Whitney Women and the Museum They Made

The third theme Tom and I outlined as a goal, attracting supporters, was inseparable from the other two. Mostly, our searches were joyous. In my memory, we were always dancing!

My friend Anne Zinsser had introduced me to the Ganzes in Connecticut, and in 1980, during another dinner with the Zinssers, Victor Ganz took me aside. I’d totally changed, over the last year or two, he said. I obviously had the Museum job in hand, I was clear and confident. He couldn’t get over the difference. After an evening discussing art and artists — including Victor’s reasoned, eloquent defense of Richard Tuttle’s genius — I lay awake wondering how to capitalize on this new-found strength. One way, I realized, was to persuade Victor to join the board of trustees, but that would take quite a while. Art was all-important to him, he was always interested in new ideas, but didn’t make a connection between furthering the art he loved and serving on a board he saw as a fund-raising and social body. Tom and I, on the other hand, strongly felt that his conviction about the importance of art could inspire trustees to believe in our plans.

Tom persuaded him to join the drawings acquisitions committee led by Paul Cummings, with a membership of articulate connoisseurs. Discussions were long, informed, animated. Members backed up their strong opinions with intelligence and wit. No one left meetings early. Many members were from out of town, but they almost always showed up: Steven Paine, a wonderful collector from Boston who had MS and was in a wheelchair; Nancy O’Boyle, a close friend with a connoisseur’s eye for art, flew in from Texas; Ed Bergman, a trustee with an astounding collection of Surrealist art, came from Chicago; Walter Fillin, whose collection was more conservative than that of the others, but of equally high quality, drove in from Long Island; Jules Prown, the chairman, who ran the best meetings ever, took the train from New Haven. Hanging drawings of the highest quality alongside others of slightly lesser worth for members to chew over and ultimately to vote on, Paul would challenge the group to select the best. Only quality mattered — and indeed, in 1987 the National Gallery in Washington validated the committee’s discrimination by showing, as their very first American drawings exhibition, selections from the Whitney’s drawings collection.

Perhaps my favorite social evening of all those years was the small, perfect dinner at their home to which Sally and Victor Ganz invited me on November 18, 1980. Sally was an equal partner with Victor in their understanding and appreciation of art, and Sally had an additional warmth. Jasper Johns, Calvin Tomkins, Susan Cheever, Philip Johnson, and David Whitney were the guests that evening, and conversation was relaxed, as it is among good friends. I was delighted to be seated next to Jasper. After dinner, Victor told the story of acquiring Picasso’s “Algerian Women” series (1954–55), five of which hung on the red walls of the Ganzes’ sitting room. He’d been in Paris on business when he had first seen them, and had immediately called Sally. “They’re Picasso’s finest works yet,” he said — only for sale as a whole series of fifteen paintings — “of course, I couldn’t buy them, it would mean pulling the children out of their schools, no college for them, God knows what else.” Of course he wouldn’t, said Sally.

But of course, he did! He eventually sold most of them, but he’d been unable to resist the extraordinary innovation he believed they represented in the history of painting — the leap to a fourth dimension, the possibility of seeing all around the object. Victor, I realized, was on an entirely different level than most collectors, in his intellectual and emotional response to painting.

As the evening ended, we descended sixteen floors to the basement, originally connected to a marina so tenants could leave their yachts and enter the building directly from the East River. (In the ’40s, during World War II, that space was turned into an air-raid shelter.) The Ganzes had appropriated this huge space for the overflow of their collection — large works by Frank Stella, Eva Hesse, Robert Rauschenberg, and, of course, Jasper Johns.

One day, Victor invited me to his office to discuss the Whitney. Walking through the door of the costume jewelry business his grandfather had founded, which Victor was now running, I was dazzled by cases of glittering faux diamonds, rubies, pearls set in extravagant bracelets, necklaces, rings, brooches. Above and around them, prints by Jasper Johns literally papered the walls, outshining the baubles, drawing the eye and the mind beyond the world they inhabited so calmly. An astonishing mélange, a wonderful extension of Victor’s vision.

