Reverence for the Object Art museums in a changed world by JANET TASSEL

“…in every prosperous municipality in the land, in the next ten years the call is likely to come for thoroughly equipped curators and directors. Harvard must maintain its leadership in this new profession, the dignity of which is as yet imperfectly understood.”

o predicted Paul J. Sachs, A.B. 1900, the Fogg Mu- the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Their fellow speakers were seum’s associate director, in 1915, a few years before he James Wood of the Art Institute of Chicago; John Walsh, director created his own legendary graduate course, Fine Arts emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum; and Neil MacGregor of the S 15a, “Museum Work and Museum Problems,” known National Gallery of London, who was named director of the simply as “the museum course.” This year marks the British Museum last November. eightieth anniversary of the formal opening of the course in 1922. Much of the conversation this year about museum theory and In celebration, the Harvard Art Museums, under Cabot director practice uncannily resonates—and struggles—with the principles James Cuno, Ph.D. ’85, sponsored an academic-year-long series of enunciated by Sachs long ago. But today’s dilemmas, although fore- lectures and discussions—“Art Museums and the Public Trust”— seen by Sachs, are a world away from those he faced. The audience featuring seven of the world’s most distinguished art-museum di- laughed when de Montebello, for example, quoted a “fanciful” rectors. Four of them, carrying on the Sachs legacy and clearly flourish from a 1992 American Association of Museums report, Ex- “thoroughly equipped,” were Harvard-trained: Cuno; Philippe de cellence and Equity: Museums, said the article, must foster “the ability Montebello ’58, marking his twenty-fifth year as director of the to live productively in a pluralistic society and to contribute to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Glenn D. Lowry, Ph.D. ’85, of New resolution of the challenges we face as global citizens; museums York’s ; and Anne d’Harnoncourt ’65, of must help nurture a humane citizenry equipped to make informed

48 September - October 2002 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re choices in a democracy and to address the challenges and oppor- Every university fine arts department, he wrote, should be tunities of an increasingly global society.” As Cuno has written closely associated with a museum of its own—its labora- elsewhere, “Whew! What a responsibility!” No museum is meant tory…so conceived that it o≠ers a large number of men and to take such rhetoric, with its “misplaced emphasis…on social ac- women familiarity with the artistic heritage of our civiliza- tivism,” seriously, said de Montebello. But such pronouncements tion through contact with original works of art, and also only emphasize how the terms have changed since Sachs’s day, o≠ers to a limited number specialized scholarly training, to when the work of art was the responsibility. enable them to serve as teachers, critics, curators, or direc- Sachs designed the course, he said, “to implant scholarly stan- tors of museums….Traditional methods of study gave stu- dards in future museum workers; to educate their eyes so that dents little more than a literary approach to the masters, they might be helped to see.” Seeing and looking are stressed in rather than an appreciation of their works, [while] the mu- all his lectures and in his unpublished memoirs (which he wrote seum brings a student into actual contact with the objects in 1958, describing himself as “this short, fat, seventy-nine-year- of his study…. old author—whose feet rest always on a footstool when at By thus “combining historical investigation with the study of home—a happy, retired Harvard teacher, member of the mu- individual works of art,” the course would aim to produce seum guild and passionate collector of Master Drawings…”). “scholar-connoisseurs” who, after applying themselves to the

Painting by William II van Haecht (1593-1637), Art Collection of Cornelius vander Goest, Harvard Magazine 49 95-5746. now in the Rubens House museum in Antwerp, Belgium. ©Scala/Artprint inform Resource,ation, co nNewtact YorkHarvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re work, could “know by the senses” and by instinct that which is and Philadelphia to visit dealers, collectors, and museum profes- possible only through daily study of originals. (Sachs’s words sionals. Selected students would be invited to black-tie dinners echoed often in this year’s series. De Montebello stipulated, for at Shady Hill, where the food rivaled the art collections: “Anyone example, that “there must never be any question of a reproduc- who professes an interest in the fine arts and is indi≠erent to the tion, a simulacrum, taking the place of an original work of art.”) joys of the palate is suspect with me,” he quipped. And the con- To Sachs’s immense satisfaction, his dear friend, Fogg director versation rivaled both: guests included everybody who was any- Edward Waldo Forbes, grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was body in the arts and business. (Sachs—see facing page—had determined been a partner in the family firm of Goldman, Sachs.) He never to make of the Fogg not only a treasure house, but also a well- ceased stressing the importance of contacts, sharing with his equipped setting adapted for teaching purposes; that he students his list of 2,000 European and American dealers and meant it to be a workshop as well as a place of inspiration for collectors, every one of whom he knew personally. undergraduates and mature scholars. Free from the craze for But the course itself “did not ignore the responsibility of the size, uncompromising when it came to quality, Forbes…un- museum to the community…to improve the quality of life for all derstood sooner than others the importance of confronting citizens.” So notes art historian Sally Anne Duncan in “Paul J. students with original works of art. Sachs and the Institutionalization of Museum Culture between the World Wars,” her 2001 Tufts University doctoral dissertation. achs was a visionary indeed, but even he might not have Sachs’s emphasis, though always object-oriented, was practical. Spredicted that his museum course would become the most im- He insisted that students be conversant in several languages and portant program of its kind in the country. “Academic training in travel extensively (often he paid the way), but also “that training connoisseurship, the identification of a work of art by its quali- in drawing and painting should be provided”—for instance, in ties,” writes art dealer the studio course, “Meth- Richard Feigen, M.B.A ’54, ods and Process of Italian “was…born in the United Painting,” a hands-on States, at Harvard.” The workshop in fresco, gesso, course produced 388 stu- silverpoint, tempera, and dents, 341 of them taught other techniques. Thus ed- by Sachs himself until his “Academic training ucation “would eventually retirement in 1944, at least overtake inherited wealth 160 of whom ended up in connoisseurship was…born in as the determining factor holding the highest posi- in who would lead the mu- tions—as directors, assis- the United States, at Harvard.” seums of America….The tant directors, and cura- model of the impresario tors—in the most prestig- was transformed into that ious museums in the coun- of the expert.” try. A short list includes If Mondays were re- James Rorimer ’27, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of served for the close scrutiny of objects at Shady Hill, Fridays at the Art; Alfred H. Barr Jr., Ph.D. ’46, first director of the Museum of Fogg were lecture days, with talks by museum sta≠, visiting pro- Modern Art; Perry Rathbone ’33, former director of Boston’s Mu- fessionals, and scholars—often of great renown—and the stu- seum of Fine Arts; and John Walker ’30, former director of the Na- dents themselves. Assigned coursework included making an ar- tional Gallery; former Harvard professors Sydney Freedberg ’36, chitect’s drawing of the floor plan of the Fogg; inspecting the Ph.D. ’40, later the chairman of the department and acting director building daily with the superintendent for one week; describing in of the Fogg; archaeologist George M.A. Hanfmann, later the Fogg’s writing (from memory) all the pictures on the second floor; deliv- curator of ancient art; and John Coolidge ’35, later director of the ering docent talks on Sunday afternoons; drafting a presentation Fogg and Sachs’s successor in the museum course until its dis- on an unpublished object, with full bibliography and connoisseur- banding in 1968; and collector-entrepreneurs ’30, ial study; preparing a radio talk of 10 minutes on a Fogg exhibition; Edward Warburg ’30, and Joseph Pulitzer Jr. ’36. and assisting with the preparations for various exhibits. Thus did Today we might scarcely recognize Sachs’s teaching methods. the Fogg become the “laboratory” Sachs had envisioned. But the The museum course, taught Monday afternoons at his home, students were also required, for example, to research and present Shady Hill (formerly owned by Charles Eliot Norton), and Friday the history of the important museums of Europe, and to be seri- afternoons at the Fogg, was remembered fondly by students such ously au courant with all that was going on in the museums of New as Agnes Mongan, curator of drawings and later director of the England. If Sachs succeeded, his students would fit his ideal of a Fogg. Sachs would pass around priceless pieces from his own col- museum practitioner: “one with the passion of a collector, the lection, asking questions like, “What does this say to you?” preparation of an art historian, and the public service values and “There you would sit,” recalled Mongan, “with some incredibly management practices of a modern manager.” rare object in your own two hands, looking at it closely.” She re- There is general agreement,” recalled Sachs in his memoirs, membered, as examples, “a small bronze Assyrian animal, a Per- “that at Harvard we blazed a trail.” But, as James Cuno never tires sian miniature; in another case, a Trecento ivory, occasionally a of pointing out, the trail is still being blazed, not least by Cuno small Khmer bronze head.” himself, who will soon be blazing new trails of his own: in Janu-

