PATRICK J. MAVEETY AND DARLE MAVEETY
An Oral History conducted by Betsy G. Fryberger
STANFORD HISTORICAL SOCIETY ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
Stanford University ©2016
2
Patrick J. and Darle Maveety
3 4 Contents
Introduction p. 7 Abstract p. 9 Biography p. 11 Interview Transcript p. 13 Topics p. 49 Interviewer Biography p. 51
5 6 Introduction
This oral history was conducted by the Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program in collaboration with the Stanford University Archives. The program is under the direction of the Oral History Committee of the Stanford Historical Society.
The Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program furthers the Society’s mission “to foster and support the documentation, study, publication, dissemination, and preservation of the history of the Leland Stanford Junior University.” The program explores the institutional history of the University, with an emphasis on the transformative post-WWII period, through interviews with leading faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, and others. The interview recordings and transcripts provide valuable additions to the existing collection of written and photographic materials in the Stanford University Archives.
Oral history is not a final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a unique, reflective, spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it may be deeply personal. Each oral history is a reflection of the past as the interviewee remembers and recounts it. But memory and meaning vary from person to person; others may recall events differently. Used as primary source material, any one oral history will be compared with and evaluated in light of other evidence, such as contemporary texts and other oral histories, in arriving at an interpretation of the past. Although the interviewees have a past or current connection with Stanford University, they are not speaking as representatives of the University.
Each transcript is edited by program staff and by the interviewee for grammar, syntax, and occasional inaccuracies and to aid in overall clarity and readability--but is not fact-checked as such. The approach is to maintain the substantive content of the interview as well as the interviewee’s voice. As a result of this editing process, the transcript may not match the recording verbatim. If a substantive deletion has been made, this is generally indicated at the relevant place on the transcript. Substantive additions are noted in brackets or by footnote.
7 All uses of the interview transcript and recording are covered by a legal agreement between the interviewee and the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (“Stanford”). The copyright to the transcript and recording, including the right to publish, is reserved by Stanford University.
The transcript and recording are freely made available for non-commercial purposes, with proper citation provided in print or electronic publication. No part of the transcript or recording may be used for commercial purposes without the written permission of the Stanford University Archivist or his/her representative. Requests for commercial use should be addressed to [email protected] and should indicate the items to be used, extent of usage, and purpose.
This oral history should be cited as: Maveety, Patrick J. and Darle Maveety (2016). Oral History. Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program Interviews (SC0932). Department of Special Collections & University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
8 Abstract
In this oral history from 2016, Patrick J. Maveety, Curator Emeritus of Asian Art at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Center (previously the Stanford Museum of Art), and his wife, Darle, offer vivid memories of their long association with Stanford, beginning with their time as art students in the years immediately after World War II.
Thinking back to his childhood in San Diego, Patrick recalls taking Saturday morning art lessons at the Fine Arts Gallery in Balboa Park. Darle, who grew up in Portland, Oregon, left high school with a passion for art and a plan to become an art teacher.
Both paint vivid pictures of life at Stanford in the postwar years. Darle, for example, remembers wearing skirts, even to paint, and dressing for class in cashmeres and sweater sets. Early in their friendship, she helped Patrick create a model of a cabin for one of their art classes. Patrick recalls taking a figure drawing class as an undergraduate from John LaPlante, along with anecdotes of other early faculty members.
In those days, the Department of Art had three classrooms near the chapel at the back of Memorial Church, Darle recalls, and each year the art students put on a costumed Beaux- Arts Ball. Although the Stanford Museum was virtually destroyed in the 1906 quake, Darle remembers doing housekeeping chores there, as well as the spooky feeling if she was caught after dark in rooms full of Indian remains and antique furniture--she took a flashlight because the building had no electricity.
The two talk about their separate roads between acquiring bachelor’s degrees in 1951 and getting married at Memorial Church in 1958. Darle describes traveling to Europe in 1952 during her studies for a master’s degree, then returning to Portland to teach. Patrick tells colorful stories about his twenty-year career in the U.S. Navy, ending in 1972.
Still interested in art history, and especially East Asian studies, Patrick says he decided to pursue a doctorate, and the couple describe the “revised” Stanford they found: a larger Art Department, near the restored and revitalized Art Gallery. Lorenz Eitner, who was
9 responsible for many of those changes, encouraged Patrick’s interest in further studies. Darle describes Eitner’s contributions and tells an interesting anecdote about Albert Elsen’s lecturing techniques. The Eitners also became friends; Darle remembers taking a Stanford Travel/Study trip in the Netherlands when Eitner was the faculty leader of the trip.
Patrick describes his studies with Michael Sullivan, who was Christensen Professor of Chinese Art at the time. When Sullivan left unexpectedly, Eitner invited Patrick to become curator of Asian art in 1978, and he says he agreed to work as a volunteer in return for staff privileges. Patrick discusses his work at the center, including his favorite piece, an eighteenth century Qing Dynasty vase that is often mistaken for Japanese. In particular he remembers an unannounced gift of a Tang horse from Richard Gump, president of Gump’s, San Francisco; and an exhibition of blue and white ceramics from Thailand.
10 Patrick J. and Darle Maveety Biography
Patrick J. Maveety, Curator Emeritus of Asian Art at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Art, curated at the Center as a volunteer from 1978 to 2000. He curated a number of important exhibitions, including blue and white ceramics of the Far East, Chinese opium pipes, Buddhist art, and Indonesian textiles.
He and his wife, Darle, were also private collectors and owners of the Maveety Galleries in Portland and Salishan, Oregon. The couple met at Stanford University, where they received bachelor’s degrees in art history in 1951 and married in 1958 at the Memorial Church. She went on to receive a master’s degree at Stanford, and Patrick studied for a doctoral degree in art history there, as well.
Between his times at Stanford, Patrick Maveety served in the U.S. Navy aboard the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and in Hamburg, Germany; Indonesia; and Washington, D.C. He retired in 1972 as a Lieutenant Commander, awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal.
Patrick (1930-2016) and Darle (1929-2016) had two children: a daughter, Mary Helen Klassert; and a son, Matthew Hermann, who died in 2015.
11 12 S T A N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y
PROJECT: ARTS AT STANFORD ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
INTERVIEWER: BETSY G. FRYBERGER
INTERVIEWEES: PATRICK J. AND DARLE MAVEETY
DATE OF INTERVIEW: FEBRUARY 16, 2016
Fryberger: This is February 16, 2016. My name is Betsy and I’m interviewing Pat and
Darle Maveety at their home near the Stanford campus. We’re going to start
by talking a little bit about your early life and background. I’m going to start
with Pat, if you would tell us where you were born, and when, and your early
schooling.
P. Maveety: [00:00:24] I was born in 1930 and raised in San Diego, California. I went to
elementary school there.
Fryberger: Were you in Coronado?
