Lila Katzen’s stainless-steel Oracle provided a meditative perch for two visitors to Monumenta in 1974. All illustrations in this article are courtesy of the William and Gael Crimmins Papers and Photos on Monumenta, Salve Regina University Special Collections, McKillop Library, Salve Regina University, Newport. Newport and Monumenta: The Ambition, Controversy, and Legacy of Contemporary Sculpture Diane M. Patrella As the late 1960s gave way to the 1970s, there was a cultural revolution in the United States. Gone were the conservative 1950s. This was the Vietnam era with its mood of counter-cultural uprising. In the 1970s, the United States experienced the worst recession in forty years. There were anti-war riots, anti-government riots, and the tragedy of Kent State in Ohio, where a university student was killed during a peaceful protest. The country experienced an oil embargo, leading to very long gas lines. The space program was going strong; the computer was being refined; the landmark abortion rights case of Roe vs. Wade divided the country. The memories of an assassinated president, John F. Kennedy, and a martyred civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, were still fresh. Instead of CNN, Walter Cronkite gave us the nightly news. The Newport Bridge, later renamed to honor Senator Claiborne Pell, opened in 1969, linking the Newport to Jamestown, and ultimately to mainland Rhode Island. In 1973, shortly before leaving the Presidency in disgrace, Nixon pulled the Navy out of Newport. This had terrible financial consequences for the city. Historically, Newport was a city renowned for its traditional architecture with quaint colonial houses and Gilded Age mansions. Its location along the coast was an ideal and picturesque setting. With all of its natural beauty and attractions, Newport suffered economically due to the loss of the Navy. Concerned Newporters, aware of the national and regional economic downturn, experimented with ways to increase tourism in Newport.1 One such event was Monumenta, an outdoor sculptural exhibit that opened in Newport in August of 1974. Monumenta began as a modest idea and rapidly escalated into a citywide outdoor sculpture exhibit. William Crimmins, a local Middletown resident and schoolmaster, was the catalyst behind the idea. It was an idea that some would applaud and some would scorn. The Exhibit The idea of Monumenta actually began with Jay Schochet, the Boston developer of the Brick Market Place (also called Brick Market Mall), a modern grouping of shops and condominiums erected in the early 1970s alongside the historic Brick Market.2 Schochet wanted to have a modern sculpture show in downtown Newport to promote his modern architecture project. His friend and Boston art dealer, Sunne Savage, suggested an exhibition similar to one that taken place at the Boston Government Center. The Boston exhibit had been conducted by modernist art historian Sam 1 2 Newport History The Brick Market Mall hosted, among other works, Odyssey by Bernard Rosenthal. Hunter of Princeton University.3 Crimmins, who was working on a Navy withdrawal impact study with Rhode Island State Senator Erich Taylor and John Fitzgerald, the Administrator of Middletown, was introduced by Taylor to Schochet. Crimmins, who was one of the founders of the Newport Music Festival, was familiar with the value of culture to attract tourism.4 He was immediately intrigued. He liked the idea but “on a larger scale”: “I had come to the realization that tourism was the only immediate hope for Newport’s economic future.”5 The idea of Monumenta on a citywide scale seemed like a nice addition to the already established 18th- and 19th-century attractions highlighted by Katherine Warren of the Preservation Society of Newport County and Doris Duke of the Newport Restoration Foundation.6 Monumenta grew from an installation planned just for the Brick Market into a show encompassing ten separate sites located at Fort Adams, Ocean Drive, downtown Newport, and on the grounds of mansions of the Preservation Society. Monumenta extended the summer tourist season by opening in August and running until October. It was to be a biennial exhibit in the spirit of European Biennales, particularly that exhibit held in Venice. Crimmins recalled: “Venice has a contemporary art exhibition every two years, and gathers the ‘best’ of contemporary art for a temporary period of time.”7 He in fact hoped it to be an especially big draw to Newport “because we live within a two hour’s drive of almost forty million people.”8 Newport and Monumenta 3 Logistically, Monumenta was a huge endeavor. From the initial idea until the opening of the exhibition, planning and realization took one year.9 To attract well- known artists to the exhibit, the organizers contacted Sam Hunter, professor of Art History at Princeton University. Hunter, a well-known author and an expert on modern art, agreed to curate the Newport exhibit.10 Crimmins was not sure just who first came up with Hunter’s name but believes it was Sunne Savage.11 This was important, Crimmins felt, because “with Sam, we were plugged into the gallery world.”12 Hunter incorporated Monumenta into his curriculum in the spring of 1974. Princeton University graduate students Sally Yard, Hugh Davies, and Ellen Guggenheim “worked on the installations, the logistics and the catalogue as a graduate seminar in the spring of 1974.”13 Crimmins, having been on the Board of the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence (RISD), recruited RISD graphic designer Malcolm Grear to design the Monumenta catalogue.