During winter vacations, he took his students to New York ary he becomes director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in Lon- ALL FRAMES: PHOTO DISK/GETTY IMAGES

50 September - October 2002 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re Portrait of the Artist as a Director he prototype of the silver-spoon baby, TPaul Joseph Sachs was born in Novem- ber 1878 in , the eldest son of Samuel Sachs (a partner in the international banking firm of Goldman, Sachs & Com- pany) and Louisa Goldman Sachs (the daughter of partner Marcus Goldman). His happy childhood included trips to Europe with his father that featured frequent visits to the great art museums. He attended his Uncle Julius Sachs’s School for Boys and Col- legiate Institution, whose graduates in- cluded the scions of New York’s most promi- nent Jewish families. There could be no possible choice of col- lege for him but Harvard. But in 1895, in “a Collector, connoisseur, hands-on teacher, Paul J. Sachs blended humiliation that rankled him for years” (ac- appreciation for art objects with the cording to art historian Sally Anne Duncan), practicalities of museumship. he failed his entrance exams, passing Ger- man, French, and history, but flunking Latin, Greek, math, and hell” of getting such an appointment. As Duncan explains it, science. After being tutored intensively for a year and studying “Forbes saw money in Paul Sachs,” a link to successful Jewish diligently in front of a poster that read “I must, I will, I can,” he alumni and art patrons, to the banking community, and not was finally accepted. At Harvard, not surprisingly, he focused least, to potential contributions from Sachs himself. To Sachs, on French and other modern languages, philosophy, and par- writes Duncan, the move represented a kind of continuum: he ticularly the fine arts. One of his principal influences was called it “a short leap from the hallowed atmosphere of the Charles Eliot Norton, whose course, “The History of the Fine banking house to the construction of a correspondingly Arts as Connected with Literature,” was the first of its kind in rarified space in the museum, a space which established a well- United States. (Sachs later purchased Norton’s home, Shady ordered universe for the presentation of capital of a di≠erent Hill, for his own family.) sort….” During the summers, Sachs worked at the family firm. After During World War I, the five-foot, two-inch Sachs, who was graduating in 1900, he joined the business, becoming partner a too short for the armed forces, served as an ambulance driver year later. One of his Harvard professors, Charles Herbert and administrator in Paris for the American Red Cross. When Moore, had o≠ered him an assistantship, but it paid only $750, he returned to Harvard, he was appointed assistant professor and his father had refused to supplement the salary. “But…,” he of fine arts. He moved steadily up the academic ladder, eventu- wrote in his memoirs, “I vowed never to give up the thought of ally becoming department chairman; in 1932, he was appointed an ultimate professional career in art.” a visiting professor at the Sorbonne and lectured at other lead- In 1909, Edward Waldo Forbes became director of the Fogg ing European universities—a major coup that introduced the Museum, and in 1911, he asked Sachs to join the Fogg’s visiting Old World to American achievements in art research and mu- committee. “This invitation is an opening wedge,” Sachs excit- seum management. In 1942 Harvard awarded him an honorary edly told his wife. “My foot is in the door.” In 1913, he was ap- doctorate as a “lover of the fine arts, who deserted a business pointed chairman of the visiting committee, and within a year, career to become an accomplished teacher.” Forbes offered him the assistant directorship of the Fogg. As chairman of the committee on personnel of the American Sachs lost no time in accepting, and soon retired from business. Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and His- “A great many people on ‘the Street’ thought I was a damn fool toric Monuments in War Areas during World War II, Sachs re- and couldn’t understand it,” he later recalled. One letter, from cruited many of his former students to hunt down looted art- an English colleague, said, “I always knew you were fond of works and oversee their return to their owners; more than 15 ‘queer things,’ but never guessed you would hide away in a million items were located. He and Forbes retired from the musty museum and hobnob with Egyptian mummies.” Fogg in 1944, but Sachs continued to teach the museum course At first he did not receive a salary, but even so, as Forbes ob- through the 1947-48 academic year as an emeritus professor and serves in his memoirs, “these days,” someone with Sachs’s lack honorary curator of drawings. He died peacefully in his library, of academic credentials “wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in surrounded by his books, prints, and art, in February 1965.