Finally, in 1981, my opportunity arrived after dinner with the artists in the Biennial. Punk was the current fad, and I remember Alexis Smith, a wonderful artist who later had a retrospective at the Whitney, wearing white bobby socks with one green shoe and one purple shoe. In a corner of the trustees’ room with Victor Ganz, each of us with glass in hand, I decided it was the moment to propose. Knowing how strongly he supported it, I felt our expansion hung on Victor’s answer: on his speaking for us, articulating the importance of the Whitney and its project, as an insider. Victor looked pensive for quite a while. I waited.

Victor looked a bit glum. “I’ve lost my virginity,” he said, with his inimitable puckish smile.

Tom and I put Victor on every possible trustee committee — in the areas of both art and business, because he was equally able in each. Hours before a budget and operations committee meeting he’d come to the Museum and go over all the figures and their background with the financial officer, and be more fully prepared at the meeting than anyone. Before an acquisitions committee meeting, he’d read, he’d go to galleries to see other work by the upcoming artists, he’d talk to their collectors — and he’d have a proper perspective to make a judgment.

Money, money, money — an unending need, constantly impelling us to think of new people and new ways to get it. Increasing our expectations of the board, we soon counted on most members — especially new ones — to support the Museum’s Annual Giving campaign with at least fifty thousand dollars a year, and to give money for their committees only after fulfilling that obligation. I learned not to be shy about asking. Trustees helped me in this.

In the still recent old days, my grandmother and mother had literally “given ’til it hurt.” In their wake, the first nonfamily trustees, without being asked, had also been as generous as they felt they could be. Now, more money was available than ever before from new, richer trustees who expected some form of recognition — publicly expressed gratitude; social or business contacts; a say in programming; a more “successful” Museum in terms of attendance or public relations; one or more of these, to bring them credit — as a “successful” child does for ambitious parents.

I finally gained the courage to ask a reluctant trustee to increase his gift, and he did. After that, with Charlie Simon’s coaching and even a practice session with him, I visited Larry Tisch and asked him for a substantial contribution. Despite his dismay at the current deficit, he promised to help, surprising me by saying he thought I was “terrific” and doing a good job. He sent $5,000, twice the amount of his last gift four years earlier. Not much for him, but the big jump boded well. In a welcome turnaround, David Solinger sent Tom a check for $5,000, with a note also saying he was doing a great job.

For programs, we tried to find donors other than trustees. Collectors of contemporary art were multiplying rapidly, and we had a bigger pool to fish in every year.

Early on, in 1978, we met with Jane and Bob Meyerhoff, of Baltimore, top-notch horse breeders and racers with an outstanding collection of work by Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, and others. Direct, delightful, they were more at home with art and artists than anyone I’d met except the Ganzes. Learning of their disagreement with their local museum, I immediately proposed that they build us a wing instead. Bob laughed, and said I was learning fast — but that they planned to build their own museum.

Assembled over many years, the Meyerhoffs’ collection unquestionably has a specific character, and its owners, loyal to this concept, rather than to an institution, were eager to keep the paintings and sculptures together and on view. We were alarmed by the increasing number of intelligent patrons who were moving away from giving major works to public museums. Bad for the public, we thought, since most private museums are not easily accessible to large numbers, and our focus was on making the Whitney more so. Worse still, in the ’80s, as prices for contemporary art skyrocketed, some collectors couldn’t resist the lure of big money and sold their collections at auction, scattering them, nullifying the ideas that had made them distinctive, and betraying the trust of the artists and dealers who’d often sold them rare and special works. Most museums didn’t have enough money to compete with private buyers. The Whitney certainly didn’t.

The Meyerhoffs became personal friends of mine, and generous friends to the Whitney as well.

I remember a “fishing” trip to Florida in 1979, when Tom and I drove by an enormous house Richard Meier was building for Alfred Taubman, a real estate developer from Detroit, and we determined to find a way to meet its owner. The next year, on a visit to my mother in Hobe Sound, Tom met me in Palm Beach and we visited Alfred, who invited us along with Mum to lunch. His house intrigued her. She was especially impressed by the TV at the foot of his bed that appeared and disappeared at the touch of a button, also by the rows of clothes in his closet. He never packed anything, all he needed was in each place he lived. Two hundred shirts lined up on white hangers! Fifty pairs of shoes! It was a shiny white ocean-liner-of-the-thirties house, with catwalks, glass bricks, and classical sculpture and modern paintings by Rothko, Moore, de Kooning. Curved glass walls like huge portholes in a house of gleaming white porcelain, with crisp geometric lines and curves constantly changing as we walked, a brilliant green croquet crease, a boat like a shark tied to the dock, and the telephone a constant background. Food, drinks, towels, wrappers, appeared effortlessly; instant gratification. Can we deal with it? Tom and I wondered.

