This book is about believers. It concerns people who gave support and cheered others on; in writing it I have been lucky enough to experience a parallel generosity. Not only have various individuals made this project possible, but they have also given vast pleasure to the work on it.
Of the individuals about whom I have written, all who are still alive have been supportive and informative. Their graciousness and pervading wit have done much to enhance the research process. I owe deepest thanks to Eddie Warburg, who is as kind a person as I have ever met. Agnes Mongan and Lincoln Kirstein have also been extremely forthcoming and consistently helpful. Philip Johnson has been generous with his time and insights as well as his keen diplomatic guidance. Ted Dreier and Anni Albers have willingly unveiled new facts while transmitting much delight in so doing. Kay Swift has done much to evoke the ambience and creativity I have tried to capture.
Rona Roob, the Museum Archivist at the Museum of Modern Art, has demonstrated the true significance of her profession by being not merely extraordinarily efficient and thorough, but also imaginative and unstinting. Besides being a superb friend as always, Samuel W. Childs—James Thrall Soby’s stepson—has been wonderfully openhanded. Without help and guidance from these two sources, large parts of this book would not have been possible.
Vicky Wilson, the editor of this book, has functioned much in the tradition of a great and perceptive teacher. She has constantly inspired me to stretch my thinking and consider new possibilities. And she has applied her rigorous intelligence with unfailing kindness.
Gloria Loomis, my agent, has been my patron saint; I thank her for her warm understanding, alertness, and encouragement. Her guidance and acuity have become mainstays of my life.
Brenda Danilowitz has been unsparing in both her assistance and her advice on issues ranging from minute details to major issues of the text. Her diligence and meticulous attention to detail, all applied with profound intelligence and appreciation of the subject matter, have been essential to the completion of the text and to the assembling of the photographs and captions. Kelly Feeney has been gracious and efficient in her help with the preparation of the manuscript. Antoinette White has been perpetually supportive and helpful, attentive to myriad details with tremendous grace and efficiency. Louise Kennedy, ever marvelous, made numerous valuable comments on language and usage.
I am grateful to R. W. B. Lewis for his thoughtful suggestions on the structure of this book, for his help in getting me to the National Humanities Center to work on it, and for his marvelous encouragement in so many ways. To W. Robert Connor and Kent Mullican at the Center itself go my thanks for providing idyllic working conditions at an essential stage of my work.
My great thanks also go to William Koshland, Eleanor Bunce, Joan Lewisohn Kroll, and Andrea Warburg Kaufman for giving me their time and recollections. John Hollander aided considerably with his observations of the difference between the patronage that is my topic and the more current styles of backing art. Morris Dickstein contributed with some of his thoughts on the 1930s in general. And, many years ago, Jill Silverman, who was working on an oral history of the Wadsworth Atheneum, introduced me to much of the subject matter in this text with her enthusiastic and informative accounts of her interviews.
Certain institutions have been invaluable resources for work on this project. These include the Museum of Modern Art Archives and its library, the Dance Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, various branches of the Yale University Library system, and the Harvard University Archives. Janis Ekdahl at MoMA has been especially helpful. And even if I do not know their names, I want to express appreciation to the many other efficient and helpful people at these places. Special thanks go also to Priscilla England, David Sinkler, and Fiorella Superbi for both their diligence and the generosity of their approach. For their help with photographs I thank Mikki Carpenter, Everett C. Wilkie, Jr., Judith Ellen Johnson, Raymond Petke, Graham Southern, Kendall L. Crilly, Norman Kleeblatt, Anita Friedman, Athena Tacha Spear, Marc George Gershwin, A. Hassberger, Geraldine Auerbach, David Burnhauser, Marie-Luise Sternath, Eugene Gaddis, Jerry Thompson, and Ashley Ringshaw. For their aid in various ways I thank Clare Edwards, Phoebe Peebles, Maria Morris Hambourg, Mark Simon, Jane Schoelkopf, Ponjab Dashi, John B. Pierce, Jr., and Rita Waldron.
I am especially grateful to Lee Eastman, Sanford Schwartz, Nicholas Ohly, George Gibson, Julie Agoos, John Ryden, Barbara Ryden, Nancy Lewis, Stuart Van Dyke, Kendra Taylor, Julia McConnell, Rachel Wild, Phyllis Fitzgerald, and Phyllis Rose. I thank my father, Saul Weber, for that initial steer toward Santayana and all he represents, and my sister, Nancy Weber, for her unwavering good humor and support. I am grateful to my late mother, Caroline Fox Weber, in myriad ways. She helped nourish this book with her particular sense of Hartford, and with her insistent distinction between art patronage in its true function and in its guise as a vehicle for social hobnobbing.
One is especially lucky to have knowing counsel and good cheer close at home. Lucy Swift Weber and Charlotte Fox Weber may have been only eight and seven years old at the time of most of my work on this text, but that did not prevent them from raising the important issues at pivotal moments, and from providing constant refreshment and inspiration. And by dedicating this book to my wife, Katharine, I hope I give some glimmer of just how much all of her patience and help and insights have meant.
N.F.W.
Bethany, Connecticut
October 1991