Rogues' Gallery Part 7

Redmond had already told the trustees about the Erickson auction; he needed the permission of two-thirds of them to raid up to a quarter of the princ.i.p.al of the Isaac Fletcher purchase fund to finance an attempt to acquire it. Though a few trustees opposed the purchase, leading figures like Lehman were for it, and the board authorized Rorimer to spend $2.5 million.5 Rorimer decided to bid himself to get the most bang for the available bucks. Of the forty-two paintings that have come to the museum attributed to Rembrandt, Rorimer decided to bid himself to get the most bang for the available bucks. Of the forty-two paintings that have come to the museum attributed to Rembrandt, Aristotle Aristotle would be the only one purchased, and Rorimer's greatest personal triumph. would be the only one purchased, and Rorimer's greatest personal triumph.

The Rorimers attended the auction with Charles and Jayne Wrightsman, Charles being one of the newer trustees. The tension in the sale room was palpable. Again, there was an overflow crowd-many dressed in gowns and black tie. Eighteen private detectives were also scattered throughout the crowd of two thousand, which broke into applause when the painting was brought onstage. So when the bidding opened at a record $1 million and Rorimer just sat there slouching with his head down, the Wrightsmans got worried. At one point in the four minutes of bidding, Charlie poked Kay and said, "Jim's asleep." But he wasn't. He'd arranged with Louis Marion, the auctioneer, to bid by winking. One wink: $100,000.

The first bidder, a private collector, dropped out fast, and Rorimer found himself competing with Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, a Swiss armaments heir and collector, and Rosenberg & Stiebel, the art dealers, bidding for the Cleveland, Rorimer's hometown art museum. He'd somehow learned that $2.2 million was as high as Cleveland's trustees were willing to go, so when Cleveland's agent bid their upper limit, Rorimer was sure he'd won his prize and winked his way to $2.3 million.6 Unlike his predecessor, Taylor, Rorimer lived for acquisition-as he'd proved at the Cloisters-and those were his finest four minutes. "I winked to victory," he cabled Redmond, who was in Rome. Unlike his predecessor, Taylor, Rorimer lived for acquisition-as he'd proved at the Cloisters-and those were his finest four minutes. "I winked to victory," he cabled Redmond, who was in Rome.

A day later, covered with corrugated plastic and quilts and strapped into a moving van, the painting traveled the six blocks to the museum under armed guard. Thanks to Robert Moses, a list of what was paid by donors in the month after the auction is in New York's Munic.i.p.al Archives, even though official oversight of the board of trustees had waned even before he left his post at the Parks Department. Although it covers only a fraction of the cost, it reveals a lot about the museum's support. Bobbie Lehman, Wrightsman (through his foundation), and Joan Whitney Payson, daughter of the financier Payne Whitney and a cousin of Sonny Whitney's who'd joined the board in 1960 (the same year she co-founded the New York Mets baseball team), each kicked in $25,000.

A few other trustees gave small four-figure sums. But most of the donations were for less than $25. One child gave twenty-five cents. Rorimer admitted that his coup had "pretty-well exhausted" the museum's purchasing funds.7 Aristotle Aristotle had become the world's costliest painting, exceeding even the biggest known private sale, Andrew Mellon's purchase of a had become the world's costliest painting, exceeding even the biggest known private sale, Andrew Mellon's purchase of a Madonna Madonna for $1.166 million in 1931. And that record would prove to have value in itself. for $1.166 million in 1931. And that record would prove to have value in itself.

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer went on view against a backdrop of red velvet on the northwest wall of the Great Hall two mornings after the auction, protected by a rope line, some potted plants, and guards. On the first day, 42,000 people came to see it, some staring respectfully or studying it through binoculars, others eating pretzels or chewing gum. Reactions ranged from awe to the "persistent feeling of discomfort, even of distaste, with the price," expressed by the editorial board of the went on view against a backdrop of red velvet on the northwest wall of the Great Hall two mornings after the auction, protected by a rope line, some potted plants, and guards. On the first day, 42,000 people came to see it, some staring respectfully or studying it through binoculars, others eating pretzels or chewing gum. Reactions ranged from awe to the "persistent feeling of discomfort, even of distaste, with the price," expressed by the editorial board of the New York Times New York Times, Arthur Hays Sulzberger's trustees.h.i.+p notwithstanding. Rorimer was unapologetic, and with good reason; the following Sunday, all museum attendance records were broken as 82,679 souls came to see it in the four hours the museum was open. The following Sunday, that record was broken again; with five weeks to go, the museum was on track for 1961 to be its biggest year ever-with almost four million visits. The gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen called the Rembrandt "the No. I attraction on the current Gotham scene."8 Thanks to Rorimer, the empty, echoing Edith Wharton vision of a museum only for connoisseurs was dead, put out of its misery by a very expensive seventeenth-century painting. Thanks to Rorimer, the empty, echoing Edith Wharton vision of a museum only for connoisseurs was dead, put out of its misery by a very expensive seventeenth-century painting.

