The Boston Raphael. Belinda Rathbone
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Название: The Boston Raphael
Автор: Belinda Rathbone
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9781567925401
isbn:
Frances Weeks Hallowell was the first woman to join the MFA board of trustees. From the start, Frannie and Perry were natural allies. At a welcoming dinner for the new director ten years earlier, they were seated next to each other, and Perry could see immediately that this bright, attractive, and socially connected woman could be a major asset to the cause, and not just as a trustee. To that old boy network she brought her feminine talent for social entertaining as well as the tactical mind of a politician. In another age she might well have been running for public office. Her father, Sinclair Weeks, was onetime Republican senator for Massachusetts and secretary of commerce under President Eisenhower in the 1950s. As his eldest child, Frannie learned firsthand from his example and inherited his political acumen, as well as his ambition. It came naturally to her to be a step ahead of the game, and her mind teemed with ideas. Over dinner on the evening when they first met, Perry asked Frannie if she would be willing to organize a group of women volunteers for the MFA. “Will I?” she replied with a big smile. “I can’t wait!”3 Unbeknownst to Perry, Frannie had conjured up the notion of a women’s committee of volunteers almost as soon as she was elected to the board just a few months before. With Rathbone in charge, her idea took flight.
The tenth anniversary party was typical of Hallowell’s genius, and Rathbone was right in awarding her the lion’s share of credit in the creation of that magical evening. But perhaps what was harder for him to define – the real magic – was the spirit of festivity and celebration that he himself had inspired. By now his skeptics had taken a backseat, and the old guard had laid down their arms. He was loved by his staff, and also by his public. His energy and optimism had pervaded every corner of the Museum. He had galvanized his team to the cause, and the cause was never far from his thoughts.
Rathbone understood, as well as anyone, that the party served more purposes than to flatter and entertain the MFA’s inner circle. Nothing works like marking an occasion to remind people of their good fortune, and also their debt. The major donors were there, and Rathbone was especially pleased to see Alvan Fuller, the heir to his family’s collection of old master paintings, who had come in specially for the occasion from his winter home in Palm Beach. In the midst of the noisy celebration Fuller took Rathbone aside to mention his promise of a gift to the Museum of a late Rembrandt. “No doubt the spirit of the moment inspired the resolution,” observed Rathbone. “One cannot underestimate the importance of such events.”4
Perry T. Rathbone, Frannie Hallowell, and Ralph Lowell cutting cake at the tenth anniversary of Ladies Committee, 1966.
While there was much to be proud of, Rathbone was in no position to rest on his crown of laurels. For with the tangible achievements of the past ten years behind him, he now faced his most challenging years as a museum director. For those were challenging times in every way. Looming in the background of the Museum’s cultural renaissance in the 1960s was the moody aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy and the sudden escalation of the Vietnam War. For America, 1965 had been one hell of a year. On February 6 President Johnson ordered the bombing of a North Vietnamese army camp near Dong Hoi in retaliation for their attack on a US military outpost. In March he increased the pressure with continuous air assaults and soon afterward sent in the first round of American troops while the Vietcong tenaciously stood their ground. On February 21 Malcolm X was assassinated in the midst of his speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. In March Martin Luther King Jr. led a civil rights march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery. In August President Johnson secured the passage of the Voting Rights Act, giving all African Americans the right to vote. But just five days later, race riots erupted in the black ghetto of Watts in Los Angeles. A confrontation between a black resident and a white policeman escalated into a five-day urban nightmare. More than thirty people died in the melee, and more than two hundred buildings were completely destroyed by fire. From the point of view of many African Americans, among others, the Voting Rights Act was too little, too late.
They were not the only segment of the population that was dissatisfied. A generation of baby boomers was coming of age, and they were not necessarily inclined to model themselves on their parents’ example. Suspicious of their central government, disenchanted with the American class system, and sympathetic to the underdogs of society, they railed against materialism, hypocrisy, and the apparent complacency of the older generation. “I can’t get no satisfaction,” ranted Mick Jagger to the angry twang of electric guitars. The song was a number one hit in 1965, its rage touching a hot spot in the American psyche and charging the airwaves with a menacing undercurrent. Everyone had something to complain about, and everyone had the right to be heard. It was all part of a rapidly changing social landscape.
One of the greatest personal thrills of Rathbone’s directorship had been to forge the MFA’s connection with the Kennedy White House. The Kennedy years made Boston a star on the political and cultural map, and its former senator elected president put Massachusetts in the spotlight. With Boston as his hometown and Harvard as his alma mater, John F. Kennedy drew from the Harvard faculty many of his closest advisors, including Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, and McGeorge Bundy. At the inauguration ceremonies Boston’s own Cardinal Cushing gave the invocation for the first Irish Catholic president in US history. Many notables of Boston’s political and cultural scene were invited to the inaugural celebrations, including Mr. and Mrs. Perry T. Rathbone.5
For the first time in Rathbone’s working life, there was a First Lady in the White House with a genuine interest and background in the arts. Rathbone immediately grasped how powerful a message this could be for every museum in the land, and for Boston in particular. “It means a great deal in our country, where art hasn’t had the sort of inborn respect it has had for generations in Europe,” he told the Christian Science Monitor of Jacqueline Kennedy’s impact on the arts, “to have someone take it so seriously and recognize its importance. I think it will be a great boon to American culture in general.”6 He seized the moment to make the connection right away, for all too often Boston stood in the shadow of New York and Washington. When he learned that Mrs. Kennedy was redecorating the White House, searching for appropriate pieces of American furniture, decorative arts, and paintings, Rathbone made it known through John Walker, director of the National Gallery, in Washington, that the MFA would gladly lend works of art to the cause. With her famous soft-spoken charm, the First Lady responded enthusiastically, and Rathbone had the distinct pleasure of selecting two dozen works of art from the MFA for her to choose from.
Perry T. Rathbone and Jacqueline Kennedy, the White House, April 1961.
She chose eleven – for the State Dining Room, George Healy’s portrait of Daniel Webster (to be hung directly across from the full-length portrait of Abraham Lincoln by the same artist), and for the family’s private quarters, watercolors by American masters with special ties to Boston: Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Maurice Prendergast, and John Singer Sargent, “helping to add a New England flavor”7 to their domestic scene. The story made for a glamorous piece of publicity – to make known the genuine interest of the White House in what Boston had to offer – and Rathbone took full advantage of it.
Besides restoring the White House to its former glory, a top priority on the First Lady’s СКАЧАТЬ