the year.”11
The roots of Ahmanson's aesthetic impulse and his delight in Sheets's designs were not clear. In part they derived from his travels abroad and from his reading. According to Sheets, Ahmanson believed that most American commercial buildings lacked the presence of art, “not merely in terms of pictures, but art that was integrated into the design of the building, both in sculpture and in murals of various kinds.”12
With the H. F. Ahmanson & Company and National American Fire Insurance Company building done, Howard put Sheets to work on the second building—a new headquarters for Home Savings and Loan to be built at 9245 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.13 The architectural firm Cunneen Company of Philadelphia took Sheets's drawings and created the project's detailed plans. When the project broke ground in October 1954, it was expected to cost four hundred thousand dollars.14 By the time it was finished seventeen months later, the cost had increased 500 percent to nearly two million dollars.15 Ahmanson called it his Taj Mahal.
Like a modern Renaissance patron, Ahmanson again allowed the artist to realize his vision. Sheets again integrated art into the structure. Instead of leaving spaces for a mural or a mosaic, Sheets thought of “a form that required these arts.”16 At the entrance, a pair of sculptures by Renzo Fenci bracketed the walkway.17 The huge bronze statues—eight feet tall, cast in Italy, and shipped to Los Angeles—represented a mother and daughter and a father and son. The statues were meant to suggest “the timelessness and indestructibility of the family group.”18
Sheets's design emphasized the classical within a modern context. Roman travertine, “the stone of the Caesars,” covered the exterior and much of the interior walls.19 The floor of the lobby combined inlaid stone and cement blocks in actual terrazzo.20 The renowned ceramics company Gladding McBean created a specially glazed ceramic veneer in a repeated pattern reading “H.S. & L.”21 The art in the project also incorporated mosaics designed by Jean and Arthur Ames of Claremont and fabricated in Italy.22 Sheets and Margaret Montgomery designed a stained-glass mural depicting the history of trade, banking, and thrift that was created by Pasadena artist John Wallis.23 It included images depicting the bartering of cows and conch shells, as well as the development of Chinese bronze coins and the modern buffalo nickel.24 Altogether, the building felt as much like a museum as a financial institution.
“Deep in the inner core of man lies his strongest compulsion—the fierce and unswerving desire to protect his family,” an elegant brochure reminded Home's visitors. Echoing patriarchal themes, the brochure likened the home to a primitive cave or a sturdy tree where a man shielded his woman and his children. “Primary is his love of family, and primary is his need for a home.” Home Savings existed “to help man achieve his basic aim.”25 Thus, in structure and expression through its sculpture, mosaics, and stained glass, Home Savings offered a narrative of community and family that appealed to postwar Southern Californians who were bombarded with images and messages that idealized the nuclear family.
The opening of the Beverly Hills office in March 1956 signaled Home's arrival on the grand stage of Los Angeles commerce. Despite the Taj Mahal reference, Ahmanson was clearly proud of the building.26 He invited the nearly six hundred craftsmen and laborers who had worked on the project, along with their wives, to a huge party. The group included representatives of twenty-five different unions along with Los Angeles mayor Norris Poulson, film stars like Audie Murphy, and others.27 Ahmanson also invited many of the operative builders whose business had contributed to Home's success. They included seven of the nation's top twelve home builders. The four largest had started 13,405 homes in Southern California in 1955.28
Ahmanson was astonished to discover how profitable his investment in aesthetics could be. In the first place, it returned significant advertising value. Newspapers gushed over the new facility. As part of the Richfield Success Story series, KTTV featured Millard Sheets leading viewers on a behind-the-scenes tour of what the television station advertised as “America's most distinctive structure.”29 More important to Ahmanson, the building became a magnet for deposits. “In nine years the old building [across the street] had taken in approximately $11 million in deposits,” Sheets later told an interviewer. “In the first ten days [after the new building was opened], $19 million walked in the front door.”30 Ahmanson concluded that, as a general principle, “business could do itself a great favor by placing a greater emphasis on the aesthetics of its buildings,” including adding “good art.”31
With this kind of incentive to invest in architecture and art, Home Savings & Loan commissioned Sheets to design a series of branches and remodels—all neoclassical marble buildings with iconic mosaics and sculpture that celebrated community, family, and home ownership. With each one, he repurposed the history of California and its abiding mythology—the missions, the ranchos, the gold rush, and the pioneers—to provide references to local history.32 The murals and mosaics confirmed a regional mythology that appealed to the transplanted, middle-class customers of the region.