P. Maveety: [00:00:37] No, not yet. We lived in east San Diego. Later on my parents
moved to Coronado.
Fryberger: Did you have any early interest in art?
P. Maveety: [00:01:08] Sure. I took Saturday morning art lessons at the San Diego Fine
Arts Gallery in Balboa Park.
Fryberger: I took a lot of art classes on Saturday mornings, too, at the Art Institute of
Chicago, so I did much of the same thing.
P. Maveety: [00:01:35] We just sat there on horses, if you know what a horse is.
13 [00:01:47] And looked at the picture that we were copying. I remember
particularly copying a Goya that the San Diego Art Museum had.
Fryberger: Was it a portrait?
P. Maveety: [00:02:01] Yes.
Fryberger: It wasn’t one of these really grim subjects. [laughter]
P. Maveety: [00:02:03] No. They wouldn’t have shown that to elementary school
students, I suppose.
Fryberger: Darle, why don’t you tell us where you grew up? And then we’ll get you both
to Stanford soon. How’s that?
D. Maveety: [00:02:25] I was born in 1929 in Astoria, Oregon, but lived most of my
young life in Portland, Oregon, except for a two-year stint at Newport,
Oregon. I went to school in the Portland public schools. I loved it all. I was
so in love with art that I left high school with the idea that I was going to be
an art teacher.
Fryberger: Did that influence you in applying to Stanford or deciding to go to Stanford?
D. Maveety: [00:02:55] Yes, because they had an art education program; but it wasn’t too
well publicized. I didn’t think I wanted to go to the University of Oregon
because my father was from Oregon State. So this was an excellent
alternative. First time I ever laid eyes on the campus was when my father
flew down with me, put me in a taxi, and I was told to go to Stanford
University. The next thing I knew I was at Roble [student dormitory].
Fryberger: Pat?
P. Maveety: [00:03:30] I had gone to high school in Oceanside because my father had
been transferred to Camp Pendleton. He brought me to Stanford for the fall
14 quarter. He spent a couple days up here with me. I checked into freshman
men’s dorm at Encina Hall.
[00:04:11] Yes. Nothing but freshmen. And I mean men.
Fryberger: Yes. [laughter] Co-education dorms hadn’t been invented yet.
P. Maveety: [00:04:21] Absolutely not. We would have been horrified.
Fryberger: What did you think you were going to major in?
P. Maveety: [00:04:30] I had no idea. As a freshman, who knew? Freshmen don’t know
much of anything. Besides, you had a list of requirements. I took
requirements for the first couple years. Then sophomore year you could
major in something.
Fryberger: Were there veterans?
P. Maveety: [00:04:59] There were lots of veterans. Some wore olive green Eisenhower
jackets from World War II. That’s all I remember.
Fryberger: Darle, what do you remember? How did students dress?
D. Maveety: [00:05:27] If you were a woman you never wore slacks, of course. You wore
skirts, even to go out and watercolor. They were fairly long. They were below
the knee.
Fryberger: Now, that was called the “New Look”.
D. Maveety: [00:05:45] That was the New Look. That was part of the whole process of
fitting in. The Chaparral would have the latest fashion. You’d look at all these
glamorous people who were a little older than you looking so elegant.
P. Maveety: [00:06:15] They were sophomores or so.
D. Maveety: [00:06:18] You wore your cashmeres and you wore your sweater sets. You
were very dressed for class.
15 Fryberger: How did you meet?
P. Maveety: [00:06:28] Art class?
Fryberger: Was this your freshman year?
P. Maveety: [00:06:33] Yes.
D. Maveety: [00:06:33] Yes. We both took some art classes together, and so we were just
there. One time he needed help on a model he was doing about a little cabin
with the little beds or rugs or whatever. Somehow I volunteered.
Fryberger: It was like a miniature room.
D. Maveety: [00:07:00] It was a real scale model. The senior year was when we did the Art
Department project. We actually did a scale model of a new Art Department
which was never built. We dreamt up that there was going to be one.
Fryberger: Tell me more about the art classes that you took and the faculty.
P. Maveety: [00:07:36] I took a figure drawing class from John LaPlante. John was a
graduate student teaching art.
Fryberger: At this point there really wasn’t much in the way of art history. Was it more
studio?
D. Maveety: [00:08:19] But the history courses of architecture, painting and contemporary
art were very important.
P. Maveety: [00:08:27] Yes, but that was sophomore, junior, and senior year.
Fryberger: Who taught those courses?
D. Maveety: [00:08:33] Farmer [Edward McNeil Farmer], Faulkner [Ray N. Faulkner],
Mendelowitz [Daniel M. Mendelowitz]. They shared these five unit courses
that were taught every day.
16 D. Maveety: [00:08:44] Watched slides and got a lecture. Wanda Corn [later chair of the
Art Department] was in awe of the fact that they taught so many classes.
Fryberger: And Victor Thompson, was he there then?
D. Maveety: [00:08:57] Yes. But he was the architect.
P. Maveety: [00:09:05] He didn’t lecture on the history of architecture, did he?
D. Maveety: [00:09:09] No. He taught a seminar in that. The point is that we had these
broad courses a lot of people took because they fit very nicely with Western
Civ [undergraduate requirements] and all that kind of thing. The history of
painting was definitely important. Farmer taught a course in color, and
Faulkner taught about designing your own contemporary interior and home
decoration.
Fryberger: What about Matt Kahn?
P. Maveety: [00:09:54] He wasn’t here yet. No. He didn’t come until 1949, our junior
year.
Fryberger: Do you remember your favorite courses? Were you interested in Asian art at
this point?
P. Maveety: [00:10:23] My parents had been to China before I was born. My father was a
Navy doctor and on duty in Guam, so they gave the people in Guam a so-
called health tour. It was to get them out of the tropics and take them up to
temperate climates. After having spent a year in the tropics, they spent a
couple of months in a temperate climate, alternating. They spent two months
alternating China-Japan, or Japan-China. My parents happened to go to
China. I thought what a wonderful place to be because I saw these
photographs of my mother in a rickshaw and my father on the Great Wall.
17 Nothing could have been better than had they taken me with them.
Some friends from Guam had taken their kids. But I did not get to China
until 1978.
D. Maveety: [00:12:20] It was always his dream.
P. Maveety: [00:12:21] And I didn’t [go earlier]; I regretted it very much.
D. Maveety: [00:12:25] Let’s back up for a minute about the Stanford classes. If you were
a freshman you were expected to take at least one art class a quarter. You had
the choice of taking drawing, or mechanical drawing, or perspective, or
things like that. You also were expected to take a color class.
There was no design professor in residence when we were there as
sophomores. When Matt Kahn showed up in our junior year, we took
Design I and Design II, and Advanced Design and Product Design classes.