In my photograph album, Alfred stands with a croquet mallet in a teeny bathing suit and a big scarlet T-shirt, on his emerald lawn, right by Willem de Kooning’s bronze Clamdigger.

Alfred himself was a rotund, ebullient man with small observant eyes and a quick mind. He seemed so friendly and warm, but everything surrounding him was so exquisite, so expensive — so inhuman? Even his guest, Anna Marks, looked perfect, a blonde woman with an impeccable figure. Our desire for some of his riches, so needed by the Museum, engulfed any warning signals, and we persevered in our quest for Alfred.

The following spring, I lunched with Alfred Taubman, Tom, and Joel at the Knick. “Hard sell,” I noted in my journal, “urged on by Joel, re past, present and future of the WM — Joel helped a lot to get us talking. At end of lunch Alfred said ‘Well, the Whitney is my favorite Museum,’ and will consider joining acquisitions committee — $25,000 no problem. Joel then told us just one of his real estate companies has made about 100 million over the last 2 years. I like him — but think he’s tough, might give us grief.”

The next time Alfred invited Tom and me for dinner in that Palm Beach house, we planned to ask him to become a trustee and to help us build our new building. We’d become friends. I remember, after the hour-long drive from my mother’s rented house in Hobe Sound, changing into my linen pants in the car outside his driveway, so I’d arrive un-mussed! Luckily I did. Because it was a very elegant dinner for fourteen, including Alfred’s friend from Paris, Anna Marks, in a gorgeous veil of gold and flowers within which she floated; and — most significantly — Alfred’s friend, partner, and chief advisor from Detroit, Max Fisher, and his wife. We knew right away we were on trial. Seated on Alfred’s right, I admired the extravagant flower arrangements (he’d fixed them himself), the food (he’d planned it with the new chef), and the house (we had no idea of all the trouble he’d gone through)!

With Max on my other side, I was cautious. But he knew how to draw me out, and I found myself telling him all about Sydney, soon to be my husband, whom he already knew about — but how? — and the Museum, describing the reasons for our space needs, our big hopes of becoming the place where people from all over the world would come to see American art. He seemed interested, and told me a bit about Detroit, its problems and its potential. I imagined he had much to do with the likelihood of achieving that potential.

After dinner, a three-piece orchestra appeared, and we danced on the terrace, by the light of a full moon, around the sapphire pool. Alfred had great rhythm and was light on his feet; dancing with him was delightful. Staggered by the opulence of the whole evening, wondering what was to come, we finally departed in a moonlit haze, after inviting Alfred and Anna for lunch with Mum in Hobe Sound the next day.

They came, along with Douglas and Mary Dillon and Mum’s old friend, Harlan Miller. Mum shone. The strange mix of people really worked. Surely, Douglas foresaw big bucks for the Met, whose chairman he was. Just like us, only better at it, I feared.

The next day, we went back to Alfred’s and, in between phone calls from people we’d have liked for the Whitney, such as Charles Allen and Henry Ford, we tried to have a serious talk. Alfred asked for a month to decide. (Was he hoping for a bid from a more prestigious institution?)

Alfred joined the board. Joined the building committee. Was involved in our choice of architect, which he applauded, even hiring Michael Graves to design many of his own most cherished projects. Came to every building committee meeting, staying for hours, keeping an impatient secretary outside the boardroom trying to remind him how late he was for his other appointments. Trained as an architect himself, glorying in his expertise, loving this role, confident, glowing with pleasure, Alfred engaged our architects in lengthy confabs about details only he and they understood.