For the artist, however, success brought its own creative constraints. With later buildings, Sheets wanted to open up his basic design by adding more glass. He offered Ahmanson drawings that explored these new directions. Howard liked the concepts, but, he told Sheets, “I'm not willing to gamble, to change the image. . . . It's foolish for us to get off of something that we know is right. The image is established. Whether all people like it or not isn't the important thing.” Resigned, Sheets acknowledged that the public “liked the sense of security that these buildings have had.”33
Sheets was sensitive to some architectural critics who described the buildings as mausoleums, “but I think many of them wish that they could design a couple of mausoleums that would produce the incredible [return on investment], which is, after all, what an architect or a designer is supposed to do.”34 Lest he be accused of pandering, he asserted “unequivocally that I have never done one thing on those buildings to compromise my own personal understanding or taste.”35 He explained that “a good designer has always had to deal with real clients whether king, bishop or a commercial agency, satisfy their needs and never compromise his own aesthetic judgment. This requires an artist capable of living in his own times.”36
Over time, Ahmanson's relationship with Sheets developed all of the complexities that infuse the interchange between rich patron and artist. With Sheets, however, Ahmanson clearly found a rich friendship. For one thing, Sheets was one of only a small number of people who had the courage to stand up to Ahmanson, and Howard seemed to appreciate his integrity. A thank-you note for a gift written in October 1960 turned into a much deeper expression of gratitude. “I know anybody's best friend is supposed to do whatever he can for the other guy,” Howard wrote, “but somehow every time I see you, you raise me up another fifty miles and my horizons of interest and enthusiasm increase in geometric proportions. That you can do all these things and still be as cozy as an old high school chum and worry about my comb, tooth brushes, and all such trivia is really more than a guy can expect from one human being.” Acknowledging his own tendency to be stingy with gratitude, Howard continued, “I am appreciative and grateful, even though I do not tell you so after each of your kind and thoughtful deeds—and that you cannot afford the time you waste on me makes these things even more eloquent.” The letter suggested that Sheets also cultivated in Ahmanson new sensibilities. He thanked Sheets for “everything that I have begged, stolen, borrowed, and so gratefully accepted—but above all for learning a new way oflife.”37
Ahmanson did not detail what exactly he meant by the “new way of life,” but the blossoming of his friendship with Sheets coincided with a new interest in the visual arts.38 As the newest fad—painting by numbers—swept through “hobby-happy America” in the mid-1950s, Ahmanson began to collect old masters.39 Sheets put him in touch with dealers and auction houses that helped Ahmanson begin building his collection.40 Ahmanson also saw himself as “the great collector of Sheetses.”41 Under Ahmanson's direction, Home Savings also became a patron of community artists. The company provided funds for the acquisition of the best art pieces displayed each year at the county fair. For Los Angeles, this new passion would leave an important legacy as Sheets and then others leveraged Ahmanson's interest into a larger effort to build cultural institutions that reflected the civic elite's aspiration to make Los Angeles one of the world's great cultural cities. For Ahmanson, this process began when Sheets recruited him to the board of the Los Angeles County Art Institute.