Photograph courtesy of the Harvard University Archives Harvard Magazine 51 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re don (see page 73). As if speaking autobiographically, Cuno says, the highest university level, have the resources to provide their “Harvard continues to have a powerful impact on the shape of in- students contact with original works of art on a regular basis, I stitutions here and abroad. Twenty-four of the world’s current feel that if students don’t get it here at Harvard, it’s a shame.” art museum directors are Harvard-trained.” Called by some the last of the Sachsians, David Gordon Mitten, In other words, the Sachs legacy to some extent lives on. For ex- Ph.D. ’62, Loeb professor of classical art and archaeology and ample, in its stipendiary internship program, Harvard trains some Hanfmann curator of ancient art, embodies the old ideology-free, 12 to 14 interns a year in both curatorship and conservation. This pure connoisseurial love for objects. Of his class on Greek program, says Ivan Gaskell, the Fogg’s Winthrop curator of paint- coinage, he reports, “Twice a week we have trays of coins, and ings, sculpture, and decorative arts, who ran the course for its ini- after I’ve explained them, we put on gloves and hand them around. Oh sure, they’re often my own coins, well-worn examples which will eventually come to Harvard, but most of them are from the Sackler. In my class on the Aegean Bronze Age, I bring in Anatolian pottery and Cycladian statuettes and Neolithic pottery from the museum collection. We use copies, too, but I think han- dling the actual objects or frag- ments makes a tremendous im- pact on people; it gives them the immediacy, the authenticity, the actual physical contact with ob- jects that have survived for, gosh, 3,500 years!” The Museum According to Sachs s to sachs’s vision for mu- Aseums, his museum course, writes Sally Anne Duncan, “be- came the normative framework for museums in America...Kantian ideals of beauty and connoisseur- ial methods coexist[ing] side by side with bureaucratic notions of tial three years, is a “true apprenticeship,” our James Cuno in expertise and progressive ideals of enlightened leadership.” His “modern equivalent of the Sachs museum his milieu—the theology, for it was no less, included the precept that the work of Fogg. To his left course.” As Gaskell describes it, “First-class is ’s a museum director was not an occupation but a calling, as custo- pre- or post-doctoral students, or their Woman with a dian of the museum’s unique, almost sacral, apartness. One of his equivalent in conservation, join a lab or a cu- Chignon (1901); students, Pennsylvania State professor Alfred Christ-Janer, G ’40, ratorial department for an academic year—or Claude Monet’s learned at Sachs’s feet that The Gare Saint- two, as in the case of the Busch-Reisinger in- Lazare:Arrival of even as the educational institution should not become em- ternship. Some are Harvard students; the a Train (1877) broiled in the every-day conflicts of the world, but should others are students from elsewhere in this is in the back- serve in a higher capacity of examiner and of critic, of coun- country and abroad. They take part in the ground. cilor and of judge, so the museum cannot a≠ord to enter day-to-day life of their departments under into the arena, to let the dust of battle cloud the eyes to ul- the guidance of curators, and undertake a research project that timate values. might result in a publication or an exhibition.” And, he adds, “an Sachs insisted that the museum must remain “firmly in the con- impressive number of these interns have gone on to prestigious cu- trol of a trained elite, [which would] maintain standards of quality ratorial work all over the world.” independent of the contingent values of daily life.” A hierarchical The Sachs legacy also survives in those few courses that utilize canon of art must remain “an organizing principle” of America’s the museum’s choice collections. Weyerhaeuser curator of prints art museums: “The canon [is] an agreed-upon compilation of Marjorie Cohn, A.M. ’61, whose course in the history of prints uses works assigned the highest aesthetic power by the historians, crit- the original wherever possible, says, “There’s no substitute for the ics, and curators who [are] its guardians.” Accordingly, museums original print. The qualities of the surface and the ink, the qualities “must direct public taste…and not be dictated [to] by it.” of texture and reflection of light, just never come through in a re- Of course, practical man that he was, Sachs foresaw problems, production.” Given that “practically no schools, except those at among them,

52 September - October 2002 Photograph by Jim Harrison 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re …ideological dilemmas presented by the public display of est achievements often add up to a good deal more than the sum rare and costly objects…entitlement versus access, excel- of the social and material circumstances of its creation.” lence versus equality, private revelation versus public The appointment of the controversial Clark (who was then at instruction, object-based knowledge versus text-based in- UCLA, and who left Harvard for Berkeley in 1988) was vigorously terpretation, universality versus multivocality, and perma- championed by many in the department who considered him a nence versus change. brilliant young Turk. But the decision was bitterly opposed by Which, as we shall see—and as reflected in the directors’ deliber- Freedberg, among others, and probably led to Freedberg’s early ations this anniversary year—brings us right up to the present. retirement from Harvard in 1983. One former graduate student told Lynne Munson, author of Exhibitionism, that Clark laid down The Battle Joined the rule, “If you were T.J. Clark’s student, you couldn’t study with hatever our wistful remembrance of things past, Sydney Freedberg”—and Clark was Wthere can be no denying that art museums are di≠erent formally reprimanded at one point by places from what they were several decades ago. Blame it on the the visiting committee for intolerance sixties. Nothing was una≠ected by the sixties’ social and moral and for violating students’ academic and intellectual upheavals. It was during this period, let us recall, freedom. that all hell broke loose at Harvard and other campuses. And this Other factors led to the vulnerabil- was also the era that ity and alienation felt around the Fogg saw many traditional in the eighties, factors such as Aga courses, among them Khan professor of Islamic art Oleg the venerable museum Grabar’s term as department chair- course, disbanded. man from 1977 to 1982. According to Of course, arguments Munson, Grabar, who had once “an- against hierarchy and nounced that he no longer wanted to elitism in art predated be called an art historian…but a visual the sixties; Sachs was semiotician…, and a small well aware of the muted but growing coterie of groundswell of opinion like-minded professors proclaiming “every man advocated disassociating his own historian,” as the department from the Carl Becker put it in Fogg and the connois- 1932. In the years be- seurial image embodied tween the two world by its collection.” In 1990, wars, rumblings against Cambridge University- the old-boy network at such educated Norman Bry- places as the Fogg were height- son, then head of the ened by “a widening discourse Some of Sachs’s comparative arts program at the University that included Socialist criticism protégés in the of Rochester, was chosen to replace Clark. world of art, and Popular Front invective,” as clockwise from Bryson had never trained in art history, but well as “New Deal arts initiatives, upper left: the rather in literature and linguistics. Accord- which embraced crafts and other Fogg’s John ing to Munson, “Bryson has argued that the grassroots” activities, observes Coolidge; Perry contemporary art historian may completely Rathbone of the Duncan. Museum of Fine disconnect his interpretation from any re- Nevertheless, in spite of its Arts; MOMA’s sponsible understanding of a work’s original shortcomings—clubbiness, prefer- Alfred H. Barr Jr.; meaning…calling for an art history driven and collector ments, and old du≠ers—the Fogg Joseph Pulitzer Jr. by ‘pragmatics,’ in which interpretations tradition, as art critic and editor of are preferred on the basis of the desirabil- The New Criterion Hilton Kramer ity of their social consequences.” Bryson writes, “may be accurately described…as an example of cultural returned to London in 1999. elitism that serves the public interest.” And it did serve, says “Harvard got away from Paul Sachs’s principles dramatically a Kramer, until it expired with Harvard’s “fateful” appointment of generation or two ago,” says the Met’s Philippe de Montebello. the self-proclaimed Marxist Timothy J. Clark as professor of fine In fact, he continues, “If you go to the College Art Association, arts in 1980. By that time, says Kramer, the “Fogg tradition was al- connoisseurship is practically a dirty word.” And J. Carter ready on the wane…its days…clearly numbered. The cultural in- Brown ’56, M.B.A. ’58, former director of Washington’s National surgency of the Sixties had done its work at Harvard, no less than Gallery, lamented shortly before his recent death, “One pines for elsewhere in the academic world…,” eviscerating rigorous tradi- Sachs’s great emphasis on the object, connoisseurship, and the tions and making room for “avowedly left-wing radicalism,” the aesthetic experience.” By the year 2000, according to Richard purpose of which, like the writings of Clark himself, was and “is Feigen, in town for a dinner at the Fogg, to destroy—or, as we say nowadays, deconstruct—the very idea back on hallowed ground and basking in the old academic that art is in any sense an autonomous enterprise or that its high- atmosphere, I happened to use the word “connoisseurship”