He taught a lot of different things. We also took all of these history of art
courses. Then you moved on to seminars. Usually they would be held either--
in Matt Kahn’s case--in his house, or in the office of the professor.
Fryberger: How many art majors were there?
D. Maveety: [00:13:30] There were about fifteen or so.
P. Maveety: [00:13:30] I’ve always said there were six.
D. Maveety: [00:13:33] There were more.
Fryberger: Who took classes but didn’t necessarily major.
D. Maveety: [00:13:38] Yes. But there were still a fair number of people that eventually
graduated in art. You had the choice of taking oil painting and/or watercolor.
You had to take watercolor in the spring and go outside.
Fryberger: Mendelowitz was teaching watercolor. Right?
18 P. Maveety: [00:14:04] Yes.
D. Maveety: [00:14:05] Obviously, he taught Diebenkorn [Richard Diebenkorn] because if
you look at Diebenkorn’s [early] paintings they look like Mendelowitz. He
was an extraordinary teacher and went on to write a major book about
drawing. Ray Faulkner taught landscape design.
Fryberger: How about Victor Arnautoff?
P. Maveety: [00:14:34] He taught oil painting.
D. Maveety: [00:14:38] There was one art materials class in which you gessoed your
canvas, ground your pigments, and mixed your colors. Then Richard
Bowman was there for a year or so and he taught oil painting.
The Art Department had limited space. It was located near the chapel
at the back of Memorial Church. There were three offices for professors on
the main floor and then two larger rooms upstairs which I think the other
professors shared, including Dr. Birkmeyer [Karl Birkmeyer] who went on to
UCLA.
Fryberger: Did you go on field trips to San Francisco? The museums or not especially?
P. Maveety: [00:15:42] No.
D. Maveety: [00:15:43] No. We did have our own art club. We put on a Beaux-Arts Ball.
Fryberger: You can tell me something about that because I have seen a newspaper
reference.
D. Maveety: [00:16:05] We have a great picture of Pat being John the Baptist.
Fryberger: Wait. I have a picture of you.
D. Maveety: [00:16:17] There’s a picture of Matt Kahn with Lyda [his wife] all dressed up.
Matt Kahn and Lyda probably had a lot to do with this.
19 P. Maveety: [00:17:24] They were closer to us in age.
D. Maveety: [00:17:25] So they encouraged us to be a group. We would go to the city as a
group and to the beach as a group, we did a lot of that kind of stuff.
Fryberger: Darle, you were a member of the Women’s Athletic Association? You were a
publicity chairperson.
D. Maveety: [00:17:49] Yes. I also was on the archery team, and therefore, was eligible for
a letterman’s sweater, which I never bought.
Fryberger: You were president, Darle, of the Stanford Art Association.
D. Maveety: [00:18:12] Yes. Somehow I got the job. And we invited all our friends to go
to the ball. It was in Roble Gym.
Fryberger: Was the Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery at that point much used?
D. Maveety: [00:18:27] A focal point.
Fryberger: What was in the Art Gallery?
D. Maveety: [00:18:31] Exhibitions. Sometimes student shows that we put together. Matt
Kahn put together a design show. Then as students we were expected to go
in there and help hang it.
Fryberger: They also had some loan exhibitions because I remember, even though I
wasn’t the person who got the letter, but I remember somebody asking about
some really early show, probably at this time.
D. Maveety: [00:18:54] There was a Gump show that we made, about “good things cost
no more.” We put that together with Matt. We were very involved with our
department. Not just Pat and me. We were all involved, nobody else did this
on campus. This was just the Art Department.
Fryberger: This was your special community.
20 D. Maveety: [00:19:27] Yes. Which is what made it so wonderful.
P. Maveety: [00:19:31] It was a small department and we all did things together.
D. Maveety: [00:19:37] We fell over each other, you know, getting in and out of the
building. There were three classrooms, no restroom, and one room with a
sink and some racks where you put your paintings. It was a very limited space
in that funny old building.
Fryberger: Darle, did you get a master’s degree?
D. Maveety: [00:20:17] Yes, in 1952
Fryberger: What were you going to do? Be an art teacher?
D. Maveety: [00:20:27] Yes. The idea was that I had a choice of getting an art education--
master’s in art. I chose to do it in design because that seemed more
important to me, and a minor in art education. Dan Mendelowitz was totally
in charge of that program.
Fryberger: Did other students do work at the closed and isolated Leland Stanford Jr.
Museum, or were you almost the only one? [After Lorenz Eitner came in
1963 to be the chair of the Art Department, the Museum’s name was
changed to the Stanford University Museum of Art. When the Museum
reopened in 1999, a decade after the 1989 earthquake, it was again renamed
and became the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford
University.]
P. Maveety: [00:20:58] She was a work study student.
Fryberger: Pat, you didn’t work at the Museum at that point.
P. Maveety: [00:21:07] Yes.
D. Maveety: [00:21:07] Yes.
21 Fryberger: You got inside the [closed and locked up] Museum. All right. I want to ask
you about Little Leland’s Last Breakfast.
P. Maveety: [00:21:12] I never saw it until I was a graduate student really.
Fryberger: Did it exist? Are you willing to say that it existed? Because a lot of people
when they are actually asked say, “Well, I don’t know. Somebody told me.”
P. Maveety: [00:21:30] No. I didn’t see it. There was no such thing as far as I know. The
most plausible explanation was that somebody or some fraternity sent some
guy down and put this thing together.
Fryberger: What kinds of things did you do when you were at the Museum? I know that
Darle worked with prints and cut mats for this old-master print collection,
which was the Robert Loeser collection of more than one hundred works.
D. Maveety: [00:22:04] Yes. We just did housekeeping chores. Remember, the upstairs
part of the Museum was like an overstuffed attic with loads of furniture up
there--quite valuable early American furniture and stuff that people had
donated including Indian things.
Fryberger: Interesting. The other side of the Museum belonged to Systematic Biology.
Right?
P. Maveety: [00:22:42] Yes.
Fryberger: The Dudley Herbarium was upstairs in that wing.
P. Maveety: [00:22:44] Yes.
Fryberger: In the late 1970s, the Dudley Herbarium was transferred to the San
Francisco Academy of Sciences.
P. Maveety: [00:22:52] Yes.
22 D. Maveety: [00:22:54] Around the upstairs balcony were these cases with Indian remains.
So it was a very strange place to go on a Sunday. Of course, remember,
nobody is in the Museum except me. Of course, there are no lights in the
Museum. There’s no electricity in that entry. If I knew I was going to stay
late, I’d take a flashlight. I’d go up the stairs and go into that little back office
on the main floor.
P. Maveety: [00:23:41] Was that what became Betsy’s office?
Fryberger: No.