COUNTY ART INSTITUTE
Founded by Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis in 1918, the Los Angeles County Art Institute was housed in what had once been Otis's Westlake Park home. The school operated under the aegis of the art division of the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art for several decades. With enrollment booming after the war, the Board of Supervisors took control in 1947.42 It then created a five-member advisory board to manage the institution.43 At the same time, the institute was chartered as a college and incorporated as the Los Angeles County Art Institute, although it continued to be known informally as Otis.44
Struggles to define the institution and its governance in the postwar years shed light on cultural transitions taking place in Los Angeles. As artist Robert Irwin, who was a student there from 1948 to 1950, reports, the curriculum was very practical. “It was almost less of an education than it was preparing to be a plumber or something,” he remembers. “I was learning techniques, I think, all the time I was in art school.” The annual Los Angeles County Art Fair offered Irwin and other students an important showcase. The very first painting Irwin completed at Otis was accepted for the fair.45
Management of the institute had gone through a rocky period as artistic and political conservatism flourished in the cold war era. The 1947 County Art Fair ignited criticism from the “Sanity in Art” movement, which rejected modernism.46 Actor Vincent Price, one of the judges for the show, said it was this kind of reactionary behavior that “consigned Los Angeles to a relatively unimportant place among the nation's art centers.”47 Price made little headway with the political elite. The Los Angeles City Council banned the public display of modern art in 1951, calling it communist propaganda.48
Despite the rebellion against modern art, as long as the GI Bill was available to pay the tuition of returning soldiers, enrollments grew. In August 1951, the institute broke ground for a new wing to accommodate the more than six hundred students who were attending classes. Following the trade school approach, the curriculum was expanded to address set design and lighting for motion pictures. Unfortunately, by the time the new wing was ready to be dedicated in October 1952, the institute's fortunes had turned. On the eve of the dedication, the director suddenly resigned. For the next two years, the board ran the day-to-day operations under the oversight of the vice chairwoman while it searched for a new director.
Millard Sheets was wrapped in bandages on the day the chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the president of the institute's board arrived to visit. Thrown from a horse, he had cracked his skull and broken his nose in four places. The doctors told him he had to let his body heal for three months. In the middle of his recovery, Sheets agreed to talk about the institute's future.
The chairman and the president wanted him to suggest a new director. Characteristically blunt, Sheets told them he wouldn't do it. “I think it's such a lousy school that I wouldn't wish it on anybody,” he said. “Unless you change your whole philosophy of why the school is being operated and get a staff that's competent, I wouldn't wish it on a dog.” Taken aback, the chairman and the president asked Sheets if he would write a plan for them. Unable to paint because of his injuries, Sheets agreed.49
Weeks later, the Board of Supervisors and the institute's board invited Sheets to the California Club to present his ideas. He told them that if they wanted to turn the institute around, they would need to build new buildings and commit money for staff and operations. John Anson Ford, the chair of the Board of Supervisors, put Sheets on the spot. “If we support it in the way you've laid out, would you accept the position as director?” Sheets reminded Ford that he lived in Claremont and said he enjoyed teaching at Scripps. Nevertheless, “because I know you won't do it,” he said, he would take the job. To his surprise, two weeks later the boards agreed to his terms.50 On August 19, 1953, Sheets was officially appointed director.51 In his letter to Ford accepting the position, Sheets stated that he would be committed to providing “a type of education in art that is deeper in significance, higher in its aesthetic aims, and demanding in unequivocal standards of discipline.”52
Sheets set out to strengthen the curriculum, the faculty, and the institution's base of financial and political support.53 He wanted to “stress solidity in the teaching of art so as to be equal with the best in the nation, in the world.”54 Under Sheets, the art institute developed a four-year curriculum and the school was accredited in the spring of 1956.55 Part-time students were relegated to night classes only. Although Sheets said he would not favor fine arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and design—over commercial arts, he decided that only fine arts would be taught in the day program. Sheets asserted that this curriculum would prepare students for their professional careers as effectively as the training required for careers in other professions.
Underlying these changes, Sheets said, was his belief that “the complex nature of our society demands a more complete and balanced curriculum of art study and work.” A base of common knowledge was essential. “Specialization without an adequate base of common culture and technical experience, like an involved structure lacking a solid foundation, will not stand.” Sheets also believed art needed to be mainstreamed into commercial culture. He warned of the “dead end” of “art for art's sake.”56
Sheets was culturally ambitious. He believed art would cure the sicknesses of society that came with modern life, including a “maniacal pressure against a real show of feeling.” To cure society, he told a group of Rotarians in 1956, “art appreciation and art experience should become a part of daily living.”57 Sheets also asserted that art appreciation belonged in a masculine world. A western outdoorsman who had braved combat during the war as a journalist, Sheets said men too often leave art to their wives. “Yet we gain great strength and courage in the study of art,” he said.58
Sheets pushed to redesign the institute's campus. He razed old buildings on Wilshire Boulevard and designed a quadrangle to be constructed on the new site, including a new gallery to showcase students’ work. Sheets also recruited a new generation of faculty. Applauding Sheets's work, the art critic for the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The tremendous growth of this area's population, industry and social life more than justifies the bold move the County Supervisors have taken to make a new, thorough and disciplined County Art Institute.”59
Behind the scenes, Sheets also assembled a powerful board that could bring both political and financial capital to the institution. As part of his deal with the Board of Supervisors, Sheets had received their promise that Dorothy Buffum Chandler would be appointed to the art institute's board. Married to Norman Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, "Buff” had become one of the region's most prominent and successful fund-raisers by the mid-1950s. Sheets believed she could provide critical connections to major donors.