We assumed that his intense interest in the building ensured a major gift toward its becoming a reality. But he had a new ambition: to buy Sotheby-Parke Bernet, currently looking for a “white knight” to prevent an unwelcome takeover. Would this aristocratic, elite, very British institution accept America’s rough diamond? The question was eagerly addressed by the press of two continents. We watched and waited, until one day Alfred asked Tom to write one of the two letters of recommendation Sotheby’s had requested. Of course Tom agreed. The letter must have been effective, because soon after Alfred became the owner of Sotheby’s, to his delight, as he never failed to tell us. And he spent more and more time on it, traveling from one end of the world to another, charming, persuading this one or that one to sell through him their precious gems, objets d’art, paintings, or castles. Shooting parties in Spain, country weekends in Sussex, or parties in the new apartment he’d moved to with his new wife, Judy, a beautiful young woman and the perfect hostess for all the entertaining now necessary. Alfred was at the peak of his career. Perhaps of his life?

In New York, I later approached him for a major gift to our campaign, sure he would respond generously, but he danced as lightly around my request as he had around that Florida pool. He didn’t know. What was Leonard giving? It was a bad time. His real home was in Detroit. He was chairman of the museum’s fund drive there, a huge responsibility.

A big challenge gift from Alfred would have done wonders for our project. I was terribly disappointed, but I should have known. It was always traumatic to pry from Alfred his promised annual trustee gift and committee dues, involving numerous phone calls, usually from me, to his secretaries, assistants, and finally to Alfred himself. Strange how the very wealthy often seem obstinately reluctant to part with what is for them the smallest amount of money.

We’d been naive about Alfred’s regard for the Whitney and his respect for us. Although he’d contributed generously to the purchase of Three Flags early in our relationship, and eventually made a verbal pledge of $1.5 million, Alfred left the board without giving to either of our campaigns.

Among many who helped, Tom and I accepted a challenge from one we admired and liked a lot: Jean Riboud, chairman of Schlumberger. Although we’d only come to ask for his company’s sponsorship of an exhibition, we hoped in time he’d become a trustee. No corporate stereotype, Jean Riboud was a sophisticated, educated, and charming Frenchman. Over vintage red wine and perfect omelettes, surrounded by American paintings and sculptures in his office, he told us of his search during his first years in New York for its intellectual and cultural hub. “When I discovered the Museum of Modern Art,” he said, “I wanted to be there all the time, to see exhibitions, to meet people, hear the talk — to have a sense of what was happening. Twenty years ago, it was the vital core of your culture. The heart of all new and exciting ideas.” Now, he felt, that was no longer true. Could we take up the banner? Become the center for contemporary creativity, in New York, in the United States, even in the world? Then, and only then, would he support the Whitney.

Exhilarated, confident we were already on the way, we assured Jean he would be surprised by how soon we would ask to see him again. He laughed. When Jean agreed to have Schlumberger sponsor the Louise Nevelson exhibition, held at the Whitney in 1980, we felt triumphant.

On a trip to visit potential patrons in Kansas City, Chicago, and St. Louis, Tom and I were vastly impressed by Ed and Lindy Bergman and their commitment to the art they believed in. Ed, already a national committee member and a trustee, was another collector who had been ignored by the local museum until the Whitney recognized him. A founder of Chicago’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Ed was a successful businessman who had sold his company to American Can Co., headed by Bill Woodside, and then become chancellor of the University of Chicago. We reveled in the Bergmans’ fine Surrealist collection, in their carefully chosen Gorky, de Kooning, and Picasso drawings, in the exquisite boxes by Joseph Cornell poking out from walls, bookshelves, and drawers — even the floors were strewn with them! When we suggested a gift from their collection to the Whitney, they seemed open to this idea. Impelled by us, they were beginning to think about its ultimate home. But the subject implied, as always, finality — of the collection, of life.

Unlike many wealthy figures, Ed was open and warm. He never failed to ask about my family, my life. He was a wise and loving man, always ready to give his most honest advice about the Museum. I remember walking along Madison Avenue after lunch with him, following a drawing committee meeting at which we’d turned down a Gorky drawing as unworthy of the collection. Ed said, “Oh, that was the right decision. I have a much better one, would you like it?” How rare, such a spontaneous gesture of enthusiasm and generosity! When the Bergmans gave their collection to the Chicago Art Institute, we didn’t even resent their decision. It was the right one for people of such deep convictions and values, people as dedicated to their community as they were to their art.

