Engines of Culture: Philanthropy and Art Museums 1560001739, 9781560001737

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title page
Copyright Page
Contents
Author’s note
Introduction to the Transaction Edition
1 Museums for the Public
2 Impulse and Justification
3 Sources of Patterns of Museum Philanthropy
Some Patterns of Voluntary Giving
Voluntary Service
Government Support
4 Philanthropy and Museum Policy
Museums and Education
Museums and Contemporary Art
5 Private Desires and Public Welfare
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Engines of Culture

Engines of Culture Philanthropy and Art Museums p»

”’ ”

*

DANIEL M. FOX With a new introduction by the author

Originally published in 1963 by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin for the Department of History, University of Wisconsin. Published 1995 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business

New material this edition copyright© 1995 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 94-11045 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fox, Daniel M. Engines of culture : philosophy and art museums I Daniel M. Fox with a new introduction by the author. p. em. Originally published : Madison : State Historical Society of Wisconsin for the Dept. of History, University of Wisconsin, 1963. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-56000-173-9 1. Art patronage-United States. 2. Art and state-United States. 3. Art museums-United States-Management. I. Title. N5205.F69 1994 94-11045 708.13'079-dc20 CIP ISBN 13: 978-1-56000-173-7 (hbk)

Contents

Author’s note Introduction to the Transaction Edition

vii 1

1.

Museums for the Public

25

2.

Impulse and Justification

31

3.

Sources of Patterns of Museum Philanthropy Some Patterns of Voluntary Giving Voluntary Service Government Support

43 43 49 51

4.

Philanthropy and Museum Policy Museums and Education Museums and Contemporary Art

59 59 69

5.

Private Desires and Public Welfare

75

Notes

81

Index

93

Author’s Note I wrote Engines o f Culture in 1961 and 1962 for the History of American Philanthropy project sponsored by the Ford Foundation at the University of Wisconsin. The text of the 1963 edition is un changed, except for the correction of typographical errors and a few changes in the citations. The new edition is the result of advocacy by several colleagues; Ri chard Magat, Peter Dobkin Hall and Stanley N. Katz. Irving Louis Horowitz, president of Transaction publishers, recommended that I write a substantial introduction to the new edition. In the first edition I said that my “greatest obligation is to Professor Merle E. Curti: without his wisdom, kindness and generosity this essay would have been neither begun nor completed.” For reasons I describe in the Introduction, this obligation persists after three decades. Daniel M. Fox March, 1994

Vll

Introduction to the Transaction Edition When the first edition of Engines o f Culture appeared, in 1963, neither museums nor American philanthropy were important subjects for research. Those who studied the visual arts considered artists and the objects they created to be their proper subjects. Scholars of social policy emphasized the state and the organized groups that sought to in fluence it. Three decades ago I was eccentric to insist that the linkage of philan thropy and the state in city, state and federal politics was the central theme in the history and contemporary situation of museums of art. Since then it has become conventional to consider art a major American in dustry, like health care, education and defense. In art as in these other industries, the distinction between private and public action is now am biguous. Considerable scholarship and journalism describes how public and non-profit museums have influenced the private market for works of art, how the education programs of these museums have diffused the taste that elite Americans wanted people in other social classes to share or admire, and how both museums and their donors have acquired enor mous government subsidies. Because so much has been published on the subject since 1963, I hesitated when Transaction Publishers, on the recommendation of sev eral experts on the history and politics of philanthropy, invited me to introduce a new edition of Engines o f Culture. What had I said so many years ago that should be reprinted? What could I say in an introduction that might be helpful to scholars who, unlike me, continue to give close attention to museums? I persuaded myself that a new edition of Engines would be an oppor tunity to write for a new audience about the central theme of my career in government, universities, foundations and scholarship. This theme is that how power is mobilized and used is the principal problem in public affairs. I have explored this theme as an activist and scholar in the are nas of health and social policy. For several months in the early 1960s, I 1

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had a commission that permitted me to learn about the theme of power in the history of America’s public museums of art.1 In the 1950s, research on the arts, especially by academics, excluded political analysis. A famous Harvard professor of American literature, for instance, taught me in 1956 that “art is not life; art is better than life.”2 Although there is now a substantial literature about the history, soci ology and economics of the arts and arts institutions, it is still conven tional for academics to dismiss politics. Many scholars describe politics as a tedious and routine activity, in the subjects they study as well as in the organizations that employ them. Similarly, in health affairs, the arena I know best, many intellectuals deplore politics because it impedes what they consider to be rational responses to incentives and disincentives that would make Americans healthier at less cost. The rejection of politics among intellectuals often takes the subtler form of what I call technocratic solutionism. Experts who practice solutionism insist that problems have technical solutions even if they are the result of conflicts about ideas, values and interests. Solutionists often assume that people who run for office and meet public payrolls need their help to decide what to tax and subsidize or how to regulate. They need help, certainly, but hardly ever to identify social problems or potential remedies for them. Leaders in government are grateful for as sistance in mobilizing support for new policies among contending inter est groups. This is not help that most technocratic solutionists are eager, or able, to provide. Engines was my first essay about politics that employed the methods of intellectual history. By the time I finished writing the book, though not when I began it, as I shall recount below, I rejected the solutionist stance that museums had been and should continue to be agents of a benign arts policy promoted by their advocates. Engines was also a minor contribution to a major change in the inter ests of social scientists. This major change was a new interest in re search on philanthropy (subsequently called “non- profit organizations” or the “independent sector”). Philanthropy became a focus of scholarship in the 1950’s and 1960’s mainly because foundations made grants to study it, but also because many intellectuals were becoming skeptical about the assumptions of the centrist coalition that dominated decisions in government and the

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economy. Some intellectuals lost faith in the liberal New Deal dogma that a national welfare state on the European model, which included public subsidies for the arts, would be legislated in increments. Others doubted that pluralistic bargaining involving large corporations, unions and professional associations, and advocates for a variety of causes would produce steady economic growth, a rising standard of living, and social justice. Many social scientists became increasingly dubious about the efficacy of the state and curious about other sources of creativity and social reform. These alternatives included the private philanthropy that had created what they regarded as uniquely American hospitals, univer sities, foundations and museums. The clumsiness of Engines can also be instructive. Like other young scholars, I often misunderstood the difference between new ideas and fashionable ones. I also assumed that my teachers and other leading secondary sources were correct. This introduction is autobiography that aspires to be history. First I place Engines in its personal and intellectual context. Then I assess its strengths and weaknesses and its influence on subsequent scholarship. Finally, I comment on the present state of knowledge about museums and power in American communities. The Commissioning of Engines The scholarly and autobiographical accounts of why Merle Curti com missioned Engines have much in common. According to a recent essay by Peter Hall, until the “advent of the Cold War,” philanthropy, and especially foundations, had been 4immun[e]’ from Congressional in quiry” and thus comfortable in its exemption from taxation. The inves tigation of Alger Hiss in 1948, after he had become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was, Hall writes, “only the beginning of steadily broadening political and regulatory challenge to the autonomy of grant-making foundations.”3 Foundations, he continues, took the “initiative for creating a public record” of their activities. In 1955 the Ford Foundation awarded Merle Curti of the University of Wisconsin “its first grants to encourage the scholarly investigation of the role of philanthropy in American life.” Hall then lists what he calls “pioneering volumes,” among which he includes Engines o f Culture*

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Curti has been an extraordinarily influential historian. His many books include The Growth o f American Thought (1943), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. He was also a successful professional politician, esteemed by peers and students. Curti was one of the youngest presidents ever elected by the American Historical Association. His reputation as a car ing teacher featured the legend that he displayed a map of the United States on which pins designated the location of scholars whose disserta tions he had supervised. The legend has some basis: the first time I met Merle Curti, in 1961, he volunteered that he had directed 110 doctoral dissertations. Curti also described himself to me in 1961 as a democratic socialist with pacifist inclinations. He said that he was appalled by the callous ness of contemporary politics and social policy. The history of philan thropy, in contrast, offered evidence of the most generous impulses in American life. Voluntary action could be an antidote to the enmities of the Cold War at home and abroad and the limited compassion of both modem Republicanism and a Democratic Party that was dominated by conservative Southern members of Congress. The Ford Foundation had chosen its grantee well. They had Curti precisely where he wanted to be. When Curti invited me to spend a summer researching and writing a monograph on philanthropy for art museums, I had recently been taught that voluntary action had great significance in the shaping of American character and its institutions. The existence of a unique American char acter was self-evident to many historians and other social scientists in the 1950’s. This unique national character, they taught and wrote, was the result of the shared experience of immigrants, of abundant natural resources and of political, economic and educational institutions that encouraged opportunity. Voluntary associations, textbooks and professors agreed, had an im portant influence on the national character. America transformed immi grants, whatever their country of origin. They became notorious joiners, for example: churches, ethnic associations, lodges and social clubs flour ished here as nowhere else. Americans were also benevolent in their voluntary action. Because of local work and money, schools, colleges, hospitals, museums and organizations of artists and scientists flourished in the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting from France in the 1830’s, called atten

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tion to Americans’ unique commitment to voluntary associations in a passage that became assigned reading for millions of undergraduates a century later. James Bryce, visiting from Britain a generation after de Tocqueville, praised American philanthropy in contrast to what he de scribed as the venality and inefficiency of urban machine politics. I learned about national character and the uniqueness of American voluntarism from my teachers at Harvard—from Fred Merk, Wilbur K. Jordan, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Frank Freidel, Donald Fleming and es pecially from Oscar Handlin.5 In his books and lectures, Handlin, I think now, romanticized the American experience. Men and women, he insisted, remade themselves and created new institutions to assist their efforts. Americans used their political and economic institutions as instruments and then emblems of personal transformation. To Handlin, as I understood him when I was an undergraduate and beginning graduate student, liberty provided the context in which Americans achieved their aspirations. Liberty had been more important to Ameri can history than the institutions of capitalism or even those of republi can democracy. Although Handlin’s interpretation of American history excited me, I was also fascinated by the details of politics that he rarely mentioned and never analyzed. At about the same time I was mortified because I wrote a mediocre hour exam in Frank Freidel’s course on American political history. About once a year until his death in 1993,1 found a way to tell Freidel that I was still eagerly learning facts about American politics. My dual interest in American character and politics caused me to write a senior honors thesis on the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project. For most of a year I lived vicariously both the politics of the late 1930’s and the concept of regional and national character in the Project’s major work, the American Guide Series. As a result of this research, I decided that I wanted to become an expert on arts policy. Arts policy in the late 1950’s meant public policy, in which the United States seemed to lag behind other countries. The New Deal Arts Projects had been defeated by controversy, mainly because they tried simulta neously to promote the arts and provide work relief for the unemployed. The new practical task was to invent, enact and implement policies that would subsidize living artists as cultural, not employment, policy. My task for research and advocacy was to understand why, in the arts as in

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health, education and housing policy, the American welfare state was incomplete. Although foundations spent more for the arts than the federal govern ment did in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, most advocates of arts policy regarded philanthropy as an inadequate substitute for public policy. In the arts as in other arenas of social affairs, most intellectuals assumed that there was a well-established general pattern of policy development. New social policies began with actions by individual donors and advo cacy groups. Then several donors united within communities to create philanthropic organizations. Next, municipalities and the states shared some of the financial burden with the philanthropists and their organiza tions. Finally, the federal government made national policy. Many years later I realized that most Americans in the early 1960’s, maybe even most academics outside the elite universities, did not par ticularly want an expanding welfare state. However, like many intellec tuals, I believed that Roosevelt’s New Deal had been desirable but remained incomplete. Sometime soon Americans would enact proper subsidies for the arts and education at all levels, national health insur ance, and an expanding social security system to replace means-tested public welfare. We complained that the United States did not have these attributes of a modem state because of the selfishness of business and professional interest groups and because many people in the middle and upper classes lacked sufficiently generous regard for less fortunate persons. These views set my interest in arts policy in a broad political frame work. My interest and convictions were reinforced during a year of re search on arts policy in Europe on a travelling fellowship from Harvard College. The titles of my earliest articles in scholarly journals made my polemical point, though at the time I was persuaded that they were en tirely objective: “Federal Writers and the National Portrait,”6 “The New Arts Patronage in Europe and the United States,”7 “Artists in the Mod em State: the 19th Century Background.”8 The normative bias in my scholarship on arts policy reinforced my adherence to the assumption that philanthropy preceded the welfare state, in present politics as in the historical past. The institutions of philan thropy helped people who needed money, or housing or education be cause they were unemployed or sick or members of a stigmatized religion,

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race or ethnic group. But philanthropists were eventually overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the problems of modem society. The unavoidable failure of philanthropy to meet escalating need cre ated constituencies and hence mandates for public policy. This had hap pened in Great Britain, beginning in the early nineteenth century. It occurred notoriously in the United States in the early 1930’s when phi lanthropy could not cope with the human misery of the Great Depres sion. The arts had a claim on philanthropy and public policy. Artists who could not prosper in a market economy deserved to be subsidized be cause their work had aesthetic and educational value. Philanthropy made major contributions to the incomes of artists and to creating access for the general public to their work. But state subsidies were now required to assure that artists had proper incomes and to make their work avail able to a broad public. The claims of the so-called high arts for public subsidy were not, however, as convincing to me as those of health care or income security or housing. Advocates for arts subsidies had difficulty justifying the use of public funds for cultural activities when many people were ill-fed, illhoused, or just ill. Moreover, the marketplace handsomely supported the arts that the general public enjoyed most, popular music and the movies. Public subsidies for the arts, in contrast, promoted activities that were patronized and enjoyed mainly by the wealthiest and besteducated persons. As a result, government funding to democratize the audiences for painting, sculpture, ballet and classical music, even dur ing a period of national prosperity like the 1960’s, lacked the compel ling moral logic of building hospital intensive care units or colleges of engineering. My doubts about the purposes of arts policy informed the research that became Engines o f Culture. On the one hand, I believed that arts policy was essential to an unfolding welfare state. Culture was good for everyone, like adequate income, appropriate housing, and affordable health care. On the other hand, I suspected that advocates of arts policy often used the rhetoric of general welfare to mask special pleading on behalf of collectors, entrepreneurs and artists. I was not sure if my re search would lead to conclusions about the American variant of the wel fare state or, instead, about interest group behavior in a pluralist society.

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Thirty years later, having expressed my skepticism about both the welfare state and interest group pluralism in both action and print, I am embarrassed by my innocence. But I am impressed by the extent to which the discipline of scholarly work made my normative conflict irrelevant to Engines o f Culture. Objectivity is a notoriously slippery issue. Among social scientists, however, there is a loose community standard of objec tivity that, when it operates effectively, makes ideology subordinate to information. Engines meets that community standard. Despite my normative in clinations, I described in considerable detail the politics by which pa trons and politicians accommodated each other in American cities from the 1870’s to the 1950’s. The state and elite interest groups made deals for which philanthropy provided money and ideological sanction. The accommodation was so successful in satisfying interests that were po tentially in conflict that few contemporaries claimed that these deals violated the public interest. There were, however, very few people in 1963 who cared very much about an argument by a young historian that art museums were a special and instructive case of the accommodation of public and private inter ests. Curti was persuaded, and so were some of his colleagues in the History of Philanthropy project, notably Irvin G. Wyllie, also a profes sor at the University of Wisconsin. The only other historian doing re search on art museums was Neil Harris, now professor of history at the University of Chicago, then a graduate student working with Handlin. Harris and I helped each other, despite our very different approaches to the issues. Professor Donald Fleming, sensing my ambivalence about subsidy for the arts as social policy and my fascination with the relation ship between ideas and politics, encouraged me to do my next research on another subject. Assessing Engines Five years earlier, Engines would not have been commissioned. The study of philanthropy was not sufficiently advanced before the first pub lications from Curti’s project. Five years later, Engines could not have been written, by me or anybody else. By the late 1960’s, what had only recently seemed to be a cumulative and reasonably stable accommoda tion of patrons and politicians had become volatile. The establishment

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of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965 made federal money available to museums in unprecedented amounts. In the same years, and partly in response to this infusion of public funds, major museums in vested more heavily than they had earlier in exhibits that were intended to attract publicity and large numbers of visitors. Museums also became more entrepreneurial. Encouraged by their trustees, their staff bought and sold more works of art than ever before and established profitable retail outlets for reproductions and souvenirs. Museums became controversial as a result of their surging income and publicity. Public officials and the media criticized the role of muse ums in marketing both old masters and contemporary art. In some cities and especially in New York, the center of the nation’s arts industry, poli ticians, the press and advocacy groups accused museum leaders of in sensitivity to issues of race, ethnicity and poverty. Scholarship on museums had new missions and audiences by the late 1960’s. The public issues raised by museums had become much too visible and complicated to assign a graduate student to address them in a few months. Engines had achieved a modest purpose, for the Ford Foundation, for Curti and for me. I did not open it for thirty years. Before I reread it, I expected to find it appalling, especially the prose. I remembered Donald Fleming telling me in 1963 “you’ll never be a stylist” (and my pleasure a dozen years later when he thanked me for sending him a reprint of an “exceedingly well-written paper”). But I also worried that I had taken philanthropists too seriously, mistaking their rationalizations for reasons. Engines has faults, but they are different from the ones I had imag ined. The prose is adequate, though at times cluttered. I was adequately cynical about the motives of philanthropists. More important, I stated clearly and supported with data my thesis about the inseparability of philanthropy and government, of private and public. I had done a credible job of writing historically about the political economy of art museums. I had not, however, sufficiently separated myself from my teachers and from the leading secondary sources of the time. For instance, I em phasized differences between American museums and those in Europe more than the evidence required. Moreover, I sharply differentiated cul tural institutions before and after the Civil War because of what I had read in the literature, not because I had examined primary data. Simi larly, I overemphasized the utilitarian purposes of museum founders,

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understating their veneration of works of art, mainly because practical benevolence was the central motive described by the authors of other monographs in the Curti project. I certainly did not know enough, or have enough imagination, about American society in the nineteenth century. Years later, Harris would compare museums with department stores and international fairs.9 I missed this completely, though I caught the analogy between museums and supermarkets in the twentieth century. Harris also subsequently cor rected my overemphasis on utilitarian purposes, arguing persuasively in 1981 that I should have used the metaphors of temples or asylums as well as of engines.10 Most important, I ignored almost completely evidence about other arenas in which philanthropists and public officials collaborated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I neglected to study in any detail the mutual accommodation of public and private interests in the history of hospitals and higher education. The facile explanation for this neglect is that I was unread and rushed. It is much more likely that I was a captive of the conventional belief that the purpose of philanthropy was to pre cede or substitute for government action. According to this belief, phi lanthropists and public officials collaborated temporarily, as a stage in progress toward the mature welfare state Many years later I realized that philanthropists and public officials have complemented each other throughout American history. An inti mate linkage of public and private has been the norm of policy and poli tics. I reached this conclusion mainly as a result of studying the history of public health, of hospitals, and of medical education, and by follow ing the work of colleagues who work on contemporary aspects of these subjects in adjacent social sciences. I also experienced the linkage every day as an employee of federal and state agencies, an academic medical center and a foundation. When I studied museums, on the other hand, I did not seek data about how patrons and politicians used each other in other arenas because I did not believe it was a central theme of Ameri can history. I got somewhat more than half the story right. The “mythology of American philanthropy,” I wrote in the conclusion of the third chapter, “has long been an extension of assumptions about private economic enterprise.” These assumptions included “blindness” about the interpen etration of government and the private sector. But I did not appreciate

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how pervasive this interpenetration has been, or the full political signifi cance of ideological claims that government, or business, or philanthropy had different domains. I am embarrassed in retrospect that I relied entirely on printed pri mary sources and did not consult museum archives. In the 1950’s and 1960’s most intellectual historians gave priority to printed texts, unless they were writing biography. They defined the principal subject of intel lectual history as public discourse; in contrast to social, political or dip lomatic history, which had to rely on unpublished documents. After the 1970’s, when intellectual historians’ prestige had declined in relation to their colleagues in social history, many of them routinely used archival sources. I am delighted in retrospect that I organized Engines thematically rather than according to chronology. The three main chapters of the book are about philanthropists’ motives, public and private funding for muse ums, and museum policy. Each of these chapters discusses data perti nent to its theme for the century preceding 1960. As a result of this plan of organization, my argument stands out clearly and has been reason ably accessible to subsequent scholars. I took Curti’s advice in choosing thematic organization. My teachers at Harvard insisted that historical monographs should be organized chro nologically. A long letter from Curti criticizing my first, chronological draft began, “What are they teaching at Harvard these days?” Curti’s goal, though I realized it dimly at the time, was that historical research should be useful to other social scientists. He urged historians to communicate with colleagues in adjacent disciplines, particularly economists, political scientists, and sociologists. A monograph organized thematically would be more accessible to these colleagues than one or ganized chronologically, even though the narrative would sometimes be repetitive. Most of my mentors at Harvard did not think much of the adjacent social sciences, when they thought of them at all. Engines, like so much scholarship in every discipline before the 1970’s, underestimates the role of women. I described great women collectors of old masters, for example Louise Havemeyer, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Edith Rockefeller McCormick. I mentioned women in the twentieth century who created museums as patronage for avant-garde artists, no tably Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. But Kathleen McCarthy properly concluded in 1991 that “most of standard institutional histories [in which

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list she includes Engines] either mention women in passing or provide only scattered references to their donations.”11 I did not neglect women because I was ignorant of their role in the history of museums. While I was writing Engines, I was also preparing biographies of women in art philanthropy for the first edition of Notable American Women. Similarly, though I committed the conventional big otry of using the masculine pronoun as the norm throughout the book, I consciously wrote about both women and men in several passages. The problem was again the absence of models. I wrote less than I should have about the role of women in the history of museums for the same reason that I missed the mutual dependence of philanthropy and government. Beginning scholars know more about what they read in books and hear from their teachers than they do either about life or pri mary data. Engines was quoted in support of contradictory interpretations from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. Here are examples of its use to support centrist, Marxist, and conservative interpretations of the history of museums. The most influential use of the research and interpretation in Engines was by Germain Bazin, a curator at the Louvre whose book The Mu­ seum Age, originally published in France, appeared in English in 1967. Engines is the only American monograph he cited in his chapter on “The New World.” Quoting Engines, Bazin argued that “American patterns of philanthropy, education and government” created distinctive func tions and audiences for museums. But he insisted, contradicting this point, that “from the beginning the American museum depended prima rily on private patronage.” He did not mention the enormous contribu tion of public funds to museum construction, operating expenses and, through tax expenditures, patronage itself. American museums, he in sisted, are “private organisms managed like corporations” that have “been spared the sclerosis of state control.” In sum, they are the “spontaneous product of American life.” Most subsequent histories of museums by journalists and museum employees have repeated Bazin’s description of philanthropy as a benign middle course between government and business.12 Engines assisted two art historians writing in a British journal in 1980 to document a Marxist history of museums. Museums, they wrote, “em body and make visible the idea of the state.” In New York City, for example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a “monument” that per

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mitted its founders to “symbolize their class’s domination of the state.” As evidence, they cited data from Engines that the “museum building would be located on city land and owned by the city...the museum collection would be owned and controlled by the concerned citizens who made up its board of directors.”13 The most sophisticated use of the argument and data in Engines was by Edward C. Banfield in 1984, in a monograph opposing public subsi dies for museums that was commissioned by the Twentieth Century Fund. Banfield, a distinguished political scientist, interpreted Engines exactly as I had intended. “Contrary to public opinion,” he wrote in his opening pages, “taxpayers have given substantial support to the arts for at least a century.” Moreover, “that so many precious objects should be forever buried in some of the most valuable land of the great cities would be inexplicable but for the fact the museums did not bear the costs.”14 Banfield’s conclusion was, however, precisely the opposite of that of the Marxists and entirely different from my normative position in 1963. Public subsidy forced museums to reject “aesthetic expression” in order to “present art as entertainment, psychotherapy, material for historical studies....” Subsidy neither honored capitalists nor assisted them in fixing the prices for the art they collected. Quoting data from Engines, Banfield wrote that museum philanthropists’ only interest in education was “to make a claim on state or local government.” But their reliance on government deflected them from the “proper function of an art m useum ...to collect and display works of art.” As a result, by the 1980’s, museums had become distracted by the need to attract crowds in order to justify subsidies from cities and states. Federal subsidies served to “benefit special interests” in the “culture industry,” including those of professors in search of grants. The history of public subsidies for muse ums was yet another on Banfield’s long list of unintended consequences of liberal policies.15 Engines, in sum, still has some value. Because it was the work of a novice in scholarship rather than a forgotten masterpiece, it is a reveal ing primary source for assumptions about methods and politics that in tellectual historians of the United States once considered obvious. Because it was for some years the only historical study of the political economy of art museums it was read and cited by scholars who then adapted its evidence and argument to their own needs.