Photographs courtesy of the Harvard University Archives Harvard Magazine 53 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re in a conversation with one of the faculty. After all, there I the program, museums were being developed, they were new or was in its very cradle. My friend said, wryly, I thought, “We just getting started around the country; they needed to be sta≠ed don’t use that word around here anymore.” with curators and directors, and he was besieged with requests Harvard, he sighs, “had come a long way since the days of Paul for people. Among the talents one needed in order to build a mu- Sachs and Sydney Freedberg.” He might have added the name of seum and its collection was, of course, connoisseurship. Today we any prominent Sachs student, like MOMA’s Alfred H. Barr Jr., who are preparing people to perpetuate those museums.” famously described the daily work of museum professionals as “the Museums today, say curators Gaskell and Cohn, are also of ne- conscientious, continuous, resolute distinction of quality from cessity more professional than in the cozy old days. Says Cohn, “We don’t sit and type our la- bels on our own typewriters and use white-out on colored paper labels the way we used to. We’re much less casual about everything. Take loans. It used to be if you wanted to borrow something you called up Paul and said, ‘I really need this piece for a week. Can you send it over?’ And somebody drove it over in the back of the car.” At Harvard, this atmos- pheric change, says Cuno, “coincided with a big change in the makeup of the visit- ing committee, once a joint committee for both the de- partment and the mediocrity”—which is to say, connois- James Wood museum, and now seurship. In any event, concludes Feigen, of the Art split in two, one for Institute of “Reverence for the object seemed to have Chicago, with the museum and lasted at Harvard barely a century.” Edward the other academic. As we have seen, reverence for the ob- Hopper’s That 1970 separa- Nighthawks ject in its museum setting is hardly mori- (1942), from tion signaled a ma- bund at Harvard. Indeed, Cuno’s lecture its collection jor division.” in the directors’ series was a magisterial And museums, at evocation of the power of the original ob- Harvard and else- ject—even the fragment of an object—to stir, stun, and where, have had to exalt. However, at Harvard and elsewhere, concedes Mar- adapt to di≠erent jorie Cohn, “there are people who are concerned with ob- civic conditions, as jects in art history, but who are somehow hostile to muse- well. “Museums are ums. For example, archaeologists who are hostile to now the concern of museums because they are terribly concerned with prove- a broader spectrum nance, architectural historians who don’t have the same ori- of the community, entation for museums, and other people whose art specialty, what- imposing contradictory claims,” says Cuno. “The museum gets ever it is, does not happen to be in museological fashion these days. caught in the middle of these contradictory claims.” How so? “Be- A number of faculty members don’t quite know how to integrate cause at the very least the community can claim it is subsidizing the original object into their teaching.” us; the museum, they can rightly say, occupies land that is not Cohn and Cuno disagree, however, with the commentators taxable. The community can’t be ignored.” who blame T.J. Clark for the disjunct. Cuno, who studied with What then are some of these “contradictory claims?” They are Clark and Freedberg, remembers them both “as having rigorous exactly those “ideological dilemmas” prophesied by Sachs. Mean- intellects and as being equally committed to detailed examina- while, pity the directors and their “public trust.” Whew! What a tion of works of art.” (Cuno completed his Ph.D. while teaching at responsibility! Vassar, after which he directed the Gruenwald Center for the graphic arts at UCLA before accepting the directorship of the The Museum as Refuge? Hood Museum at Dartmouth. He returned to Harvard to assume n his own lecture this year, Cuno began by recalling the his current chair in 1991.) I“terrible events” of September 11, 2001. In the wake of such ca- Of Sachs and connoisseurship, Cuno says, “The issues are dif- tastrophe, he said, museums “have an especially important re- ferent now than they were then. When Paul Sachs was running sponsibility. We have all heard stories of people going to muse-