D. Maveety: [00:23:48] It was like where the office of Lorenz Eitner [former Museum
director] was going to be. Yes. Those little offices in front. The point was
that leaving at night it would be dark. I’d have to turn my flashlight on and
go down and get myself out of the building. I swear, if somebody had wanted
to hide up there and said, “Boo,” I probably wouldn’t have ever come back
to campus. It was just spooky. Here were all these beds that had coverlets
and things on them, and dressers, and chairs--all sort of jammed into the
building like someone’s attic.
P. Maveety: [00:24:28] Jane Stanford’s furniture.
D. Maveety: [00:24:29] It wasn’t just Jane’s, it was stuff that other people had given too,
and nobody quite knew what to do with it. Of course, there was the
“Governor Stanford” locomotive engine downstairs. I mean that was
something else again. You’d walk into that little rotunda, and my god, there
was this thing right in your face.
Fryberger: It sounds as if you were on your own.
23 D. Maveety: [00:25:13] Absolutely. They trusted me that I wouldn’t leave the front door
open and it was like I just could do whatever I was supposed to do. I would
get assignments from Mrs. Helen Cross.
D. Maveety: [00:25:31] I called her the keeper of the keys. I don’t know if we really called
her the director of the Museum.
P. Maveety: [00:25:39] No, I don’t think so.
D. Maveety: [00:25:39] But she was just in charge of the Museum.
Fryberger: John LaPlante later became sort of acting director.
D. Maveety: [00:25:48] Actually, he was over at the Museum in those days. Yes, and
finding things to do. It was a question of keeping the place open, if not really
open. Once a year it would be open and people wandered around through
the galleries.
I don’t think we bothered. I mean just nobody went there. It was way
off in the corner of campus. It was very remote.
Fryberger: In 1952 Darle you got a master’s. Help me with the chronology. When did
you get married?
P. Maveety: [00:26:30] 1958.
Fryberger: Pat, when did you go in the Navy?
P. Maveety: [00:26:36] 1951.
Fryberger: You sort of knew you were going to go into the Navy. Right?
P. Maveety: [00:26:46] Yes. I had actually joined the Navy at the Office of Naval Officer
Procurement in the spring quarter of 1951, before graduation, because you
had to do something.
Fryberger: Right. Is this during the Korean War?
24 P. Maveety: [00:27:04] It had started. Yes. The handwriting was on the wall.
Fryberger: Yes. David Fryberger went into the Navy in 1953.
D. Maveety: [00:27:13] Pat didn’t want to go sit in a foxhole, so he--
Fryberger: David didn’t either. That’s why he went into the Navy.
What did you do in the Navy? Did you go to OCS [Officer Candidate
School]?
P. Maveety: [00:27:32] Yes. Went to OCS at the end of summer 1951, and took a four-
month course. Spent ninety days getting a commission and learning about
the Navy. Then in January of 1952, I was commissioned and took my orders
to an ancient battleship that was in the shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia.
Darle was already a graduate student.
Fryberger: You stayed out here and got a graduate degree. Were there many graduate
students?
D. Maveety: [00:28:42] Yes, there were a few of us. By that time art history was beginning
to take on more significance. By 1950, with Karl Birkmeyer teaching here,
there was a more serious approach to art history. He helped bring the
exhibition, Masterpieces from the Berlin Museums in 1948-49, to American
museums from Germany. He had been “a Nazi,” except he wasn’t.
P. Maveety: [00:29:14] Been forced to join the German Army.
D. Maveety: [00:29:15]. Somebody found out that he could type and he would make a
good secretary, and so they sort of used him in office duty jobs. Later, he
came to this country and married an American. I was among a group of
Stanford students who went to Europe with him in the summer of 1952.
Fryberger: Meanwhile, Pat’s on a battleship in Portsmouth, Virginia.
25 P. Maveety: [00:30:13] The battleship Mississippi which had been built in 1914. This was
not what I had thought I’d be doing.
My math is not good enough. The thing was built in 1914, and I joined
it in 1958. That’s what? Forty-four years?
D. Maveety: [00:30:42] It was an ancient vessel.
P. Maveety: [00:30:45] I thought, this is terrible. I mean there was the whole Sixth Fleet in
the Mediterranean. Glorious modern battleships or cruisers.
Fryberger: How did you get out of Virginia and the aging battleship?
P. Maveety: [00:31:04] At that point my father was the commanding officer of the naval
hospital at the Marine Corps schools in Quantico, Virginia. When I went
home from Portsmouth, Virginia, a family friend, who was sort of a
politician, was there. I complained to him about my horrible duty.
He said, “Well, what do you want? What would you like to be on if
you don’t like the Mississippi? What would you be on?”
I said, “Put me on the Sixth Fleet flagship. Of course.” The only
warship that had air conditioning. And it was new.
P. Maveety: [00:32:29] It was a merchant ship. We resupplied Air Force bases in
Northern Greenland. And I went off to Greenland because I raised my hand
and got it.
Fryberger: Different climate though.
P. Maveety: [00:32:53] I had a whole bunch of shipmates that were highly pissed off
because I got it and I hadn’t been there very long. “What about me? I’ve
been here longer than he has.” At some point in the summer of 1952, I got a
set of orders to the MSTS [Military Sea Transport Service] and went off on a
26 clunky World War II merchant ship. As I look back on it now, it was an
educational experience.
D. Maveety: [00:33:48] Tell them what happened. The best part is, you got orders.
P. Maveety: [00:33:52] When I got back to Norfolk that summer, I called up the ship and
said, “Could you send a car out and get me?”
“Oh, yes. Sure. By the way, your orders have arrived.”
“Orders? Orders to what?”
“Orders to the Newport News.”
“What?”
Newport News was the flagship of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.
This four-flusher, I thought, had gotten me on the Sixth Fleet flagship.
I went off for a year and a half tour of duty on the Newport News.
D. Maveety: [00:34:41] The whole point of going to Europe in those days was to find out
that the works in those black and white slides we looked at in classes, have
color. Some are green and white marble. I couldn’t believe it. I guess Pat felt
the same way. It was all in Technicolor.
P. Maveety: [00:35:42] I was sent to join the Newport News in the Mediterranean. The ship
was still in Norfolk, but it was about to leave for the Mediterranean. I spent
the next year and a half getting to the Newport News and establishing myself
and my division and my position on the ship.
Fryberger: At some point you were in Germany and you learned German.
P. Maveety: [00:36:26] Oh, yes, but that’s much later.
I was sent to shore duty in Washington D.C. after about a year or so.
After I finished out my obligatory three-year tour in Washington, I got out of
27 the Navy, went to Europe with a friend of mine with whom I had cooked up
the idea to ride bicycles in Spain. From January to July.
[00:37:59] In the meantime, I had become enamored of being in the
Navy, and so when I got home, I asked if the Navy would take me back and
they said sure, and we’ll let you know. After three weeks, they let me know. I
got back in the Navy and was sent to the Naval Communications Station in
Washington for shore duty. I had about a year and a half tour of duty in
Washington. I became regular Navy then. I was no longer a reservist.