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Engines and Contemporary Scholarship Like other products of Curti’s History of American Philanthropy Project, Engines was incorporated retrospectively into the field of what is now called non-profit or voluntary action or independent sector stud ies. Every new field needs a history to complement its funding, journals and professional associations. Peter Hall, Stanley Katz and a few other scholars have provided this history for the study of non-profit organiza tions. But most of the social scientists in the field have ignored thenefforts to create ancestors. I am an ancestor in non-profit studies and a contemporary in the study of health policy. For a decade, John Simon, Peter Hall and their col leagues at the Yale Program on Non Profit Organizations have regularly invited me to talk about my current work and have kept me informed about the history and present politics of their newly created field. From Hall, I learned that Lester Salomon, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, had independently discovered the thesis of Engines. According to Hall’s account of a 1986 paper by Salomon, the “failure of scholars and policymakers to acknowledge the interpenetration of government and the private non profit sector” is a result of both the failure of research and the limitations of theory. Salomon faults wel fare state theory for its “failure to differentiate between government’s role as a provider of funds and its role as a deliverer of services.” He criticizes voluntary sector theory “because of its tendency to justify the voluntary sector in terms of failures of government and the market.” Salomon reached this conclusion as a result of analyzing the problems created for non-profit organizations by budget cuts in the first Reagan Administration.16 I was surprised by Salomon’s sense of discovery but not in the slight est because he had ignored Engines o f Culture. Why was the interpen etration of government and non-profit organizations news to anyone in the 1980’s? As a participant in the health care industry I live with the facts of interpenetration. My news about art museums in 1962 and 1963, generalized, is a fact of life for the more then ten percent of the Ameri can workforce who are employed in the health and human services industries. I have little interest in knowing how scholars who study the non profit sector in general have reached their conclusions. What interests

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me is how people who lead public, non-profit and investor-owned orga nizations have related to each other in particular cases. Turning from theory to empirical research, I was pleased to find a rich literature on art museums by historians, sociologists, political scientists and economists. Historians have contributed substantial knowledge about museums as institutions through which wealthy Americans have communicated their tastes and values, mainly to members of the middle classes. Neil Harris has continued to study museums and to compare them with other institutions. In a 1990 collection of his articles from two decades, Harris combines vast knowledge about the interconnection of ideas and insti tutions in American culture with his enthusiasm for museums.17 Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’ book about cultural philanthropy in Chicago from the 1880’s to 1917 was the first examination of a major museum in its full socioeconomic context.18 Kathleen McCarthy’s Women’s Culture: American Philanthropy and Art 1830 1930, expands the history of mu seums to include institutions founded and governed by women to pro mote crafts, folk art, and the work of avant-garde artists.19 Joel Orosz, writing about museums before 1870, describes an “informal museum m ovem ent...gu id ed ...b y the imperatives of American culture.”20 Daniel Sherman’s book about art museums in nineteenth-century France contributes to general museum historiography a distinction among “an ecdotal,” “schematic” and “contextual” studies.21 Sociologists, and especially Paul J. DiMaggio, have made the history and present situation of museums an important subject for research. DiMaggio has emphasized two themes in many publications since the late 1970’s: the unique role of non-profit organizations in mediating between culture and the marketplace; and the interplay of local and na tional issues in the behavior of both social elites and museum profes sionals. He combines research in primary data, including historical sources, with facility in organizational theory. Moving with care from scholarship to prescription, DiMaggio has recently warned that, as a result of demography, the general economy, the state of the art market and changes in upper class behavior, “Art museums can no longer count on steadily increasing demand for their services.”22 Another important contribution by a sociologist to the literature on museums is Diana Crane’s study of the New York art world between 1940 and 1985. Following DiMaggio and other scholars Crane argues that control over museums has shifted from social elites to government

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Engines of Culture

and corporations. She describes how this shift occurred in the New York art world, “which retained its position at the center of the gatekeeping system” through which artists are selected for prestige and profit. Over four decades, she argues, New York museums sought broader constitu encies and simultaneously became “less responsive to emerging art styles.”23 Several political scientists have written cogently about recent arts policy, of which museums have been the leading beneficiaries. Milton C. Cummings published in 1982 an indispensable study of the political background of the creation of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.24 A 1991 Cummings article is a sophisticated historical analysis of government and the arts in the United States.25In 1987 Kevin Mulcahy made a balanced case for an argument similar to that of Ed ward Banfield in his polemic of 1984. American arts policy, Mulcahy concluded, has been characterized by “an inability to define a public cultural interest.”26 Economists’ analysis of museums begins with a theoretical choice. Those economists who prefer to define museums as firms criticize them for misusing public funds to benefit a small segment of the population. The museum-as-firm engages in accounting practices that self-servingly ignore the value of its capital, in land and buildings, usually provided by government, and in objects of art, donated by philanthropists.27 Most economists, however, justify public and philanthropic subsidies because they decide that museums are public utilities (natural monopolies) or merit goods (goods that people should have more of than they will pur chase in the market). Economists who decide that museums operate outside the market analyze their operations as a problem in public fi nance and describe how they could reduce the losses that result from their public mission. These losses are caused by what economists call market failure, public policy and consumer opinion that limits their free dom to buy and sell objects of art under the most favorable conditions. Notable contributors to the economic literature on museums have in cluded Tibor Scitovsky,28 Dick Netzer,29 Bruno S. Frey and Wemer W. Pommerehne,30and recently a group of nationally prominent economists assembled by Martin Feldstein on behalf of the National Bureau of Eco nomic Research.31 Most scholarship on museums has separated the institutions and their collections. Art was one subject; how museums operated and what they

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aspired to another. This assumption persisted even in studies, like those of Harris, McCarthy (and, of course, Engines), that described how mu seum leaders wanted members of the public to benefit from particular kinds of objects. Art historians have been comfortable with this separation, at least until recently. A vast art historical literature of the past century describes and analyzes particular objects without offering very much information about where they were hung or stored, and with hardly any attention to how and for whom they were displayed. Social scientists have been def erential to art historians, just as most of their colleagues who studied science once assumed that their proper subject was its social setting rather than how knowledge is produced. Museum professionals have usually reinforced the separation of art and institutional life. They have found it useful to define themselves as the coordinators of the interconnected worlds of artists, dealers, collec tors, government and foundation officials, and visitors. The official definition of museums makes this separation appear to be self-evident. A handbook published by the Association of Art Museum Directors defines a museum as a “permanent non profit institution, es sentially educational or aesthetic in purpose, with professional staff.” This formulation dichotomizes education (or the search for attention from the public) and any purpose involving the “aesthetic” (or a reac tion to an object, lay or learned). Professional staff, the definition im plies, are essential for managing the dichotomy. The directors then list the activities of this non-profit institution, which “acquires objects, cares for them, interprets them and exhibits them to the public on some regu lar schedule.” Each activity requires special expertise and coordination.32 The museum trade press and the writings of leading directors rein force the assumption that art and institutional life are separable. A no table example is a 1989 monograph by John Coolidge, former director of Harvard’s Fogg Museum, on the relationship between patrons and architects in designing art museums in the twentieth century. In sequence, Coolidge celebrates the brilliance and beneficence of private collectors, complains that many of them have been dominated by powerful and famous architects, praises the collaboration of architects and professional staff, criticizes museum trustees for having more “sympathy” for “cre ative artists” than for either the “average man” or those who “govern and administer the people,” and, finally, criticizes museums for “disre

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Engines of Culture

gard for visitors” and making their collections inaccessible. A book that began by celebrating elites ends with the recommendation that public libraries should be the model for art museums. Like any good profes sional who is required to negotiate among many constituencies, Coolidge adroitly comes down on all sides of every controversial issue.33 Thomas Hoving’s 1993 account of his service in the late 1960’s and 1970’s as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art described his re jection of the dichotomy between art and the museum.34 Whatever Hoving’s faults and achievements, he blurred what had long been ortho dox distinctions among art, its purchase, sale and display and political events within and outside museums. As many critics insisted, Hoving did not originate the blockbuster exhibition, or dramatic bidding by museums at public auctions, or deaccessioning works of art. But he vio lated professional norms by explicitly claiming every aspect of museum activity as a proper subject for his expertise. Like museum directors, hospital executives insisted for decades on separating the roles of medical staff, trustees and administration. The job of the director, in a hospital as in a museum, was, according to or thodoxy, to mediate among persons carrying out their assigned roles. I know from personal experience (as well as from reading social science) that every day in every hospital many people violate the norms of the tripartite separation of work and authority. These norms were once use ful principles to cite during the first stages of conflict resolution. But their usefulness has declined as changes in how hospitals are financed rearrange the stakes and the accountability of physicians, managers and board members. Similar changes seem to be occurring in museums. Hoving may be an example of premature professional innovation. During the 1970’s and early 1980’s, for example, hospital directors could lose their jobs because they tried to make physicians more sensitive to costs and trust ees more interested in market share. Such behavior is now rewarded. In health affairs, scholars wrote about the interpenetration of money, politics, science and technology before medical and hospital professionals discussed it in public. A similar example of academics’ freedom from the constraints of industry seems to be occurring in the study of museums. DiMaggio, Harris and Crane, for example, have been more explicit than any museum professionals (except Hoving, of course) in describing the effect on museums of changes in their external environment.

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A few scholars have begun to insist that the study of museums be entirely reconceived. To them, museums are sources of data to study more important issues. Scholars who ask, for example, how museums are influenced by ideas about the arts, or education or gender or the interests of social elites, or changes in demography have misconceived the issue. Like the social scientists who have insisted that illness and responses to it are socially constructed, revisionist scholars criticize their predecessors for assuming what has to be proved. In the metaphor of statistics, museums are not dependent variables.35 Two books published in 1991 make these points. A collection of es says, The Poetics and Politics o f Museum Display, makes the study of museums a subject for the recently organized field of cultural studies. In the introduction, Ivan Karp claims for the social constructionist point of view every subject bearing on art and its display: All exhibitions are inevitably organized on the basis of assumptions about the in tentions of the objects’ producers, the cultural skills and qualifications of the audi ence, the claims to authoritativeness made by the exhibitors and judgments of the aesthetic merit or authority of the objects or settings exhibited.36

Svetlana Alpers describes what she calls the “museum effect,” which makes museums themselves creators of objects of art.37 Carol Duncan goes even further, making museums central to the politics that results from how people see objects: “To control a museum means precisely to control the representation of a community.”38 To Philip Fisher, in Making and Effacing Art, museums are a “tech nology.” They have become part of the process by which art is made. Paraphrasing a 1923 essay by the French poet and critic Paul Valery, Fisher claims that museums engage in a “violent resocialization in which the objects of the past [are] stripped of their worlds and resettled chro nologically in the land of art.” Andre Malraux, novelist and politician, borrowed and extended Valery’s insight. Museums, he said, “estrange the works they bring together from the original functions.” Museums, Fisher writes, became “storage areas for authenticity.” As a result artists now create so that their “work will find itself eventually within a mu seum as part of what the future w ill...take to be the past.”39 The new scholarship of cultural studies makes obsolete by implica tion Engines o f Culture and most of the subsequent work on museums that I have described. The evidence that is most important to these revi

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sionists reveals how and why people have represented and displayed what they saw. They accuse the social scientists who have analyzed museums as educational, business, scholarly, or political institutions of missing a fundamental point: that the significance of works of art is the result of ongoing social negotiations. These obsolete scholars missed the point by taking for granted objects of art, much as most of the social scientists who studied medical science wrongly assumed that there is a universally applicable pathophysiological classification of diseases. Such scholars cede the authority to examine central questions to self-inter ested experts who claim a particular domain. I hope that scholars of art museums as institutions in American soci ety do not react defensively and derisively to such attacks. In my proper field of health affairs, the insights of people who are influenced by cul tural studies (or its principal method, social construction) have potential practical importance as well as enormous intellectual interest. These insights are, for example, having a small influence on the definition and content of primary care practice and the management of chronic dis abling illness.40 Moreover, advocates of cultural studies may discover that research on museums by social scientists in the past has more pertinence to their work than they currently believe. In the study of the arts as of health affairs, the best primary data about what people saw and thought are often what they said about matters of politics and money.41 My faith that scholarship is cumulative remains intact, perhaps in nostalgic tribute to the professional education that I described earlier in this essay. That faith sustains me as I again offer Engines o f Culture for critical review. Notes 1. For my exploration of power see most recently Daniel M. Fox, Power and Ill­ ness: The Failure and Future o f American Health Policy (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993). 2. Perry G.E. Miller, English 7, Harvard College, Fall, 1956. Miller was, of course, a distinguished intellectual historian as well as a professor of literature. 3. Peter Dobkin Hall, “Dilemmas of Research in Philanthropy, Voluntarism and Non profit Organizations,” in his Inventing the Nonprofit Sector (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 245. 4. Ibid., 245, 337. 5. Neil Harris properly ascribes enormous influence on the study of institutional history to Bernard Bailyn’s 1960 book, Education in the Forming o f American

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Society (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). Bailyn’s book was especially influential at Harvard in the 1960s. I was generally aware of it but unfortunately did not read it carefully because I was uninterested in Early American History. This error must be described as silly. Neil Harris, “Cultural Institutions and Ameri can Modernization,” Journal o f Library History, Winter 1981, 16: 28-47, re printed in Harris* Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990), 100-101, for the discussion of Bailyn’s influence. 6. D.M. Fox, “The Achievement of the Federal Writers’ Project,” American Quar­ terly, Spring 1961, 13: 3-19. 7. D.M. Fox, “The New Arts Patronage in Europe and the United States,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 1962, 61: 223-234. 8. D.M. Fox, “Artists in the Modem State,” Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criti­ cism,” Winter 1963, 22: 135-148. Reprinted in M.C. Albrecht, J.H. Barnett, and M. Griff, eds., The Sociology o f Art and Literature (New York, Praeger, 1970). 9. Neil Harris, “Museums, Marketing and Popular Taste: The Struggle for Influ ence,” in Ian M.B. Quimby, ed., Material Culture and the Study o f American Life (New York, W.W. Norton, 1978), 140-174. Reprinted in Cultural Excursions, 56-81. 10. Neil Harris, “Cultural Institutions” in Cultural Excursions, 108. To my delight, Harris has made generous use of Engines in the essays collected in this book; see, for example, pages 20, 23, 56, 108, and 253. 11. Kathleen D. McCarthy, Women *s Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830 1930 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991), 245. 12. Germain Bazin, The Museum Age (New York, Universe Books, 1967, translated from the French), 243, 250, 261, 278. For the influence of Bazin’s book and its point of view see, for example, Nathaniel Burt, Palaces fo r the People: A Social History o f American Art Museums (Boston, Little Brown, 1977), Karl E. Meyer, The Art Museum: Power, Money, Ethics. A Twentieth Century Fund Report (New York, William Morrow, 1978), and most recently, Kenneth Hudson, Museums o f Influence (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1987). 13. Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, “The Universal Survey Museum,” Art History, December 1980, 3: 448-469. 14. Edward C. Banfield, The Democratic Muse: Visual Arts and the Public Interest. A Twentieth Century Fund Essay (New York, Basic Books, 1984), 4, 101-102. 15. Ibid., 92-116. 16. Peter Dobkin Hall, Reflections on the Nonprofit Sector in the Postliberal Era,” in Inventing, 100-101. 17. Harris, Cultural Excursions. 18. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Culture and the City: Cultural Philanthropy in Chi­ cago from the 1880s to 1917 (Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 1976). For Engines see 244. 19. McCarthy, Women's Culture. 20. Joel J. Orosz, Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740 1870 (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1990). 21. Daniel J. Sherman, Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics o f Culture in 19th Century France (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989). 22. Paul J. DiMaggio’s publications on art museums include, “Cultural Entrepre neurship in 19th Century Boston, Media, Culture and Society, 1982, 4:33-50, reprinted in Paul J. DiMaggio ed., Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in

22

23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

Engines of Culture Mission and Constraint (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986); “The Non Profit Instrument and the Influence of the Marketplace,” in W. McNeil Lowry, ed., The Arts and Public Policy in the United States (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1984); “Classification in Art,” American Sociological Review, August 1987, 52:440-455; and “Constructing an Organizational Field as a Pro fessional Project: United States Art Museums, 1920-1940,” in Walter W. Powell and PJ. DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991), 26. Diana Crane, The Transformation o f the Avant Garde: The New York Art World, 1940 1985 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987). Milton C. Cummings, “To Change a Nation’s Cultural Policy: The Kennedy Ad ministration and the Arts in the United States, 1961-1963,” in K.V. Mulcahy and C.R. Swann, eds., Public Policy and the Arts (Boulder,CO, Westview Press, 1982), 141-168. Milton C. Cummings, Jr., “Government and the Arts: An Overview,” in Stephen Benedict, ed., Public Money and the Muse: Essays in Government Funding for the Arts (New York, W.W. Norton, 1991), 31-79. Kevin Mulcahy, “Government and the Arts in the United States,” in Milton C. Cummings and Richard S. Katz, eds., The Patron State: Government and the Arts in Europe, North America and Japan (New York, Oxford University Press, 1987). Other books about arts policy are of interest. Alan L. Feld, Michael O’Hare, and J. Mark Davidson Schuster, Patrons Despite Themselves: Taxpayers and Arts Policy. A Twentieth Century Fund Book (New York, New York University Press, 1983), is an excellent analysis that applies to the arts the theory of tax expendi tures formulated by Stanley Surrey and his disciples. Edward Arian, The Unful­ filled Promise: Public Subsidy o f the Arts in America (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1989), is a polemic against cultural elitists by a professor of political science who served as an officer of a state arts council. In his view the interest groups of a “performance culture” which includes art museums unfortu nately capture an unfairly large share of public funds. See for example William D. Grampp, Pricing the Priceless: Art, Artists and Eco­ nomics (New York, Basic Books, 1989). Grampp’s views have infuriated many scholars who are unsympathetic to the rigorous application of the theories of the Chicago School of economists. Nevertheless, his analysis offers insights into the behavior of museum donors and officials and makes good use of his knowledge about the visual arts as well as economics. I do not share Grampp’s taste for using models of ideal markets to judge the mess of human experience. And as the chief executive officer of a nonprofit institution I cannot agree with him that I am not fully accountable to my colleague trustees. But his views are less patronizing, to risk a pun, than those of economists who want to subsidize museums because ordinary people need larger doses of the high arts than they will purchase volun tarily. Articles by Scitovsky and other economists are anthologized in Mark Blaug, ed., The Economics o f the Arts (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1976). Dick Netzer, The Subsidized Muse: Public Support fo r the Arts in the United States. A Twentieth Century Fund Study (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1978, 1980). Bruno S. Frey and Werner W. Pommerehne, Muses and Markets: Explorations in the Economics o f the Arts (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989). A chapter on “Muse

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31.

32.

33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

23

ums and Art Galleries” (61-77) attempts an international comparison of sources of financing for art museums. The authors’ statistics are flawed as they apply to the United States because they ignore tax expenditures in the analysis of museum budgets and operating costs, though they acknowledge that these expenditures (ie. tax collections foregone as a result of exemptions, exclusions and deduc tions) account for a third of all public funds for art and culture. They also seem to ignore local and state taxation as a source of funds for museums. As a result they perpetuate the mythology that public subsidy of museums in the United States is around 10% of their expenditures, compared with 70-95% in the countries of the European Union. Martin Feldstein, ed., The Economics o f Art Museums (Chicago, University of Chicago Press for the National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991). This vol ume includes an excellent article by DiMaggio and a provocative article by Peter Temin, “An Economic History of Art Museums,” (179-193). A Journal o f Cultural Economics has been published for some years, but it is not indexed with standard economic literature or subscribed to as a matter of course by major university libraries. My sampling suggests that its papers are written by social scientists from a variety of disciplines most of whom are con vinced that more subsidy for cultural work is in the public interest. A sampling of such papers can be found in the proceedings of an international conference: Ruth Towse and Abdul Khakee, eds., Cultural Economics (Berlin, Springer Verlag, 1992) . The official definition is quoted in Sherman E. Lee, ed., On Understanding Art Museums (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall for the American Assembly, 1975), 6. The article on the history of museums in this volume is a richly detailed ren dering of the centrist position articulated by Bazin (Joshua Taylor, “The Art Mu seum in the United States,” 34-67). John Coolidge, Patrons and Architects: Designing Art Museums in the 20th Cen­ tury (Fort Worth, TX, Amon Carter Museum, 1989). Thomas Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1993) . For some of the more temperate attacks on Hoving see Robert Hughes, “Masterpiece Theater,” The New York Review o f Books, March 4, 1993, 8-10; Calvin Tomkins, “More and Less True Confessions,” The New Yorker, February 8, 1993. In “Making the Fossils Frolic,” The Economist, June 5, 1993, 101-102, that newspaper’s anonymous journalists gets Hoving*s point: “what a spanking investment the politicians are making with every cent of public money they put in to ...b ig museums.” My sympathies with social construction and cultural studies are described in a book that tries to bridge art history and the history of medicine: D.M. Fox and Christopher Lawrence, Photographing Medicine: Images and Power in Britain and America Since 1850 (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1987). Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, eds., The Poetics and Politics o f Museum Dis­ play (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 11-12. Ibid., 26. The title of Alpers’ article is “The Museum as a Way of Seeing.” Ibid., 101-102. Philip Fisher, Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums (New York, Oxford University Press, 1991), 10-11, 24. There is a growing literature on patients’ and professionals’ perceptions of ill ness and on how people in different cultures interpret the international knowl

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edge of biomedical science. I examine the consequences for policy of a relativist view of disease in Power and Illness, note 1 above. 41. See for example Roger Cooter, Surgery and Society in Peace and War: Orthopaedics in the Organization o f Modern Medicine (London, Macmillan, 1993). Cooter has for many years been writing the history of medicine as a social constructionist of Marxist inclinations. For an elaboration of this paragraph see my review of Cooter*s book in the Times Literary Supplement [London], January 15, 1993, 7.

1

Museums for the Public The development of art museums in America since the 1870’s has been a function of their involvement in the philanthropic process and, to a lesser extent, of their need to justify additional support from govern ment funds. The earliest American art galleries, in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, were, for the most part, either busi ness enterprises or the static property of learned societies; after the Civil War, changing sources and patterns of financial support modified mu seum goals and policies. The public museums established in the past ninety years had their origin in creative philanthropy—benevolent ac tion by groups of private individuals who had a complex vision of the potentialities of the institutions they supported. As the American muse ums matured, the actions and ideas of these individuals were colored by the public character of the institutions they founded and supported. The influence of philanthropy and public support on museum devel opment is evident in several areas. Donors and administrators carefully articulated moral and social justifications for benefactions and for the institutions’ existence and expansion. One result of this social concern on the part of philanthropists was that American art galleries, dependent on philanthropic and municipal support, combined the functions of ac quisition, exhibition and exposition at an earlier date than most muse ums in Europe, which were conceived mainly as national or local treasure houses. Moreover, the combination of public and private funds, which created and sustained most American museums, made them extremely sensitive to public opinion and to national and local crises in politics, economics and social thought. Despite the egotism and short-sightedness of some leading benefactors, art museums have moved with a changing America from 1870 to the present day to become the largest and perhaps 25

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the most significant voluntarily supported cultural institutions in mod em history. In 1845, William Dunlap, historian of art and design in America, saw no indication of any effort to create public art galleries.1A quarter-cen tury later, public museums were being founded across the nation, al though the Middle-Atlantic and North-Central states contained about seventy-five percent of museum property until the third decade of the twentieth century. The public museums founded in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries differed from earlier American galleries in hav ing specific programs for public service, enunciated and administered by independent corporations. These institutions were inspired by and borrowed their techniques for exhibition from European museums. But motives and methods developed in Europe were modified by American patterns of philanthropy, education, and government. European museums were the product of eighteenth and nineteenth century educational theory, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. In some cases, France particularly, they were made possible by violent social revolutions. These galleries were repositories of national and interna tional treasures, symbols of national prestige, even emblems of the middle class’ victory over the aristocracy in struggles for power. Their educa tional function was conceived in limited terms; the past teaching by ex ample. They were often forbidding, dark, disorganized and cluttered. Few efforts were made to publicize the collections or to develop coher ent educational programs until the twentieth century. European muse ums were always maintained by the public treasury; private philanthropy aided, but neither created nor sustained the Louvre or the National Gal lery of London.2 American public museums contrast sharply with this description. In the nineteenth century, American philanthropists did not believe the country had a national art treasure worthy of museum exhibition; our national prestige could not be measured in terms of a lengthy past which yielded glorious examples of a high level of civilization.* Our private *The terms “philanthropist” and “museum philanthropist” are used in a broad sense through out this essay; attitudes and values ascribed to them refer to statements and actions by donors of funds and art objects and to opinions expressed at the donors* request by their spokesmen, professional museum administrators and personal art advisers.

