Negotiations for the property acquisition proceeded quickly.
By late summer, Joel succeeded in out-bluffing tough dealers and acquiring the properties.
At the budget and operations committee meeting, Tom’s projected deficit of nearly $500,000 for the next fiscal year aroused strong displeasure — not only about the numbers, but about Tom’s daring to present such a figure. The deficit figure seemed to be another justification for the disapproval of those trustees already against Tom.
The committee instructed him to reduce the deficit by one-half immediately and to produce a plan that would get rid of the other half. Tom and I could raise the money, I felt sure. Most of the deficit represented unfunded exhibitions, and corporations usually preferred to make commitments close to their current fiscal year. The idea of eliminating programs — the only apparent solution without cutting staff — was abhorrent. And canceling a scheduled exhibition would be disastrous, especially for a museum where living artists would consider such an act a betrayal of the Whitney’s principles. The Museum’s relationship with artists, dealers, and collectors was at stake. Tom was upset and angry, as was I.
Walking home with several board members after the meeting, Joel assured me we needn’t make drastic program cuts. Knowing “an extravagant man is in charge” and that Palmer wasn’t strong enough to control Tom’s spending, the board, through the budget and operations committee, must. Otherwise, the Museum would go out of business.
This kind of ultimatum was the only way to put the brakes on Tom, Howard said. I shouldn’t be discouraged. But I felt the condescension inherent in the apparent doubletalk: why hadn’t they told me that this was merely a ploy to intimidate Tom? That they didn’t really want to cut programs? As president, I should be aware of such games.
They did it because they didn’t trust me not to tell Tom.
In the end, we raised more than half the money, mostly from new donors. We called them, we introduced ourselves, we made dates to see them, we talked about the Whitney’s vital importance to New York and to our country. This seemed easy, since we ourselves believed in our cause so strongly. And we discovered corporate leaders, foundation heads, and wealthy individuals who believed with us.
That first year as president was a year of learning for me, and one of new and sometimes heady experiences.
The Museum sponsored a trip to Paris for the Friends of the Whitney. We organized a variety of programs and art-oriented trips that both raised money for the Museum and also educated and entertained this important membership group. Tom couldn’t leave New York just then, and I was delighted to go along and represent the Museum’s leadership on the Friends’ first trip abroad.
On June 28, after thirty-nine years at the Museum, Sylone Brown, our head guard, retired. He was an important symbol, one we were reluctant to part with. His retirement represented the end of an era. He’d been there with Gertrude, since the early years, and he exemplified the Whitney’s history with all it implied — Museum ups and downs, and Museum ideals of loyalty and continuity. Tom arranged a festive party for him with the whole staff and even a few trustees. A three-piece band played cheerful music, guests ate and drank, and an upbeat spirit prevailed.
So much of my time was now spent working with the powerful people we were enlisting that, at that farewell for Brown, I was grateful for the chance to catch up with key, behind-the-scenes staff members whose role was so important to the functioning of the Museum.
Ruth Schnitzer was one of those. For decades, Ruth nurtured Friends and Whitney Circle members, counseling them on every aspect of their lives, apprising directors, curators, and presidents of their moods and desires. On museum trips, she always made certain that everyone felt comfortable. “Ruthie,” Tom would erupt, “where on earth can we put this one at dinner tonight?” And she’d always know. Her tough but fair judgments were leavened with humor and kindness. She took us all into her big heart.
Later, Jack and registrar Nancy McGary became ambassadors for the Museum as they installed our traveling exhibitions. Museum professionals all over the world responded to their skill. Nancy’s responsibility was to keep track of all works in the collection as they traveled across the world or the city, or just from floor to floor, ensuring their safety and condition, dealing with a staggering array of complex problems and people.
Then there was engineer John Murray, self-assured, robust, confident of his important role, whose job was to keep all the building’s aging, complicated guts in good condition, including wiring, plumbing, and temperature control. Jack Martin and John go almost as far back for me as the Whitney itself.
And Anita Duquette, for whom I had developed great respect and affection, was keeper not only of “Rights and Reproductions” (imagine the number of permissions sought each year!) but of the Whitney’s history. She knows more of that history than anyone. I’ve known her since she was a young woman with a long braid, watched her through marriage, pregnancy, and motherhood to her lovely maturity today.
In a toast to Brown, Tom spoke of his emblematic meaning for the Whitney. Then Altamont Fairclough, the new chief guard, spoke movingly in his deep Jamaican voice and, with his radiant smile, presented a bronze plaque carved with an appreciative inscription from all the guards.