54 September - October 2002 Photographs courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re ums in the days following the attacks on New York and Washing- Museum of Art under Philippe de Montebello, author and critic ton, just to be there, quietly, safely in the company of things that Heather MacDonald, after praising the Met’s “scholarly, beauti- are beautiful, things that are impossibly fragile yet have lasted for fully mounted” exhibition of works by a seventeenth-century centuries through wars and tumult to lay claim still on our imagi- Italian still-life painter, recapped some alternative aspects of New nations….It was a way of coming home, of being reminded that in York’s museum scene at the same moment: a fundamental way home was still there.” Seven blocks up the Giorgio Armani show at Then he referred back to the lecture by the National Gallery’s the Guggenheim reminds us that the “art” in an “art mu- Neil MacGregor, recalling MacGregor’s narrative “that as Ger- seum” these days is optional. The Guggenheim has turned man fire bombs and rockets rained down upon the city, the Lon- its entire spiral ramp into one endless advertisement…; by don public asked to see old master pictures on view once again in the fourth turn of the screw and the hundredth loose-fit- the Gallery (they had been kept in safe storage deep in Wales ever ting pantsuit, the nightmare sensation of being trapped in since the start of the war). Moved to respond, the Gallery put on a…Bloomingdale’s boutique grows overwhelming…. view each month one painting, changing the painting every Across the East River, the Brooklyn Museum of Art pre- month,” to reassure the citizenry that “however violent life was, sents a heartbreaking spectacle of a once august institution however threatened they were by the enemies of the civilized beached by demographic change, now flailing desperately world, their artistic legacy was safe and available to them as it had to find a new audience—whatever the cost. Hip-Hop Nation: been for a hundred years….” Roots, Rhymes, and Rage presents the billion-dollar hip-hop A most trenchant example of this response to the threats of the industry, complete with gangster rap, obscene misogy- outside world is that of nist lyrics, and city- James Snyder ’73, direc- killing gra∞ti, as art tor of the Israel Museum worthy of inclusion in Jerusalem, who says, in a museum dedi- “Of course the museum cated to man’s great- continues to be open! est achievements. We recently finished an And back in…Man- absolutely great show of “Things that hattan, the Museum 100 magnificent objects of Modern Art is dis- sent from China, and are impossibly fragile playing some of the 120,000 people saw it. grotesque products of And we just opened a yet have lasted for contemporary Soho show called ‘Handled With and Chelsea, created Care’: Glass in the Israel centuries lay claim still on as props to the cul- Museum. We’ve got prob- tural elite’s favorite ably the richest collec- our imaginations.” “issues”—AIDS, sex, tion of ancient glass of AIDS, feminism, AIDS, any museum in the homosexuality, AIDS, world. So part of this is the patriarchy, AIDS, about showing the qual- the irrelevance of ity of the patrimonial artistic skill, AIDS heritage, and part of it is and capitalism. Kiki actually making a kind Smith’s contribution of philosophical point about the frailty and the endurance of to the AIDS “issue” is 12 silvered water bottles all in a row, glass. We have very few tourists now, but our obligation is to be marked with the labels “semen, mucus, vomit, oil, diar- strong and to keep these objects available to the people who live rhea, urine, sweat, pus”…. here. In a climate such as this, people come and use the museum The Guggenheim, which has embarked on a joint venture with even more as a place which lifts them up and which takes their a Las Vegas casino, soon thereafter put together an exhibit de- minds o≠ the complex issues outside.” voted to motorcycles. In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum with great In one of his books, Vermeer’s Wager, Ivan Gaskell claims that art fanfare mounted Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collec- is indeed “therapeutic,” but warns that we must tion, which, in author and critic Roger Kimball’s words, included, distinguish between consideration of art as causing forget- in addition to the notorious depiction of the Virgin Mary “fes- fulness, or a superficial assuagement…and…what Aristotle tooned with cutouts from pornographic magazines and...a clump famously defined…as catharsis: a wholly therapeutic con- or two of elephant dung,” some of the following: cept, connected with contemporary medicine, encompass- pubescent female mannequins…studded with erect penises, ing the purging of pity and fear, thus righting the emotions vaginas, and anuses, fused together in various postures of of the soul. sexual coupling, the portrait of a child molester and mur- On the other hand, caveat emptor: museum visitors in search of derer made from what looks like a child’s hand prints, consolation and catharsis had better be careful which museum [and] bisected animals (pigs, cows) in plexiglass tanks full they choose. In an article last winter for City Journal magazine hon- of formaldehyde. oring the “triumphant democratic elitism” of the Metropolitan The marketing campaign for Sensation included a “warning” that

Harvard Magazine 55 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re the exhibit would bring on “vomiting, confusion, panic, eupho- no formal training in strategic planning, in institutional relation- ria, and anxiety.” So much for consolation and refuge. As de ships with stakeholders, in crisis management—the kinds of is- Montebello (quoting Hamlet) dolefully intoned in his Harvard sues that all heads of organizations must face.” lecture, the situation, “though it make the unskillful laugh, can- By and large, these were not issues Sachs and Forbes had to not but make the judicious worry about, cocooned as they were in the grieve.” cordial, gilded informality of early museum- The list of museums’ mis- building—though they were hardly slackers, alliances with “popular” either: President Lowell called them “those culture is indeed griev- exuberant mendicants.” But their extensive ous—from Kansas City’s network of wealthy contacts insured relatively Nelson-Atkins Museum of painfree fundraising and gifts of prize collec- Art’s exhibition on Disney tions (Sachs himself donated huge sums and theme parks to the San more than 2,690 pieces of art to Harvard; his Francisco Museum of Mod- father was one of the Fogg’s great benefactors, ern Art’s show on the and his mother gave a number of important American sneaker, Design paintings), and of properties such as Bernard Afoot: Athletic Shoes, 1995-2000. Berenson’s Villa I Tatti near Florence and the It is what Chicago’s James Bliss family’s estate, Dumbarton Oaks, outside Wood in his lecture (quot- Washington, D.C. ing de Toqueville) called By contrast, Cuno describes his own the “invisible despotism of Sisyphian e≠orts at fundraising as periods of entertainments.” One may “pressure and strain,” when “every day you recall the pranks of Marcel wake up to fight some battle, to raise some Duchamp, who said, “I money, to push the cause uphill.” threw the bottle rack and He is not alone. According to Susan Young the urinal into their faces as in the Harvard Business School Bulletin, “mer- a challenge, and now they chandising know-how and advertising savvy admire them for their aes- are but two of the myriad skills…required of thetic beauty.” Or, to quote today’s museum manager….The fundraising George Orwell, “If you and financial aspects of their jobs, say the threw dead donkeys at peo- HBS MBAs who were interviewed for this ar- ple, they threw money ticle, are often the most challenging.” The back.” word “discouraging” If we are now asking what in the Philippe de is not uncommon in world these museum/casino/fun parks Montebello such accounts. of the Met- can be thinking of, we have inevitably ar- ropolitan Is there a solution? rived at… Museum of Trustees with deep Art and a pockets and savvy, says The Bottom Line bust of Greyser, are invaluable, n 1997 Alexander Cuno and James Wood Menshikov, although he admits, Ifounded the Harvard University Pro- (ca. 1703- “The hardest part for gram for Art Museum Directors, a year- 04), from its trustees is to unlearn long endowed program that, according collection the things they have to Cuno, “introduces recently appointed gained from corporate art-museum directors, as well as more senior directors, to board experience that leadership and management issues, in addition to trends they think apply auto- in university-based art-history teaching and leadership” matically to nonprofit (see “Captains of Artistry,” March-April 1998, page 2o). boards.” Sachs, too, The group of 10 meets three times during the academic certainly knew how to year at Harvard, and “in the summer the four more-or- attract and cater to less junior directors take part in a six-day program at the trustees and potential Business School called ‘Strategic Perspectives in Not-for-Profit donors, but once, in a discussion of modern art, he exploded: Management.’” [Trustees] would come from State Street or their law of- Stephen A. Greyser ’56, D.B.A. ’65, Chapman professor of busi- fices, and one would say, “I like it” and another would say, ness administration emeritus, cochairs this program. Says he, “I “I don’t like it.” Well, what the hell di≠erence does it make show one slide in the program that’s entitled, ‘What They Didn’t whether they like it or not? Teach in My Ph.D. Program in Art History.’ Most heads of muse- Such a remark would elicit embarrassed blushes in museum ums have never had training in such things as financial manage- circles today. Museums need happy trustees, just as they need as- ment. For some, it is a stretch to read a balance sheet! They’ve had tute marketing, for they must market themselves, and not only to