Becoming aware of the boundaries of the art world, I wondered if museums couldn’t cooperate rather than always compete for the same people and the same art. With this goal, in December 1978, I invited the presidents and directors of the four major museums in Manhattan for lunch in my apartment. Everyone actually showed up. Blanchette Rockefeller and Dick Oldenburg of MoMA; Douglas Dillon, Bill Macomber, and Phillippe de Montebello from the Met; Peter Lawson-Johnson and Tom Messer from the Guggenheim; Tom and me. After a slightly stiff start, over poached red snapper and a little wine, everyone loosened up.

We were a pretty powerful bunch, remarked Tom Messer, and could wield tremendous clout if ever we decided to make a joint approach to an organization we had no hope of succeeding with as individual institutions. Corporate sponsorship was usually based on personal relationships, we agreed, and I suggested foundations. “Did you have a specific one in mind?” asked Messer. “The ones that have been shockingly uninterested in the visual arts,” said Blanchette, “are Ford and Rockefeller.” I was impressed by her candor. Tom Messer would, he said, consider a joint approach, perhaps to match challenge grants from the NEA, and would get back to us later.

I asked Douglas if the Met would be more active in the contemporary American field in their new 150,000-foot, five-level American wing. Only up to World War II, he said firmly — then added that they’d be doing more contemporary shows through their Department of Painting and Sculpture, so I wasn’t sure. (After lunch, Dick Oldenburg told me “Douglas was lying through his teeth, don’t listen to a word.”) Still, everyone seemed to think the meeting was a good idea, and Blanchette offered MoMA as host next time.

The next day the Met announced they had hired Bill Lieberman, a top curator at MoMA, to become head of their new contemporary art program.

We were all, no doubt, too hungry for every dollar, too jealous of our connections, relationships, and “turfs” to have a genuine collaboration that might jeopardize any of that. The experience added a layer to my increasing disillusionment with the politics of museums. Although not as naive as I’d once been, I could still be deeply disappointed when things didn’t turn out as I thought they should, when those I’d trusted to perform feats of goodness and mercy turned out to be merely human.

One of our goals was to become more widely known across our country. Our first effort to have a national committee had fizzled after its first meeting in 1966, when Jacqueline Kennedy had been its first chair. Now, in 1979, Tom and I determined to revive it and to make it an integral part of the Museum. We wanted to invite collectors who were involved with the museums in their own communities, who would bond together and form a lively group committed to the Whitney. First, we had to get approval from the board.

Bob Friedman and Frances Lewis were concerned that the “by invitation only” process was elitist, versus the traditional Whitney policy that anyone who wanted could join in activities. When Frances mentioned, as an example, the Virginia Museum’s exclusive Collectors’ Club and its policy of “keeping people out,” we realized she was talking about anti-Semitism, at one time directed against the very generous Lewises themselves. Ed Bergman from Chicago and Barbara Millhouse from North Carolina, soon to become members of the national committee as well as trustees, told us they were against exclusivity for the wrong reasons, but felt a little elitism was necessary to attract people. And in no way were either of them elitist. The Whitney was special because it was open to a wide spectrum of people, and Leonard proposed the final decision: to make membership more open and flexible, we would have members themselves suggest other members.

Pleased with this “go-ahead,” we met right away with protocol official Grace Belt, a friend of Tom’s who represented the State Department in New York City, and asked her to help us. We wanted to have our first meeting as soon as possible, to set up a network of young, energetic, and involved people all across the country who loved the Whitney and American art. Charter members were invited by Tom or me, either in person or by telephone: K. K. and Douglas Auchincloss from Kingsville, Texas; Graham Gund of Boston; Carolyn and Roger Horchow from Dallas; Arlene and Robert Kogod of Washington, D.C.; Seymour Knox from Buffalo; Jane and Richard Lang of Seattle; Susan and Lewis Manilow of Chicago; Buddy Mayer of Chicago; Jane and Bob Meyerhoff of Baltimore; Susie and S. I. Morris of Houston; Emily and Joe Pulitzer of Saint Louis; and Ellen and Jim Walton of Pittsburgh.

Others joined a little later, and the first annual three-day meeting took place in May 1980, as part of our fiftieth anniversary celebration. Brendan Gill was instrumental in infusing the group with his buoyant spirit.