Fryberger: In the meantime, were you two communicating?
P. Maveety: [00:39:02] Yes. We must have been.
D. Maveety: [00:39:03] We sent Valentine cards.
Fryberger: We’re almost up to 1958. You’re getting married. Right?
D. Maveety: [00:39:20] Then we got married at Stanford and then went back to
Washington. Eventually he was assigned to Long Beach. Then he went to the
Far East and I followed.
P. Maveety: [00:39:57 [Looking at a photo of the wedding] Here I am on my wedding
day, with my best man, my father, and me. That’s Darle and her uncle who
was giving her away. Her father had died couple of years before. There we
are at the church.
Fryberger: You got married on the Stanford campus, in the chapel of Memorial Church.
That’s important.
D. Maveety: [00:40:29] Robert “Rabb” Minto [Robert M. “Rabb” Minto]--
P. Maveety: [00:40:32] --was our chaplain.
D. Maveety: [00:40:36] And a calligrapher.
28 P. Maveety: [00:40:37] He thought Darle was particularly attractive. He was a Scottish
Presbyterian.
D. Maveety: [00:40:57] The Navy now assigned him to Washington D.C., to the
intelligence school. Then the rest of his career was more regular. And a
foreign service type.
Fryberger: When did you spend time in Germany? Because you speak German.
D. Maveety: [00:41:20] That was in the mid-60s.
P. Maveety: [00:41:23] Then, in 1959 I was assigned to a two-year tour in Washington. I’d
already been there for one tour of duty.
Fryberger: Did you do any museum-going during all this time?
P. Maveety: [00:41:53] Sure. We became lifetime members of the Smithsonian Institution.
D. Maveety: [00:41:58] We went to the National Gallery. We went to New York and we
saw everything we could. In 1968, he got assigned to Hamburg. Then we got
another assignment, and this time to Indonesia. After that tour he retired in
1972.
[00:42:53] We had the decision of what to do. You know, here he was
comparatively young. What was our next career going to be? He still wanted
to be an art historian so he decided that he would come back to Stanford. At
first they said, “Oh, we’re not sure we want you.” When we found out there
was a graduate-at-large program, we came back to that.
Fryberger: Some classes you took as a graduate student weren’t in the Art Department.
P. Maveety: [00:43:27] Yes. Right.
Fryberger: In East Asian Studies?
P. Maveety: [00:43:32] Language. What else? Chinese History.
29 Fryberger: When you were in Indonesia, were you particularly interested in ceramics?
Had you started collecting for yourself in some way?
P. Maveety: [00:43:51] I was interested in ceramics because the museum in Jakarta
collected ceramics that were sent from mainland Asia, that is, China and
Japan and Thailand. That was the connection I could make between Asian
art and Indonesia.
Fryberger: In Indonesia, were you able to see a lot of ceramics?
P. Maveety: [00:44:37] Yes. Indonesia has one of the world’s largest collections of
Chinese ceramics.
D. Maveety: [00:44:42] I was invited to help wash them.
D. Maveety: [00:44:49] I got to handle them and I was supposed to make little drawings of
each and then show where it was in the case. Then I washed and scrubbed
the objects and the case was painted, and then we put them back exactly the
way they’d been in 1936, which was pretty silly.
Fryberger: When you decided to go to graduate school, did you consider going any place
other than Stanford?
P. Maveety: [00:45:17] Heavens no.
Fryberger: How had the University changed in the years that you’d been away? Had the
Art Department changed?
D. Maveety: [00:45:29] The Art Department had changed. It was in a new place between
the Art Gallery and the main library.
Fryberger: Totally different. You arrived in 1972, a period of student unrest.
P. Maveety: [00:45:36] The Lou Henry Hoover House was all boarded up.
D. Maveety: [00:45:44] We came back in the midst of all the turmoil.
30 Fryberger: That was sort of scary.
P. Maveety: [00:46:04]. How could these honyocks [unwelcome students] ruin our
campus?
D. Maveety: [00:46:11] We were annoyed rather than upset. We just thought that was a
stupid way to behave.
Fryberger: When you established contact with the Art Department, who was in charge?
Was it Lorenz Eitner who you first met?
P. Maveety: [00:46:27] Yes.
D. Maveety: [00:46:29] Matt Kahn and John La Plante were the only two holdovers.
P. Maveety: [00:46:36] Michael Sullivan, who taught Chinese art, was reasonably
encouraging.
Fryberger: Why don’t you say a bit about Lorenz Eitner and Al Elsen [Albert E. Elsen]?
Did you take any courses from Al?
P. Maveety: [00:47:00] Sure. Eitner was reasonably encouraging.
D. Maveety: [00:47:27] He wanted you to be his student and do that Menzel [Adolph
Menzel] stuff, didn’t he?
Fryberger: Because you knew German. Menzel was a fabulous draftsman.
P. Maveety: [00:47:39] I already knew who Menzel was.
Fryberger: You were probably the only one who did know who Menzel was.
P. Maveety: [00:47:45] I think so. German art was not taught really.
Fryberger: No. It wasn’t taught much in any American university or college. It was all
French art and English art.
31 How about Al Elsen? What did you take from Al? He used to teach the
introductory survey, but you must have taken a seminar or something from
him.
D. Maveety: [00:48:17] Yes, he took a lot of classes from Al, I think. He wasn’t quite as
interested in contemporary art. I remember one time that Al came to our
house when he was on sabbatical. His wife Patty was also there. Al went
down to the end of the living room where we were talking about something
that we had on display. He went on and delivered a twenty-minute lecture on
what we were looking at.
P. Maveety: [00:48:56] Al, not me.
D. Maveety: [00:48:57] Yes. Patty looked at me and she said, “Well, there’s his twenty-
minute sound bite.” It was true. He always knew exactly what time it was and
how long the lecture was and could always cut it off.
Fryberger: Yes. It was amazing. He often talked from no notes and with his back to the
screen so he couldn’t see the slides. He didn’t need any cues from the slides.
He had a great memory. He was really impressive.
P. Maveety: [00:49:29] He was.
D. Maveety: [00:49:29] Oh, he was an incredible guy to be around.
Fryberger: Yes.
D. Maveety: [00:49:32] His wife was pretty interesting, too. Patty was in a whole other
experience.
Fryberger: His father was a lawyer.
P. Maveety: [00:49:49] That’s how he got that way.
32 Fryberger: There was a compelling logic to his lectures. I mean once he got started you
could see he’d outlined everything.
D. Maveety: [00:49:55] He knew exactly where he was.
Fryberger: Lorenz, in his way, was a brilliant lecturer, too. Very, very different.
P. Maveety: [00:50:02] Yes.
D. Maveety: [00:50:03] We went on a trip to Europe with the Eitners--the canal trip on
the Dutch Waterways. I probably have a diary of that.