“Monty” Fairclough was another remarkable Whitney person. After emigrating from Jamaica to London, where he worked for British Rail, he arrived in New York and came to the Museum shortly after the Breuer building opened. He worked his way up to the position of head guard based on his intelligence, hard work, invincible cheerfulness, a genuine pleasure in dealing with the public, and an intuitive, non-judgmental understanding of what the Museum is trying to do. His unerring common sense and his wonderful humor have often defused a tense situation or calmed a hostile patron. Few are aware, perhaps, that he and his staff of guards are the Whitney’s primary interfaces with our public, and one former coworker, Rob Ingraham, says, “Monty’s gentle, benevolent hand on the Museum’s day-to-day operations is as important to the Museum’s reputation as any exhibition, any curator, or any trustee.”
I presented Sylone Brown with a check from the board. Mum, who had come with me, in her usual warm way spoke fine and touching words and handed him her own check. Best of all, for me, Marie Appleton was there. Now retired from her job at the front desk, where I’d had my first job working beside her in the Museum on Fifty-fourth Street, she looked just the same: erect and exquisite in her black dress, Calder pin, and snowy hair. She had worked at the Whitney for fifty years!
This party rolled time back, reminding me of those who had died, or had gotten older — like Mum. I wanted to reassure her. My turn now, to nurture her — and also, to be on my own at the Whitney.
Visiting Brendan Gill in his office at the New Yorker, or “The Word Factory,” as it was affectionately known, I noted that it was “marvelous, all piled up with books & magazines & ms. & photos & files with one cleared-off black leather sofa upon which we sat amid the literary clutter.” We discussed the new Library Fellows Brendan would head. This group would sponsor a distinguished series of books, collaborations between writers and artists, directed by elegant May Castleberry. Librarian par excellence, with quirky taste and humor, May manages the Whitney’s expertly catalogued and shelved library. In 1996 she organized a full floor exhibition of rare Western books, photographs, and prints. Her imagination roams freely in her selections of artists and writers who collaborate on the fine-art publications she creates for the Whitney. In the Magic-Magic book, an extraordinary magician, Ricky Jay, worked with May and six visual artists: Vija Celmins, Philip Taaffe, Jane Hammond, William Wegman, Glenn Ligon, and Justen Ladda. Who but May would ever have conceived such a project! It’s a kind of flip-book, revealing its mysteries as one manipulates it. Almost simultaneously, she did Mesa Verde, by writer Evan Connell and artist Robert Therrien, a beautiful book printed on parchment and boxed in linen. May, Brendan, Tom, and I organized the Library Fellows, a group of book lovers who, besides helping to support the publishing program, provide special treats at writers’ or scholars’ libraries, or in unusual spots, with surprising guests to entertain and delight us. Once, stately, beautiful Jamaica Kincaid read from her latest horticultural piece in Central Park’s lovely Conservatory Garden. A light rain was falling, but May had provided umbrellas for all, and we perched dry and enchanted on green benches amidst lilies and roses.
Tom, Brendan, and I were also planning a national committee, to bring the Museum new friends and patrons who would spread news of the Whitney to the whole country, and whose dues would fund traveling exhibitions to small museums that could not otherwise afford to show them. This committee came into being in 1980, and Brendan was its first and most inspiring and beloved leader.
In July 1978 my cousin Nancy Tuckerman, an old friend of Jacqueline Onassis since school days who had worked with her ever since she’d been in the White House, arranged for the three of us to have lunch. I hoped to persuade Jackie to become involved once again with the Whitney, since she had written me an encouraging letter saying how wonderful the Museum was these days, particularly in its appeal to young people.
But Jackie got involved with the Met, instead.
Day after day, such journal entries as these remind me of those days: “Wrote letters. Will never catch up.” “Overwhelmed by letters and phone calls.” “Signed hundreds of letters at Museum.” “Wrote letters again.”
Some moments still reverberate with their original luminescence, such as the first time I met Jasper Johns, whose work I greatly admired. Tom had arranged lunch at Les Pleiades; I’d never met Jasper, and was timid at the thought of asking him for a favor at our first meeting. After preliminaries, finding Jasper friendly and unpretentious, I realized Tom was leaving the request up to me. So I asked. Would he make a poster for the Whitney’s upcoming fiftieth anniversary of its founding, to disperse all around the city, on billboards, in subways, buses, everywhere we could manage to display it? A long silence. Had I offended him? But Jasper answered with great generosity, saying that he’d like to do it. I wanted to hug him. One bit of lunch talk: he said someone had referred to the “viciousness” of the art world. I asked, “Well, is it vicious?” He thought for a long time, looking inscrutable, then said, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know any other world.” A perfect answer.