In addition to Chandler, Sheets recruited his new client and patron, Howard Ahmanson.60 Howard's tenure on the art institute's board marked the beginning of his life as a cultural patron, and of the visual arts particularly. It was inspired by Sheets's evangelizing and integrated with a growing friendship that challenged Ahmanson on many levels. On the board, Howard also began one of his first public collaborations with Dorothy Chandler, who impressed him with her leadership qualities and her ability to inspire the community to action.61 Chandler's passionate efforts to promote the construction and development of major civic institutions rubbed off on Ahmanson, even as Sheets helped develop his sense of aesthetics.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
Ahmanson's experience with Sheets, the County Art Institute, and the annual art fair helped him discover what others in the city were already discovering. In the postwar world, the city not only was burgeoning with new tract homes and factories but also was the center of a growing community of artists. Like New York after World War II or Paris after World War I, however, as Robert Wernick would later write, “Los Angeles had all the ingredients of a cultural explosion, but it had almost no cultural apparatus.”62 The city lacked a major art museum and, as late as 1960, could support only forty-one commercial galleries, including frame shops, art associations, and “vanity” shops devoted to the work of a single artist.63
For years the visual arts had been relegated to a portion of the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art, which had opened in Exposition Park near USC in November 1916.64 Throughout the 1920s, the collection had grown with gifts and acquisitions. After a new wing opened in 1930, the museum received a gift of more than two hundred works of art that included paintings by Matisse, Segonzac, Rouault, Signac, Courbet, Modigliani, Vlaminck, Eakins, Bellow, Luks, Hassam, Henri, and Prendergast.65 These additions finally gave the collection weight. Later, gifts of paintings by Renaissance artists including Titian, Rubens, Lotto, Bordone, Holbein, Petrus Christus, De Hooch, Ter Borch, van Orley, and Bouts added historical depth to the European collection.66 As new donations arrived from William Randolph Hearst and George Gard DeSylva in the early postwar years, the Board of Governors began to consider the idea of establishing an independent art museum. In 1954, Arthur Millier, the art critic for the Los Angeles Times, offered a series of testimonials from leaders in the art community lobbying for a new and separate art museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Many of these voices echoed architect Anthony Thormin, the president of the County Museum Association, who asserted, “We are no longer a pueblo in an unending mustard field.”67
Real progress began after Richard “Ric” Fargo Brown arrived to become chief curator of art in 1953. The great-grandson of the founder of Wells Fargo, Brown had a PhD from Harvard and came to Los Angeles from the Frick Gallery in Manhattan, where he had been a research scholar for five years.68 With “his boyish face [and] his eloquent tongue,” Brown quickly befriended the elite collectors in the community, including Norton Simon, a wealthy industrialist who owned Hunt's Foods.69 A leading collector, Simon joined the Board of Governors of the County Museum in 1957 and agreed to help the fund-raising effort.70
At the time, Dorothy Chandler had already begun to raise money to erect a major concert hall downtown. Asked if she would lead the effort to build an art museum as well, she declined but recommended department store magnate Edward William Carter for the job. The president of the Broadway-Hale department stores, Carter was already chairman of the Southern California Symphony Association and the Board of Regents of the University of California. In 1958, he joined the museum's Board of Governors and became chair of the fund-raising committee.71
Fund-raising was key to winning political approval from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. In the spring of 1958, Supervisor Kenneth Hahn declared that he would oppose any effort to build a separate county art museum because he feared that such a move would undermine the quality of the existing museum in Exposition Park (which was in his district). He also suggested that over the long run taxpayers should not have to pay for the maintenance of a second facility.72 To counter Hahn's concerns, Carter told the board that the new facility would operate as a branch of the main museum and that it would offer the public an opportunity to view collections that had remained in storage because of a lack of exhibition space.