Eitner was extraordinary. They [Lorenz and Al] were both
extraordinary in their depth of knowledge.
Fryberger: You know, in those days shortly after Lorenz came and recruited Al and
other faculty, the Art Department was rated the seventh highest in the
country. I think that’s probably because of the prestige of the faculty.
D. Maveety: [00:50:49] Yes, it was an outstanding faculty.
Fryberger: That introductory art history class, which I audited in 1968 or 1969, the
auditorium was full. That auditorium [which holds more than three hundred
people] was absolutely packed with students. It was impressive.
P. Maveety: [00:51:10] Sure was.
D. Maveety: [00:51:11] Eitner just did an extraordinary job of hiring. The fact that he had
full control to do whatever he wanted. I can remember in the Museum doing
something once for the registrar’s office, we misspelled something and I had
very carefully, you know, covered it over. The registrar, Anita Mozley, looked
at me and said, “No. He won’t like that.” I went home and did it over again.
Fryberger: Anita brought a lot to that role.
33 D. Maveety: [00:51:56] I think what you should do is explain how you ended up not with
Eitner but with Sullivan, and then what happened there.
Fryberger: Yes. Tell us about Michael Sullivan, because by this time you must have
obviously felt you wanted to do something with Asian art, not European art.
P. Maveety: [00:52:18] I did. Sullivan was rather difficult to get along with, and I didn’t
really like him.
D. Maveety: [00:52:29] He did invite you to be part of his program, and that was
considered quite an honor.
P. Maveety: [00:52:32] He came to me one day after the first quarter and said something
about “I understand you didn’t sign up for my basic course.” I said, “No, I
signed up for it, I believe.”
You could tell he wasn’t pleased that I hadn’t signed up for his Chinese
Art I or whatever it was called. I knew which side the butter was on after that
point.
D. Maveety: [00:53:16] He recruited his students.
P. Maveety: [00:53:18] Yes. You never quite knew where you stood with him.
Fryberger: I remember the stories told about Khoan [Michael Sullivan’s wife] and the
Christmas parties that were held in the lobby of the Art Building [Cummings
Art Building]. People brought their special food and Khoan arrived with her
special Chinese dishes.
D. Maveety: [00:53:47] One time we went to dinner with Eitner, who was honoring
Sullivan-- Or did the Sullivans put this thing on? I’ve forgotten now. I’m
sitting next to Eitner, and because Khoan is on one side and I’m on the
34 other, she is feeding him the things he should eat. The Sullivans had ordered
for this meal.
P. Maveety: [00:54:16] It was in the restaurant China First on El Camino
D. Maveety: [00:54:30] Khoan was pulling the tidbits out of the things that he would not
eat. He’s sitting there and saying to me, “Darle, can I eat this?”
Fryberger: He was not an adventurous eater.
D. Maveety: [00:54:50] I have to also say that Eitner was very generous to me in my
efforts to kind of broaden my experiences in the Art Department, in the
design field, especially with calligraphy and things like that. He permitted me
to go and work in the print studio. Remember, there was a printing press
upstairs. There was Matt Kahn’s studio and then there was another one that
was a printing studio. I was allowed to go in there and play with it. I was
always grateful for the fact that he gave me permission to go up there, get the
type out, set it, and print. It wasn’t that I did anything with it so much; it was
just that he was willing to let me explore it.
Fryberger: You know, he was very open in many ways, like hiring Leo Holub to teach
photography. That was wonderful for Leo, for the students, for the
University.
Let’s get back to Michael Sullivan. Then, how did you come to join the
Museum staff?
P. Maveety: [00:56:11] Oh. Because Eitner asked me.
Fryberger: At this point your research on your dissertation was sort of stalled or
something?
P. Maveety: [00:56:23] Yes, it was.
35 D. Maveety: [00:56:26] Sullivan had left.
P. Maveety: [00:56:28] That was a little bit further on. Anyway, Sullivan had the
opportunity to go to Oxford and live like one of the nobility there. Khoan
wanted to be in England. That left behind all of his graduate students. Eitner
must have told Sullivan that wasn’t the thing to do, to go and leave his
graduate students behind. Sullivan lost me at that point.
D. Maveety: [00:57:27] The whole point was that he wanted to be there. They were pretty
demanding of the graduate students, especially Kumja Kim, asking, “Will you
do this for me?” And “Will you do that?” And so forth.
P. Maveety: [00:57:55] While they were at Oxford for a quarter, they asked, would I be
willing to pick up their newspaper every Sunday or every day.
Fryberger: In 1978 when you joined the Museum, did you know anybody on the staff?
The Museum really wasn’t exactly fully integrated with the Art
Department at that point. It was quite separate. Except Lorenz gave a
seminar on drawings and connoisseurship. A number of graduate students,
and some undergraduates, took that class. Then Dwight Miller also taught
seminars. Some of the faculty did organize shows. Dwight organized several
shows. Did you ever take a class from Dwight?
P. Maveety: [00:58:59] Yes. We’d go along in the middle of a lecture and all of a sudden
he’d say, “Wait a minute. I wanted to include that.” And he’d zip to his office
with the class sitting there with their arms akimbo. He would come rushing
back in with the slides.
Fryberger: He knew a lot, but he had trouble organizing in certain ways.
P. Maveety: [00:59:29] That’s true.
36 D. Maveety: [00:59:32] For Eitner, Sullivan had been, in a sense, the curator of Asian art.
Once he was gone and no longer interested, what was Eitner going to do
with his limited funds?
Fryberger: Eitner asked you if you would be the curator of Asian art at the Stanford
Museum.
P. Maveety: [00:59:54] And he said at the time, “I’m sorry. We don’t have any money to
pay you.” Because of what went on in our income from our gallery in
Oregon, we didn’t really want to mix up sources of income, so I said I would
do it for free, if I got certain staff privileges.
We didn’t want to have to pay taxes in both places.
Fryberger: When you started at the Museum, what were the challenges? Reinstallations?
Exhibitions? You had to look through the whole collection and learn about
it, which took time.
D. Maveety: [01:01:30] He just snooped for first year or so.
Fryberger: Yes. The basement was full of interesting objects.
Let’s talk about the Asian collections at the Museum. One of the oldest
and most important is the collection of Japanese art, some Chinese works as
well, that Jane Stanford acquired in 1904. It included close to five hundred
objects and was formed by the Japanese dealer/collector Seisuke Ikeda who
had recently died.
Your 1987 exhibition catalog, The Ikeda Collection of Japanese and Chinese
Art at Stanford, describes how Ikeda’s son was on the way from Japan to
England, hoping to sell it to the British Museum, but stopped in San
Francisco and met with Mrs. Stanford, who was determined to acquire it.