On September 25, 1979, Jasper showed us his poster. One bright flag over another, letters stenciled in red, white, and yellow underneath, saying “1980 THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART.” It was just perfect. We were so overwhelmed that we didn’t even notice how painstaking Jasper had been in depicting those fifty years. One flag had forty-eight stars, representing the number of states in the union in 1930; the other had fifty, the right number for 1980.
A few months later, Jasper gave me his first sketch for the poster. It’s one of my most precious possessions. It’s a wonderful, jaunty watercolor with all the strong elements of the final work, on a background of rich orange. I look at it almost daily. Somehow, it represents everything I valued most in those years. The reasons to care for the Museum, and its raison d’être. What it was all about, when you got past the relentless, dreadful money needs, meetings, talk, problems, manipulations, museum politics, pretense. Art and artists, the heart of it. That’s what I remember when I look at Jasper’s drawing. I also remember something Jasper once said about Tom, that he “always made things more fun.” One of Tom’s greatest attributes, it seems to me, and I was grateful that Jasper had recognized it, had articulated it.
I marveled at my good fortune. How, by some genetic fluke, because I happened to have been born to a particular family at a particular time, I now held a position of power and influence. I could meet and talk with Jasper Johns, for me the best and most emotionally moving artist of our day. I could waltz around the world, meeting anyone I wished to, wining and dining, despite my own deficiencies. Today, I represented the Whitney Museum of American Art just as my grandmother had. And the immediate future of the Museum now depended on me. As I reflected on all this, a tremendous pride and sense of mission overtook me.
Before leaving for a family sailing vacation, concerned about the Museum’s finances, I wrote to Palmer Wald, urging him to prepare carefully for the September trustees meeting, which would focus on the budget. “It’s very important to present the budget vividly, dramatically — flamboyantly? Song and dance — belly dancers to portray the different lines on the budget — below the line, the bottom line — all kinds of things come to mind.”
Far from the Whitney, I looked back on the past year.
I had urged Tom to work more closely with trustees, to use them as advisors in their areas of expertise, and to make his staff more available to them, in the hope of bringing them closer to the Museum, so they’d better understand our plans and support them. Tom had been concerned that trustees might take advantage of the staff — by asking for their help in identifying and buying works of art for their own collections, for instance, or using curators’ powerful influence with dealers or artists. These trustees might unknowingly cause competition and divisions among curators by offering favors in exchange for their help. The commercial art world can be complex and devious — like any world — and Tom wanted to protect his curators.
I wrote Tom about some of the things on my mind:
Affection; I enjoy being with you, having some good laughs, working together. I recognize that you have made a big effort to adjust to the changes implicit in working with me rather than Howard — for instance, in such delicate areas as staff participation in trustees’ meetings or committee meetings, and of trustee help in borderline areas, or accessibility of staff other than yourself to trustees. I appreciate this a very great deal.
Respect: for many reasons. Your complete commitment and dedication; your talents with people, which I’ve now observed at close hand; your intelligence; such details as your careful consideration before reaching a decision and taking action. Your strong leadership. And more.
I am extremely impressed by the way the Whitney has looked in the past year.
Obviously, much remains to be done. As you know, I think, as does Howard, that the right “senior” curator would be an important asset, in helping us to maintain a position of leadership and boldness in terms of contemporary American art. Because it is necessary to be bold, to have the courage to exhibit what we think is important, now. And I must do much more in terms of developing our board, and other funding sources. But I really believe we can accomplish a great deal, if we take care to communicate with each other about all matters of importance to the Museum. For me, the adjustment to a new leader was also difficult at times, and the struggle to see clearly what was in the best interests of the Museum was often unsuccessful. But now it seems easier, and one reason is obvious: we are really working together, and this is increasingly satisfying to me. I hope it is to you.
I see today that I was groping toward a performance review process, now a more formal part of the institution, and necessary for both board and director. It’s necessary to assess both positive and negative aspects of the job a director is doing, to give that director a chance to respond and to comment in turn on the board’s performance. We didn’t do that. I wish we had.
In my first report for the Whitney Review, our annual publication, I expressed optimism about the future, gratitude to all who had helped make my first year successful, and pride that, through a combination of various grants and policy decisions, the Museum’s activities were now free to 40 percent of our audience, including senior citizens, students, artists, and all who visited on free Tuesday evenings, thus approaching the original ideal of free attendance. I wrote of new committees, new membership categories, and the need for new funds; of the Jasper Johns and Saul Steinberg exhibitions, now traveling around the world. This was my most heartfelt sentence: “It must always be stressed, however, that all our activities are based on the integrity and accomplishments of artists.”