56 September - October 2002 Photographs courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re one public, but to several. Which publics? Find out with market- special exhibitions, and a large gift and book store. It has ing research, advises strategist Fiona McLean in her book, Market- become possible to visit the museum, see a show, go shop- ing the Museum. A museum director needs, for example, ping, and eat, and never once be reminded of the heritage • to know who its visitors are; what is the profile of their age, of civilization. their occupations, interests, and so on. “Oh, now,” chides Stephen Greyser, “just because a thing is • to discover who are not visiting the museum; how they could commercially successful doesn’t mean that it is antithetical to art. be persuaded to visit. Does this mean that I would be happy to have a disco atmosphere • to help establish priorities: Should the museum invest in up- at the MFA? Of course not. But there are a lot of things that may grading the labeling or is there a greater need for baby-changing o≠end ultratraditionalists that make sense. For example, in re- facilities? (To be fair, cent years the MFA has upgraded its food service, and with that, Sachs himself under- they have made themselves a destination spot for young people— scored the importance it’s a ‘place to go.’ Now some people might say, well, they’re going to museum visitors of there for the wrong reasons. But in fact, if these new visitors in- comfort, including hale deeply of the real reasons and the real stu≠ and decide to be- bathrooms.) come members and maybe start providing resources to enhance The upshot of all the art experience for other people, isn’t that a good thing? I this financial anxiety would say yes. Naturally, if the experience-enhancement activity and marketing, ac- overwhelms the underlying substance, it’s not going to be a suc- cording to Cuno, is a cessful total experience, even from a business point of view.” scenario codified by Confirming the primacy of the “underlying substance,” Philippe Thomas Krens, the de Montebello in his talk recalled the Victoria and Albert Mu- director of the Gug- seum’s “ill-conceived…infamous” advertising campaign touting the genheim Museum, café “with art on the side.” He has also written that “luring people as “great collections, in under false pretenses will generate only short-lived gains. Those great architecture, a who come for such marginal activities will necessarily turn out to great special exhibi- be fickle. They’ll eventually move on, and why not, since they had- tion, a great second n’t come for the exhibits in the first place.” exhibition, two shop- In a debate with de Montebello set up by the New York Times ping opportunities, (headed “Hip versus two eating opportunities, Anne d’Harnoncourt Stately’’), the Guggen- a high-tech interface via of the Philadelphia heim’s Krens reported Museum of Art, the Internet, and econo- with a Mughal paint- that the motorcycle mies of scale via a global ing from the Hamza- exhibition had indeed network.” Nama romance, “generated a new audi- A Follower of Amir The upshot, according Hamza Attacks Tah- ence for the museum.” to Hilton Kramer, is that masp (ca. 1562-77) Yes, he was asked, but We now take it for do these people come granted that the art back? His retort: “We museum is an appropriate place in which to don’t tag them like order lunch or dinner, buy something to whales and find them.” wear, do our Christmas shopping, see a To which de Monte- movie, listen to a concert, attend a lecture bello replied, in his lofti- on anything under the sun, possibly even est Sachsian mode, “To art…. me, audiences are sec- Similarly, writes Lynne Munson, “most muse- ond….Our primary re- ums now front-load the visitor’s experience with sponsibility is to the so many opportunities to sip cappuccino and to works of art….Then purchase water-lily patterned neckties that their comes the matter of foyers might be mistaken for premium shopping bringing it to the public. malls.” The public is the ulti- Finally, as art critic and teacher Carol Duncan mate beneficiary of our writes of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, at one primary purpose.” On time, beyond “the classical monumental entry the subject of commer- façade, the entire sequence of world civilizations cialism in the museum, followed one upon the other, Greece, Rome, and Egypt on one side he echoed Sachs: “This is a question of aura. People who make the balanced by Japan, China, and India on the other.” But since the conscious decision to visit a museum do not want a promulgation of addition of the East Wing, the “narrative” has changed: their daily existence.” There must be, he said, “a kind of caesura.” The museum’s opening statement now consists of a large How then does the museum make ends meet? Doesn’t it need to gallery of modern art, three new restaurants, a space for enlarge its public? Shortly before his death, J. Carter Brown an-