The format was typical of many to come: Marylou and Sonny Whitney started things off with a bang, giving an elegant lunch at Le Cirque. After lunch came the business meeting, when members established a tradition of deciding on which special programs would be sponsored with their dues. Curators made presentations, and there was keen competition, since those programs not voted for probably wouldn’t happen. The first one approved by the national committee, “Art of the Thirties” from the permanent collection, was to travel around the country to smaller institutions that might not otherwise be able to afford such exhibitions. This program has since grown, reaching hundreds of small museums and university galleries and hundreds of thousands who enjoy these exhibitions. On Friday evening, a seated dinner-dance with artists, writers, and other art world guests. A Saturday seminar, followed by visits to special collections or places, and a variety of dinners in homes or studios. On Sunday, a special trip.

Tom had noticed Doris Palca, our dynamic head of publications, working in an engineer’s dark blue jumpsuit to keep her clothes from dirt and dust. “That’s cute,” he said to Doris, and immediately decided on a uniform for national committee Sundays. How many photos I have of picnics, excursions, boat rides, with us all in our Whitney jumpsuits, suitably accessorized!

That first Sunday, May 18, to give members a sense of the Museum’s history, we took the group to my grandmother’s studio for a picnic. Mum herself came and enjoyed talking with many members, including her old friend from Buffalo and Aiken, Seymour “Shorty” Knox, the great patron of the Albright-Knox Museum, and Joe Pulitzer, from Saint Louis, with whose uncle, Ralph, she had played in a regular poker game. All were fascinated by her memories of her mother’s dozens of birds wandering in the garden, or when artist Robert Chanler had sent Gertrude a kangaroo from Australia and she’d emptied out the pool for it. She described Howard Cushing doing the murals in the stairwell: “He painted that lovely lady, right up there, imagining her dark hair, almond-shaped eyes, and beautiful figure. He’d never seen her, but when he married, his wife was exactly the image of that lady!”

A beautiful day, a happy day. We were looking forward to our second meeting, to be held every year out of town. That same year, in October 1980, we met at Jane and Bob Meyerhoff’s farm near Baltimore. They were extraordinary hosts, arranging visits to museums and private collections, encouraging us to wander all over their farm, showing us their racehorses as well as their extraordinary art collection, and making us feel completely welcome. They put the seal of perfection on the whole idea. Ever since, host members have tried to live up to the standard they set.

Ed Hudson of Fort Worth ran the official business meeting in Baltimore, and enthusiasm was so high that members discussed increasing their yearly dues, then fifteen hundred dollars. After going back and forth about the right amount, Dick Lang said, Oh, for heavens’ sakes, let’s stop talking and just make it five thousand! And everyone agreed. Tom and I were flabbergasted, and would never, ourselves, have suggested such a drastic rise. But the group decided they wanted to have a real impact, by sponsoring traveling exhibitions and sometimes even programs at the Whitney itself. We were delighted they’d identified with the Museum and its needs so quickly.

Among many examples of the national committee’s munificent spirit, I recall a dinner in our apartment at the time of the national committee’s second meeting in New York. I’d invited Marylou and Sonny Whitney (Marylou has always been vice chairman, and a high-spirited, generous one she is), Tom and Bunty Armstrong, Laura Lee and Bob Woods from Los Angeles, Dathel and Tommy Coleman from New Orleans, Anne and Brendan Gill, Jerry Zipkin, who knew everything about everyone, Charlotte Curtis, on the editorial board of the Times, and new members Bebe and Crosby Kemper of Kansas City. Marylou exclaimed in wonder when she first glimpsed Crosby’s handsome six-foot seven-and-a-half-inch frame in our living room, “Why Crosby Kemper!! I haven’t seen you since I was selling war bonds in Kansas City in the forties! You haven’t changed a bit!” and flung her arms about his barely reachable neck. He turned pink with pleasure while his new wife Bebe looked astounded. Determined not to let the opportunity pass, Marylou plunged right on.

“Now you must meet my niece Flora, she’s the head of the Museum you know, and she needs lots of money, you must give her something extraordinary.”

Crosby said, a bit bewildered, “Of course, yes, what would you like? What does the Museum need?”