37 Works ranging from scroll paintings to ceramics, netsuke, and lacquer boxes
were shown in the new Stanford Museum later that year. You reproduced a
photograph of the 1904 installation that shows the son and the Museum’s
first curator Harry Peterson installing cases of ceramics.
[Fryberger and the Maveetys browsing through the catalog] Here is a
large, handsome, eighteenth century vase from the Qing Dynasty.
Artist unknown (China, Qianlong period (1736–1795)), Vase (meiping), 18th century. Porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze enamel. Cantor Arts Center collection; Stanford Family Collections, JLS.9032
P. Maveety: [01:02:40] This vase isn’t blue and white, but it is in the blue-and-white
technique, and here yellow. It is my favorite piece in the whole Ikeda
collection. It is most unusual because it looks, to the trained eye, like a
Japanese piece, there’s nothing about it that looks Chinese, unless you have a
38 trained eye. It always had been counted as a Japanese piece. That always
bugged me. Because it had a Japanese provenance.
[01:03:49] I finally found a similar dish, ascribed to the Jin period
(1115-1234), which is that period between the Song and Ming dynasties when
the potters had freedom of choice. There was no commander in chief for
ceramics. They made what they liked.
Fryberger: Was it possible that this was by a Japanese trained ceramicist who was then
working in China, or not necessarily?
P. Maveety: [01:04:44] I think it was the product of the Chinese ceramics industry, which
was at a low point when this was made. They copied Japanese.
Having the Chinese copy Japanese was almost unheard of, because the
Chinese considered themselves a more advanced civilization.
Fryberger: Tell us about Maggie Van Reed Biddle of San Jose. She gave an important
album of Japanese surimono prints to the Museum in 1892. It contained
more than one hundred and fifty small color woodblock prints. [see The
Stanford Museum Centennial Handbook: 100 Years/100 Works of Art, 1991, p. 29,
1962.86] The Japanese print scholar Roger Keyes wrote an article about the
album in The Stanford Museum journal in 1974. The donor’s brother Eugene
Van Reed was the consul-general for the King of Hawaii in Japan from 1866-
1873.
39
Various artists (Japan, 19th C.), The Van Reed Surimono Album, 1806- 1813. Woodblock print. Cantor Arts Center collection; Gift of Maggie P. Van Reed Biddle, 1962.86.1-106
P. Maveety: [01:08:14] He passed it on to his sister. There’s a letter from her to Curator
Peterson [Harry C. Peterson] in 1902 which refers to it and other “curios”.
The last item was one that amused me. A dried frog.
Fryberger: Let me ask you some other questions about the Committee for Art, Treasure
Market, and the Contemporary Collector’s Circle.
With your own collection, are you giving certain objects, or have you
already given them to Stanford, to the Cantor Center?
D. Maveety: [01:10:12] Yes.
40 P. Maveety: [01:10:13] Yes.
D. Maveety: [01:10:13] Everything that’s currently on loan will become theirs.
Fryberger: Is it mostly contemporary American glass, or is some of it Indonesian
ceramics?
D. Maveety: [01:10:19] A little of everything. Hilarie Faberman [then a curator at the
Cantor Center] came over and picked out things she liked.
We have to talk to the new Cantor staff. There’s no point in giving
them something if they don’t want it. We do have a lot of stuff in Oregon,
but the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem is interested in it, and probably
a lot of it will stay there.
P. Maveety: [01:10:47] Most of that art is contemporary and made in Oregon.
D. Maveety: [01:10:54] The stuff that’s here is up for grabs for Stanford if Stanford wants
it.
Fryberger: Let me show Pat a few more photos of Asian art in the Museum’s collection.
41
Artist unknown (Thailand, Ayudhya kingdom (1351–1767)), Head of a Buddha, 16th century. Bronze. Cantor Arts Center collection; Gift of Mortimer C. Leventritt, 1941.226
Fryberger: I picked several illustrations from The Stanford Museum Centennial Handbook.
This bronze head of a Buddha is a gift of Mortimer Leventritt (Class of
1899).
P. Maveety: [01:12:44] It is from Thailand and very early. [Centennial Handbook, p. 34,
1941.226]
Fryberger: Did you know where Mortimer Leventritt bought Asian art?
P. Maveety: [01:13:05] No.
42 Fryberger: I know the other part of his collection which had major eighteenth century
Venetian paintings and drawings. He lived in Venice, but he bought a lot of
that, I’m sure, in New York.
The Leventritt Collection included several ritual food vessels [dings].
Here, however, is one that’s a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart Marshall [Stewart
M. Marshall]. [Centennial Handbook, p. 19, 1964.118]
Artist unknown (China, Warring States period (475–221 BCE)), Ritual Vessel (ding), 5th century BCE-4th century BCE. Bronze. Cantor Arts Center collection; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart M. Marshall, 1964.118
43 Here is a Ming dynasty jade of a reclining water buffalo given in 1968
by Alice Meyer Buck, in memory of her husband Frank. [Centennial Handbook,
p. 23, 1968.38]
Artist unknown (China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)), Water Buffalo, 14th century-17th century. Jade (dark gray nephrite). Cantor Arts Center collection; Gift of Mrs. Frank E. Buck, 1968.38
Fryberger: Did you ever meet her?
P. Maveety: [01:13:53] Yes.
Fryberger: I did, too. Do you have any interesting recollections?
P. Maveety: [01:13:59] She was pretty decrepit by the time I met her.
Fryberger: I went up to the Buck Estate and had tea with her and somebody from the
Development Office. I remember Michael Sullivan installing the Frank E.
Buck Collection of jades in a newly refurbished gallery in the Museum.
Here’s a handsome dish you obviously picked out.
44 P. Maveety: [01:16:13] Yes. It is Vietnamese porcelain with underglaze blue decorations
[Centennial Handbook, p. 32, 1987.17].
Artist unknown (Vietnam, 15th C.), Large Dish, 15th century. Porcelain and underglaze blue. Cantor Arts Center collection; Committee for Art Acquisitions Fund, 1987.17
Fryberger: Did you begin to admire Indonesian ceramics when you were in that part of
the world?
P. Maveety: [01:16:27] Yes and no. Indonesia is one of the world’s great repositories of
Chinese ceramics. They were sent to pay for the spices that the sultans were
collecting. As you can see they’re very similar because they were copies.
That’s about it. There are major differences that you can pick out.
Fryberger: Here is a Tang dynasty tomb figure of a horse given by Richard Gump.
[Centennial Handbook, p. 22, 1980.176]
45 P. Maveety: [01:17:53] Yes. His Gal Friday came down one day, almost unannounced,
with this Tang horse. We installed it in the gallery and that was it. It was not
damaged as most of this genre are, often they’re busted off at the ankles and
at the ears and tail.