Portrait courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Harvard Magazine 57 95-5746. Painting © Philadelphia Museum of Art/CORBIS print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re swered in a personal e-mail, “On the contrary, [museums] are His own view, he continues, is that museum acquisitions are hugged so tight by the great bear of the public that they are gasp- in the service of the public good. They are a means of trans- ing for breath.” De Montebello agrees: art does not need to “cast ferring works of art from the private to the public realm, wide the nets to gather in ever more paying guests.” Blockbuster where scholars are more likely to learn of their where- shows, he shrugs, mean “Egypt, Matisse, Picasso, Impressionists, abouts, and students and the general public will be given Impressionists, Picasso, Matisse, Egypt, over and over.” (Or as the chance to study and appreciate them. This is why I be- Greyser had quipped, “Monet, c’est la monnaie.”) The Met, de Mon- lieve that museums should continue to acquire works of tebello told one interviewer, doesn’t do blockbusters. “And we ancient art [following careful procedural guidelines that he haven’t done an Impressionist show in seven years….We do exhi- outlines]. It is one way by which we can preserve the past bitions, and if they turn out to be very popular, then that’s won- for the benefit of generations to come. derful.…One of the ways in which I specifically resisted the block- He quotes David Stuart, Bartlett curator of Mayan hieroglyphic buster mania is by abolishing charging for exhibitions.” One way inscriptions and lecturer on anthropology at the Peabody Mu- out of the “blockbuster mania” is for museums “to emphasize seum, a scholar “often described as the world’s leading Mayan building up their endowments. It is the budget that should be in epigrapher, [who] has said, ‘I work with looted objects routinely support of the program, not the other way around.” in my research. I have no qualms about using material if it’s going Over and over in the Harvard lecture series, blockbusters were to be scientifically useful,’” and others who emphasize “that re- denounced for the noise, crowds, and fusing to consider a looted or un- confusion they generate, preventing provenienced object is absurd.” the visitor from, as John Walsh said, “Is this not the same for works of “deep looking.” Cuno summed up the antiquity from the Mediterranean “Harvard” approach to this complex world?” Cuno asks. “Definitely,” say issue in his lecture: “I would suggest Blockbusters colleagues like David Mitten. Maybe that we could begin by clearing away not, argue others, like Boardman pro- some of the clutter in our museums, were denounced for fessor of fine arts Irene J. Winter: the many distractions we have intro- The institutional justifications duced into them—the commercial, the noise, crowds, for acquiring these objects are the alimentary, the promotional, the familiar to all: how the museums entertaining, even, to the extent that and confusion they and collectors of the past have it comes between the viewer and the been able to preserve works that work of art, the educational—and by generate, prevent- would otherwise have been de- weaning ourselves of our reliance on stroyed; and how, once the piece temporary exhibitions and all of their ing the visitor from is extracted from its original attendant hype. We need to be more context and place of origin, modest in our e≠orts, to get back to “deep looking.” there is nothing that can be basics, to regard as our most impor- done to salvage the site, so the tant contributions once again the ac- piece might as well be acquired quisition, preservation, and presen- by a museum, rather than buried tation of and research into our in a private collection. permanent collections.” Justifications such as these But with the subject of permanent collections, we bump come very close to willful ignorance. Every purchase fuels against yet another of Cuno’s “contradictory claims.” the continuing search for yet more marketable works, which then contributes directly to the further disruption Pillage or Preservation? of sites and destruction of evidence in clandestine searches About the only time we read about art museums’ collec- for the saleable unitary piece. In short, these searches are tions is when they are accused of harboring works of art destroying the very base from which we can reconstruct looted from private individuals during the Nazi era or hous- any understanding of the original contexts of the works ing antiquities pillaged from archaeological sites and ex- that then turn up in collections, often leaving questions of ported illegally from their countries of origin. authenticity unanswerable. James Cuno, Boston Globe, October 26, 2000 But, argues Cuno, “Look at recent events in Afghanistan: the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, completely destroyed by the Taliban. s the current president of the Association of Art Mu- Obviously, they couldn’t have been moved. But the objects in the Aseum Directors, Cuno finds this debate on cultural property Kabul Museum, including 59 smaller Buddhas, all those irreplace- one of the thorniest on the list of museum directors’ concerns— able artifacts of the Silk Road, also completely destroyed by the and of course, like the others, it directly involves the public trust. Taliban, lost forever because the policy of the government had been Museums in democracies, Cuno has written, to not allow the removal of objects from the country.” (In March are increasingly being asked to reexamine their holdings in 2001, de Montebello had announced that the Metropolitan was light of values most prized by democratic societies, the seeking permission to remove some of the more portable sculptures most obvious relevant one being the consent of the people and to transport them to the Met at its own expense. To no avail.) whose patrimony was removed. The Fogg’s recent exhibition, (please turn to page 98)