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art collections had been made in one generation; there were no aristo cratic family collections to compare with those in Europe and to inspire similar envy and hatred among the newly-powerful middle class. Founders of American public museums were concerned about the qual ity of culture in America and the role of taste in civilized life. The insti tutions they created were conceived as instruments of direct and indirect education, and American museums benefitted from the fact that their founding coincided with a revolution in educational thought. The most important difference between Europe and America was the role of private citizens in creating and sustaining the institutions. Mu seum growth in America had a double dynamic: on one hand, the direct and subtle influence of the need for approval, concessions, funds, and services from municipal and state governments; on the other, the chang ing goals and methods of private philanthropists. Private collectors and self-appointed guardians of culture were transformed into public bene factors by the interaction of their own concern for public welfare with the need to co-operate with the elected and appointed representatives of the people. Nineteenth-century philanthropists, usually able to forge their own policies, condescended to representatives of local government only if they desired. But in the twentieth century, changes in American soci ety and politics combined with changes in the means and ends of philan thropy to make prospective benefactors more sensitive to the needs and desires of the public, less willing and able to convert the living into the dead hand. European visitors have described the uniqueness of American art museums. They have emphasized the central importance of private bene factors, the excellence and size of museum buildings, the attractiveness of exhibits, the resourcefulness of museum directors who must serve philanthropists and communities as well as art, the scope and variety of museum educational programs, and the desire of almost every public museum to possess a collection from all parts of the world and all periods of history. These points were made in detail by the French art historian, Rene Brimo, whose study of the history of taste and art insti tutions in America appeared in 1938. Brimo explained that American public galleries were created to serve both a social and intellectual elite and the general public, and that reliance on private philanthropy made American museums more subject to changes in public taste than those in Europe.3

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Brimo also described some indirect results of dependence on private funds. Perhaps the most important result, from his point of view, was the close collaboration between museums and private collectors who were, of course, potential donors of funds and objects. Significant also were the activities outside the visual arts undertaken by American museums, particularly concert programs and lecture courses in music, literature, drama, and history. European museums, Brimo asserted, favored the elite while those in America encouraged “social concern as philanthropy for social profit, as patronage to instruct...not only an elite but the great public toward an ideal of perfection.” In the course of their devel opment, he concluded, American museums became “the center and the personification of the intellectual life of the United States.”4 The public museums described by Brimo and other Europeans were founded in most major American cities between 1870 and 1920 and have several common characteristics: dependence for support on gifts and bequests and, in most cases, on municipal tax funds; a name which reflects collective rather than individual action, though a donor’s name may be used for a wing or a special room; and a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees which formulates policy and is responsible for selecting pro fessional administrators. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadel phia Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago are the leading examples of this form of museum organization. These museums view themselves as requesting support by and as serv ing the broadest possible public. This dominant type of museum has had a pervasive influence. Many galleries created from the collections of single individuals or historical societies have been transformed into public museums.5 Others, founded to promote particular points of view, particularly the modem art move ment, have obtained tax exemption by claiming that special pleading for modem art is an educational activity. There are at least eight other types of art museums in America, founded by philanthropists or public institutions, but differing from the public museums in origin or goals.6 The simplest ones are the private galleries left to the public as monuments to their donors. Static in character, they rely on only one philanthropic act; the Gardner Museum in Boston and the Barnes collection in Philadelphia are examples, A similar type are the museums bearing the name of a single donor, but with capacity and funds for growth; the Corcoran Gallery in W ashington and the

Museums for the Public

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Guggenheim and Whitney Museums in New York, for instance. A third type initiated by a single philanthropist is closely related to the public museums: in Worcester, Massachusetts, for example, one man, industri alist Stephen Salisbury, provided the initial funds for a museum in the hope that the community would take responsibility for the institution’s growth. A fourth variety is the university museum founded by a single benefactor, with the university taking responsibility for maintenance and growth; the museum at Stanford and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard are illustrations. Most American museums, however, like the public galleries, were founded and are sustained by collective action. Some were organized as community activities by academies or historical societies; a few of these, such as the galleries in Cincinnati, Buffalo, and Portland, Oregon, be came public museums; others, like the museums of the New York and Wisconsin Historical Societies remained limited in size and aspiration. A number of museums were founded by direct government action; the New York State Museum and the St. Louis City Museum come to mind. A seventh type are those founded by private philanthropy which have become government agencies, examples of which are the National Gal lery, endowed by Andrew Mellon, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, origi nally organized by private citizens. Finally, there are several museums, like those in Newark and Jamestown, which were initially administered by public libraries. Although museum philanthropy is in some ways a new departure, intimately related to changing patterns of both art patronage and educa tion, it has several characteristics in common with other kinds of bene factions. Like gifts to social welfare agencies and higher education in the past century, museum philanthropy was grounded in an urge to in struct and uplift the American people. It shares with religious charity a desire to promote and disseminate knowledge of certain eternal veri ties; in fact, museums were often viewed as surrogate churches.7 Muse ums, like other objects of voluntary benevolent action in America, reflected philanthropists’ belief that there are unique values in nongov ernmental operations. Moreover, museum philanthropy shares with ev ery other modern American charitable cause the conviction that growth and progress are necessary in society and in charitable institu tions; few public museums have been considered complete. In addition, although museum philanthropy, more than most other causes, engaged a

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donor’s personality, museums were affected by the twentieth-century shift in emphasis from individual small gifts to organized, large-scale benefactions.8 By the end of the nineteenth century, most museum philanthropists and administrators had developed a mythology about their role which has persisted to the present day. They viewed themselves as consecrated enthusiasts bringing taste and truth to the vulgar. This was a convenient justification for ignoring the facts about municipal appropriations and the unvarnished egotism of many gifts and bequests. Their self-satisfac tion was reinforced in the twentieth century by the international reputa tion acquired by American public museums. In the nineteenth century, American philanthropists did not believe our museums could ever rival major European galleries. But great feats of private art collecting, the prelude to almost every large benefaction, continuous European social and political upheavals, and the growing excellence of American art gave them the opportunity to equal Euro pean galleries by the third decade of the twentieth century. By that time, however, instead of merely rivaling European treasure-houses most American public museums were moving in two directions; toward ac quisition of increasingly valuable collections and toward community service, mainly as educational institutions. What Russell Lynes describes as the “Art World,” somewhat suspect to many Americans during the nineteenth century, became both respect able and a big business in the same years that public museums were maturing.9 These two developments are related: museum growth stimu lated the art market, and the opportunity to convert whim into charity provided a moral justification for private collecting on any scale. To put it another way, a desire to consume conspicuously and to shine in the glory reflected from possessed masterpieces was often stimulated and justified by the moral and ethical impulses of American philanthropy over the past three-quarters of a century.

2

Impulse and Justification Lewis Mumford has argued that public museums are “a manifesta tion of our curiosity, our acquisitiveness, our essentially predatory cul ture.”10 But the impulse to create and contribute to art museums was more complex. For better and for worse, museum philanthropists were “curious” in order to moralize, “acquisitive” for the sake of social and educational ideals, and “preyed” on an older culture in order to stimu late a younger one. Their benefactions were encouraged and justified by nineteenth century anxieties about the quality of American life, imported and domestic ideas about progress, improvement and spiritual educa tion, and, perhaps most important, personal altruism and involvement with works of art. Concern for improvement and uplift involved many philanthropists in a paradoxical justification of their activities: museums were viewed as both utilitarian instruments and antidotes to life in modem America. Similarly, disinterested altruism was often complicated by yearning for social status and prestige and, in the twentieth century, by a desire to control the destiny of surplus funds and estates rather than to allow the government to do so. Most benefactors were moved by several motives; it is difficult to say which one was the most telling. Art philanthropy, unlike most other kinds of charity, has often represented the extension of an individual’s most satisfying avocation into public service. Perhaps it enabled a man to have his cake and his conscience at the same time, to combine aes thetic delight with good works. The glamour and adventure of art col lecting by the merchant princes and princesses of the Gilded Age and after have been recorded elsewhere in considerable detail.11However, it is necessary to analyze and summarize the anxieties, intellectual and 31

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social assumptions, and personal considerations which were reflected in the institutions there men and women founded and sustained. Although the first genuine public museums were founded in the de cades after the Civil War, the mood which led to their creation had its roots in the first half of the century. In the midst of material prosperity and national expansion, many men were concerned about the spiritual side of American life. This concern, reflected in literature and in agita tion for religious, social, and educational reform, was also expressed by people interested in art. The founders of the National Institute, the fore runner of the National Gallery of Art, for example, declared in 1840 that “the sons of the intelligent and enlightened and virtuous men who achieved the independence and secured our freedom” were “less intelli gent, less enlightened...than their sires.”12 The beneficent influence of art on manners and morals was a major theme for many orators and journalists in the decades before the Civil War. To cite a single example which might be duplicated many times, Frederick A. P. Barnard, the well-known educational leader, declared in 1854 that “our territorial expansion and physical power have outstripped the march of our intellectual cultivation and our social refinement.” Art provided a remedy for this deficiency, he continued; it promoted public and private morality. Barnard admonished those whose “tastes have risen above the dead level that characterizes our country” to promote the cause of art.13 These anxieties about American taste and refinement were intensi fied after 1865. More important, they were rallying points for men inter ested in creating public museums. Charles C. Perkins, a founder of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, expressed the continuity of ideas with the prewar years when he told the American Social Science Association in 1870 that museums of art give the people sorely needed “means of form ing a standard of taste through knowledge of the masterpieces of the past.”14 The persistence of this concern for American cultural life is il lustrated by the fact that even in 1910 an orator was applauded for de claring that museums “lend coordination and cohesiveness to our national idea.”15 New anxieties about American society affected philanthropists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many museum founders shared the concern of other prominent Americans that the family and

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the church were losing much of their civilizing and stabilizing power and the fear that millions of immigrants would modify the physical, social, and political structure of American cities beyond recognition. These anxieties motivated many art collectors and enthusiasts to con tribute to a variety of charitable causes, and they stimulated the conver sion of public art museums into semi-religious and educational causes. The elevation of art to the role of a surrogate religion was reflected in museum architecture, membership programs, and educational ideals. At the turn of the century, for example, a museum director declared that his temple was built with the intention of impressing “upon persons enter ing the building that they were going into a great monument, a place of importance, an institution worthy of consideration and thought.”16Anew member of the Chicago Art Institute in the 1890’s declared, “I feel as if I had joined the church.”17 As late as 1922 the trustees of the Philadel phia Art Museum pointed out that, “A large number of our visitors are foreign bom or of foreign parents. To them the museum must take the place of the cathedral.”18 It was a short step from this view of museums as instruments of cul tural stability and continuity to their use as instruments of the American ization of immigrants. However, donors, trustees and other spokesmen for museums differed from many of their contemporaries in asserting the positive values of pluralism over the eclectic uncertainty of the melting pot; the historical and international character of public museum collec tions usually reinforced pluralistic values.19 The desire for an original and authentic American culture, expressed from the earliest days of the Republic, was not ignored by the founders of public museums. Many of them hoped that public galleries would stimulate native artists. Although some philanthropists felt that a mu seum was not the proper place to hang the work of living artists, others believed that public exhibition of the art of the past was a necessary foundation for a glorious future of American artistic achievements.20 These hopes and aspirations were in large part derived from and stimu lated by several currents in nineteenth-century political, social, and edu cation philosophy. The aspects of nineteenth-century social thought which were of central importance to the history of museum philanthropy can be summarized in a few words: progress, improvement, culture and public service. These concepts have European, particularly English and French, roots. Although the influence of these ideas on art museums was ini

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tially evident in England, they had a greater impact in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century America. Only in the past forty years, under the influence of European Social Democracy and the achievements of American museums, have the European galleries re-oriented their pub lic service programs.21 The idea of progress had several implications for American museums. Philanthropists declared that the institutions must be oriented toward the future and that knowledge of the past was necessary for progress. Worship of the past for its own sake did not receive much support in nineteenth-century America from the leaders of business and social life who engaged in philanthropy. An illustration of the concept of progress through the proper use of the past is an 1870 statement by the Executive Committee of the Metropolitan Museum: “No progress is possible which is not based on what has gone before. This knowledge must not only be possessed by artists, but by the public also, as a condition of the growth of art with us.”22 Another implication of the idea of progress was the conviction that decay was the “natural” result of maximum growth. “A finished mu seum is a dead museum, and a dead museum is a useless museum,” said the Director of the United States National Museum in a widely publi cized address in 1891.23 Nineteenth-century meliorism, the doctrine of improvement, played a major role in providing museum philanthropists with justification and encouragement. This concept, based on the idea of progress and a be nevolent view of human nature, was reflected in two assumptions sub scribed to by most museum leaders: the belief that men can be improved if the correct methods are found and supported, and the conviction that human beings will make a rational choice among alternatives when their self-interest is at stake. Improvement based on the fine arts would, most philanthropists agreed, be moral and spiritual; uplift through museum exhibitions and educational programs might succeed where churches and schools had failed. Individuals confronted with objects of aesthetic and moral value would compare them with objects of inferior value and modify their ideas and actions.24 Furthermore, it was asserted, museums were more democratic than other educational and welfare institutions because the uplift that museums provided was reflected in “the cultural side of life” which was a necessity for every class. Most of these men had a generous view of human, and especially American, nature; they

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were convinced that “the love of beauty is not restricted to the aristoc racy of wealth and education.”25 Museum donors and administrators did not, for the most part, share the concern of such philanthropists as Josephine Shaw Lowell and An drew Carnegie that their assistance to the less fortunate classes might militate against efforts for self-help. For museums obviously could not help the unfit to survive in the struggle for existence; they avoided dan gerous benevolence because they provided Culture, which was a result and symbol of the separation of certain moral and intellectual activities from the driving forces of society. A recent writer, Raymond Williams, has described this attitude toward the arts as an attempt to establish a “court of human appeal to be set over the processes of practical social judgment and y e t...a mitigating and rallying alternative.”26 Culture and its useful manifestation, taste, were conceived by many museum men as rewards for the strong and the fit; something tangible which could be bought on the market, internalized, and then freely bestowed on the community. In this view, museum philanthropy could not be any thing but constructive charity. However, museum philanthropists, and their spokesmen in the late nineteenth century were unable to fight clear of all the philosophical dilemmas embodied in the dominant ideas of their time. These dilem mas were reflected in conflicting statements about the aims of museum philanthropy. The aims were conceived in two very different ways: as a contribution to the broad education and welfare of the American people, raising taste, manners, morals, and standards of craftsmanship, and as a service to the religious and contemplative side of human life. The first view implied acceptance of the contemporary world and a desire to im prove it; the second, dissatisfaction with a civilization in which material things were elevated to a higher place than products of the human spirit and imagination. The first, more utilitarian, view of museums attracted those philan thropists who, not completely satisfied with justification by taste, sus pected that museums might, in fact, “serve to kill time for the idle” of all classes.27 Museums, these men felt, must avoid giving mere solace to the unfit, especially if these unfortunates were also poor.28 Thus, they emphasized the importance of promoting good industrial design by en couraging artisans to look at masterpieces; and spoke of the dignity and tourist trade that public art collections would bestow on their cities.29

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Most important, they hopes that museums, by stimulating undiscovered geniuses to become great artists, would heap glory on our much ma ligned nation.30 Art galleries would even serve practical purposes for men of average fitness and little craftsmanship: for example, by foster ing the habit of collecting which, like thirst, “induces habits of neatness, order, and skill.”31 To another group, art was mainly an antidote in cultural and moral terms. Three examples, which span fifty years of museum history, clarify this point. In 1870, William Cullen Bryant, poet, editor, and civic states man, told the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that “we should counter the temptations to vice by...the influence of works of art [which] is wholesome, ennobling, instructive.”32 Thirty-five years later, Benjamin Ives Gilman, director of the Boston Museum and a very practical man when dealing with philanthropists, lamented that “art aims to offer u s .. .sights that are satisfying, moments that we would wish to delay... but the imperative necessities of practical life have so ingrained within us habitudes of thinking and striving for the morrow, that the best of us are unable to accept the gift.”33Although most museum leaders of the nonutilitarian group had accepted industrial civilization by 1920, new dangers had appeared. Paul M. Rea, Director of the American Association of Museums was worried about anarchists and Bolsheviks when he declared that, “Disquieting tendencies...cannot be counter acted by suppression or force. The task of America is to inspire and cultivate more wholesome and saner interests and truer ideals.”34 Although Museum donors and their spokesmen shared common anxi eties, hopes, and assumptions about American life, personal consider ations were probably more important than general ideas for stimulating gifts and bequest of objects and funds. Who were the wealthy men and women who contributed to public museums and what special signifi cance did art have in their lives? Most of the great benefactors of public art museums were men and women who had inherited wealth.35 They had the leisure, the education, the money to travel and collect works of art for their own pleasure and prestige. But many museum philanthropists had created large fortunes themselves. The first multi-million dollar bequest to an American mu seum came from the estate of Jacob Rogers, a self-made locomotive manufacturer from New Jersey. One of the greatest collections ever given to an American museum belonged to Benjamin Altman, an immigrant

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who became a department store magnate. Despite their origin, men like Rogers and Altman had a great deal in common, because of their inter est in art, with such inheritors of wealth as Martin Ryerson and Mrs. Potter Palmer of Chicago and Robert deForest and J.P. Morgan of New York. The importance of personal considerations in museum philanthropy was reflected in the fact that American philanthropists were more con cerned with art museums than with historical and scientific collections in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.36 Americans had inferiority feelings about their cultural achievements, not about their industries, natural resources, geological and ethnological wonders, or science. Moreover, scientific concerns were closer to those of business and industry, less pleasant, refreshing or ennobling in the philanthro pists’ eyes than the fine arts. Science was painfully close to being real capital; art provided social and moral as well as aesthetic capital. It was also more difficult for both untutored men and men with gentlemen’s educations to understand science than for them to develop at least a passable knowledge about art. Furthermore, one cannot ignore the aes thetic joy provided by objects of art. The personal appeal of art collecting and philanthropy was frequently reinforced by more utilitarian considerations. Art was a form of investment, either secure or speculative, for many men. Art philanthropy seemed to be safer than patronage for music and the theater: genuine masterpieces do not fluctuate widely in value, they require very little upkeep and museums, once established, will not fail for lack of customers.37 The amount of disinterested altruism in museum philanthropy cannot be measured. However, it was probably less important than in benefac tions for other causes. Art collecting became a means of self-expression and self-glorification for many wealthy men and women. It often seemed to guarantee some kind of immortality to individuals whose names were identified with the possession of great works of art. One writer has re marked in this connection that, “What the rich men had accumulated was slipping away from them ...as they felt futility and hostility clos ing in around them, they longed passionately for the happy company, in the even darker regions ahead of these magical and secure and vivid [works of art].”38 Philanthropists took considerable pride in their personal art col lections. J.P. Morgan, for example, was proud of having a finer art

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collection than many European royal families. Like many other col lector-philanthropists, Morgan regarded his great feats of acquisi tion as a form of market-cornering, both of objects and immortality.39 Many men and women derived considerable pleasure from collect ing in one lifetime what European aristocrats had acquired over many generations. Possession of great works of art, especially when the collector did not have lifelong familiarity with the fine arts, seemed to represent “a natural instinct” for the best. Their collections often confirmed their somewhat egotistic view of the natural superiority of American business heroes, no matter how many professional ex perts the collectors employed.40 The special significance of objects to philanthropists was reflected in the fact that very few major benefactors gave museums cash with out kind. It has been suggested, by Henry James, for example, that Americans worship objects and that material piety is one of the more questionable manifestations of an acquisitive society.41 But this is not a complete explanation of aesthetic accumulation. A more cyni cal, though still inadequate suggestion, made and documented by S.N. Behrman in his biography of Lord Duveen, is that art dealers like Duveen persuaded their clients to donate objects to museums in or der to avoid worrying about their pictures “being dumped on the market at a difficult time.”42 A more complete explanation, rooted in nineteenth-century moral dilemmas, is that many museum philan thropists tried to combine the role of Renaissance prince with the Christian concepts of altruism and the stewardship of wealth; by giv ing objects as well as cash, they could demonstrate their own acu men and benefit the public at the same time. In the twentieth century, many philanthropists operated in the same context while playing the more dangerous game of gambling on the futures of living artists and donating their works to museums. Collector-philanthropists have been able to benefit the public without parting permanently from their beloved objects by lending works of art for temporary exhibitions since the earliest days of the public museums. Museum philanthropy also enabled men and women to belong to an exclusive group and at the same time have the satisfaction of serving the Great Public. This paradox appeared in many appeals for funds and in creased membership in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For ex ample, Edward S. Morse, a curator at the Boston Museum, told a group

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of prospective donors in 1892 that, “In this plea for the widest and most generous support for the M useum ...I am speaking of an institution organized and supported mainly by a few men of wealth and culture.”43 As recently as 1950, museums still based their appeal on a subtle com bination of snobbery and democracy: A “Dear Collector” letter sent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art through the Book of the Month Club to potential buyers of paintings reproduced as stamps for pasting in an al bum used the same argument Morse had made almost sixty years ear lier; collectors belong to a select group which intends to remain select while increasing in size. Another factor motivating large gifts and bequests to museums was the desire on the part of businessmen to do something special for the cities in which they had lived and prospered. This motive, with deep roots in the Anglo-American charitable tradition, was exemplified in American educational philanthropy by the bequests of such men as Stephen Girard, Peter Cooper and Andrew Carnegie. However, bequests of art objects to museums by local businessmen presented a different problem in justification than most educational and welfare donations. In justifying most welfare and educational philanthropy, it was usually not considered necessary to demonstrate that the money had been earned with an ultimate charitable use in mind. But donors to museums appar ently did not like to admit that their collections had been gathered ini tially for aesthetic or mimetic reasons. For instance, although it would appear that Benjamin Altman had acquired his great collection for a variety of personal reasons, these motives were subsumed in an asser tion of complete disinterest when his bequest to the Metropolitan Mu seum of Art was described: “It was Mr. Altman’s ambition,” the Director of that museum wrote in 1913, “to leave to the people of the city with which his success in life had been identified.. .a collection of works of art of the highest possible standard.”44 However, most museum philanthropists did not rely on this form of activity alone to establish reputations for public service. Many, if not all, of them were active participants in welfare, religious and educa tional causes. For example, Robert deForest of New York was both a leader in numerous welfare causes and a moving spirit in the Metropoli tan Museum of Art, which he served as trustee and president. His career is an illustration of the way many wealthy men in this period balanced their social consciences and the aesthetic inclinations.45