Artist unknown (China, Tang dynasty (618–907)), Horse, 7th century-8th century. Glazed earthenware. Cantor Arts Center collection; Gift of Richard B. Gump in memory of Lloyd Dinkelspiel, Sr., 1980.176
Fryberger: You’ve mounted a lot of different exhibitions. Which stand out in your mind
as being among your favorites?
P. Maveety: [01:19:53] Of course, the first one I did was blue and white ceramics from
Thailand. It was November 1978 of my first year. It took quite a while to put
it together.
Fryberger: How about memorable Museum moments? Like after the Loma Prieta
earthquake. Where were you during the earthquake?
P. Maveety: [01:24:50] Darle and I were in Oregon.
46 Fryberger: Did you meet any collectors who then gave things to Stanford?
P. Maveety: [01:25:41] I guess you could call it a working relationship with the curator of
Asian art in Jakarta, a man named Abu Rido. I went there twice. I made two
trips to Indonesia to be with this guy and study the collection because its
focus was the influence of Chinese ceramics on Indonesian textiles and the
influence of Indonesian fabric design on Chinese ceramics.
Fryberger: It works both ways.
P. Maveety: [01:26:56] I used to imagine the Chinese looking at these Indonesian designs
and then they could translate them into ceramics.
Fryberger: You and Darle were members, or maybe still are, of the Contemporary
Collectors Circle.
P. Maveety: [01:27:25] No, we’re not still members.
Fryberger: Did you go on trips with the group?
P. Maveety: [01:27:30] Yes.
Fryberger: You and Darle sat at the front desk of the Cantor Arts Center for a while.
P. Maveety: [01:28:45] Yes. It was an interesting place to sit and observe and watch what
went on.
Fryberger: When Tom [Thomas K. Seligman] was director, all the curators had to take
turns sitting out at the front desk at least once. Since you’ve retired, have you
been doing anything that bears any relation to your earlier Stanford
connections, or anything that the Historical Society should know about?
P. Maveety: [01:29:37] I don’t think so.
Fryberger: Have they hired an Asian curator at the Museum?
47 P. Maveety: [01:29:40] No. My successor, or successor’s successor, didn’t get a
replacement. I don’t know how Connie [Connie Wolf, director of Cantor
Arts Center, 2012-2016] is dealing with that.
Fryberger: Any changes in what you think about art and the art world, and
contemporary Chinese art and all those astronomical prices?
P. Maveety: [01:30:40] I don’t follow contemporary Chinese art. The one artist that I do
follow is Wu Guanzhong who died a couple years ago. I bought two Wu
Guanzhong paintings on two separate occasions in Beijing. This was the first
one I bought in Beijing. I picked it out of a stack of things. I paid $700 for
that, which was a pretty good price, and brought it back. Then next trip to
China I bought another one, and that’s the one that I gave to the Museum in
honor of Tom when he retired. That’s the better one. Better than this. I
haven’t bought anything since then.
Fryberger: When you went to China, did you ever go with the Committee for Art?
P. Maveety: [01:32:03] No. Went with Stanford’s Travel/Study program.
Fryberger: Travel/Study. They’ve combined some trips with the Committee for Art
now. Isn’t that right?
P. Maveety: [01:32:16] I think so.
Fryberger: That makes sense. Yes. Anything else you want to say? Changing taste,
changing world?
P. Maveety: [01:32:26] Changing world is for sure.
Fryberger: Okay. Let me stop for now. Thanks so much.
[End of interview with Patrick J. and Darle Maveety, February 16,
2016]
48 Topics
Arnautoff, Victor (1896-1979) Astoria, Oregon Birkmeyer, Dr. Karl (1891-1980) Bowman, Richard (1918-2001) Buck, Alice Meyer (1882-1979) Camp Pendleton, California Chaparral, The China Contemporary Collectors Circle Corn, Wanda M. Cross, Helen Diebenkorn, Richard (1922-1993) Elsen, Albert E. (1927-1995) Faberman, Hilarie Farmer, Edward McNeil (1901-1969) Faulkner, Ray N. (1906-1975) Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, California Governor Stanford locomotive Guam Gump, Richard (1906-1989) Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon Holub, Leo (1916-2010) Ikeda Collection of Japanese and Chinese Art at Stanford, The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, The Kahn, Matt (1928-2013) LaPlante, John (1922-2000) Leventritt, Mortimer (1877-1966) Mendelowitz, Daniel M. (1905-1980) Miller, Dwight Minto, Robert “Rabb” M. (1920-
49 Mozley, Anita, 1928-2010 Peterson, Harry C. (1876-1941) Quantico, Virginia San Diego Art Museum San Diego, California Seligman, Thomas K. Stanford Art Association Stanford Art Gallery Stanford Museum Centennial Handbook, The Stanford University--Department of Art and Art History Stanford University--Department of Asian Studies Stanford University--Dormitories--Encina Hall Stanford University--Dudley Herbarium Stanford University--Museum of Art Stanford University--Memorial Church Stanford University--Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery [now the Stanford Art Gallery] Stewart, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall M. Sullivan, Michael (1916-2013) United States Navy universities and colleges--administration--art administration University of California, Los Angeles Van Reed Biddle, Maggie Women’s Athletic Association Wu, Guanzhong, 1919-2010
50 Interviewer
Betsy Geraghty Fryberger is the Burton and Deedee McMurtry Curator of Prints and Drawings, Emerita at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts (formerly Stanford University Museum of Art). She retired in 2009 after working for forty years at the Museum.
As curator of prints and drawings, Fryberger organized about a hundred exhibitions, often with catalogues, and co-edited the Stanford Museum’s journal. She also organized loan exhibitions that included works by such major artists as Goya, Piranesi, Whistler, Kollwitz, Klee, and Picasso. In 2003 her ambitious exhibition The Changing Garden: Four Centuries of European and American Gardens received high praise. Over the years, with the support of the Museum directors, Professor Lorenz Eitner and later Thomas K. Seligman, she enlarged the permanent collection of prints and drawings from a few hundred to about 1,500 drawings and more than 5,000 prints.
Fryberger was born in 1935 in Chicago, Illinois. She received her BA with honors in art history from Bryn Mawr College in 1956. During college she spent two summers as an intern at The Art Institute of Chicago in the Print and Drawing Department. She married David Fryberger in 1957 and the next year received an MA from Harvard University, also in art history. After working briefly at The University of Chicago Press, she joined the staff of The Art Institute of Chicago as an assistant curator of prints and drawings. In 1967 she and her husband moved to the Bay Area, settling in Palo Alto. Fryberger worked in San Francisco for R. E. Lewis, a dealer in old-master prints, Japanese prints, and Indian miniatures and then joined the very small staff of the Stanford University Museum of Art.
In her retirement Fryberger volunteers at two historic Palo Alto gardens: giving lectures and serving as a docent at the Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden; and working at the Williams Garden at the Museum of American Heritage. In addition, she is an active interviewer for the Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program.
51