“Oh, how wonderful!” I said, madly stalling, with no idea of the extent of his fortune. Should I ask for a new typewriter for an office or a new building?

I took a deep breath. “We’ve been longing for a beautiful painting by Georgia O’Keeffe, one she’ll only sell to a museum.”

We planned a big party for the fiftieth anniversary of the Museum’s founding, which Gertrude had announced on January 6, 1930. It was to be on Gertrude’s birthday, January 9, 1980, in honor of all the artists in the Museum’s collection. Mayor Edward I. Koch proclaimed that week as “Whitney Museum of American Art Fiftieth Anniversary week in New York City.” On the cover of the brochure was Jasper Johns’s beautiful poster of the two flags, and inside, along with greetings from Governor Hugh L. Carey, the Mayor’s announcement, and a short introduction by my mother, was a list of the 944 artists represented in the permanent collection who were invited. And so many of them came! It was a joyous occasion. The evening party was nostalgic and fun, with big posters on the walls of my grandmother and her work, the Museum on Eighth Street, and Juliana Force. Paintings Gertrude had given the Museum when it opened in 1931 hung in the galleries. Fiona and I wore fringed brocade jackets my grandmother — her great-grandmother — had bought while on her honeymoon in Japan. They were a bit frayed, but evocative.

I had the good fortune to attend the first annual exhibition of the Whitney Museum when it opened on Eighth Street. It was a spectacular opening.

Juliana Force presided regally, the building was indeed beautiful, warm and friendly. Our paintings looked magnificent. And there was an unlimited flow of booze! By midnight the artists and the place had become a glorious shambles — sandwiches ground into the carpets, cigarette butts everywhere, even in the outstretched hands of some sculptures, and happily drunken artists passing out. Mrs. Force had two big strong men in livery standing by — and at a nod from her, these men began carrying drunks out of the Eighth Street entrance and stacking them on the sidewalk like cord wood.

It was a magnificent, never-to-be-forgotten opening. I only regale you with this account on the off chance that you were not present.

Bless Juliana Force, the Whitney Museum, and you.

In December 1979, Jack Baur, Mother, and I had a Christmas lunch at Les Pleiades. We felt at home in its cozy ambiance with big mural paintings of France on the walls, and a familiar menu: cold poached salmon or bass on the buffet table, perfect salade Niçoise, omelettes, and on Mondays fluffy cheese soufflé. Sotheby’s was still a block away on Madison, and Mum’s old friend, John Marion, renowned auctioneer, was at the next table with a client.

My mother and I loved and respected Jack, and were sorry to hear it when he began giving his negative views of Tom. “Trendy.” “Star-struck.” “Lacking artistic judgment.” Despite Jack’s criticisms, all made from a safe distance, we had a lovely time, Jack and Mum reminiscing about the good old days as people no longer deeply involved can do. As I do, today.

At Sotheby’s, after lunch, John Marion sold a Persian manuscript Mum had inherited from her parents, who had inherited it from their parents, for the benefit of the Museum. Sitting on the edge of our chairs, willing more bids with all our energies, we were disappointed when it went for $44,000 instead of the $50,000 to $80,000 estimated price.

One fine spring day Everett Fahey, the erudite young director of the Frick Collection, invited me for lunch in his upstairs lair. Ceremoniously, he poured ancient sherry as we gazed out the French windows at his garden, where magnolias, daffodils, and blue pansies bloomed luxuriantly. Immediately enchanted by Everett’s openness and enthusiasm — and his good looks! — I relaxed happily on a tapestry-covered chair at a Renaissance table. After a bit of museum gossip, Everett said casually, “Your mother has, I think, a very beautiful Turner. Does she, or do you, have any idea of its worth?”

Of course, we didn’t. I guessed, vaguely, $250,000. He laughed and said that wasn’t even close. When I told him Mum lugged it back and forth between Westbury and New York in the back of her station wagon he was scandalized. “You should really have it appraised,” he said. “I imagine it’s worth several million.”

Discussions ensued, in the family, and with a few others. Passed down to her from her mother, who had inherited it from her husband, who had been left it by his uncle, Oliver Payne, Mum felt attached to it, but she finally decided to sell the painting — urged, I now know, by her lawyer, who realized how little cash she would have in her estate. She would give a substantial sum to the Museum, however, making, as Tom said, “the first, and most significant, gift … which launched this campaign for the future.”