58 September - October 2002 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re REVERENCE FOR THE OBJECT quality. But in recent decades anti-elitists is naïve. According to this way of think- (continued from page 58) often question even “the notion that there ing, what we believe to be true—about is such a thing as art, that this art consists past events and historical figures long Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur, orga- of certain classes of objects rather than considered significant, or about the merit nized by the University of Pennsylvania others,” as art historian Linda Nochlin of treasured artistic and literary works— Museum of Archaeology and Anthropol- says. Many of the rebels dare the keepers is actually a propagandistic illusion per- ogy, and organized for Harvard by Irene of the flame to go ahead and define quality, petuated by the powerful.” The univer- Winter, is an example of enlightened ex- or even beauty, if they can. Asks Stephen sities are to blame for the spread of cavation and acquisition, says Cuno. E. Weil, author and former deputy direc- postmodernism, says de Montebello: “These objects,” he says, “illustrate the an- tor of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Mu- “Harvard in particular was a leader in dis- cient Sumerian culture of Ur, homeland of seum, “Is ‘quality’ an inherent characteris- seminating deconstruction and relativism the biblical Abraham, in what is now tic of a work of art, or, like beauty, does it and contextualism and theory.” southern Iraq. These glorious pieces, thou- lie not merely in the eye but ultimately in Hilton Kramer, too, laments that value sands of years old, are all the result of ex- the mind—and possibly, even in the entire judgments di≠erentiating one work of art cavations responsibly done so that their social experience—of the beholder?” from another are “now deemed to be inde- context was documented and stud- fensibly elitist.” ied; the reason they can be shown is Such judgments that they were moved from that part stand “opposed to of the world to the safekeeping of the doctrine of the University of Pennsylvania. ‘diversity,’ which There was every possibility that requires us to be- these objects might have been de- lieve that distinc- stroyed in the Iran-Iraq war or tions of value and Desert Storm. Right now the cul- achievement in art tural politics of the world is empha- are nothing but a sizing what we call ‘retentionist’ political racket de- policies; what some of us are arguing signed to protect for is an ‘internationalist’ policy, en- the interests of abling those objects to be rescued white male hetero- and shared with the world.” sexual artists in the West.” As it The Museum as Enemy happens, this ac- ultural politics” brings curately sums up “Cus to by no means the final, the position of but perhaps the biggest, headache of those critics, such museum directors, as Benjamin H.D. and in some respects Glenn D. Buchloh, for whom quality “is the central the mother of all Lowry of the tool which bourgeois hegemonic culture their headaches: the Museum (that is, white, male, Western culture) has of Modern demonization of the Art, and a traditionally used to exclude or marginal- museum itself. As detail of ize all other cultural practices.” Fogg curator and MOMA’s In the sixties, French sociologist Pierre Campbell’s professor of history Soup Cans Bourdieu took this line of reasoning to its of art and architec- (1962) by sociological endpoint, saying that the ture Henri Zerner Andy Warhol “true function” of the art museum “is to says, “Oh, sure. I have reinforce for some the feeling of belonging at least one colleague This loaded and for others the feeling of exclusion.” who obsesses over question, The list of “excludeds” extends beyond the idea that the mu- which strikes the horizon, it seems. An abbreviated list seum is the enemy.” at the heart of would include self-described multicul- The gravamen of traditional turalists. “Often, the claims made against the charge, it seems, museum ide- us are of the moment, and personal, not is the museum’s ology, can be the long or broad view,” says Cuno. “‘This “elitism.” We have traced back, is our museum,’ visitors might say, ‘but I seen how pivotal the concept of a true as it is by Lynne Munson, to “postmod- don’t see myself or my ethnic or national elite was to Sachs’s blueprint for his ideal ernism…a spino≠ from deconstruc- origin reflected on your walls.’” To the museum. The scholar-elite, the connois- tion…[which] posits that truth and objec- resolutely color-blind de Montebello, this seurs, would arbitrate the issues central to tivity are impossible and that our is balderdash. “No sentient being will not a museum’s reason for being: issues of traditional understanding of knowledge find his heritage under this [the Met’s]

98 September - October 2002 Photographs courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re roof,” he declares. “A black youngster on claims on behalf of blacks, the homeless, ests.…True, many groups will be rep- one of our weekend public-school tours Ukrainians, all and other “dominated resented by someone else…but the confronted me with the Met’s ‘elitism,’ groups” who “believe that the museum situation is extreme for children as and I answered him, ‘But you’re an elitist should address the more positive aspects they cannot lobby easily for the yourself! This is a Saturday, and yet here of their culture….” Cuno has written about ways in which they would like to be you are at the Met.’ The rest of the kids the “storm of protest” from Irish-Ameri- represented in the way, for example, clapped.” cans concerning an exhibit at the Museum possible for women…. But the drumbeat is deafening. Ten years of the City of New York called Gaelic Brian Shepherd, in Museums ago, the Association of Art Museum Direc- Gotham: A History of the Irish in New York, and the Appropriation of Culture tors published a book, Di≠erent Voices, that leading him to the conclusion that the Add to these lamentations the ubiquitous was completely devoted to museum is called claim that museums should be remedying multicultural—black, His- upon to be “not on- all the ills of the world, from poverty to panic, and Asian—and ly a site for com- global warming. Whew! What a respon- women’s demands, one of memoration but sibility! the wave of such books that also for self-com- But as de Montebello says, “…change is a have flooded bookstores memoration, by and commodity I believe art museums should and libraries. One contribu- for its ‘stakehold- use with the utmost circumspection.” tor, Carol Becker, managed ers’ themselves.” Doesn’t that make the art museum elitist? in her article to summarize The list of ex- “That is exactly what we are,” he replies. the entire book: cluded “stakehold- “That is what art is, and that is what every Women, gays, Afri- ers” has grown too visitor to the Met is—by crossing the can Americans, Asian threshold they are joining the elite.” Americans, and Na- The Getty’s director And Cuno agrees: “It seems to me tive Americans have emeritus, John patently obvious that, like institutions of begun to engage in Walsh and, from its higher learning, art museums are by their collection, Paul the tedious work of Cézanne’s Young very nature elitist….” This, he says, is what redefining their own Italian Woman at the the public expects: “This is the way we position in society…in Table (ca. 1895-1900) honor the public trust.” writing and in art. “Museums exist,” Cuno elabo- They are challeng- rates, “as sacred precincts, places ing the concept of a dominant cul- apart, and we need to articulate ture, and those perceived as being that purpose well. I firmly believe on the margins have a great advan- in the civilizing role of the mu- tage in so doing, because, as Hegel seum. We have preserved, pulled said and Franz Fanon after him: The aside from the tumult of the world, slave always understands the master these precious things, and have better than the master understands made them accessible. And really the slave…. that is the public trust: providing Women artists have confronted our visitors access to works of art, the representation of the female not to entertain them, but to body. How, they ask, can they paint change them, to alter their experi- themselves or other women with- ence of the world, however slightly, out challenging all that has come to make it come alive anew, and to before—the disempowering pos- have them walk away at a di≠erent tures and devastation caused by the angle to it.” internalization of the male gaze. That sounds something like …The struggle is not over any sin- Paul Sachs himself. And it sounds gle piece of art. Rather art has be- as if the Sachs-Cuno legacy will come the focus of a much larger de- flourish. bate over who gets to write, to speak, to visualize, to tell their Contributing editor Janet Tassel most story; who gets to frame and inter- recently reported, in “Antioch Re- pret reality, to position their text, as long and various for consideration here. vealed,” on a major exhibition of classical art at part of the cultural mastertext. But just one more: the Worcester Art Museum (see November-De- In Marketing the Museum, Fiona McLean Children…are in a particularly weak cember 2000, page 50). She wishes to thank the accomplishes a similar feat in a couple of position because they are relegated Harvard University Art Museums Archives for pages, citing demands for “cultural em- to the state of childhood which, by enabling her to consult Paul J. Sachs’s unpub- powerment” of local people and for more definition, largely robs them of the lished memoirs, “Tales of an Epoch,” and Sally “political content” in displays, along with ability to represent their own inter- Anne Duncan’s doctoral dissertation on Sachs.

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