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New factors have stimulated art philanthropy in the past generation. As the American people became intolerant of excessively conspicuous consumption, and concentrated wealth declined under the pressure of income and estate taxes, millionaires’ palaces became almost extinct. Smaller mansions meant less wall-space for collections. This, combined with the tax laws, encouraged collectors to part with a great many art objects. But many large benefactions were made before income and in heritance taxes became major problems for wealthy men, and the direc tion and extent of giving are still decided by individuals, not by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. A desire for personal prestige as a member of a cultured group and for a kind of immortality through asso ciation with works of art, highly personal factors, are still dominant in museum philanthropy. Another new stimulus has been a more permissive attitude on the part of philanthropists toward their children. The nineteenth-century desire to acquire aristocratic status for one’s family through possession of works of art meant that a number of great collections were kept intact into the twentieth century. In some cases, however, the desire to keep a collec tion intact was combined with a desire to create a public monument; the collections of Henry Clay Frick in New York and the Taft family in Cincinnati, for example, became separate museums. However, many children of great collectors were forced to dispose of inherited and un wanted art objects, sometimes in great haste, under the pressure of credi tors and the tax collector: this seems to have been the case with the heirs of J.R M organ, Mrs. H. O. Havem eyer and Edith M cCorm ick Rockefeller. Sometimes this dispersal took the form of museum philan thropy, as with the Havemeyer collection; more often it resulted in both hurried sales and philanthropy, as in the instances of the Morgan and McCormick-Rockefeller collections.46 Since the Second World War, collectors have been more liberal toward their children. As one promi nent collector declared, “A m an.. .shouldn’t force his taste on his chil dren; and his children shouldn’t have to pay a tax in order to own some pictures they don’t want.”47 Although appeals for museum funds have gradually been extended to a broader segment of the population over the past seventy-five years, the nature of the appeal has remained basically unchanged. Prestige and fashion seem to have predominated over altruism and social concern in the motivations of most museum philanthropists. In 1870 an art expert

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predicted that, “it will become fashionable to visit museums, be ac quainted with art—and this fashion will cause money now spent on luxu rious living to be devoted to adorning the walls of our houses with works of art.”48 Fifty years later a museum director declared that painting and sculpture had “prestige” as a heritage from the past, that interest in art was “the thing to do,” and that culture was supposed to have “a refining and uplifting influence”: his order of motives is instructive, particularly since his position required constant interaction with philanthropistcollectors.49 Nevertheless, philanthropic motives were complex and many factors entered into the impulse, the appeal, and the justification. This complex ity was revealed whenever museum leaders from across the nation gath ered to publicly pat themselves on the back. The following statements, exemplifying divergent attitudes towards museums, are culled from speeches given by philanthropists and administrators representing the major public museums at the opening of the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1916: The museum will ever be found a safe retreat from the annoyance and perplexities of routine life...an example of the best...an educational agency.... Art must still be nourished by the few who appreciate its value__ Art is a luxury for the rich, but a necessity for the poor.... Let us dedicate this museum...to the ser vice of humanity.... Museums...must be fostered and supported by a few con secrated enthusiasts...in truth a vital civic need...does give a broadening of opportunity, and that this opportunity is appreciated is shown...by the figures of the turnstiles, by the money that the municipalities are willing to expend for the support and maintenance of the institutions.50

3

Sources and Patterns of Museum Philanthropy Public Museums have been a partnership between men of wealth and the representatives of the people since they were first established in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Many men have denied this fact, although the story of this partnership is revealed in the annual reports of every public museum. Even where municipal or state governments make no direct contribution to operating expenses, museums have benefitted considerably from tax-exemption and gifts of land. In return for govern ment support, museums have expanded their educational programs, granted the public free admission, and provided advisory services to municipal art commissions. Private philanthropy, however, has dominated the partnership. The base of museum philanthropy has continually broadened since the 1870’s. Gifts and bequests from wealthy individuals have been most important, but contributions from membership drives, foundations, and business corporations increased in the twentieth century.51 By mid-century, new varieties of individual, collective, and institutional philanthropy had appeared, stimulated by Federal tax laws and the importance of muse ums as community cultural centers.

Some Patterns of Voluntary Giving In general, museum philanthropists in the nineteenth century had no intention of limiting the base of their support. Quite the contrary: most museum founders anticipated a generous response from the general pub lic. This point is indicated by the progressive increase of the member ship of every public museum, the texts of a large number of fund-raising 43

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speeches which have been preserved, and the social range represented by donors to loan exhibitions. As early as 1870, a committee of the Metropolitan pointed out that it is possible to find “art of value” in homes “not otherwise luxurious.”52The democratizing influence of government support and the educational ideals of museum leaders reinforce this in terpretation. The conception of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century museums as institutions created primarily by and for a social and intellectual elite is a distortion by historians with an animus against the Gilded Age. Gifts of money and objects have been the major source of museum income and endowment. The proportion of gifts to bequests and the ratio of accessions by purchase to those by gift vary so much among different museums that it would be misleading to attempt more than descriptive remarks. Money gifts of amounts under twenty-five thou sand dollars have accounted for the major part of the income and en dowment of most public museums.53 Museums west of the Mississippi seem to have been more dependent on either government support or a few large donors than those in the East. But there are exceptions: muse ums in San Francisco, Santa Fe and Portland, Oregon, for example, have been dependent on medium- and small-sized gifts.54 Bequests have also followed varied patterns. Jacob Rogers, whose bequest to the Metropolitan at the turn of the century has been men tioned, had never given that institution more than his annual member ship dues. Rogers’ motivation was not clear, and his bequest took the Metropolitan by surprise.55 Conversely, Mrs. Potter Palmer, queen and cultural leader of Chicago Society, left four hundred thousand dollars to welfare charity and permitted the Art Institute of Chicago to select only one hundred thousand dollars worth of paintings from her collection.56 Mrs. Palmer’s conscience may have inclined her to shift her charitable emphasis in her will; it is also possible that, like other philanthropists, she felt that her heirs would continue her museum philanthropy by gifts. In the twentieth century a number of techniques developed for col laboration between philanthropists and museum staffs which insured that museum growth would be planned. In 1916, for instance, the Cleve land Museum announced that purchasable objects had been secured for a loan collection in the hope that they would be bought for presentation to the museum.57 In the 1920’s, a new form of collective philanthropy, with a specific appeal to people of moderate wealth appeared: organiza

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tions called Friends of the Museum or Print Clubs at most public muse ums contributed toward the purchase of objects which the museum staff desired for the permanent collections. These organizations expanded as tax problems and museum growth reduced the number of large indi vidual benefactions and great collections in private hands.58 In addition, many museums have invited general public subscriptions for the pur chase of specific works of art or exhibited objects taken from dealers on consignment until the purchase price was contributed.59 After the Second World War, museums developed techniques which enabled collectors to deduct art philanthropy from their income tax re turns and keep the objects in their possession for life or for stipulated periods of time. In many cities, museum directors became unofficial advisers to local collectors and encouraged them to purchase objects which the museums wanted.60 Since 1934, when Andrew Mellon con vinced the Treasury Department that the pictures whose value he had deducted from his income tax returns were actually destined for the pub lic, the federal government has not interfered with deductions for art philanthropy.61 However, the government has required that appraisals of works of art given to museums be made by recognized outside experts, not museum officials. Restrictions on gifts and bequest of money and objects were deplored by museum leaders, but reluctantly accepted in most cases until the 1930’s. The most common restriction was the request that an individual’s collection be hung as a unit in perpetuity. Occasionally collectors were even more demanding; one New York collection was placed in a gallery of the Metropolitan designed as a replica of the benefactor’s ballroom. However, many collectors were more liberal; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer and James G. Johnson, for example, permitted museums to show their paintings in any way they desired.62 Museums began to decline re stricted gifts after the mid-1920’s: the most notable incident was the Metropolitan’s refusal to accept Senator Thomas Clark’s collection in 1925.63 The attack on restricted gifts began through the collaboration of museum leaders and individual philanthropists, and, from the 1920’s, museums acted together to persuade benefactors that the projection of personal tastes into an indefinite future is not in the public interest. In 1917, Robert deForest persuaded Isaac D. Fletcher to attach no restric tions to his important bequest to the Metropolitan.64 Similarly, at the

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close of the First World War, the first president of the Cleveland Mu seum established a firm policy that no restricted gifts would be accepted.65 Since the 1920’s, the American Association of Museums has tried, with some success, to enforce a national policy based on the principle that, since restrictions impede growth and freedom, museums should “accept no gifts or bequests of exhibition material upon which any conditions are attached.”66 However, because the institutions still compete for gifts and bequests, many of them continue to accept restricted gifts in order to augment mediocre collections.67 Other factors, perhaps more important than the Association’s policy statements, have diminished the intensity of the restriction problem in the past thirty years. As museums became wealthier and more aware of their public role, they could refuse gifts with less fear of offending local philanthropists. Another liberalizing factor was the increased humility and distaste for public censure on the part of museum philanthropists in the 1930’s; in 1937, for example, the Hanover Bank’s philanthropy de partment advised potential contributors that “some restricted gifts stand out today more as memorials to the pride and egotism of the donors than to their devotion to art or to the public.”68 Most important of all was the increasing role of museums in shaping collectors’ standards for acquisi tion; it has become somewhat difficult for pupils to tell their teachers what to do with collections bought on the teachers’ advice.69 Local social conditions and individual preferences also influenced the nature and extent of gifts and the relation of philanthropists to their museums. Detroit is a good example. At the same time that some of the wealthiest men in Detroit were helping the Art Institute to acquire a notable collection, Charles Lang Freer, although a resident of that city, gave his great collection of oriental art to the Smithsonian Institution and only a mediocre group of prints to the Institute. After 1919, when the Institute became a branch of the municipal government by the deci sion of philanthropists, a Benefactor’s Society was organized to acquire objects for the permanent collection. Prominent citizens like Edsel Ford served as trustees for an institution which lacks the policy-making au tonomy of other museums, especially in questions of the tenure of per sonnel and the allocation of funds to various museum services.70A similar situation would probably have been regarded as an affront to philan thropic liberty by leading citizens in Cleveland or Boston. Explanations for these local patterns can be attempted only by local historians.

Sources and Patterns of Museum Philanthropy

47

Museum members have been an increasingly important source of in come. Moreover, they form an interested audience that can be counted on to feel responsibility for the institution in financial matters and act as a pressure group when municipal appropriations are at stake. In addi tion, many men were stimulated to make large gifts and bequests by their experience as members. Membership has always been organized by classes, based on the amount of dues paid, but it is important to note that the cost of membership, particularly in the lowest classes, has re mained unchanged since the late nineteenth century. Thus, considering the change in the value of a ten dollar payment over the past twenty years, the number of people who could afford museum membership has increased markedly. In fact, however, while the number of members has grown, the percent of increase has not equalled the population growth of the largest cities.71 Perhaps this lag is more a reflection of the large num ber of cultural and philanthropic institutions competing for attention and funds in the twentieth century than evidence for the exclusiveness of art museums. Membership dues were regarded ambiguously until the period after the Second World War; sometimes as philanthropy, but often as a fee for such special privileges as admission to exhibition openings, special lec tures and social events.72 In the past fifteen years, the popularity of in come tax deductions for charitable contributions has resolved the ambiguity of membership dues. In most cases, only the lowest class membership is not regarded as philanthropy, while the fees for the upper classes are divided into two parts; a small portion is considered to be a fee for special services, and the bulk is regarded as a tax-exempt contri bution. The class system is completely accepted at the present time, and, as in the past, only the highest classes have the privilege of electing the trustees.73 The most important innovation in museum philanthropy in recent years has been corporate giving, either directly or through community trusts. Precedents for business support can be found in the nineteenth century; the earliest business contribution seems to have been an offer of a tem porary gallery to the Metropolitan by Tiffany and Company in 1871.74 In 1909, the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis persuaded local manufacturers to buy admission tickets for their employees in order to finance and exhibition of Saint Gaudens’ sculpture.75A decade later, the museum in Columbus, Ohio, held “Art Smokers” to which businessmen

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were invited through Rotary and Kiwanis clubs.76Nevertheless, in 1939 Laurence Coleman, official historian of American museums, concluded, rather pessimistically, that “businessmen rightly expect value for their money, and the best way to handle their support, if desired, is through payment for a specific service.”77 The entry of business corporations into unrestricted museum philan thropy and support for museum education was in large part a result of the corporate income tax law of 1935, which allowed a five percent deduction for philanthropy, and of the difficulty encountered by the Pepsi Cola Corporation when it tried to support museum exhibitions directly during the Second World War. The five percent deduction encouraged industrial memberships and gifts in cash and kind. For example, one manufacturer contributed flooring and bricks to the Museum of Modem Art. The Pepsi-Cola exhibitions were criticized for being a sorry mix ture of advertising and philanthropy; most of the cooperating museums withdrew from the program after one year.78 This criticism influenced the postwar emphasis on business contributions of unrestricted funds, industrial memberships, and gifts for educational programs. Thus, when Laurence Coleman returned to the problem of corporate philanthropy in 1952, he found that of all forms of giving to museums “only corporate giving is now on the rise.”79 One of his examples was the art museum in Akron, Ohio, which derived one-quarter of its income from one hundred and eighty industrial and commercial firms in 1951. Corporations’ desire to improve their public image and young execu tives’ cultural aspirations became new and increasingly important mo tives for museum philanthropy. Other varieties of museum philanthropy developed after World War II. Cultural Community Chests and local Fine Arts Funds stimulated gifts to museums, as well as to symphony orchestras and theaters. Con tributions from Junior Leagues, Chambers of Commerce, and local foun dations increased. Museums earned money from special entertainments like fashion shows, card parties and rummage sales and from retail trade in art books and reproductions.80 New fund raising experiments were reported at the end of the 1950’s: the Museum of Modem Art realized more than eight hundred thousand dollars from an art auction held over a closed television circuit; a new museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was sponsored by twenty-five manufacturing concerns; the Jersey City

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Fine Arts Council planned to establish a museum financed by public subscription and foundation grants.81 But museums continued to derive most of their funds from individual gifts and bequests, endowment funds and municipal government appropriations. In the past generation, museums became increasingly independent of the whims of individual philanthropists. In the 1920’s, the American Association of Museums cautioned small museums to exercise diplo macy and tact in dealing with local philanthropists; by 1957 the Asso ciation advised firmness and dignity: It is better to lose an important addition to the collection than it is to mortgage the museum’s future in order to avoid offending a potential donor...Most museums receive offers of long-term or permanent loans of objects. Avoid such entangle ments at all costs...It is possible that the owner is seeking social prestige by having materials on display in the museum. It is probable that the owner wishes to place discarded but cherished objects in a safe but rent free storage warehouse.82

Similarly, some museum leaders at mid-century were concerned about increasing profits from sales of books and reproductions compromising the public character of their institutions and others deplored the possi bility of museums becoming “supermarkets of culture.”83 Thus, muse ums became stable public trusts with a sense of dignity and concern for their public image that was analogous to the attitudes of great founda tions and universities.

Voluntary Service Gifts of time, though less important in museum philanthropy than in welfare and religious causes, cannot be neglected. Several museums organized women’s auxiliaries to collect funds and perform volunteer services, especially in connection with educational programs. More im portant were the trustees, who devoted considerable time to the affairs of public museums, although the actual details of museum administra tion were handled by professionals since the end of the nineteenth cen tury. Trustees were the bridge between private and public contributions. Trustees’ abilities and influence have been as varied and changing as those of more passive museum philanthropists. In general, trustees have taken an active interest in their museums; the man who served two years on a committee for purchasing works of art and never visited his

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museum’s collection seems to have been an exception.84 Until the First World War, philanthropists alone formulated the policies of the institu tions they had created; museums’ staffs were the servants and not the equals of the trustees. But the development of a museum pro fession which took its motives and methods from both scholarship and social work modified the role of the voluntary leaders.85 Since the 1920’s, professional staffs, many of them trained in the Fine Arts Departments of Harvard and Princeton, increasingly influenced policy decisions and inspired new varieties of philanthropy. In 1914, Benjamin Ives Gilman suggested that art experts sit on museum boards: “The men of means and the men of ends must join forces for the best achievement of their common purpose.”86 Gilman’s goal was achieved in the next generation, though not without considerable accommodation by both sides. Trustees left their mark on museum organization and administration. They instituted rigid accounting procedures within museums, led fund raising campaigns, and handled the complex legal and political details involved in circumventing restrictions in city charters, wills, and deeds of gift.87 Perhaps the most significant contribution of the trustees was the rationalization of administration and procedure in terms of the ideals of the public museums; the careful organization and balance of facilities for exhibition, acquisition and exposition. As in other areas of American philanthropy, a business-oriented culture created charitable trusts in its own image. The interaction between trustees and professionals created patterns of behavior which differed markedly from patterns in European muse ums, where the trustees have advisory powers only. American trustees wanted their museums to make brilliant acquisitions, increase their at tendance, have popular educational programs and attract new philan thropists.88The pressure to obtain large collections or money gifts and at the same time publicize and popularize museums conditioned the prac tices of museum professionals. Many of them played the social game, made special promises to collectors and dealers and, in the case of mod em art, occasionally speculated in futures on the art market.89Thus, phil anthropic influence, represented by benefactors and trustees, was stimulated and reinforced by egotism and desire for prestige among col lectors, professionals, and trustees. This combination of factors has been

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a major source of energy for the growth and development of the public museum.

Government Support Alfred Hoeber, a staff member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, declared in 1892 that the Museum “was founded...by a little band of public-spirited men and sustained out of their private purses.”90 A little later, Hoeber listed the grants made by the City of New York for build ing and maintaining the institution. This paradoxical explanation of the sources of funds for public museums has been a central element in the philanthropists’ self-image. Historians of the public museums tend to emphasize private support and ignore contributions by municipal gov ernments. According to a writer in 1927, the growth of American muse ums was due entirely to “the backing they have received from generous citizens.”91 More recently, Walter Pach, a noted art critic and museum historian, went so far as to suggest that heroic private citizens have saved the taste of the American people from control by annoying and ignorant politicians.92 Although the initiative for founding art museums was not taken by government agencies, and educational programs were not entirely a tool for prying funds from legislatures, governments have been involved in museum development since the 1870’s. Of approximately thirty-seven million dollars spent for museum buildings between 1870 and 1910, municipal and state governments contributed sixteen million, or about forty percent of the total.93 By 1930, the income of museums from gov ernment appropriations was slightly more than fifty percent of their in come from private citizens and foundations combined.94 In 1953, city governments provided eight million, four hundred thousand dollars for operating expenses alone—about fifty percent of total operating costs.95 It is impossible to determine accurately how much governments have provided in building subsidies and gifts of land. The early history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art illustrates the interaction of philanthropists and politicians. The founders of the insti tution declared in 1870 that, We do not anticipate that it will be possible to create such an institution by private means alone. Our hope is that when private effort and private beneficence have

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The story of Boss Tweed’s henchman Sweeney telling the Metro politan’s trustees in 1872 that the museum must be a public institution has been repeated many times.97 But the trustees would have lobbied for a piece of the purse without Tammany Hall’s encouragement. Early an nual reports praise European government appropriations for museums and the Board was confident that “at no very distant day the taxpayers will support the museum.”98 The Metropolitan, they declared in 1875, was “entitled” to government support as “one of the educational institu tions of the State.”99 The municipal government retained an influence in the Metropolitan’s affairs even though New York philanthropists wrested the initiative for making plans and decisions about museum buildings from the Park Com missioners by the 1880’s.100 In 1892, the same year that Hoeber glori fied the self-sufficiency of the “little bands of public men,” a cut in appropriations by the City Board of Estimate caused “a crisis in the finances of the Museum so grave that the executive Committee... requested” an emergency meeting of the trustees.101 The year before, pressure from the City Government had forced the museum to open on Sundays. However, it is important to note that the new Sunday opera tion was paid for by a combination of city funds and private contribu tions from Benjamin Altman and H.O. Havemeyer.102 The City’s contribution to the Metropolitan increased in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In 1920, however, Robert deForest, president of the museum, worried about a decline in the percentage of costs covered by municipal appropriations. In 1909, he claimed, the City contributed sixty-eight percent of the Metropolitan’s expenses; by 1919 only twenty-eight percent. These figures suggest that deForest was a victim of the mythology about the noble bands of public-spirited men; according to other Metropolitan records for the same years, the City had provided fifty percent of the operating cost in 1915, and, after two years of war mobilization, the percentage had fallen to forty, not twenty-eight percent.103 Despite his attack on the City and his statistical juggling, deForest recognized the importance of government support to the museum. He declared that fears of government control had proved groundless and that the Metropolitan’s role in the community was explained by the reci

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procity of public service and government support; more public service, he argued, had elicited more government support, while the use of pub lic funds tended to increase the emphasis on public service in the mu seum.104As another spokesman for the Metropolitan remarked in 1920, “let us give Tammany Hall the credit due it for the support it has given to the Metropolitan.”105 The New York State Legislature provided indirect support for the Metropolitan by permitting the City to appropriate funds for the mu seum and by granting the institution tax-exempt status on the condition that it conduct educational programs and admit the public free of charge on certain days. The legislation was the model for similar action in other states, although there were some variations; direct state contributions to the Chicago Art Institute and permission to set aside a portion of the real estate tax in St. Louis, for example.106 In addition to indirect support, several states established art museums in cooperation with private phi lanthropists. The first public museum founded by a combination of state and private funds was the Utah Art Institute, established in 1899; in the 1940’s, state museums in Virginia and North Carolina were initiated by joint action.107 Although a number of states, particularly in New En gland, were hostile to even indirect support for public museums for many years, the Association of Museums has not found it necessary to lobby for basic museum legislation in recent years.108 The Federal government gave public museums little more than vague and sporadic encouragement until the 1930’s. The 1876 Bureau of Edu cation Report on Public Libraries suggested that art museums be founded as a partnership between municipal governments and men of private wealth. Fifteen years later the Director of the National Museum, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution which received little Congressional atten tion until the twentieth century, told an audience of museum philanthro pists and administrators at the Brooklyn Museum that “unless a museum be supported by liberal and constantly increasing grants from some state or municipal treasury, it will ultimately become suffocated.”109 How ever, the federal government did give some indirect aid to museum phi lanthropy in the 1880’s by exempting from the tariff objects of art imported by museums.110 Museum response to the crisis of the 1930’s, stimulated by federal legislation, reinforced the partnership between private citizens and gov ernments. Federal contributions to museum construction and WPA Art

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Centers and Museum Projects persuaded most municipal governments to restore and in some cases increase contributions cut in the 1930-1934 period. Although municipal appropriations for museums were lower in 1939 than in 1930, support from municipal funds was the second largest source of museum income in the nation as a whole and Laurence V. Coleman, Director of the American Association of Museums, declared that “the regime of the wealthy benefactor and socialite is giving place to that of democratic support.”111 A decade of economic crisis and readjustment forced museum philanthropists to accept the fact that “public support must be regarded as the enduring financial bulwark of museums.”112 There was very little opposition to government support among mu seum philanthropists in the 1930’s. The philanthropy department of the Hanover Bank, for instance, expressed the hope that government arts funds would “not be withdrawn too rapidly and too completely.”113Rec ognition of the need for a mixed cultural economy resulted in such de velopments as philanthropists’ support for New York’s abortive plan to give the Museum of Modem Art a new home in a Municipal Art Center.114 Andrew Mellon’s gift of a National Gallery of Art could easily have been made in the form of a public museum, with autonomous control by trustees; but Mellon chose partnership with the federal government. Nevertheless, despite fear of government domination on the part of a minority of philanthropists, private citizens continued to bear a heavy share of the cost of art museums. Even the WPA Art Centers, embryonic public museums, received half their total funds, approximately threequarters of a million dollars, from private contributors.115 The trend in the period since the Second World War has clearly been toward an increased public share in the partnership with private philan thropists. Art News predicted in 1946 that in the future “public funds...will be called upon to assume a still larger share of the burden.”116 In 1948, the Director of the Los Angeles County Museum declared that govern ment support predominated over private philanthropy west of the Mis sissippi River.117Other museum leaders asserted that museums, as public institutions, should not “have to subsist on charity.”118 Private philan thropy was even used to finance campaigns for public appropriations. In 1954, Laurence Coleman reported a two-thirds increase in municipal support over the past fifteen years.119 A more recent statement on the question of public support was made in March, 1961 by Daniel Catton