“Los Angeles is fast emerging as a world art center,” Carter told the supervisors, “but we can never be great until we have quarters in which to house our cultural treasures.” To seal the deal, Carter and Brown announced that they had already secured one-third of their three-million-dollar fund-raising goal by receiving a pledge from Norton Simon for one million dollars to help finance construction of the new facility.73 Throughout the summer and fall of 1958, Carter courted other major donors.
Howard Ahmanson was among the most important of Carter's prospects. In the late summer of 1958, Ahmanson offered “to make available $2,000,000” to help build the new museum. The financing was “somewhat unusual” in character and came with “some very specific restrictions.” As the Museum Associates attorney explained, Ahmanson's company would actually make a twenty-year, two-million-dollar loan to the board. No payments on principal would be due for ten years and Ahmanson's company would only charge a low 2 percent rate on the money. Meanwhile, Ahmanson would commit to donating stock in one of his corporations to Museum Associates. Over the course of seven years, the board would eventually own about 80 percent of this company, effectively becoming creditor and debtor on its own loan.74
The deal was also contingent on the Board of Supervisors agreeing to Ahmanson's terms and to a formal commitment on their part “to be responsible for the maintenance and operation expense of such a museum.” At the same time, however, Ahmanson was convinced that the museum needed to be insulated from the political pressures that might be brought to bear on the Board of Supervisors; otherwise “there may be trouble in the future.” To ensure that the Board of Supervisors would go along, Ahmanson personally presented his proposals to various individual supervisors and sought “to give Associates complete control over the building and as complete independence as possible from the Board of Supervisors.”75
In exchange for his financial contribution and lobbying efforts, Ahmanson wanted changes in governance. He asked that the Museum Associates board be increased from fifteen to thirty members. Current members had officially been appointed by the Board of Supervisors, but Ahmanson wanted the new members to be appointed by the Museum Associates board itself, to make the board more independent of the politicians.76 The proposed agreement also stipulated that “this building shall at all times be called the ‘Ahmanson Gallery of Fine Arts” and that this would be “the only name to appear on the building.” Ahmanson also wanted to approve the location, the architect, and the builder.77
When Ahmanson's proposal was presented to the Museum Associates board in September 1958, the members were generally enthusiastic. Norton Simon said he would favor accepting the proposition but that if the plan went through he would like to modify the terms of his own one-million-dollar gift. There were people in the community who still questioned the quality of what the museum had to exhibit, Simon said, and he would like to work with Ric Brown to focus on building the collection.78 The board's attorney agreed to work with Simon on a revised agreement, and the board accepted Ahmanson's concept with the details to be worked out by attorneys.
The donor agreement with Howard Ahmanson, according to writer Suzanne Muchnic, “was a bold move that signified Ahmanson's clout with the Board of Supervisors and Carter's political savvy.” The supervisors were reportedly in debt to Ahmanson's bank, and Ahmanson chose this moment to call in his chits.79 At Ahmanson's urging, the supervisors agreed to pay the salaries of the museum's employees and maintain the buildings and grounds at a level commensurate with that of major public cultural institutions in other cities.80
On December 2, 1958, Carter publicly revealed Ahmanson's pledge in a presentation to the Board of Supervisors.81 Ahmanson's contribution, combined with the one-million-dollar pledge by Norton Simon and five hundred thousand dollars promised by dozens of other contributors, gave the Board of Supervisors enough confidence to enter into a contract on December 9 that would allow Museum Associates to build the museum on county-owned land in Hancock Park. Supervisor Hahn and Ed Carter reassured the public that no taxpayer dollars would be used for the actual construction. All of these dollars would be privately raised.82 In fact, “the agreement was hailed as a blueprint for uniting public authority and private money in the field of culture.”83
Although initially gracious and supportive, Norton Simon became increasingly frustrated with the Ahmanson plan. Even before it was revealed to the public, he asked for reassurance from Ed Carter that the agreement would not preclude naming other buildings for other people. Moreover, he hoped the initial building would be located on the site in such a way that it would not diminish other buildings that might be added in the future. He wanted to be clear that “the public should have a part in contributing to the present building fund so that it would not appear to be a private affair.” He objected to the idea that this civic museum would seem to be a memorial to one individual. According to minutes of the board's November 18 meeting, Simon suggested: “If it were primarily the Ahmanson Gallery, no one would give to it.” Carter and the museum's attorney reassured him that Ahmanson had no intention of binding the museum so tightly. Nevertheless, Simon “thought it was necessary to make it very clear that the Ahmanson gift is only part of the whole plan.”84
Simon's objections remained private for a number of months.85 When Carter held a press conference in April 1959, he told reporters that with the Ahmanson and Simon commitments, as well as one million dollars more pledged or given by fifty-five other donors, Museum Associates had four million dollars. Carter described the donors as “an excellent cross-section of the top leaders in our community.” Before the end of the year, he expected to begin the first phase of construction of what would eventually be a $10.5 million facility that would open to the public in 1961.86 But Carter's optimism and patience were tried over the next few months as the Board of Supervisors delayed formal approval of the site.