I still remember when John Pope-Hennessey, aristocratic head of the Met’s European Paintings department, came to see Juliet and Her Nurse. The apartment at 10 Gracie Square was elegantly shabby; I couldn’t even find the teacups. Our conversation was stilted because his British accent was so thick I could hardly understand a word he said. The Turner, as later described by Rita Rief in the Times, is “painted in his soft, dreamy style that anticipated Impressionism.” It depicts a festive scene in Venice, with crowds watching fireworks near San Marco, and Juliet and her nurse watching from a balcony lit by the flaming sky. The painting hung on green boiseries, over a Bechstein grand piano also painted green and decorated inside with illustrations for La Fontaine’s fables. It glowed in the gentle light from the East River. John was pacing slowly back and forth, looking intently, his concentration becoming absolute. We were silent for many minutes. I sensed how badly he wanted this painting for the Met.

I have a photograph of my mother sitting at Sotheby’s, on May 29, 1980, at 11:00 A.M. Elegant as always, in black trousers and a yellow and black silk print jacket, she sits between my brother Whit and me. John Marion leans over her, smiling, while Mum seems to be saying “Ooooh,” as she often did, with what Alida Morgan, a young cousin, calls “her fluted mouth.” And in fact she was excited, rather than sad. As John Marion described it in the “Flora” book:

“One of the highlights of my career occurred on May 29, 1980 when I was privileged to share with Mrs. Miller one moment that combined two of her greatest passions — the Whitney Museum and her Turner. … She knew it would be widely sought after, as did I. Neither of us, however, could anticipate that it would make auction history. … When I leaned forward to wish her good luck she whispered in response to me, ‘You’ll do just fine.’ Inspired by that gracious reassurance, I took my position. A hush fell over the room as I began the auction. Rather quickly the bidding passed the $2.5 million mark. The silence in the auction room was punctuated only by the sound from the two bidders — one over the telephone calling from London, the other present in the salesroom. In 6 minutes 4 seconds, I brought the hammer down for a record $6.4 million … the highest price at that time ever paid at auction for any work of art. … I will not forget this moment of history. Nor will I forget the special style and grace of the woman who made it possible.”

We were only disappointed that an individual, rather than a museum, had acquired Juliet. Someday, I hope, this wonderful work of art will settle where the public can see it.

The money from the sale that my mother gave the Museum paid for much of Michael Grave’s design fees for the addition to the Whitney that was never built.

For trustees, their spouses, and Michael Graves, in 1981 we had the “Ganzes’ and the 2 Floras” party. Bright red invitations bid guests to drinks at the Ganzes’, then across the hall to my mother’s apartment for dinner. On my black dress I pinned Gertrude’s parrot pin, exquisitely crafted with bright jewels and enamel, and felt just great. Trustees gasped at the Ganzes’ Picassos and Johnses, Rauschenbergs and Stellas. Then, next door, at seven round tables with pink tablecloths, green napkins, freesias and poppies, after duck and snowpeas, trustees made exuberant speeches with the pears and chocolate. A happy tone prevailed, and Mum was the queen of the evening. At eighty-four, still beautiful, elegant in her black sequins, she greeted everyone with sparkling warmth, making them feel welcome, part of her family.

How I miss Mum, still! How blessed I was to not only love my mother and be loved by her, but to work with her. While I had been grieved by her absences when I was a child, as she’d been by her own mother’s, we’d become close later, just as she and Gertrude had. She encouraged me in all I tried to do at the Whitney. She supported me with unfailing interest. She seemed delighted with everything Tom and I told her about. She always cared.

I remember so well the last day she came to the city, when she visited Michael Graves and me just a few months before she died in the summer of 1986. She wanted to see his final design for the Museum’s expansion. Although her failing eyesight made it difficult to see the drawings, she looked as hard as she could, and was enthusiastic about them and about our descriptions. She couldn’t have guessed how much that meant at a time when we were discouraged by the opposition the design had aroused.

Feeling it was vital for the institution, she wanted the family to keep its connection with the Whitney. How happy Fiona’s involvement with the Museum would make her today!

Twenty-two