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Rich, Director of the Worcester Art Museum: “No society in the past has been more generous in its educational and charitable programs than ours—both in private giving and in civic governmental support. But all at once we find that the present level of generosity is not enough.”120 Although the partnership between governments and philanthropists has existed since the 1870’s, there have been dissenting voices: several cities were reluctant to contribute to public museums, and a number of philanthropists preferred pure voluntarism. Philadelphia, for example, did not provide a building for proffered art collections until the 1920’s. When J.P. Morgan was under attack for his financial activities, the City of New York refused to contribute towards the Morgan Wing of the Metropolitan.121 James Jarves, the noted collector and critic, who of fered his collection to Boston only to have it refused, nevertheless as serted in 1864 that appropriations for museums “are as much a duty of the government as for any other purposes connected with the welfare of the people.”122 But in the following decades, Jarves’ missionary zeal was tempered by the failure of his efforts to influence the taste of the American people and by his role as an adviser to wealthy collectors. He wrote to Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1884 that he wanted museums to be privately run organizations working in the public interest rather than public institutions subject to chicanery.”123 Similarly, Charles C. Perkins, one of the founders of the Boston Museum, declared that the growth of American museums “must be accomplished by...private munificence if at all” and not by a “paternal government.”124 Several major museums received only indirect support from govern ment funds. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is an illustration. The museum’s founders had the advantage of initial support from established institutions: Harvard College, the Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Insti tute of Technology. Nevertheless, the land at Copley Square, the first site of the museum, was donated by the City on the condition that the museum be open free of charge to the public one day each week.125 In 1891, even though there was some tension between the patricians and Irish political leaders, a few philanthropists suggested that the Boston Museum, like its New York and Chicago counterparts, should obtain municipal support. However, the trustees took great pains to point out the uniqueness and wisdom of totally private support; the Boston Mu seum, they implied, was successful while being different from every other American public art gallery.126

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Despite this firm policy, Boston staff members argued in favor of municipal support. S.R. Koehler, Curator of Prints, declared in 1882 that national, state, and municipal patronage is not necessarily evil “in the light of history.”127 By 1917, although the Museum still received no government support, Benjamin Ives Gilman, Director of the institution and defender of the vested rights of Society in public art galleries, de clared that, “The permanent collections established in American cities find no difficulty in obtaining exemption from taxation in return for a measure of free admission. They are classified with our churches as public benefactors.” Gilman even claimed that the same argument could be used to obtain “positive” financial aid from municipalities.128 Cleveland was the only other major public museum without direct support for operating expenses from public funds. It is unique in the Middle West where the Detroit and St. Louis Museums are branches of municipal governments and other galleries receive large government appropriations. Nevertheless, when the Cleveland Museum was founded in 1916, the Trustees expected the City to make gifts of land for addi tions to the original building.129 Government support, like voluntary action, influenced the policies and goals of American museums. Perhaps most important, it forced phi lanthropists to translate their zeal for improvement and culture into a guarantee of free admission to the general public. Moreover, there has been a close connection between municipal support and educational pro grams. J. P. Morgan, president of the Metropolitan, was saying nothing new in 1904 when he pointed out that, “The museum is looking for city support and it is good politics as well as good policy to make its rela tions close with the public school system.”130 In 1908, the Director of the Minneapolis Museum declared that a museum “is an extension of the educational system which every city supports at present. It is more far-reaching in its effects since it offers educational facilities to adults as well as to children. If a city desires to have such an institution it should be willing to pay for its maintenance.”131 After 1906, when the American Association of Museums was orga nized, the relation between educational programs and municipal sup port was clarified by statistics. In 1916, for instance, the Association reported that of fifty-one museums reporting organized educational work, thirty-eight received financial support from the people in the form of tax funds, broadly based membership or both. Twenty-nine of these institu-

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tions received direct municipal support.132 Twenty years later, an Asso ciation report indicated that “museums with more than twenty-five per cent of income from public funds make more educational contacts in their communities.”133 These figures made museum trustees and directors more aware of the responsibilities and results of mixed private and public support. In 1917, John Cotton Dana, Director of the Newark Museum, predicted, rather after the fact, that “the growing habit of cities to maintain their own museums...will surely tend to democratize them.”134 The next year, a special committee of museum directors admonished their colleagues that, “The disposal of public funds involves an additional responsibility upon the administration of the museum since the interests of the visiting pub lic have to be maintained.”135 During the Depression Decade and the Second World War, museum leaders’ consciousness of community responsibility was sharpened, partly as a result of the increased share of costs borne by taxpayers. Museum spokesmen reflected this trend in their statements about education; for instance, Edsel Ford, a trustee of the Detroit Institute of Art, declared in 1940 that, The museum of tomorrow may have to depend more and more upon governmental subsidy rather than endowments... If the museum is to receive public financial support, it must play an essential part in the recreation and enjoyment of people who have ever more leisure.136

Theodore L. Low, an expert on museum education, put it more suc cinctly in 1942: “City fathers.. .are not going to support a cultural Fort Knox.”137 Thus, the history of public museums indicates a growing acceptance of the necessity of public support and even a belief in its positive value. At the same time, many museum leaders have minimized the influence of government funds; some have even ignored it altogether. This curi ous blindness seems to have been the result of fear of government con trol of museum policy combined with uncritical acceptance of the vast amount of philanthropic rhetoric about the glories of voluntarism and free enterprise. A great many statements on the subject, often rather contradictory, may represent a conscious or unconscious effort on the part of trustees and staffs simultaneously to state the facts and assure philanthropists of the importance of their benefactions. The mythology

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of American philanthropy has long been an extension of assumptions about private economic enterprise. The importance of municipal support to public museums can be illus trated by comparing them with private colleges and universities. Like the colleges, autonomous public art museums have viewed themselves as products of private philanthropy. But in 1950, when art museums received approximately fifty percent of their income from the public purse, private colleges and universities received less than twenty-five percent of their income from government funds. It seems clear that by mid-century museums belonged to the people far more than did private institutions of higher education.138

4 Philanthropy and Museum Policy In two areas of museum activity, education and the exhibition of con temporary art, programs developed for reasons that were both altruistic and practical. Developments in both areas are an index of changes in the goals and methods of museum philanthropy since the 1870’s. The growth of educational programs was stimulated by the need to obtain approval and funds from local governments, a desire to increase attendance, and an interest in making collections more useful. Museum educators were influenced by public libraries, settlement houses, foundations, new ideas about the educational process, and new challenges during two World Wars and the Great Depression. Similar stimuli account for the increas ing emphasis on exhibitions of contemporary art since the 1920’s. In addition, the growth of modem art as a major object of museum philan thropy reflects changes in the nature of art collecting and a new public attitude toward living artists.

Museums and Education Although nineteenth-century philanthropists and museum directors spoke about educating the public and improving the aesthetic quality of manufactured goods, they did not believe that art education needed much of a helping hand. Mere contact with fine objects, they asserted, would immediately improve public taste: those who could would help them selves.139Museum education thus reflected the laissez faire implications derived from a view of education based on faculty psychology. The reports of the Metropolitan Museum in the last decades of the nineteenth century list a number of gifts and bequests to establish art classes and schools. The trustees’ desire to “convert the useless gold [of 59

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Wall Street] into things of living beauty” elicited a response from sev eral men who were well-known for their general educational philan thropy.140 F. T. Reed, for example wrote to the president of the Metropolitan, “I feel a little shy about making fees and charges [at the art school] as they would deter just the young men whom I am most interested in; those who are smart and poor.”141This attitude is similar to Andrew Carnegie’s rationale for his public library benefactions. An other nineteenth-century approach to the problem of making museums serve a broad public stressed informal instruction. Charles L. Hutchinson, a prominent contributor to the Chicago Art Institute, expressed this view when he argued that the museum should be “a three ring circus rather than a mausoleum.”142 Education seemed rather dull to many art collectors whose museum philanthropy was motivated by a combination of altruism and egotism. Thus, it is not surprising that the early educational programs had lan guished by the beginning of the twentieth century. As Henry W. Kent, the man who created the Metropolitan’s direct education program, re called in 1940, The trustees [before 1905] had planned to meet the Charter’s demand for popular education. They had organized an industrial school and an art school... they had set a gallery apart for the exhibition of industrial arts... The schools had been given up long before I came to the museum and the lectures were spasmodic.143

The educational programs developed by Kent and his colleagues were financed mainly by municipal governments and private foundations, al though the income from these sources was supplemented by funds from unrestricted endowment, contributions from industrial corporations, and a few private gifts and bequests for educational purposes.144 Two other objects of American philanthropy, libraries and settlement houses, were similar to public museums in purpose and achievement. In many cities these three institutions were the only engines of culture with a bias toward a broad public; perhaps the only educational institutions which did not emphasize the benefits of competition and material suc cess in almost every program. Libraries and settlements had an influ ence on museums through both individuals and ideas. The social and educational aims of museums and public libraries were similar, despite the fact that the glamorous traditions of art patronage involved in museum philanthropy differentiated it from library benefac

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tions. The difference between museums and libraries was reflected in the opposition of many museum leaders to proposals for joint fund-rais ing campaigns and combined boards of trustees;145their similarity in the fact that the two most influential museum educators, John Cotton Dana of Newark and Henry W. Kent of New York, were trained as librarians. Beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century, Dana and Kent acted, spoke, and wrote in the field of museum education. Dana’s mu seum grew out of his desire to expand the community services of the Newark Public Library. Kent, on the other hand, came to the Metropoli tan thirty-five years after it was founded; unlike Dana, he had a great collection to work with and some difficulty convincing prominent phi lanthropists that education (“exposition,” he called it) is as important to museums as acquisition and exhibition. The settlement houses nurtured and demonstrated the belief of many philanthropists that art could be made a part of the daily lives of all Americans—if only some efforts were made to reach the people. In the twenty years before the First World War, settlements, more than librar ies, held an element of glamour for many American with both cultural and philanthropic inclinations. Settlement workers were still dedicated amateurs at this time, while museum workers were becoming increas ingly professional. The settlements emphasized participation in the arts; they were not satisfied with a passive view of cultural education. In every city, these centers demonstrated that first and second generation Americans could understand, enjoy, and practice the fine arts. Settle ment leaders conveyed their beliefs to museum philanthropists through their writings, pressure group activities, and, in some cases, by actual work in museum educational programs.146 Art museums were slow to adopt the lessons of settlement art pro grams: but when they did, they achieved greater success than the settle ments because they possessed the actual objects of art, which made art education more meaningful. In several areas, particularly neighborhood branch galleries, concerts of live music, and children’s education, mu seums were twenty years or more behind the settlements. Programs in these areas were organized and directed in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century by ex-librarians like Dana and Kent and by former settlement workers like Louise M. Dunn, Associate Curator of Education at the Cleveland Art Museum and David Marines, who orga nized concerts of live music at the Metropolitan.147As museum educa

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tion expanded in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the settlements decreased their emphasis on direct art education and appreciation.148 The explanation for the settlements’ greater initial success in art edu cation than public museums may lie mainly in the different attitudes of the philanthropists who supported the two institutions. Settlement work itself was regarded as a form of philanthropy; most settlement workers in the early twentieth century were educated middle-class men and women who dedicated considerable time and energy to the programs in the houses. The dominant museum philanthropists, on the other hand, were either passive donors or trustees whose only contact with visitors and students was indirect—through policy making. Moreover, while the attraction of settlements to philanthropically-minded individuals was in the work itself, the main attraction of museum philanthropy was in the works of art that were collected and donated. However, by the 1920’s, when the educational programs of both institutions were increasingly directed by professional social workers and teachers, and the museums reaped the pedagogical advantage of possessing original works of art, the eventual dominance of museums in the field of popular art educa tion was clearly foreshadowed. Like the settlements, museum education achieved its greatest success with children. Many parents were more concerned about their children receiving culture and displaying approved taste than they were about adult education. A writer on museums in the Nation in 1889 expressed the typically American concern for children’s aesthetic sensibilities that became a central principle of museum education: “It is from the chil dren now growing up, from their children and their children’s children that the deeper results are to be expected.”149Although museums tried to develop adult education programs from the beginning of the twentieth century, their lack of success, compared with programs for children, was viewed as damning evidence of museum elitism by left-wing critics in the 1930’s.150 The First World War had a marked influence on American museums and hastened the adoption of goals and techniques developed in librar ies and settlements. Art museums were regarded, to quote a representa tive spokesman in 1917, as “life giving oases in a desert of war talk and war fear.”151 Museum leaders wanted to supply “peace and inspiration” for the troubled times, and to mobilize cultural values in the service of democracy.152 In practice this meant that museums sought new mem

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bers and worked to influence more people through expanded educa tional programs, concerts of live music, art-recreation activities for the armed services, and special patriotic exhibitions. American manufactur ers, deprived of the services of European designers, became “aware of their shortcomings in industrial art.”153 In order to help manufacturers, museums, led by the Metropolitan, made special efforts to educate and stimulate American craftsmen and designers: the nineteenth-century hope of museum philanthropists that their institutions would benefit indus trial design was realized. Museums also tried to play a part in making the world safe for “the democracy of the things of the spirit.”154 One manifestation of this atti tude was the fact that museums became conscious of the special needs of first-generation Americans during the war. Lectures and classes in the arts, crafts, history, and literature of various countries began to ap pear in museum programs—supported by gifts from leading collectorphilanthropists. More important, museums made use of the settlements’ discovery that music was the art closest to the experience of most immi grants; museum concert programs, in most cases initiated during the war, and supported by such men as John D. Rockefeller and Robert deForest, attracted many new visitors.155 Museums, it was argued at this time, could aid the Americanization of immigrants by providing object lessons in pluralism. As Ella Lyman Cabot, a noted philanthropist and educator, told the American Associa tion of Museums Convention in 1918, America after this purging war must become a unified nation. It must not be like a melting pot with all the treasure of each nation fused and lost.. .Rather it must be like an orchestra of many different pieces playing under a skilled leader and in an harmony richer for the ordered gift of each contributor. In the spiritual reconstruc tion of America the Museums shall play their part.156

Museum leaders added another argument: as products of voluntary ac tion, their institutions were symbols of the American way of life, an “example... of the unqualified generosity and public-mindedness—an example of the true American spirit.”157 The explanation for the new departures in museum education during the 1930’s lies mainly in the realm of ideas, although economic pres sures should not be entirely discounted. Under the influence of a revolu tionary new government arts program and the increasing interest of

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private foundations in the arts, public palaces became primarily centers for community cultural services. The belief that everybody can appreci ate and enjoy the arts if sufficient access and encouragement is provided became, with occasional reservations, the accepted philosophy of pub lic museums and many philanthropists until, in the 1950’s, a new wave of prosperity and its attendant middle-class sophistication gave the elit ists their first opportunity in more than a generation to disparage the art for the people movement. It has been argued that economic losses during the Depression led to philanthropic appeals to a broader segment of the population and in creased municipal appropriations, and that the need to justify this new income gave new impetus to already expanding educational programs.158 But this is an overstatement. If the years from 1930 to 1939 are consid ered as a unit, a different picture emerges than if the worst years of the Depression are treated separately. It is true that 1933 was a bleak year for museums and that municipal appropriations were cut sharply be tween 1931 and 1935; and there is no doubt that many citizens sympa thized with the Detroit legislators who wished to sell the Art Institute’s collection and use the proceeds for home-relief.159The larger museums, however, increased their wealth from 1930 to 1939, while the smaller institutions’ resources remained rather stable throughout the period. No public museums went out of existence in the 1930’s and, although mu seum directors lamented the disappearance of great collections, some of them made strenuous efforts to secure the Mellon, Widener, Bache, and Kress bequests.160 Although the growth of museums was slower than in the 1920’s, the decline in museum income, even in the worst years of the Depression, never equalled the percentage of national decline in business activity. Museum income in 1930 was sixteen million dollars; in 1938 it was eighteen million. When museum income was at its lowest point, in 1933, the Nelson Gallery of Art was opened in Kansas City.161 Surely the mu seum director who saw public museums in the future financed and di rected from Washington was exaggerating.162 The overemphasis on the economic roots of educational programs in the 1930’s was a result of a myth created in that decade; the belief that museums had shirked educational responsibilities throughout their his tory. Museum men “gape and do nothing about underprivileged visi tors,” an influential writer declared.163Another critic suggested that many

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museum philanthropists did not support genuine popular art education because they were afraid of disturbing their monopoly of cultural, eco nomic, and political power.164 This attitude, based on aversion towards men of wealth and the economic determinists’ critique of philanthropic motives and the bourgeois ideal of service, was completely contradicted by an American Association of Museums statistical survey in 1934 which concluded that, The philanthropically inclined have been supporting museums, have been taxing themselves to pay for the museums* educational services to other men’s children. But as these services have grown and as their importance in the educational scheme has been recognized, the work has reached proportions where it has obviously become a public charge.165

Museum education has been an important concern of many philanthro pists and municipal governments since the nineteenth century. It did not begin with the New Deal, although it was certainly stimulated by it. Museum education received greater impetus from foundations and from the federal government than from these attacks. The Carnegie Foun dation, beginning in the late 1920’s, financed educational experiments in museums and, more important, distributed art appreciation kits (slides, reproductions, and books) in an effort to prepare college students to enjoy museums.166 In 1938,167 the Kress Foundation donated paintings to small museums across the country, a program which enabled these museums to devote more funds to educational activities. Foundation support was also primarily responsible for the opening of the first au thentic branch museum, in Philadelphia in 1933, and for the first mu seum-sponsored exhibition in a settlement house, in New York in 1934. The WPA Arts Programs provided funds and personnel for museum education. Community Art Centers, initiated by the WPA but dependent on local philanthropy, brought instruction in technique and appreciation to many towns without public museums. In several instances these Cen ters later became public museums, deriving support from private citi zens and municipal governments.168The WPA Museum Project paid the salaries of several thousand new guides, lecturers and instructors in public museum educational programs. Although museum service to industry was curtailed during the Depression, programs for public school chil dren, financed by the WPA, municipal governments, and foundations, were expanded.169 Many museum leaders agreed with their colleague

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who declared that the new sources of stimulation hastened the achieve ment of “what we have all been preaching for a quarter of a century.”170 The educational progress of the 1930’s was preserved and expanded to some degree as a result of demands made on museums during the Second World War. As in the First World War, museums were conscious of the role they could play on the home front and more funds were avail able for education because the European crisis curtailed the supply of art objects. Museum education during World War II had a different emphasis than in 1917-1918, however; patriotism and incitement against the enemy was replaced by relaxation and humanitarian values. In 1918, a spokes man for the Cleveland Museum called the War “the greatest chivalric enterprise of all time,” and railed against “the brutishness of the Hun.”171 His successor took a different position in 1942: “Art is among the ideal values which we fight to preserve__ The museum has thus become a symbol of enlightened, unselfish democracy.”172 The goal of museum education during the Second World War was very similar to the goal during the Depression: to help people “forget their worries for a time” through “a brief reminder of eternal values.”173 The ideal museum was still compared to a church; in the nineteenth century both these institu tions were considered places for worship; by the mid-twentieth century they were more often described as oases for relaxation and meditation. However, it is probable that the ideal museum and the emphasis on eter nal values existed mainly in the rhetoric of enthusiasts and administra tors. There are no grounds for ascribing other motives than curiosity and desire for knowledge or entertainment to the majority of visitors to pub lic museums. The concept of museums as popular universities, developed during the War, had an important influence on museum education after 1945. This new view of the social function of the institutions was a synthesis of the various trends in museum education since the beginning of the century. It was stimulated by the painful contrast between cultural aspi rations and the destructiveness of war. Francis Henry Taylor, Director of the Metropolitan and a leading museum educator, expressed this new development in 1945 when he asserted that, “The museum must be come the free and informal liberal arts college for the whole generation. Our soldiers and sailors...will be the first to demand a return once more to the humanities.”174

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There was little public criticism of emphasis on education in the De pression and war periods. After 1946, however, the conflict between exhibitors and expositors, which had first appeared among museum men in the first two decades of the century, was revived. In the earlier stage of the debate, the two poles of thought among philanthropists and their spokesmen were represented by Benjamin Ives Gilman, who declared that museums should serve the elite before the masses, and John Cotton Dana, who railed against temples of culture in the name of progressive democracy.175 Similar positions appeared after World War II, with Francis Henry Taylor speaking for the forces of education and James J. Sweeney of the Guggenheim Museum and Meyer Schapiro of Colum bia University as outstanding proponents of aesthetic purism.176 The educators were accused of being more interested in public relations than in the arts; they responded by suggesting that their opponents were anti democratic, and that museums could serve both the intellectual and the social elite and the Great Community without compromising the offer ing to either group. Although a practical compromise between the extreme positions in the debate has been achieved, there have been no unambiguous state ments of the aesthetic philosophy underlying museum education pro grams. In the past thirty years, new elements in museum leaders’ thought about art and society have modified the terms of the earlier debate be tween Gilman and Dana. These new elements seem to have been in some measure the result of the aesthetic theories John Dewey and Albert C. Barnes enunciated in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Museum leaders, how ever, have not accepted all the implications of the new theories. The aesthetic and social ideas expressed in the two periods of contro versy reflect different conceptions of the function of art and the nature of society. Gilman argued that since the primary function of a museum was to collect and exhibit great works of art, it must be organized to serve mainly those people who were most sensitive to art. Although he made some reservations, Gilman usually identified wealth and formal education with proper sensitivity to art. Dana wanted to expand the com munity services of museums; but only in order to inculcate the moral and ethical values explicit in museum publications and programs since the 1870’s.177 Although Dewey and Barnes, like Dana, sharply attacked academic “antiquarianism” in art education, their goal was to “break through the

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crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness,” not to create and expand art museums. Indeed, Dewey, by arguing that beauty can be found in the commonest and meanest things, and Barnes, who defined art edu cation as learning to perceive the common factors in all aesthetic expe riences, seemed to suggest that museums were operating with several false premises.178 If a ray of moonlight could produce an aesthetic expe rience, why spend large sums collecting Old Masters? If the art of all periods expressed the same human experiences, why organize museum collections historically or by national schools? These views seemed to threaten the aesthetic convictions and material interests of many collec tor-philanthropists and museum administrators. Moreover, the social aspects of museum policy seemed to betray the rhetoric museum leaders had borrowed from Dewey and Barnes. Mu seum spokesmen talked as if a clearly defined public, a Great Commu nity willing to respond to art already existed; they apparently ignored Dewey’s insistence that America had too many shadowy and formless publics. While museum directors appealed for funds, dealt with trustees and politicians, assembled collections, and talked vaguely about educat ing whole communities, Barnes used his magnificent collection as a pri vate educational museum. Dewey’s belief that common aesthetic experience is a necessary preliminary for the “consummation” of the Great Community, was apparently forgotten by museum directors in their scramble for more funds and public attention from their communities.179 Thus, while Barnes successfully preserved the purity of his purpose, museum leaders compromised; they refused to probe too deeply into the implications of Dewey’s ideas. Many museum directors may have wanted to break down the separation between art and life; but they also needed financial support from the social elite and politicians. Although Andre Malraux’s concept of “the museum without walls” might have been con genial to Dewey as a logical extension of his views, it would have been career suicide for even the most education-minded philanthropists and politicians. Men like Francis Henry Taylor, who used many of Dewey’s phrases, were primarily professional administrators, not philosophers. When academics like Schapiro accused administrators like Taylor of intellectual shabbiness, the educators’ only defense was to point to ris ing attendance figures and expanding educational services.180Thus, the debate has had a paradoxical conclusion: both the elitists and the fol lowers of Dewey and Barnes have had tighter cases, but their opponents

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have won the field by dropping their poorly assimilated philosophy and using the two arguments, attendance and growth, which have been the major justification of museum philanthropy since the 1870’s.