If Ahmanson had hoped that philanthropy would be less likely than politics to engender the slings and arrows of public opinion, he was sorely disappointed. In March 1960, the Los Angeles Examiner reported that a bitter debate had exploded over the plan to name the new museum after its largest contributor. A group known as the Los Angeles Art Committee asked the Board of Supervisors to reconsider the plan. They revealed that Norton Simon had already reduced his pledge from one million to one hundred thousand dollars because of his frustration with the idea.87 Another donor, Judge and Mrs. Lucius Peyton Green, collectors of old masters, had decided to give their collection to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco rather than LACMA because of the naming plan. Art critic Jules Langsner, the chair of the Los Angeles Art Committee, reminded the supervisors that the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., had successfully attracted major gifts and collections because its founding patron, Paul Mellon, had not insisted on putting his name on the institution.88 After the Board of Supervisors ignored these protests and unanimously approved the Ahmanson name, another donor, art collector David E. Bright, announced that he would withdraw his fifty-thousand-dollar pledge if the board refused to reverse its decision.89
As the controversy continued, Ric Brown tried to find a compromise. He suggested that the new museum be designed as a series of structures, only one of which would carry Ahmanson's name. Howard and the other trustees agreed to this plan.90 A delighted newspaper editorial celebrated this “happy compromise” that ended a controversy that had threatened either to diminish contributions to the project or to ignore the name of a generous donor.91 Howard was not so pleased. “Now I know why people give their money away when they're dead, you can't argue about it then.”92
Ahmanson's frustration with the controversy also affected his relationship with Brown. During the time that Carter was negotiating with Ahmanson over his gift, Brown had visited the Ahmanson house on South Hudson and seen Howard's growing collection of art. It included fifty paintings by old masters and others, including works by Jan Vermeer, Tintoretto, Pieter Brueghel, Titian, Claude Monet, Jean Francois Millet, Eugene Delacroix, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, David, Diego Velasquez, Gustave Courbet, and John Singer Sargent, as well as more modern works by contemporary Southern California artists.93 The “Dutch school” was his favorite, but as he told a reporter, there was “no pattern” to his collecting. Every painting was an adventure. He just kept going to Europe and returning with art.94 After looking over Howard's collection, Brown concluded that Ahmanson's casual approach had left him with several fakes. Ahmanson resented the idea that he might have been duped. “This led to very bad blood between Ric and Howard,” according to one former board member.95
The tensions between Brown and Ahmanson increased when it came time to select an architect. Carter's original agreement had promised Ahmanson a significant voice in the selection process. Brown wanted a contemporary architect to design an iconic building that would be internationally recognized. He advanced the names of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Eero Saarinen.96 Mies came to Los Angeles twice and was wined and dined at Perino's with board members.97 Saarinen and architect Philip Johnson also met with Brown and the board. By September 1959, the board had accepted Brown's recommendation that Mies be chosen, but a final decision was dependent on Ahmanson's approval.98
Howard was not interested in the sober rationalism of Mies's architecture or the sweeping arcs and curves of Saarinen's style. By 1960, he was fiercely loyal to the region that had made him rich and keenly attached to the artistic and architectural vocabulary that Millard Sheets had established for Home Savings and other financial institutions in the region.99 If Sheets wasn't acceptable and a nationally recognized architect was necessary, Ahmanson favored Edward Durrell Stone, whose clean white structures invoked a modern classicism. Ahmanson's preferences were reflected in a new list of architects submitted to the board in January 1960. Stone had been added, but local architect William Pereira was at the top of the list.100
