The Boston Raphael. Belinda Rathbone

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СКАЧАТЬ movements and quiet transactions, of indisclosable sources and whispered information – a necessity surely in the museum world, and something that Rorimer had refined beyond the wildest dreams of espionage.”² He was also not very collegial, and Rathbone had never warmed to him.

      In their choice of Hoving as Rorimer’s successor, the Met trustees sought to embrace a larger public, a museum more committed to education and outreach. The Rorimer years were ones of “consolidation and careful management,” according to museum historian Calvin Tomkins, but now it was time for a leader more inclined to innovation, someone more like Rorimer’s predecessor, Francis Henry Taylor, who had boldly moved the Met out of its postwar doldrums. “The pendulum had swung once again,” wrote Tomkins of Hoving’s appointment. “Youth and energy and fresh ideas were at a premium, and the soundest policy might well lie in the calculated risk.”³

      Hoving and Rathbone were both native New Yorkers, but from different parts of town. Hoving was born to privilege – his father was chairman of Tiffany & Co. – and young Tom grew up in a spacious apartment on Park Avenue, attended private schools, and summered in fashionable Edgartown. Rathbone was the penurious son of a wallpaper salesman from Washington Heights, attended public schools, and spent his summers at his grandmother’s house in the sleepy upstate village of Greene, New York. But while there were differences in their backgrounds, their personalities shared the essential traits of the modern museum director: a natural instinct to popularize and to publicize, and a readiness to perform for the crowd, the camera, and the microphone. “A foe of stuffiness,”⁴ as the press described Rathbone when he arrived in Boston in 1955, was a term that could equally have applied to the young Tom Hoving twelve years later. As historian Karl Meyer put it, Rathbone was “an older and tweedier version of Hoving.”5

      Rathbone was older, but tweedy would hardly describe the image he projected in his portrait by photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1966, which shows him as he typically presented himself – perfectly groomed and meticulously dressed, with a flair that walked the line between conservative and sporty, a casual, colorful elegance that is the museum man’s special turf. Six foot two and weighing in at an approximately maintained 180 pounds, he understood the language of clothes, the quality of materials, and how to strike a pose. Stylish as he was, Perry Rathbone did not give off an air of privilege as much as pride in his role in serving the public. Despite, or perhaps because of, his privileged upbringing, “Hoving didn’t have the class that Perry had, or the elegance,”⁶ according to the art dealer Warren Adelson, who knew them both.

      Hoving was something of a bad boy, capricious and unpredictable, a natural show-off. Rathbone strove to make people feel comfortable, while Hoving rather enjoyed making them squirm. Both Rathbone and Hoving had an appetite for challenge and a high tolerance for risk. But Rathbone was also a stickler for accuracy, while Hoving was perfectly comfortable with the occasional white lie or colorful embellishment of the truth. He brought to the director’s job a dash of the high-end salesman, with that hint of condescension, along with the savvy of a city politician. These were interesting ingredients, and perhaps just the ones needed to dodge the bullets that would certainly come flying before he was through with the Metropolitan Museum, and it with him. In retrospect, Hoving was perhaps better prepared than Rathbone for the changes that were then taking place in the museum world, and more adept at directing them to his advantage. As the directors lined up for their banner year, it was going to be an interesting dance to watch.

      In 1965 Rathbone began the monumental task before him, to “lay pipe” for 1970. A centennial, as some wise person told him as he entered the planning stages, is a fate worse than death. By the time it was over, he would come to understand the full weight of those words.

      For the first time in its history, the Boston Museum embarked on a capital campaign drive. Looking forward to its second century, securing the funding was a foremost priority in achieving its goals. In the 1960s inflation was changing the economic outlook in ways that no one could have predicted, and in ways that made everything going forward unpredictable. The museum’s endowment went down, while the pressures on its financial resources went up. The cost of mounting exhibitions was suddenly many times what it had been just a few years before, with insurance, travel, and construction costs rising exponentially. At the same time it also began to be clear that professional curators could no longer afford to live on the modest “gentlemen’s” salaries that used to be par for the course. There was the high cost of living, and there was the high cost of running a museum. Until recently the Museum’s endowment had paid for 90 percent of its operating expenses. Just as the public’s expectations climbed, inflation outpaced the endowment revenue. Just as the American public was becoming accustomed to the idea of improvements in every sector of public life as an inalienable right, the postwar economy began sputtering for the first time.

      

      Architectural rendering, George Robert White Wing, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1969.

      The biggest challenge was the need for space; with its increased staff and operations developed under Rathbone’s direction, the Museum had outgrown its building. A whole new wing was conceived to expand and improve its activities. At a projected 45,000 square feet, this new wing would increase exhibition space and relocate the administrative offices, library, restaurant, and education department. Physically it would join the two extensions at the west end of the building to form an outdoor courtyard for the display of modern sculpture.⁷ Phase one of the program was to add additional space to the decorative arts wing at the East end to house the Forsyth Wickes collection in meticulously reproduced interiors of the benefactor’s home in Newport, as specified by his will.⁸

      Beginning with the urgent need to publicize the campaign, Rathbone moved the versatile and affable Diggory Venn over from the education department to direct the production of fund-raising materials and generally field all publicity efforts. The Challenge of Greatness, a lavishly illustrated booklet, detailed the Museum’s needs, breaking them down into their various categories: bricks and mortar, staff salaries, operations, and last but not least, acquisitions. After a long trustees’ meeting in October 1965 to discuss fund-raising tactics ahead, Rathbone recorded in his journal the reluctance he faced in introducing the bold facts of raising money to the Yankee old guard. Clearly, they had come to take their museum’s financial health for granted, to believe that they were well set up for the future, thanks to the generous and farsighted founders of the pre-graduated income tax days. As Rathbone discovered to his dismay, “There was a conspicuous dislike of the direct appraisal of what our trustees must give.”⁹

      A few days later Rathbone’s mood was more optimistic, following the first “cultivation” meeting for the Centennial Development Fund Drive in the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel in Copley Square. Helen Bernat, a new trustee with fresh energy, had arranged a luncheon party for a group of prospective donors and guests of honor, including Senator Edward Kennedy, Boston mayor John Collins, and William Paley, chairman of CBS. “A bit of a strain for all concerned,” recorded Rathbone, “but anxiety melted with the success of the proceedings. Mrs. B. spoke beautifully and president Ralph Lowell was at his best. Then a slide presentation with a tape recording followed by my speech which went over very well. We are encouraged. For the first time outside the Museum family I pronounced our need – $20,000,000.”^{10, 11} In 1965, when a first-class postage stamp cost five cents, the Eastern shuttle between New York and Boston was fifteen dollars, and an average family income was less than $6,000 a year, this was a breathtaking figure indeed.

      When Rathbone took the helm in 1955, the MFA was widely known as the Old Lady of Huntington Avenue – respected, staid, rich, but old-fashioned. The trustees knew full well that the Old Lady had fallen behind the times, and she required a major fix. Arriving straight from his conspicuous success as director of the City Art Museum of Saint Louis,¹² Rathbone appeared СКАЧАТЬ