Museums and Contemporary Art In the last half of the nineteenth century artists were either suspicious or dangerously attractive characters to many businessmen and men of leisure. This suspicion was sometimes carried into their art collecting and museum philanthropy. The Reverend Dr. Henry Bellows, a promi nent New York clergyman and a member of the committee of the Union League Club which took the lead in organizing the Metropolitan Mu seum of Art, declared in 1870 that artists were “a brooding, dreamy, meditative class, closed to the world...seldom men of practical wis dom, push and enterprise.”181 Similarly, the first president of the Metro politan, John Taylor Johnston, felt “very apprehensive of the effect of inviting the disaffected artist element” to the opening of the museum in 1872. Johnston did not specify why the artists were “disaffected;” per haps it was because the Metropolitan had decided to ignore living Ameri can artists in favor of the art of the European past.182 The birth of public museums coincided with the decline of private patronage for contemporary artists in Europe and America—a develop ment noted by observers at the time who were both favorable and op posed to it.183 Most collectors preferred investing in objects of secure and permanent value to gambling on the contemporary market. Nine teenth-century social upheavals placed a large amount of pre-eighteenthcentury art on the market; new historical and critical techniques endowed these objects with cultural and moral value. The early public museums reflected in some degree both the desire of American millionaires for approval from European aristocrats and con noisseurs and their interest in public enlightenment. Uncertain about their own tastes and anxious to avoid embarrassment or to reveal im proper education, many men seemed to prefer donating casts and repro ductions of works of demonstrable value to speculating on original work by unproven contemporary artists. In other words, their identification with Renaissance princes was not complete; to nineteenth-century mer chants and industrialists, only the art of the past seemed to have perma nent value, to confer prestige, and to be a safe investment. Their expert

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advisers, who, ironically, were often artists themselves, did not dare to recommend that they become patrons as well as collectors. Moreover, shrewd international art dealers with overstocked inventories of Old Masters, like the Duveens, and museum directors anxious to develop historical collections, played on the collector-philanthropists’ social and aesthetic insecurity.184 By the turn of the twentieth century, a few far-seeing museum leaders realized that this focus on the past might choke the growth of American art. S. R. Koehler of Boston and John Cotton Dana were outstanding critics of the focus on the past. Dana attacked art collectors’ attachment to “cultural fetishes;” their desire to collect only what other rich men had collected.185 Koehler, more specific in his indictment, deplored the fact that “modem artists are manufacturers of pictures... which they paint on speculation and for which they must seek a market” among a small group of interested patrons.186 But there were exceptions to this pattern. Artists and their children loaned and donated original paintings and sculpture to museums. As early as 1882, the Metropolitan exhibited a painting by Albert Pinkham Ryder, on loan from Mrs. J. H. DeKay.187 In Chicago, paintings by Bierstadt, DeHaas, Johnson, and Neal were exhibited in 1873.188Twenty years later, a wealthy Chicagoan established a trust fund, administered by the Art Institute, to commission works by American sculptors.184Al though public museums were hostile to native impressionists like Maurice Prendergast until the 1920’s, works by the French Impressionists were donated to the Boston Museum as early as the turn of the century.190 Such artists as Samuel F.B. Morse and Daniel Chester French were of ficers of the Metropolitan in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Koehler was essentially correct when he concluded that museums have “only a secondary bearing” on the creation and stimula tion of “a truly American school of art.”191 The dominant attitude of museum philanthropists and administrators was expressed by another Boston staff member, Benjamin Ives Gilman, just after the turn of the century; “The ideally best collecting for museums consists in acquiring from the user, not the maker.” The museum’s duty, he asserted, was to collect and exhibit the best art—after it had been approved by experts and collectors.192 The early attempts to hang works by contemporary artists in muse ums had little success. The small group, led by John Quinn, who spon

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sored the Armory Show in 1913 were severely attacked by many of thenfellow philanthropists.193The same year that the Armory Show informed those Americans who care to look that an aesthetic revolution had oc curred was also the Metropolitan’s most successful year in obtaining gifts and bequests of the art of the past.194 Contemporary art still presented a problem in the 1920’s, even though it was hard to escape the fact that there was contemporary European and American work worthy of permanent exhibition. Some philanthropists and museum directors were worried about making hasty judgments; they did not want to “waste” money donated in the public interest on what might turn out to be inferior art. Others declared that patronage of living artists was the proper concern of private individuals, who could exer cise their whims without compromising their public consciences. Sev eral museums leaders advised patience; the private taste of their generation, they asserted, would become gifts to public museums in the future. As the president of the Metropolitan declared, museums wanted some means to “test out for the community all the vagaries of contem porary genius.”195Apparently museum philanthropists still clung to the nineteenth century beliefs that culture and taste could be defined and bestowed and that properly tested judgments would enable men to dis cern the difference between great and mediocre art. If museums could be tastemakers for the art of the past, what pre vented them from directing public attention to meritorious contempo rary art? The difficulty of defining aesthetic quality is only a partial explanation. Another important obstacle was the fact that museums and artists still did not have the same vested interests. As late as 1929 the American Association of Museums lobbied to defeat “efforts of certain artists” to secure a tariff on contemporary works of art and, even in 1937, after philanthropists’ attitude toward living artists had undergone a considerable change, the public museums acted together to defeat an artists’ boycott of museums which refused to pay rental fees for bor rowed paintings.196 Perhaps an additional obstacle was the ethical con flict between philanthropists, who advocated art for the community’s sake, and those artists and critics who espoused art for art’s sake. The dominant attitude of public museums toward contemporary art did not change until two new factors entered the situation: the idea that public interest in the arts, an expanded audience, was not possible with out recognition and encouragement for contemporary artists, and the

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decreasing number of Old Masters on the art market. These factors be gan to have a more than sporadic effect on philanthropists in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Only at this time did they realize that their ideals had con tained a dangerous contradiction: the idea that museums must continu ally grow through accessions from periods which could produce no more works of art. The interest of museums in expanding their audience through the publicity value of contemporary art began in the 1920’s. Perhaps this development was a delayed reaction to the publicity received by the Armory Show combined with the interest excited by exhibitions of pa triotic art during World War I. In the 1920’s, many museums instituted annual exhibitions of modem art with a purchase prize for the best works, while others began to set aside a small sum each year for gambling on a few contemporary works. In the late 1920’s, several leaders declared that museums had an obligation to artists who lived and worked in their metropolitan areas and the first museum exhibitions of contemporary local and regional art were held at this time. Public interest in contemporary art, combined with solicitude for art ists, increased markedly in the 1930’s. The Museum of Modem Art claims most of the credit for stimulating this interest; but trends carried over from the preceding decade and the WPA Arts Projects seem to have had a more significant influence. Contemporary art had glamour and public appeal for the first time in American history. In addition, many people realized the extent to which artists’ means of livelihood depended on general prosperity. Museums, interested in broadening the base of their support and expanding their community services, capitalized on this new interest. Acquisitions of contemporary art increased and the battle be tween the modernists and the traditionalists provided educational de partments with a new function—convincing the public that the museum was not mistaken in its purchases of controversial works of modem art.197 Although philanthropists were frequently criticized in the 1930’s for being defenders of the status quo, contemporary social protest painting was included in several exhibitions and permanent collections. The San Francisco Art Museum, for instance, received gifts from the Friends of Diego Rivera, and the New York Museum of Modem Art exhibited sev eral caricatures of business heroes despite protests from some philan thropists that the painting were “offensive.”198 The second factor which stimulated philanthropy for contemporary art was the problem created by the diminishing amount of art of the past

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on the market.199 Largely as a result of museum philanthropy, the “cir culation of elites,” in Pareto’s phrase, as far as collecting Old Masters was concerned, had come to a dead stop in the public museums—at least temporarily. This problem, recognized in the 1920’s, did not be come acute until the Depression years, when collectors had less money to spend on art. The collectors’ dilemma was exploited by crusaders for modem art and resulted in a new kind of public museum: the patronage museum. Galleries supported by philanthropists and devoted solely to stimulating interest in contemporary art were established in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco in the 1930’s. In other cities, public museums with general collections devoted galleries to twentieth-century art and in creased the scope of their annual exhibitions of modem art. The history of the Whitney Museum of American Art provides a case study of the antipathy of public museums to contemporary art in the early twentieth century and the successful conversion of private tastes into public trusts in the 1920’s and 1930’s.200 Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a sculptor herself, established a Studio Club in Greenwich Vil lage in 1910 in order to provide exhibition facilities and companionship for neglected American artists. A list of the artists who had their first shows at Mrs. Whitney’s gallery is almost an outline history of Ameri can art in this century. Mrs. Whitney and her assistant, Juliana Force, refused to admit that they were engaging in philanthropy, even after the Club had evolved into a museum; the word had too many depressing connotations for American artists. The Studio Club became a museum in the early 1930’s, for several reasons: by establishing a charitable trust Mrs. Whitney insured the per manence of her collection and the continuation of her patronage to liv ing artists; a museum lent prestige to artists whose paintings it bought; and by becoming a public trust, the collection could receive gifts from other philanthropists. But the Whitney was a museum in name more than in practice until the 1940’s when it decided to become “an impor tant member of the museum world.”201 Although there were no direct educational programs, gifts were accepted from any source, business men were added to the artists who composed the first board of trustees and, in the 1950’s, a group of collective contributors (the Friends of the Whitney Museum) was established. Contemporary American artists and their patronage museum had become respectable in the museum world.

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The new relationship between living artists and museum philanthropy was discussed at a conference in 1950 attended by outstanding repre sentatives of both fields. A spokesman for the artists complained that “the functions and policies of museums have been an unknown quan tity.”202 In reply, Lloyd Goodrich, Director of the Whitney Museum, de clared that, One of the museum’s most important functions would be to help bring about con ditions in which living artists can create to the best of their ability... Museums often have to pay big premiums to acquire works of artists whom they neglected when they were alive...To put it baldly, buying a living artist’s work has two advantages—the museum pays less and the artist eats.203

Other museum leaders suggested that artists serve as trustees, persuade their patrons to support museums, and join pressure groups working to obtain more government funds for museums. As a result of the confer ence, artists secured agreements protecting their rights at museum exhi bitions and in sales of their work by museums.204 The new spirit was so widely accepted by the mid-1950’s that Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan, an institution long equivocal about contemporary art, declared that “the task of the museum is to try to narrow the breach that already divides the artist from the public.”205 Purchases and gifts of twentieth-century art dominated museum phi lanthropy after the Second World War.206This development is explained by the new ideas of the 1920’s and 1930’s, the diminishing supply of Old Masters, public and critical acceptance of many modem styles which were fiercely attacked a generation earlier, and the persistent belief among American philanthropists that failure to grow means imminent decay. The patronage museums were initially planned to maintain only tempo rary collections; by the 1940’s they had become treasure-houses rather than clearing-houses. However, a few museum directors and philanthropists still questioned the propriety of speculating on the modem art market. Opposition to the policies of the patronage museums was expressed by several men, nota bly by John Canaday, art critic of the New York Times, who argued that the Museum of Modem Art was too insulated from the broad public interest to make reasonably unbiased decisions in matters which affected the value of works of art.207

5 Private Desires and Public Welfare Several historians have charged that public museums, particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were primarily instru ments for displaying and reflecting the elitist aspirations of the urban aristocracy. In this view, the exclusiveness of the institutions was clearly demonstrated by the erection of palatial and forbidding buildings and their location in remote parks. Some critics have argued that the “social strategy involved in securing museum philanthropy impeded the devel opment of pure scholarship which made use of public art collections.”208 These views cannot be supported by unequivocal evidence. Most public museums were conceived as institutions for the masses as well as citadels for the classes. The presence of municipal support, the need to justify tax exemption, and the appeal of museums as philanthropies rather than as objects of luxury expenditure were factors which democratized and popularized American public museums. This judgment is based on evidence from charters, annual reports, and architectural history. The charter of every public museum was broad enough to permit the philanthropists of each generation to modify goals and practices. In many cases, charters were deliberately vague and ambiguous because the founders did not want to hamper future administrators of the public trusts they had established. Neither government support nor philanthropic dog mas imposed rigidity on public museums; yet most charters provided for educational programs and free admission for the public on at least a few days of each week.209 Annual reports indicate that many nineteenth-century trustees favored central locations, and in several cases succeeded in obtaining them. The first buildings of two of the greatest institutions, the Chicago Art Insti75

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tute and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, were erected on downtown sites. The problem of museum location was complex, however, involv ing practical as well as idealistic factors. This complexity is revealed in the records of the Metropolitan Mu seum of Art. The Committee which planned the museum in 1870 rec ommended consideration of the possibility of locating it in Central Park, but the Executive Committee preferred a site closer to the heart of the city—where the New York Public Library was later erected. The pro posal was rejected by the City Park Commissioners.210 The records of the negotiations between the trustees and the Com missioners indicate that Central Park was chosen for its practical advan tages, not because of its distance from lower class districts or the moral symbolism of a natural setting. The major considerations affecting the final decision were the ease of future expansion for a museum in the Park, the fire hazard in congested districts, the difficulty of protecting the collections from dirt and industrial smoke, and, most important, the desire on the part of the municipal government to donate park land rather than more valuable property further downtown.211 This solution was not eagerly accepted by all the trustees; in 1878 several of them complained that “the distance of the new building from the residences and places of business of many of the trustees will make it difficult for them to con tinue that personal attention to various departments which is now given by them in Committees.”212 With all their disadvantages, both to the public and to the trustees, park locations had advantages which businessmen-philanthropists could not ignore. Speaking in 1908, Robert Koehler, first director of the Min neapolis Museum, declared that a “natural setting” enhanced the beauty of works of art. But he emphasized the fact that parks were “ideal and practical at the same time”: All practical businessmen will suggest that it be centrally located, easily accessible from all parts of town. This, however, at once implies a temporary location, an unavoidable removal as soon as the business interests of the city expand. The proper location... would be in some city park to permit of expansion without entirely destroying the original purpose of the park.213

In the last generation, many museum leaders used park locations as evidence for the elitism of their predecessors. These men were influ enced by the severe attacks on the allegedly elitist “guardians of cul

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ture” by writers in the Progressive and New Deal periods. Edsel Ford, a leading trustee of the Detroit Art Institute, for example, wrote in 1940 that, The selection of a busy avenue in the heart of a metropolitan area as a museum site, the discarding of the forbidding monumental building...the easier accessibility from the street.. .all play their part in the breaking down of barriers between the visitor and the new museum.214

Even Laurence Coleman, official historian of American museums, as serted in 1950 that trustees had been forced to realize that “sites in re mote parks are now outside the pale.”215 Ironically, twentieth-century urban growth and the automobile have made museums in parks accessible to more people than museums in city centers. Although museum founders did not consciously plan for this development, it is hard to believe that men renowned for foresight in their business activities lost this quality completely when they turned to philanthropy. The wisest philanthropists, like the most sensible busi nessmen, refused to limit the future expansion of their creations or to ignore the potential growth of their cities. Moreover, an index of the “success” of every public art museum, no matter where it is located, has always been the number of visitors it attracted; museum philanthropists have expressed more concern about falling attendance than about the danger of the working classes defiling works of art. Museum architecture has often been cited as an indication of exclu siveness. Palaces of art—buildings with heavy baroque or classical facades and tenement-house rears—have excited somewhat unreason able anger among architectural and social reformers.216 The only mod els for American museum architects in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were converted palaces, like the Louvre and the Uffizi, or mock temples like the British Museum. In addition, the desire of philanthropists to create public institutions which contained or reflected the cultural wealth of their cities led them to choose the approved style for public buildings of their time. Perhaps the architectural critics have ignored the high cost of museum buildings and the reluctance of municipal governments to condemn what the taxpayers had underwrit ten just because it had become fashionable. Nevertheless, new architec tural styles and the importance of museums as educational institutions were reflected in buildings erected since the second decade of the twen

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tieth century; the Cleveland Museum, completed in 1916, is a notable example.217 The charge that the “social strategy” involved in museum administra tion impeded the development of sound scholarship ignores the fact that philanthropy made possible the expansion of museum collections and the employment of specialized museum staffs. It also assumes that good scholarship and conspicuous consumption are mutually exclusive. Cer tainly Duveen, Morgan, and other princes of commerce and art used museum experts as runners, tipsters, or, more politely, consultants. But collectors’ desire for correct attributions encouraged increasingly accu rate scholarship in museums218 and, as the museum profession became more competitive, graduate training in art history became a necessity for ambitious directors and curators. At a time when museums were deeply involved in the philanthropic process, other arts institutions were largely the private property of a social elite.219 Although museums have never been a mass charity, they have had a broader base of support and more interaction with public agencies than symphony orchestras, opera companies, or theaters. The latter institutions did not become philanthropies until the 1930’s; but museums reflected the changing goals and semantics of American phi lanthropy long before that decade. On the eve of the First World War, museums, like welfare causes, began to emphasize the nature of their programs rather than the source of their funds; “community service” rather than “charity.” Another indication of the difference between mu seums and other arts institutions is the fact that when museums began to sponsor concert programs, in the second decade of the twentieth cen tury, they carefully explained that they were acting to provide good music, which was desired by, but denied to, the common man.220 Thus, public museums, institutions created by joint voluntary and public action, became centers for public education and enjoyment. Most of the philanthropists were motivated by a desire to bring the benefits of art, as they saw them, to more people. In their desire to expand and utilize these public collections and merit government support, museum leaders developed educational and publicity programs on a scale which has had few parallels in the history of cultural institutions. Two World Wars and a Great Depression forced museums to realize more sharply that they had a significant role to play in community life. Ideas and

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techniques developed by libraries and settlement houses influenced mu seums’ efforts to expand and humanize their community service pro grams. A new attitude toward living artists and the place of art in the lives of the people, which was stimulated in large measure by Federal programs in the 1930’s, modified museum policies and led to the cre ation of a new kind of institution, the patronage museum. Public museums reflect their dependence on voluntary action for most of their leadership and funds. It could be that the establishment and growth of these institutions after 1870 was made possible as much by the so phistication of philanthropic techniques as by the accumulation of large private collections and increasing public interest in art. Throughout the history of the public museums, new services were provided, to indi vidual philanthropists and to communities, partly to justify and attract continuing voluntary benefactions. Reliance on local philanthropy and municipal support made it imperative that museums be constantly aware of changes in their communities. In addition, museum staffs had to re gard publicity, fund-raising, and political activity as important tasks. One of the major goals of nineteenth-century philanthropists was achieved by the mid-twentieth century: public museums had become significant arbiters of contemporary taste. Although the average family still purchased paintings and reproductions to match its carpets and cur tains, museums had influenced taste in industrial design, architecture, advertising, and, through exhibitions and the sale of fine reproductions, private homes. Moreover, many museums assumed or accepted respon sibility for approving and disapproving works by living artists, a role that was often justified by the argument that museums, as public institu tions representing the traditions of art, have a vested interest in trying to express balanced judgments. Although museum philanthropy has come from a relatively small seg ment of the population, the history of public museums indicates that the money and interest of the few can serve the education and pleasure of the many. The great achievement of American public art museums has been their ability to further public welfare while serving private desires.

Notes Chapter One 1. William Dunlap, A History o f the Rise and Progress o f the Arts o f Design in the United States (Boston, 1918), 278. 2. For European background see Edward Edwards, The Administrative Economy o f Fine Arts in England (London, 1840); Wilhelm von Bode, Mein Leben (Berlin, 1930); Jean Laurent, La Republique et Les Beaux Artes (Paris, 1955). Rene Brimo, L*Evolution du GoutAux Etats Unis (Paris, 1938), 171ff.; Francis Henry Taylor, Babel’s Tower (New York, 1945). 3. Brimo, VEvolution du Gout aux Etas Unis (Paris, 1939), 172-180 4. Ibid, 185-86; cf. Robert C. Smith, “The Museum of Art in the United States,” Art Quarterly, XXI, Autumn 1958, 297-316. 5. Frick Collection Ruled Free of Accept Gifts, “Museum News, XXVI, September 15, 1948, 1. 6. For a more detailed discussion of various types of American art museums see Paul M. Rea, The Museum and the Community (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1932), 11-19. 7. “More and more they are taking over the function of Community Centers... and...of the Cathedral.” Quoted in Robert B. Harshe, “The Museum and the American Art Renaissance,” Creative Arts, IX, November 1931, 386. 8. The generalizations about American philanthropy in this essay are drawn mainly from Robert Bremner, American Philanthropy (Chicago, 1960), and Merle Curti, “American Philanthropy and the National Character,” American Quarterly, X, Winter, 1958, 420-37, “Tradition and Innovation in American Philanthropy,” Proceedings o f the American Philosophical Society, CV, April 1961, 146-56. 9. Russell Lynes, The Tastemakers (New York, 1954), 275ff.

Chapter Two 10. Lewis Mumford, Sticks and Stones (New York, 1955), 150. 11. S.N. Behrman, Duveen (New York, 1952), R.L. Duffus, The American Renais­ sance (New York, 1928), Aline B. Saarinen, The Proud Possessors (New York, 1958), D. and E. Rigby, Lock, Stock and Barrel (Philadelphia, 1944). 12. Richard Rathbum, The National Gallery o f Art (Washington, 1961), 26. 13. Frederick A.P. Barnard, Art Culture (New York, 1854), 28, 38, 31. 14. Charles C. Perkins, Art Education in America (Cambridge, 1870), 21. 15. Robert U. Johnson, “The Establishment of Art Museums,” Proceedings o f the First Annual Convention o f the American Federation o f Arts, (Washington, 1910), 88 .

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16. Quoted in Laurence Vail Coleman, Museum Buildings (Washington, 1950), 67. 17. Newton H. Carpenter, “The Value of Members to Museums,” Proceedings o f the American Association o f Museums, IV, 1910, 94. 18. The New Museum and Its Service to Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1922), 16. 19. The attitude toward immigrants of most museum philanthropists seems to have been a compromise between the polar positions expressed by factions of the Immigration Restriction League: most museum leaders did not believe that AngloSaxon culture would absorb all other cultures or that the United States would eventually be composed of autonomous national groups. Museum leaders tended toward a kind of pragmatic pluralism and avoided contention on the issue. Nev ertheless, since most members of the League were anti-pluralist, the education policy of public museums ran counter to the League’s dominant sentiments. For a discussion of the restrictionist attitude toward cultural pluralism see Barbara M. Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants (Cambridge, 1956), 131. 20. Report o f the Executive Committee o f the Metropolitan Museum o f Art to the General Committee (New York, 1860), 21. Hereafter cited as Metropolitan, Report. . . . 21. These concerns were major motives for the establishment of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London after the Great Exposition of 1851. The utilitarian aims of this museum had an influence on American museum founders. For de tails see Winifred E. Howe, A History o f the Metropolitan Museum o f Art, I, (New York, 1913), 134. For what may be an overestimation of French influences see Walter Pach, The Art Museum in America (New York, 1948), 25ff. For Ameri can influences on Europe, see Brimo, 182. 22. Metropolitan, Report..., 10; cf. Guido de Ruggiero, The History o f European Liberalism (Boston, 1959), 410. 23. G. Browne Goode, The Museums o f the Future (Washington, 1891), 445. This idea is curiously parallel to one of the leading ideas of American Imperialists of this period: what Albert K. Weinberg calls “the pseudo-biological doctrine of natural growth.” This is another indication of the depth of museum philanthro pists’ commitment to the major assumptions of American thought of their time. See Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny, (Baltimore, 1935) passim. 24. Theodore L. Low, The Education Philosophy and Practice o f Art Museums in the United States (New York, 1949), 26-63; Grace Fisher Ramsey, Educational Work o f Museums o f the United States (New York, 1938), 25. 25. William B. Ashely, “The Promotion of Museums,” Proceedings o f the American Association o f Museums, VII, 1913, 39, 44. 26. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (Garden City, 1960), xvi. 27. Quoted from the remarks of Joseph H. Choate at the opening of the Metropolitan’s Central Park Building in 1878 by Howe, I, 199. 28. Ibid., 196, 204. 29. William C. Prime, an officer of the Metropolitan, said in 1888: “Yes, there is money in teaching people to love beautiful objects.” Quoted in Low, 13. Simi larly, Howe, I, 196, quotes Choate: “Truly Republican art...is...th e vital and practical interest of the working millions.” 30. Metropolitan, Report..., 10. 31. Edward S. Morse, “If Public Libraries, Why Not Public Museums?” reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, July 1893, 774. It is of some interest that Morse (1838-1925) was a zoologist and President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science before he became curator of Japanese pottery at the

Notes

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

83

Boston Museum of Fine Arts (DAB [New York, 1934], XIII, 242-43). Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston, 1955), 19, notes that Morse was a prominent Darwinian. The extent of the influence of Social Darwinism on American businessmen in the period had become a matter of some dispute. The view generally followed in this essay, which minimizes the influ ence of Social Darwinism on American philanthropy, is expressed in Irvin G.Wyllie, “Social Darwinism and the Businessman,” Proceedings o f the Ameri­ can Philosophical Society, CIII, October, 1959, 629-635. William Cullen Bryant, The Life and Works o f William Cullen Bryant (New York,, 1884), II, 265. Benjamin Ives Gilman, “On the Distinctive Purposes of Museums of Art,” re printed from the Museums Journal, January, 1904, 12. Paul M. Rea, “The Future of Museums in the Life of the People,” Museum Work, III, March, 1921, 48. For the data in this paragraph see Saarinen and Howe, passim. On the predominance of art over science museums see Central Hanover Bank and Trust Company, The Fine Arts in Philanthropy (New York, 1937), 23. Behrman, 27. Ibid, 297. Saarinen, 72ff. Behrman, 248. Morgan’s views were well represented by Edward Robinson, Director of the Metropolitan, in his introduction to Guide to the Loan Exhibition o f the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection (New York, 1914), vii: “Had such an as semblage represented the results of several generations of a family of collectors, it would have been a most remarkable achievement, but formed as it was by one man, and during a comparatively short period of his life, it is probably without parallel in the history of collecting.” Henry James, Preface to The Spoils o f Poynton, in Richard Blackmur, ed., The Art o f the Novel (New York, 1950), 123. Behrman, 237. Edward S. Morse, Museums o f Art and Their Influence (Salem, 1892), 4,6-7,13. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Handbook o f the Benjamin Altman Collection (New York, 1914), xi; for a fictional merchant prince and his museum philanthropy, see Henry James, The Golden Bowl (New York, 1932), 98, 101-02, 105. An interesting sketch of deForest’s philanthropic career can be found in Henry Watson Kent, What I am Pleased to Call My Education (New York, 1949), 140ff. See Howe and Saarinen on Morgan and Havemeyer; Daniel M. Fox, “Edith Rockefeller McCormick, “ in Notable American Women (Cambridge, 1971). Thomas B. Sherman, “Art and Taxes,” The Saturday Review; XXXIX, July 7, 1956, 26. George F. Comfort, “Art Museums in America,” Old and New, I, April, 1870,512. Erwin O. Christensen, “Art Museums for the Public,” Museum Work, V, JulyAugust, 1922, 36. The Bulletin o f the Cleveland Museum o f Art, III, July 1916, passim.