Many of the major donors knew and admired Pereira, whose office was located two blocks from the proposed site for the museum. A Chicago native, Pereira was once dismissed by an architectural critic as “Hollywood's idea of an architect.”101 Fit and trim with thick wavy hair, deep-inset eyes, and a Roman profile, he had worked for the famed architectural firm Hola-bird & Root early in his career and had helped to design the 1933 World's Fair. He and his brother Hal had launched their own architectural firm focusing on movie theater design. In the late 1930s, the brothers moved to Los Angeles, where Bill worked in Hollywood as an art director and production designer. He became a professor of architecture at USC. In the 1950s, he formed a partnership with Charles Luckman. Together they designed commercial buildings, department stores, television stations, industrial facilities, banks, and hospitals. Fascinated with science fiction and the future, Pereira would become the architect of choice for Southern California's aerospace industry. With several collaborators, he and Luckman designed the Los Angeles International Airport and its iconic futuristic Theme Tower.102 By 1960, he and Luckman had dissolved their partnership and Pereira had formed his own firm. His style appealed to Howard Ahmanson and other donors. In March 1960, he was awarded the design contract for the new art museum.103
At this same meeting, Ahmanson was elected to the Museum Associates board.104 As Pereira submitted drawings and developed models, Ahmanson suggested changes.105 As chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee, he clashed frequently with Simon and Brown, and sometimes with Ed Carter. It was all a personal battle of egos, according to Brown. “They all want power, and they all want their say.” Howard understood the situation. He even made fun of himself. He told a reporter metaphorically, “I play several instruments, but what I love to play best is the organ because I can drown out any other instrument.”106
CULTURE IN THE MANAGED ECONOMY
As Ahmanson transitioned from entrepreneur to cultural patron, others in the savings and loan industry in Southern California followed the same path, including Mark Taper and Bart Lytton. The localism at the heart of the industry's development, embedded in government policies that restricted operations to narrow geographic areas, reinforced the close relationship between local entrepreneurs and the community as a whole. This relationship in Los Angeles also reflected larger patterns in American society.
In 1962, historian Robert Wiebe traced the evolving relationship between business and government in the United States. He described the many ways in which government had become the arena for resolving once-bitter street fights among competitors and between shippers and producers, and labor and management in the American economy. Along the way, he said, the federal government had grown throughout the early twentieth century to rival business for national leadership. But in reality there was no rivalry, Wiebe concluded: “The great blend of our time has so intermixed business and government that a practical, precise separation of the two is no longer possible.”107
Wiebe's observations were focused primarily on the regulatory environment, but they also carried over into cultural and social policy. By the early 1950s, presidents and governors regularly consulted business leaders on social issues. Increasingly, great entrepreneurial wealth in America was given to private philanthropy. Innovators like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller had restructured the practice of the philanthropy to fund social innovation with an eye to transforming charity and government. These developments complemented the partnership between business and government in the regulatory environment and extended them into the social realm.
To a government entrepreneur like Howard Ahmanson this partnership between government and business in the cultural arena was totally appropriate. Ahmanson's gift to LACMA, for example, was one of many and in the end not the largest. Los Angeles County taxpayers, through the agency of their Board of Supervisors, made the biggest commitment by promising to fund the new museum's operations into the distant future. The project was conceived as a joint venture between the public and private sectors to promote civic culture. Given Ahmanson's apparent role in brokering this deal with the Board of Supervisors, it seems clear that he believed in the appropriateness, or at least the expediency, of this kind of partnership. Many business leaders did. It was simply another reflection of the cooperative relationship between business and government in the postwar economy.
Wiebe was impressed with this brilliant accommodation and suggested that it was responsible for the nation's prosperity and domestic tranquility. “With so few signs of domestic upheaval at the beginning of the 1960's,” he wrote, “any elite would take pride in the record of America's durable business leadership.”108 Unfortunately for Wiebe, Howard Ahmanson, and the nation, the inherent and relentless destructive and creative forces of capitalism, combined with long-repressed resentment and dissatisfaction in the nation, opened a new era whose history would fade the brilliance of this great accommodation.