“You can’t do better than Malcolm Grear and Sam,” Crimmins noted. “They are internationally famous . Malcolm’s reputation is absolutely wonderful.”14 Nancy Rosen and Sally Yard ran a Monumenta Information Center from an office on Spring Street in Newport. Crimmins acted as “producer” of the undertaking.15 Standing, left to right: Sally Yard, Hugh Davies, Daisy Davidson, Nancy Rosen Blackwood, Isaac Witkin, and Thelma Appel. Seated or kneeling, left to right: Gael Crimmins, Peter Scholl, Sam Hunter, and William Crimmins. 4 Newport History This map showing the location of art works was published in a one-page brochure distributed free to the public. Newport and Monumenta 5 Crimmins gained support for Monumenta on a citywide level though his personal connections. To have access to state-owned land, he contacted Dennis Murphy of the Department of Natural Resources. For use of the grounds of two Preservation Society properties, the Elms and Chateau-sur-Mer, he contacted Katherine Warren. For the city-owned property, he contacted Newport Mayor, Humphrey Donnelly III. All agreed to make their locations available for the sculpture.16 Sam Hunter was responsible for choosing the artwork and he procured it from many leading artists of the day. Crimmins enthused: We were fortunate to get almost everyone except for Mark DiSuvero and [Isamu] Noguchi. Mark was in France at that time. And somehow nobody had a piece of his— and Noguchi, we couldn’t find a piece. So everybody else of merit, from older people to younger people, were in the show, everybody here, young and old, from Henry Moore to Dickie Fleischner.17 The show consisted of fifty-four sculptures by forty different artists. They included Karel Appel, Alexander Calder, Anthony Caro, John Chamberlain, Christo, Willem de Kooning, Kosso Eloul, Herbert Ferber, Richard Fleischner, Peter Gourfain, Windtotem by David Smith, carried out in stainless steel in 1962, was one of the sculptures on the grounds of The Elms. Dressed in a striped shirt, Sam Hunter supervises its installation. 6 Newport History The installation of many works, including Alexander Liberman’s Argo on Ocean Drive, required cranes, bulldozers, and a substantial work force. Robert Grosvenor, Brower Hatcher, Anne Healy, Barbara Hepworth, Robert Indiana, Lila Katzen,William King, Lyman Kipp, Gary Kuehn, Alexander Liberman, Clement Meadmore, Henry Moore, Robert Murray, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Claes Oldenburg, Jules Olitski, Arnaldo Pomodoro, George Rickey, Salvatore Romano, James Rosati, Bernard Rosenthal, Lucas Samaras, David Smith, Tony Smith, George Sugarman, Hugh Townley, Paul Von Ringelheim, Isaac Witkin, and James Wolfe. Hunter also had the challenge of choosing the locations around Newport to place the sculptures, with one exception. “Sam decided where things went. Christo decided where he wanted to go, because if you tell Christo what to do, he won’t do it, because it’s got to come from him.”18 Any exhibit of this size has numerous volunteers and Monumenta was no exception. Delivery and installation of the sculptures was a great undertaking. It involved not only the organizers and technicians, but also many artists who came on site to supervise installation and put on finishing touches. Many of the sculptures were enormous and required large flatbed trucks for delivery. Hugh Davies called on his friends for assistance. What was known as “The Bad Boys’ Yacht Club,” including Peter Scholl and John Schofield, met the flatbed trucks exiting the Newport Bridge. Riding BMW motorcycles, the “Bad Boys” escorted the trucks through town to their designated locations.19 At location after location, a crane operator, Bill Reagan, met the flatbeds. For two weeks, using his hydraulic crane, Reagan gently lowered the sculptures into place.20 “This was our man who installed every piece, Newport and Monumenta 7 handling work valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in front of the extremely nervous NY gallery reps, with such dexterity and precision that he became known as the ‘man with the velvet touch’.”21 Monumenta cost roughly $148,000 to produce. The funds were raised through private and corporate donations and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).22 The public viewed the show at no cost. An illustrated catalogue of the exhibit, including explanatory essays, was available for four dollars.