Chapter Three 51. Since foundation grants were most important for museums’ educational pro grams, they will be discussed in more detail below.

84

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52. Metropolitan, R eport..., 21. 53. Statistics on gifts and bequests to museums can be found in John Price Jones, The Yearbook o f Philanthropy (New York, 1942,1943,1946,1948); also Laurence Vail Coleman, The Museum in America (Washington, 1939); Frederick R. Keppel and R.L. Duffus, The Arts in American Life (New York, 1933), summarizes sta tistics on the value of works of art imported from abroad by museums in the twentieth century. Statistical tables indicating the proportion of gifts to bequests over a twenty-five year period can be found in John Price Jones. 54. James H. Breasted, “Who Pays for Museums and How Much?” Archaeology, I, September, 1948, 123. 55. Howe, II, 71. 56. Saarinen, 23. 57. Bulletin o f the Cleveland Museum ofArtt II, September, 1916, 1. 58. This middle-class collective patronage first appeared in Western Europe and the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Organizations like the German Kunstvereine, the French Societe de Amis d ’art, and the American Art Union flourished until the great collectors began to dominate the art market and art philanthropy in the second half of the century. The levelling influence of the First World War, the Depression and, later, the Second World War created a situation in which middle-class collective patronage again became possible. Museums on both sides of the Atlantic have encouraged similar organizations for collective patronage in recent years. 59. “Public Support,” Art News, XXXIII, May 25, 1935, 12. 60. For American museums and Federal income taxes see Sherman, 6ff. An excel lent survey of American tax deductions for art-gifts can be found in The Econo­ mist, CXCV, May 28,1960, 869. For financial and tax pressure on collectors see Francis Henry Taylor, “The Moral and Intellectual Responsibilities of Expand ing Collections,” Proceedings o f the American Philosophical Society, XCVIII, August, 1954, 348. 61. Behrman, 260-65. Another factor which stimulated tax-deductible philanthropy was the increasing cost and value of works of art, which was in part a result of museum purchasing and philanthropy. 62. On Mr. Bishop's ballroom see Robert deForest, “Museum Policies and Scope,” Museum Monographs, No. 3, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1930,3. On Johnson and Havemeyer see Saarinen, 116, 171. For other descriptions of the develop ment of restrictions policy see Howe, and Coleman, Museum in America, I, passim. 63. Howe, II, 83. 64. Robert W. deForest, “The Notable Bequest of Isaac D. Fletcher,” Museum Mono­ graphs, No. 1, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1917, 3-4. 65. Coleman, Museum in America, II, 238-39. 66. N. H. Carpenter, L.E. Rowe, G.H. Sherwood, “The Administration of Museums: Committee Report to the A.A.M.,” Museum Work, I, June, 1918, 17-21; for the same problem in the next generation, cf. “Resolution of the A. A.M. on Gifts and Bequests Policy, 1945,” Museum News, XXII, February 15, 1945, 1. 67. Carle E. Guthe, So You Want a Good Museum, (American Association of Muse ums Publications, New Series, No. 17), November 17, 1957, 3; also Sherman. 68. Central Hanover Bank and Trust Company, 31. 69. Harshe, 386; Taylor, 349; also Philip Rhys Adams, Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, to the Author, Conversations, March, 1960

Notes

85

70. On Detroit Museum: Maurice Grosser, “Art,” The Nation, CXCI, July 2, 1960, 16-18; Clyde H. Burroughs, “Benefits of a Supporting Society,” Museum News, XXII, February 15, 1945, 7; on Freer, see Rathbun, 102ff. 71. Burroughs, 7; Newton H. Carpenter, “The Value of Members of Museums,” 91-97; American Association of Museums, Reports o f Director (Washington, 1928 et. seq.). 72. The average tenure of individual memberships is four to six years. It is not clear why members drop out, but one hypothesis is that most members have always regarded their dues as philanthropy, to be discontinued at will, rather than as payment for desired services. If the services were felt to be necessary, member ship would probably be more stable. This argument is reinforced by the fact that free admission to museums undercuts the basic privilege of membership. The importance of special programs for members was undercut by new trends in museum education after World War I. 73. Guthe, 30. 74. The museum rejected the offer; it is not clear exactly why. Howe, I, 163. 75. Proceedings o f the First Annual Convention o f the American Federation o f Arts, 108. 76. Willian M. Hekking, “Art Smokers for Business Men,” Museum Work, VI, January-February, 1924, 163. 77. Coleman, Museums in America, I, 184. 78. Lynes, 296-298. 79. Beardsley Ruml, ed., The Manual o f Corporate Giving (Washington, 1952), 121. This judgment conflicts with Coleman’s discovery two years later that munici pal appropriations had increased more than any other source of museum income in the past fifteen years. Perhaps Mr. Coleman had slipped into mythology about private men in order to improve his case before the businessmen. 80. Guthe, 20. 81. John Price Jones Company, Philanthropic Digest, V, April 15, 1959, n.p.; VI, May 4, 1960, May 18, 1960, n.p. 82. Guthe, 3. 83. “Art Museums Take on a Commercial Hue,” Business Week, May 26, 1956, 45-46;l Daniel Catton Rich, “Museums at the Crossroads,” Museum News, XXXIX, March, 1961, 38. 84. Henry L. Ward, “Trustees and the Executive Officers of Museums,” Proceed­ ings o f the American Association o f Museums, VI, 1912, 80. 85. Early museum trustees chose directors very carefully, but not necessarily for their knowledge of art. In 1904, for example, J. P. Morgan told his fellow trust ees in New York that a director should have “courtesy and those qualities of a gentleman and man of the world which will enable him to put the Museum in relations of respect and sympathy with the different classes of the com munity ... It is unlikely that these ideal qualifications can all be found united in any single man. Executive capacity and gentlemanly qualities are essential. Museum experience can be acquired.” (My italics.) Quoted in Robert W. deForest, “Museum P olicies...,” 5. Several early directors had given their museums generous gifts—the first directors of the Metropolitan and the Fogg Museum at Harvard, for example. Directors were expected to avoid rocking the cultural, social, and political boat. An early Cincinnati director was eulogized as “a vital member of a choice group of men at his club which comprised commercial as well as intellectual leaders.

86

86. 87.

88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

Engines of Culture These have testified to the scope of his knowledge and the soundness of his opinions on every question of public importance.” In Elizabeth R. Kellogg, Memo­ ries o f Joseph Henry Gest (Cincinnati, 1937), 44. By the First World War, however, standardization of museum techniques and ethics, the regular flow of ideas between museums, and the creation of a profes sional job market gave trustees a new factor to contend with: professional vested interests. By 1921, for example, the Director of the American Association of Museum could say that the “vision” of museum professionals was ahead of the vision of “the corporate bodies by which we are employed.” Cited by Paul M. Rea, “The Future of Museums in the Life of the people,” 54. The year before, an Association committee had even attacked businessmen-trustees for not appreci ating the peculiar problems of cultural-philanthropic institutions. Carpenter, Rowe, Sherwood, 19. Benjamin Ives Gilman, Museum Ideals o f Purpose and Method (Cambridge, 1922), 356. Public accounting procedures, however, have not always been admirable. Per haps the sketchy, imprecise figures in the early reports of every museum repre sent the disdain of an in-group for the public or lack of interest in exact accounting. More likely this vagueness was the result of an ambiguity peculiar to private philanthropy in the public interest. Museums, like the great foundations, prefer to be responsible only to their trustees for detailed explanations of financial circumstances and policy formulation. As art museums became more dependent on broad public support and money from municipal taxes, the figures in the annual reports became more precise and revealing. But for a long time many trustees were able to ignore the accountability inherent in their public role. Coleman, Museum in America, I, 392; Edsel B. Ford, “The New Public Museum From the Standpoint of a Trustee,” Museum News, XVIII, September 1, 1940,9; Pach, 70. Lynes, 260, 265; Alfred Frankfurter, “On Trustee Interference with Professional Standards,” Art News, LAX, September, 1960,19. Philip R. Adams, and Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art), to the Author, March 1960; for a statement on professional ethics in 1921 see “The Cause,” Museum Work, IV, July-August, 1921, 2: “Those who administer the affairs of museums should conserve at all events the high character of the work of their museums and refuse any offer of aid which may jeopardize the service that the museum may render to the cause to which it may be dedicated.” Alfred Hoeber, The Treasures o f the Metropolitan Museum o f Art (New York, 1892), 9. E. E. Lowe, A Report on American Museum Work (Edinburgh, 1928), 10. Pach, 216. J.A. Udden, “Museum Buildings in the United States,” Science, New Series, XXXVI, July 26, 1912, 110. Laurence Vail Coleman, “Recent Progress and Condition of Museums,” Bien­ nial Survey o f Education in the United States (Washington, 1932), Chapter XXII, 10.

95. Laurence Vail Coleman, “City Support of Public Museums,” Museum News, XXXII, May 15, 1954, 3-7. 96. Metropolitan, R eport..., 17. 97. For example, in Howe, I, 139.

Notes 98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

103.

104. 105. 106.

107.

108. 109. 110.

111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

117. 118. 119.

87

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Annual Reports (New York, 1871-1902), 24. Ibid., 146. Howe, I, 217. Metropolitan, Annual Reports, 538. An interesting indication of the involvement of museums in the general his tory of American philanthropy is the fact that part of the cost for the new Sunday operation was raised through newspaper subscription campaigns—one of the banes of the New York Charity Organization Society in the 1890’s. Howe, 1,225. Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration (New York, 1921), 41. For the figures on which deForest based his inaccurate percentages see Metropolitan Museum of Art, A Review o f Fifty Years Development (New York, 1920), n.p. Metropolitan, Fiftieth Anniversary..., 36-37. Ibid., 31. Laurence Vail Coleman, Manual fo r Small Museums (New York, 1927), 324ff.; Coleman, Museum in America, 1,187ff. For an instance of a State Supreme Court upholding a legislative act chartering a public museum and providing municipal funds see, St. Louis City Art Museum, Annual Report, 1912. Report o f the Utah Art Institute fo r the years 1899 and 1900 (Salt Lake City, 1900); Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, 84th Con gress, 2nd sess., Report #2409, July 7, 1956, 223-24; Commission on Fine Arts, Arts and Government (Washington, 1951), 98ff. Coleman, M anual..., 324; for State of Massachusetts offer to Metropolitan Boston Arts Center see John Price Jones Company, Philanthropic Digest, VI, February 24, 1960, n.p. Goode, 438. On the benefits of tariff reduction first to museums, later to collectors, see Alfred Frankfuter, “Fifty-five Years of American Museums,” Art News, LVI, Summer 1957,51; Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, 52nd Con gress, 2nd sess., 1892, “Free Art,” passim; for a study of the entire subject of the tariff on art and a useful bibliography see Vincent Henry Demma, American Patronage o f the Fine Arts in New York City (Unpublished Master’s Essay, Uni versity of Wisconsin, 1961), Chapter III. Coleman, Museum in America, I, 182. Ford, 9. Central Hanover Bank and Trust Company, 54. A. Conger Goodyear, The Museum o f Modern Art: The First Ten Years (New York, 1943), 126. Daniel C. Rich, “The Art Museum and the Community Art Center,” Museum News, XVIII, September, 1940, 10; Thomas C. Parker, “Community Art Cen ters, Museum News, XV, October 15, 1937, 7-8. “Museum Income Sources,” Art News, XLIV, January 1, 1946, 32. According to this article, the same trend could be discerned in symphony orchestra philan thropy; in 1946 a third of the major American orchestras were supported by both private and public funds. Breasted, 124. Bruno Gebhard, “Other People’s Money: A Case History of Museum Financ ing,” Museum News, XXVI, December 1, 1948, 6. Coleman, “City Support...,” 3-7.

88 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129.

130. 131. 132.

133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

Engines of Culture Rich, “Museums at the Crossroads,” 38. For details see Saarinen, 82-87. James Jackson Jarves, The Art Idea (Cambridge, 1960), 263. Francis Steegmuller, The Two Lives o f James Jackson Jarves (New Haven, 1951), 284. Charles C. Perkins, Art Education in America (Cambridge, 1870), 8.7 Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Fifteenth Annual Report (Boston, 1891), 8; Arthur Dexter, “The Fine Arts in America,” in Justin Winsor, The Memorial History o f Boston (Boston, 1881), 405. Museum of Fine Arts, 4. S.R.Koehler, Art Education and Art Patronage in the United States (Philadel phia, 1882), 20. Gilman, 384, 387-88. Bulletin o f the Cleveland Museum o f Art, III, July, 1917, 76. When a new wing was built in the 1950’s, the cost was borne entirely by philanthropists. Bulle­ tin ..., XLVIII, June, 1959, 115. The Cleveland museum does receive annual grants from two public school systems for special teaching services. deForest, “Museum Policies...,” 7. Robert Koehler, “Some Ideas on the Founding of an Art Museum,” Proceedings o f the American Association o f Museums, II, 1908, 130. Paul M. Rea, “Educational Work of Museums,” reprinted from the Reports o f the Commissioner o f Education for the Year Ended June 30, 1916,401; Paul M. Rea, “Conditions and Needs of American Museums,” Proceedings o f the Ameri­ can Association o f Museums, X, 1916, 31. Edmund Cooke, “A Survey of the Educational Activities of Forty-Seven Muse ums,” Museum News, XII, June 15, 1934, 6. John Cotton Dana, The Gloom o f the Museum, (Woodstock, 1917), 9. Carpenter, Rowe, Sherwood, 21. Ford, 9. Theodore L. Low, The Museum as a Social Instrument (New York, 1942), 34. John Price Jones, ed., Philanthropy Today, (New York, 1949) 69-70. It is note worthy that private universities, with the aid of Carnegie Foundation funds, only began to examine carefully the role of public funds in their operation at the end of the 1950’s.

Chapter Four 139. A good example of the theory of art education in the late nineteenth century occurs in Charles M. Kurtz, ed., Official Illustrations from the Art Gallery o f the World's Columbian Exposition (Philadelphia, 1893), 8: “Primarily, the object of the Exposition may be assumed to be educational... opportunity is afforded for study and comparison. Each exhibitor may learn something... which may lead to the improvement of that which he produces, whether it be in the domain of art or manufacture. At the same time, the general visitor to the Exposition may gain new ideas and correct impressions that have been formed upon insufficient or erroneous data.” 140. Howe, I, 200. 141. Ibid., 204. 142. Lynes, 149.

Notes

89

143. Kent, 147; cf. Frank Jewett Mather, “An Art Museum For the People,” Atlantic Monthly, C, December, 1907, 729-40; “For the People nothing had been done except to open the doors. Dazzling statistics of attendance and acquisition only meant that more stones were being provided for an ever-increasing throng that wanted bread.” 144. Howe, II, 172, 203,207; Ramsey, Educational Work..., passim; Thomas Munro and Jane Grimes, Educational Work o f the Cleveland Museum o f Art (Cleveland, 1952), 13, 25. 145. Coleman, Museum in America, I, 114; Rea, 123. 146. The bibliography on settlements is extensive; only a few works can be cited here. On settlement workers attitude toward art and philanthropy see Jane Addams, A Function o f the Social Settlement (Philadelphia, 1899), Twenty Years at Hull House (New York, 1910), The Second Twenty Years at Hull House (New York, 1930), passim; Mary K. Simkhovitch, Neighborhood (New York, 1939), passim; Lillian D. Wald, The House on Henry Street (New York, 1915), passim; Robert A. Woods and Albert J. Kennedy, The Settlement Horizon (New York, 1922) passim. 147. Munro and Grimes, 36, 45; John Andrew Myers, “Music at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts,” Edward Robinson, “Music at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Museum Work, II, February, 1920, 145ff.; Laura W. I. Scales, “The Museum’s Part in the Making of Americans,” Proceedings o f the American As­ sociation o f Museums, XL, 1917, 133. Museums, like settlements, were also in terested in music as a “sociological force,” a means of binding people more closely together. More important, the concerts were an attempt to extend musi cal opportunities “to people who could not afford.. .regular orchestra concerts.” The Cleveland Music School Settlement Orchestra performed at the Museum. In New York, museum concerts were conducted by settlement leader David Marines about whom Robinson wrote, “Marines was admirably adapted to direct... because of his experience not only with audiences of the finer class but also among the music loving people of the lower East Side of New York.” 148. Helen Hart, “Social Settlements and the Trend Toward Specialization,” Social Forces, IX, June, 1931, 526. 149. “The Cost of Small Museum,” The Nation, XLIX, November 21, 1889,406. An example of a former settlement worker influencing museum education directly is cited by Munro and Grimes, 45; Mrs. Louise M. Dunn, a former settlement worker who was Associate Curator of Education at the Cleveland Museum for many years, managed to convince her colleagues that children could be allowed to visit museum galleries by themselves without seriously endangering the works of art. 150. See below, p. 60-61. Museums still provide more education for children than for adults: see “Museums Expand Service in Nation,” The New York Times, Decem ber 25, 1961. 151. Frederick A. Whiting, in Bulletin o f the Cleveland Museum o f Art, III, April, 1917, 59. 152. Ibid, 43-44. 153. For special museum activities during the First World War see “War Time Ser vice by Museums and by Museum Men,” Museum Work, I, November, 1918,34; for industrial design see Richard F. Back, “Museum Service to the Art Indus tries,” Industrial Art Monograph #3, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1927).

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154. Morris Gray, “The Real Value of Art,” reprinted from The American Magazine o f Art, August, 1920, n.p. 155. Robinson, 148. 156. Ella Lyman Cabot, “The Museum as a Center for Americanization and Nation Study,” Museum Work, I, June, 1918, 20. 157. Scales, 33. 158. Coleman, Museum in America, I, 181; Low, The Educational Philosophy..., 68; R.L. Duffus, “The Museum Takes Off Its High Hat,” The North American Re­ view, CCXLII, Autumn, 1936, 30-44. 159. Coleman, Museums in America, I, 182. 160. Low, The Educational Philosophy..., 66. 161. Coleman, Museum in America, I, 18 Iff. 162. Rich, “The Art Museum and the Community Art Center,” 9. 163. Thomas R. Adam, The Civic Value o f Museums (New York, 1937), 102; cf. Francis Henry Taylor, “Museums in a Changing World,” Atlantic Monthly, CLXIV, De cember, 1939, 785-92. 164. Taylor, “M useum s...,” 791; similarly, Coleman, Museum in America, I, 90, quotes Frederick R. Keppel, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York who had fallen into the easy explanation: “I cannot say that we have actually seen the fine arts in the United States swing from oligarchy to democracy in ten years, but I can say that oligarchy was the word that naturally came to mind ten years ago and that democracy is the word one thinks of today.” I have been unable to discover the context of Keppel’s remark. It is possible that since the Carnegie Corporation was contributing a great deal of money to college muse ums for educational purposes, Keppel may have been contrasting the relatively smaller interest of public museum donors in education with what the Carnegie Corporation was doing. 165. Cooke, “A Survey...,” 6. 166. For statistics on foundation grants to museums to the mid-1930’s, see Eduard C. Lindeman, Wealth and Culture (New York, 1936), 90-91; for more recent fig ures, John Price Jones, Philanthropy Today, passim. ; for detailed figures and description of the Carnegie grants see Carnegie Corporation of New York, Re­ port o f the President and the Treasurer (New York, 1931, 1935, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942), passim. 167. Alfred M. Frankfurter, “Nationwide Gifts of Italian Art by the Kress Founda tion,” Art News, XXXVI, February 15, 1938, 15ff. 168. Rich, “The Art Museum...,” 10; Parker, “Community Art Centers,” 8; United States Federal Art Project, Federal Sponsored Community Art Centers, W.P.A. Technical Series, Art Circular #1, October 8, 1937,4; Cumulative WPA figures on expendi tures for Centers and Museum Projects by the Federal Government and philanthro pists were published in Museum News, XVIII, February 15,1941,2. 169. Lydia Powell and Thomas Munro, The Art Museum Comes to the School (New York, 1944), passim. 170. Rich, “The Art M useum ...,” 10. 171. Whiting, 59. 172. Thomas Munro, “The Art Museum in War-Time,” Bulletin o f the Cleveland Museum o f Art, XXIX, February 1943, 1. 173. Ibid., 2. 174. Taylor, Babel’s Tower, 50. 175. Gilman, Museum Ideals..., passim, Dana, The Gloom o f the Museum, passim.

Notes

91

176. Perhaps the best example of the bitterness of the controversy is Meyer Schapiro’s review of Taylor’s Babel’s Tower in Art Bulletin, XXVII, December, 1945,272-76. A more recent position, which tends to straddle the problem by leaving educational work to the museums and scholarship to university people, can be found in John Coolidge, Some Problems o f American Art Museums (Boston, 1953). 177. See note 37 above. 178. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York, 1927), 183; Art as Expe­ rience (New York, 1937), passim; Albert C. Barnes, Art in Painting (New York, 1937), passim. 179. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 142, 183. 180. See note 38, above. 181. Letter from Reverend Dr. Henry W. Bellows to the Executive Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, quoted by Howe, I, 121. 182. Letter from John Taylor Johnston to William T. Blodgett, quoted Ibid., 145. 183. von Bode, Mein Leben; Koehler, Art Education and Art Patronage; Laurent, La Republique et Les Beaux Artes; Joel H. Duveen, The Rise o f the House ofDuveen (New York, 1937); Edwards, Administrative Economy...', John Pye, Patron­ age o f British Art (London, 1845), passim. 184. Behrman, 248. 185. John Cotton Dana, The New Museum (Woodstock, Vermont, 1917), 14, 31. 186. Koehler, 24. 187. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Loan Collection o f Painting and Sculpture (New York, 1882), 20. 188. Bessie L. Pierce, A History o f Chicago (New York, 1957), III, 296, 475. 189. James W. Pattison, “Municipal Art in Chicago,” Proceedings o f the First Annual Convention o f the American Federation o f Arts (Washington, 1910), 67. 190. Brimo, 182. 191. Koehler, 4. 192. Benjamin Ives Gilman, Museum Ideals..., 128. 193. Walt Kuhn, The Story o f the Armory Show (New York, 1938), 15; Walter Pach, Queer Thing, Painting (New York, 1938), 180ff. 194. Smith, “The Museum of Art in the United States,” 305. 195. William Sloan Coffin, “The Museum’s Service to the Community,” Museum News, XI, December 16, 1933, 6; Coleman, Museum in America, II, 295. 196. Reports o f the Director and Treasurer o f the American Association o f Museums, 1929, 6; Coleman, Museums in America, II, 295. 197. An account of a Cleveland publicity program for modem art appears in I.T. Frary, At Large in Marble Halls (Philadelphia, 1959), 25ff. 198. San Francisco Museum of Art, Art o f Our Time (San Francisco, 1945), passim', A. Conger Goodyear, The Museum o f Modern Art: The First Ten Years (New York, 1943), 39. 199. Edgar J. Bemheimer, “To American Museums,” Art Digest, VI, June 1, 1932, 1, is a dealer’s plea for museums to rescue private collectors (and, incidentally, dealers); Taylor, “Museums in a Changing World,” 792, regards the inflated art market as immoral. 200. Whitney Museum of American Art, Catalogue o f the Collection (New York, 1939), passim; John Sloan and Forbes Watson statements in Whitney Museum, Julian Force and American Art (New York, 1949), 37, 55. 201. Whitney Museum, The Whitney Museum and its Collections (New York, 1954), passim; J.M., “Plans, Payments and Purchases,” Arts, XXXII, May, 1958, 15.

92 202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207.

Engines of Culture John D. Morse, ed., The Artist and the Museum (New York, 1950), 4. Ibid, 6-7. Ibid., 8,10,20,59ff. Taylor, “The Moral and Intellectual Responsibilities...” 245. Pach, 162. Canaday’s numerous articles on the problem are listed in the New York Times Index since 1957. Of special interest are his remarks on March 6,1960, II, 13: 1; May 8, 1960, II, 11:1; September 4, 1960, II, 8: 1-2; Also, Lynes, 264 takes the Modem Museum to task for being a “vested interest...jealous of its position.” Pach, 162ff., believes that museums should be concerned with “enduring val ues,” not contemporary patronage.

Chapter Five 208. For example, Adam, The Civic Value o f Museums, 24; Coleman, The Museum in America, I, 89; Dana, The New Museum, 31, The Gloom o f the Museum, 13, A Plan fo r a New Museum, 10; Oscar Handlin, “The Modem City as a Field of Historical study,” (Paper presented at the opening session of the Harvard Sum mer School Conference on the City and History, Monday, July 24, 1961), 16; Mumford, Sticks and Stones, 149, Pach, 42. 209. For a summary of museum charters see Coleman, A Manualfo r Small Museums, 324ff., 343-44. 210. Howe, I, 152. 211. Metropolitan, Report..., 23; cf. George F. Comfort, “Art Museums in America,” 504: “An edifice which is to contain public galleries of art should be located away from the noisy and dusty thoroughfares of a great city.. .to prevent shad ows and light reflections which will min the galleries... where room exists for expansion... it should be within easy access o f the great mass o f the population o f the city. All of these conditions can be met only in the public parks.” (My italics.) 212. Metropolitan, Annual Reports, 128. 213. Robert Koehler, “Some Ideas on the Founding of an Art Museum,” 130. Al though Dana seems to bear the major responsibility for the belief that museums were deliberately built in inaccessible places, he was aware of the practical rea sons for building in parks, even though he discounted them. See The Gloom o f the Museum, 13. 214. Ford, “The New Public M useum...,” 9. 215. Coleman, Museum Buildings, 10. 216. Dana, The New Museum, 32; Frary, 16; Mumford, 150. 217. Coleman, Museum in America, I, 197-217; Museum Buildings, 3. 218. Behrman, passim; Saarinen, 64. 219. Cf. Margaret Grant and Herman S. Hettinger, America’s Symphony Orchestras and How They Are Supported (New York, 1940), passim; Irving Kolodin, The Metropolitan Opera (New York, 1936), passim. 220. See Note 142, Chapter Four.

Index relations with museums, 71, 74, 79 Art News, 54 Arts, economics and sociology of, 2,20 history of, 1-2, 17, 20 politics of, 2 public policy on, 5-8 Association of Art Museum Directors, 17

Akron, Ohio, art museum, 48 Alpers, Svetlana, 19 Altman, Benjamin, 36-37, 39, 52 American Art Union, 84n58 American Association for the Advance ment of Science, 82n31 American Association of Museums, 36, 36, 49, 53-54, 56-57, 63, 65, 71, 86n85 American Historical Association, 4 American Social Science Association, 32 Architects, of museums, see Museum architects Art, collectors, and collecting, 17, 2728,30-31,36-39,45,50,55,59,6971, 73, 79 artists, attitudes towards, 69 historical societies as, 28 museums as advisors to, 45-46, 78 contemporary (nineteenth century), 69 dealers of, 17, 38, 50, 70 entrepreneurs of, 7, 17 Impressionist, 70 market, 1, 9, 18, 30, 50, 79, in Old Masters, 69-70, 72-74 modem art movement, 28, 50, 59, 70-74 Armory Show, 70-72 social protest in, 72 Art commissions, municipal, 43 Artists, 17, 38, 59, 69-70, 72, 79 American, museums as stimulus for, 33, 36, 59-60 industrial, museums as stimulus for, 35, 59-60, 63, 82n29 patronage and subsidies for, 5-7, 22n26, 72-73

Bache bequest, 64 Bailyn, Bernard, 20-2 ln5 Ballet, 7 Banfield, Edward C., 13, 16 Barnard, Frederick A. P., 32 Bames, Albert C., 67-68 Bames Collection (Philadelphia), 28 Bazin, Germain, 12, 23n32 Behrman, S. N., 38 Bellows, Henry, Reverend, 69 Bierstadt, Albert, 70 Book of the Month Club, 39 Boston (city government), 55 Boston Athenaeum, 55 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 28,32,36, 38, 46, 55-56, 75-76 Bridgeport, Connecticut, art museum, 48 Brimo, Rene, 27-28 British Museum, 77 Brooklyn Museum, 53 Bryant, William Cullen, 36 Bryce, James, 5 Buffalo, New York, art museum, 29 Bureau of Education, United States, 53 Business corporations, 3,16,43,47-48, 60 Cabot, Ella Lyman, 63 Canaday, John, 74 Carnegie, Andrew, 35, 39, 60 Carnegie Corporation, 90nl64 93

94

Engines of Culture

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 3 Carnegie Foundation, 65, 88nl38 Chambers of Commerce, 48 Charity Organization Society (New York), 87nl02 Chicago Art Institute, 28,33,44,53,55, 60, 70, 75-76 Chicago School (economics), 22n27 Cincinnati, Ohio, art museum, 29, 8586n85 Civil War, 9, 25, 32 Clark, Thomas, 45 Cleveland Museum of Art, 41, 44, 46, 56, 61, 66, 78, 88nl29, 89nl47, 89nl49 Cleveland Music School Settlement Orchestra, 89nl47 Cold War, 3-4 Coleman, Lawrence, 48, 54, 77, 85n79 Columbia University, 67 Columbus, Ohio, art museum, 47-48 Community Chests, 48 Congress, United States, 3-4, 53 Coolidge, John, 17-18 Cooper, Peter, 39 Corcoran Gallery (Washington), 28 Crane, Diana, 15-16, 18 Culture and Taste, ideas of, 30, 32, 3435, 56 Cummings, Milton C., 16 Curti, Merle, 3-4, 8-11, 14 Dana, John Cotton, 57, 61, 67, 70 Darwinism, Social, 83n31 Defense industry, 1 DeForest, Robert, 37, 39,45,52-53,63 DeHaas, M. F. H., 70 DeKay, Mrs. J. H , 70 Democratic party, 4 Detroit (city government), 46, 64 Detroit Institute of Arts, 29, 46, 56-57, 63, 77 Dewey, John, 67-68 DiMaggio, Paul J., 15, 18 Directors, of museums, see Museum directors Donors, to art museums, see Museum donors, Philanthropists Duncan, Carol, 19

Dunlap, William, 26 Dunn, Louise M., 61, 89nl49 Duveen, Lord, 38, 70, 78 Education, art, theory of (nineteenth century), 88nl39 faculty psychology of, 59 history of, 10 industry, 1 medical, 10 philanthropy, 29,39,59, and govern ment support, 58 public policy on, 5-6 Feldstein, Martin, 16 Fine Arts Funds, 48 First World War, 46, 50, 59, 61-63, 66, 72, 78, 84n58, 85n72, 86n85 Fisher, Philip, 19 Fleming, Donald, 5, 8-9 Fletcher, Isaac D., 45 Fogg Museum (Harvard), 17,29,85n85 Force, Juliana, 73 Ford, Edsel, 46, 57, 77 Ford Foundation, 3-4, 9 History of Philanthropy Project, 34, 8, 10, 14 Foundations, 3, 17, 43, 48-49, 59-60, 65, 86n87 Freer, Charles Lang, 46 Freidel, Frank, 5 French, Daniel Chester, 70 Frey, Bruno S., 16 Frick, Henry Clay, art collection of, 40 Friends of the Museum organizations, 45, 73 Gardner, Isabella Stewart, 11 Gardner Museum (Boston), 28 Gilded Age, 31, 44 Gilman, Benjamin Ives, 36, 50, 56, 67, 70 Girard, Stephen, 39 Goodrich, Lloyd, 74 Government, 17, 51-58 philanthropy and, 11-12, 14,44-46, 51,55 private sector and, 10-11, 14 see also Museums, government sup port of

Index Great Britain, 7 Great Depression, 7, 57, 59, 63-67, 78, 84n58 Guggenheim Museum (New York), 29, 67 Hall, Peter, 3, 14 Handlin, Oscar, 5, 8 Hanover Bank, 46, 54 Harris, Neil, 8, 10, 15, 17-18 Harvard University, 2, 5, 6, 11, 17, 50, 55 Havemeyer, H. O., 52 Havemeyer, Louise, 11, 40, 45 Health care, industry, 1,2, 14, 18 public policy on, 5,7, national health insurance, 6 scholarship on, 18-20, 23-24n40, 24n41, effect of, on practice, 20 Hiss, Alger, 3 Historians, intellectual, 11, 13 social scientists and, 11 Hoeber, Alfred, 51-52 Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz, 15 Hospitals, 3-4, 7, 18 executives of, 18 history of, 10 intensive care units, 7 Housing, public policy on, 6, 7 Hoving, Thomas, 18 Hutchinson, Charles L., 60 Immigration Restriction League, 82nl9 Imperialism, 82n23 Improvement, doctrine of, 34-35, 56 Independent Sector Studies, 2, 14 James, Henry, 38 Jamestown, New York, 29 Jarves, James, 55 Jersey City Fine Arts Council, 48-49 John Herron Art Institute (Indianapolis), 47 Johns Hopkins University, 14 Johnson, Eastman, 70 Johnson, James G., 45 Johnson, John Taylor, 69 Journal o f Cultural Economics, 23n31 Junior Leagues, 48

95

Karp, Ivan, 19 Katz, Stanley, 14 Kent, Henry W., 60-61 Keppel, Frederick R., 90nl64 Kiwanis clubs, 48 Koehler, Robert, 76 Koehler, S. R., 56, 70 Kress bequest, 64 Kress Foundation, 65 Kunstvereine (Germany), 84n58 Labor unions, 3 Liberty, in American experience, 5 Libraries, public, 18, 29, 59-62, 78-79 Los Angeles County Museum, 54 Louvre Museum, 12, 26, 77 Low, Theodore L., 57 Lowell, Josephine Shaw, 35 Lynes, Russell, 30 Making and Effacing Art, 19 Malraux, Andre, 19, 68 Marines, David, 61, 89nl47 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 55 McCarthy, Kathleen, 10-12, McCormick, Edith Rockefeller, 11, 40 Mellon, Andrew, 29,45,54, bequest, 64 Merk, Fred, 5 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 12-13,18, 28,34,36,39,44-45,47,51-53,5556, 59-61, 63, 66, 69-71, 74, 76, 85n74, 85n85, 89nl47 Miller, Perry, 1, 20n2 Minneapolis Museum, 56, 76 Morgan, J. P., 37-38, 40, 55-56, 78, 83n40, 85n85 Morse, Edward S., 38-39, 82-83n31 Morse, Samuel F. B., 70 Movies, 7 Mulcahy, Kevin, 16 Mumford, Lewis, 31 Museum architects, 17 Museum directors, 17-18,25,27-28,31, 33-36, 39,41,45, 52-53,55-57,59, 63,66-68,70-72,74,76,85-86n85 professionalization of, 49-50,61,78, 86n85, 86n89 Museum donors, 46-47, 49-50, 63-64, 79

96

Engines of Culture

artists as, 70 collaborations with museum staff, 28, 44-45, 78 collective, 45, 73, 84n58 collectors as, 36-40, 68-71 contemporary art and artists, atti tudes towards, 69-74 corporate, 43, 47-48 education programs and, 59-62,6566, 90nl64 families of, 40, 70 financial aspects of donations, 30, 37-38, 40, 45 goals and purposes of donations, 2533,35, 37,39-41,67,69,74-75, 78 government, partnership with, 5355,57-58 patterns of giving, 43-49 philanthropic interests, other, 39 restrictions on gifts and bequests, 45-46, 50 social range of, 44 sources of wealth, 36-37 see also Philanthropists, Philanthropy Museum founders, artists, attitudes towards, 69 governments as, 29, 53, 65 governments, interaction with, 5154, 76, 78 historical societies as, 28-29 patronage museums of contemporary art, of, 73 philanthropic donations and, 16, 17, 25, 28-30 private galleries, of, 28-29, 40 public libraries as, 29 purposes of, 9, 25, 27, 31-33, 44, 75-77 self-image of, 51-52, 57, 69 women as founders and patrons, 1112, 15 see also Philanthropists, Philanthropy Museum of Modem Art (New York), 48, 54, 72, 74 Museum officials, 22n27 Museum staff, 17, 38-39, 44-46, 5052, 56-57, 65, 78-79 Museum trade press, 17

Museum trustees, 17,28,33, 39,46,49, 52, 57, 59, 61-62, 68, 73-76, 8586n85, 86n87 influence on professionals, 50-51 Museum visitors, 17, 62-63, 66, 76 Museum volunteers, 49 Museums, 3, 4 acquisitions, 30, 49-50, 70, 72, 74, 78, 85n53, 89nl43 public subscriptions for, 45 administration, 50, 86n85, 86n87 admissions policies, 43, 52-53, 5556, 75, 85n72, 87nl02 aesthetic purposes of, 17-19,28,6769, 71, 79, 91nl76, 92n207 American cultural values and, 26-27, 30, 32-36, 41, 59, 66-67, 79 national prestige and, 26-27, 30, 35-37 quality of life and, 27,31,36,6263 Americanization of immigrants, in struments for, 33, 61, 63, 82nl9 analogies to, 10, 60 annual reports, 43, 75 art exhibitions in, 18-19,27,34,4748, 63, 70, 79 contemporary art, 59, 70-74, sales, 74 temporary loan, 38,44-45,49,71 art market and, 1, 9, 16, 18, 30, 7072,79, 84n61 artists and collectors, stimulus for, 33, 35-36,59, 63,65, 67, 70, 79, 82n29 artists, living, recognition of, 70-74, 79 arts policy and, 16 attendance, 59, 67-69, 76, 89nl43 buildings and architecture, 16, 27, 33,52,75-77 as church surrogates and sources of moral improvement, 29, 33-35, 66, 81n7 collections, organization and display of, 17, 19, 27, 45, 59-60, 6874 as community cultural centers, 43, 52-53, 63, 68, 81n8

Index

97

social science analysis and, 1517, 19-20 income and endowment, sources of, 44, 47-49, 51-52, 63, 87nll6 interest group politics and, 8-9, 13 location of, 75-77, 92n211, 92n213 membership programs, 33, 38, 43, 47, 56, 62-63, 85n72 industrial, 48 as merit goods, 16 neighborhood branches of, 61, 65 patronage museums, 73-74, 79 pluralism and, 63, 82nl9 public image and public relations, 49-50, 67, 79 as public services or utilities, 16,2728, 57, 60, 67, 78-79, 82n21 66 public support, reliance on, 25-28, as entrepreneurs, 9, 13, 16, 18 44,52-57, 63,68,72,75, 78-79, European, 23n30,25-27, 30, 34,50, 86n87 5 2 ,84n58 sales, books and reproductions, 39, in France, 15, 26 45,48-49, 79 fund-raising campaigns, 38-40, 43scholarship and, 75, 78, 91nl76 45.4850,61,68,74,79,87nl02 social elites and, 15-16, 38-41, 44, government support of, 1, 8-9, 1267, 75 13,15-16,22n26,23n34,25,27university museums, 29, 90nl64 28, 30,41,44-47,49-58,60,63, Music, 7, 37, public concerts in muse 65,68,7 5 ,7 7 -7 9 ,85n79, 86n87, ums, 28, 61-63. 78. 89nl47 87nl06, 87nll6, 88nl29 city management, 46 Nation, 62 city or state charters, 50, 75, National Bureau of Economic Research, 87nl06 16 Federal contributions to construc National Endowment for the Arts, 9, 16 tion, 53 National Endowment for the Humani to education, 65, see also New ties, 16 Deal National Gallery of Art (Washington), tariff policy, 53,71, tax policy, 29, 32, 54 45, 48 National Institute (forerunner), 32 land grants, 43, 51, 55-56, 76 National Gallery of London, 26 state legislation, 53 National Museum (United States), 34,53 Neal, David, 70 taxation, tax exem ptions as source of, 12, 23n30, 28, 43, Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City), 64 47, 53, 56, 84n61 Netzer, Dick, 16 historiography of, 12-13,15, conser New Deal, 3, 5-6, 63-66, 77, 79 vative, 13, Marxist, 12-13, revi American Guide Series, 5 sionist, 19-20 Arts Centers, 53-54, 65, Arts cultural studies and, 19-20, Projects, 5, 63, 65, 23n31 Federal Writers’ Project, 5 economic analysis and, 16,22n27 Museum Projects, 54, 65 criticism of, as elitist, 9, 62-65, 67, 75-77 as insulated, 74 as market-oriented, 9, 49 as popular or publicity-oriented, 49, 67-68 as solace to the unfit, 35 donors, independence from, 49 education programs of, 1,17,26-28, 30.34.43.48- 50,53,56-57,5969, 72-73, 75, 77-78, 85n72, 88nl29 armed services, for, 63 children’s and students’, 61-62, 6 5 ,89nl49, 89nl50 financing of, 60 museums as popular universities,

98

Engines of Culture

New England, hostility to public support of museums, 53 New York City, 9,12-13,16,51-52,5455, 65, 73, 76 Board of Estimate, 52, Park Commis sion, 52, 76 New York Historical Society Museum, 29 New York Public Library, 76 New York State Legislature, 53 New York State Museum, 29 New York Times, 74 Newark Museum (New Jersey), 29, 57 Newark Public Library, 61 Non-profit organizations, history of, 2, 14-15 North Carolina state art museum, 53 Notable American Women, 12 Opera companies, 78 Orosz, Joel, 15 Pach, Walter, 51 Painting, 7, 41 Palmer, Mrs. Potter, 37, 44 Pareto, Vilfredo, 73 Pepsi-Cola Corporation, 48 Perkins, Charles C., 32, 55 Philadelphia, 55, 65 Philadelphia Art Museum, 28, 33 Philanthropists, 26n, criticism of, 72 and public officials, 10 and public service, 39 women as, 11-12 see also Museum donors, Museum founders, Museum trustees Philanthropy, Christian stewardship and, 38 influence on museums, 25, 27-30, 34-36, 50-51, 74-75, 79 invest ment and, 37-38 large-scale donations, shift to, 30 mythology of, 51-52, 57 politics of, 1-2, 9 public policy and, 6-7, 10, 14, 27 purposes of, 29, 31-36, 40 reform, source of, 3, 6-7, 10 scholarship on, 2-3, 9 scientific concerns, lack of interest in, 37

social philosophy, influence on, 3335, 82n23, 82-83n29 voluntarism and, 4-5, 12, 29, 57 Philosophy, aesthetic, influence on museums, 6769 social (19th century), influence on museums, 33-35, 82n23 see also Culture and Taste, Darwin ism, Improvement, Progress, Public Service Physicians, 18 Poetics and Politics o f Museum Display; The, 19 Pommerehne, Werner W., 16 Portland, Oregon, art museum, 29, 44 Poverty, issues of, 9 Power, history of museums and, 2 in public affairs, 1 Prendergast, Maurice, 70 Princeton University, 50 Print Clubs, 45 Professional associations, 3-4 Progress, idea of, 34, 72 Progressive Era, 77 Public health, history of, 10 Public Service, in charitable tradition, 39 economic determinist critique of, 65 government support and, 53 Quinn, John, 70 Race and ethnicity, issues of, 9 Rea, Paul M., 36 Reagan Administration, 14 Reed, F. T., 60 Religious philanthropy, 29, 39, 49 Report on Public Libraries, 53 Republicanism, 4 Rich, Daniel Catton, 54-55 Rivera, Diego, Friends of, 72 Robinson, Edward, 83n40 Rockefeller, John D., 63 Rogers, Jacob, 36-37, 44 Rotary clubs, 48 Ryder, Albert Pinkham, 70 Ryerson, Martin, 37 Saint Gaudens, Augustus, 47

Index St. Louis City Museum, 29, tax support for, 53, 56 Salisbury, Stephen, 2 Salomon, Lester, 14 San Francisco Art Museum, 45, 72 Santa Fe art museum, 45 Schapiro, Meyer, 67-68 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 5 Science, in American culture, 37 Scitovsky, Tibor, 16 Sculpture, 7, 41 Second World War, 40, 45, 47-48, 57, 59, 66-67, 74, 78, 84n58 Settlement houses, 59-63, 65, 78-79, 89nl49 and art education, 61-62, and music, 89nl47 Sherman, Daniel, 15 Simon, John, 14 Smithsonian Institution, 46, 53 Social security, 6, 7 Social welfare philanthropy, 29, 39,49, 78 Societe de Amis d’art (France), 84n58 Stanford University Museum, 29 Surrey, Stanley, 22n26 Sweeney, James J., 67 Sweeney, Peter, 52 Symphony orchestras, 48, 78, 87nll6 Taft family of Cincinnati, art collection of, 40 Tammany Hall, 52-53 Taylor, Francis Henry, 66-68, 74 Technocratic solutionism, 2 Theater, 37, 48, 78 Tiffany and Company, 47 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 4

99

Trustees, of museums, see Museum trustees Tweed, William Marcy, 52 Twentieth Century Fund, 13 Uffizi Museum, 77 Union League Club (New York), 69 Universities, 3 -4 ,7 ,29,49,58, 88nl38 University of Wisconsin, 3, 8 Utah Art Institute, 53 Valery, Paul, 19 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 55 Victoria and Albert Museum (London), 82n21 Virginia state art museum, 53 Visitors, to museums, see Museum visitors Voluntarism, 4-5, 29, 51, 57 Weinberg, Albert K., 82n23 Welfare state, 3-8 Whitney, Gertrude Vanderbilt, 11, 73 Whitney Museum (New York), 29, 7374 Studio Club, 73 Widener bequest, 64 Williams, Raymond, 35 Wisconsin Historical Society Museum, 29 Worcester Art Museum (Massachusetts), 29, 55 Works Progress Administration (WPA), see New Deal Wyllie, Irvin G., 8 Yale Program on Non-Profit Organiza tions, 14