RORIMER'S SENSE OF SECURITY WAS EVIDENCE THAT THE Museum had changed, too. Late in 1955, Rorimer's first big challenge had been fulfilling a pledge made by Taylor to cull the museum's collections and clear out its attics and storerooms of "surplus and inferior art." Museum had changed, too. Late in 1955, Rorimer's first big challenge had been fulfilling a pledge made by Taylor to cull the museum's collections and clear out its attics and storerooms of "surplus and inferior art."9 Nearly ten thousand objects were identified to be sold at auction or, in the case of fifteen thousand surplus objects from the museum's Egyptian digs, sold directly to the public in the art and book shop (most cost about $10), earning the museum $330,000, which was a.s.signed to curatorial budgets to fill gaps in the collections. Donors were given the chance to buy things back at prices set by an independent appraiser. Nearly ten thousand objects were identified to be sold at auction or, in the case of fifteen thousand surplus objects from the museum's Egyptian digs, sold directly to the public in the art and book shop (most cost about $10), earning the museum $330,000, which was a.s.signed to curatorial budgets to fill gaps in the collections. Donors were given the chance to buy things back at prices set by an independent appraiser.

With the museum's finances stabilized (there would be an $82,677 surplus in 1957), attendance breaking records, members.h.i.+p rising to new heights, and the endowment nearing $78 million, planning for the continuing renovation of the building had grown more ambitious. At a trustees' meeting in March 1955, the idea had been floated of removing the steep exterior stair to the Great Hall-it led to an ugly, boxy, allegedly temporary structure known as the doghouse-moving the museum entrance, coat-room, information desk, and bookstore to the ground floor, and moving crowds up to the Great Hall on stairs and escalators. That plan would never be realized-the museum's irregular foundation made it too expensive. But it was evidence of the Met's reawakening.

Unburdened by deficits in the booming postwar economy, Redmond had been able to reverse the long-standing policy of having trustees cover them; he'd decided that only the artistically aware, the truly interested, and the potentially helpful would be considered for members.h.i.+p. Vacancies on the board would not be filled immediately. Neither would the post of vice director under Rorimer; instead, in 1956, Redmond hired Joseph Veach n.o.ble, who'd previously worked in the educational film business, to serve as the museum's head of operations and chief administrator. n.o.ble would promptly prove that his worth went beyond nuts and bolts. He'd come to the museum's attention because of his interest in art. Fascinated with Greek vases, and already building what would become the largest private collection of them in America, he'd contacted a young Greek and Roman curator named Dietrich Felix von Bothmer, one of the museum's most fascinating and controversial characters.

Born to a n.o.ble family in Hannover, Germany, in 1918, the young Bothmer had worked for a sculptor as a boy and learned to make lithographs and woodcuts but realized he would never be an artist. "I had the advantage in life of an older brother who had a job in the Berlin Museum," Bothmer says. Bernard von Bothmer, already an Egyptologist, introduced him to the world of museums, one of the few acceptable career paths for young aristocrats. As a teenager, inspired by the opening of a Berlin museum, Dietrich studied Greek and Latin and visited Greece, where, at seventeen, he decided to make antiquities his career.

Back in Germany, he entered the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin, but he detested the new n.a.z.i regime, and soon resolved to leave. "I am a German, but I have always kept my distance from people who were political," he says. Accepted as one of Germany's last Rhodes scholars before the war, he went to Oxford in 1938, where he studied cla.s.sical archaeology under Sir John Beazley, the world's leading expert on ancient Greek art. "My ultimate goal was America," he says. He visited as a tourist in 1939, and never went home; he was offered a fellows.h.i.+p at the University of California at Berkeley by H. R. W. Smith, another authority on Greek vases; he was still there on a temporary visa when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. He started a doctoral dissertation while on a fellows.h.i.+p at the University of Chicago in 1942 and returned to Berkeley to continue his Ph.D. studies in 1944, but they were interrupted. He'd volunteered to join the American army and that year was sent to the South Pacific.

In April 1945, shortly after his division landed on Mindanao as part of the drive to liberate the Philippines, Bothmer found himself on patrol behind enemy lines. "We were supposed to destroy some enemy bunkers," he says, his eyes filling with tears. "Everybody had run away and they left me behind, wounded, with a man who was crying for his mother. I helped him to safety. I saved a man's life." He was awarded a Bronze Star for gallantry, a Purple Heart, a combat infantry badge, and, eventually, American citizens.h.i.+p. "I was then looked at with more friendly eyes," he says. "I had done my civic duty."

Life still wasn't easy. Bothmer returned to Berkeley in 1945 to complete his Ph.D., but discovered that his prospects had dimmed; under an alien curfew law, he had to leave the library early every night, money was scarce in the academic world, and there were few jobs or research opportunities available, particularly for someone with a German accent. But Bothmer had, in the meantime, repaid his brother Bernard by helping him get to America, too, and through him had begun meeting museum people, including the Met's German-born Greek and Roman curator, Gisela Richter. "She took an interest in me," he says.

In 1946, he walked into the Metropolitan, asked for Richter, and ended up at lunch with several members of the Greek and Roman Art Department, where there happened to be a job opening. Francis Henry Taylor had someone in mind, but Richter and her second-in-command, Christine Alexander, wanted Bothmer, so they gave him a desk and put him to work rearranging their departmental storeroom, "basically as an intern," he says, to show what he could do. A few days later, Richter sent him to meet the trustee Walter Baker. She called it his "Park Avenue test," and he pa.s.sed with flying colors, identifying one of Baker's antiquities as a partial forgery and winning a meeting with Taylor. Though the director struck him as anti-German, Bothmer's academic credentials and military record stood him in good stead, and he was hired as an a.s.sistant curator at $3,000 a year in April 1946 on the same day that another veteran, Lieutenant Commander Ted Rousseau, was named an a.s.sociate curator earning twice that amount.

Bothmer quickly became a force in the life of the museum. He helped Rorimer with the German words he needed to write his wartime memoir, befriended the eccentric, acid-tongued Asian art curator, Alan Priest, and through him met Josephine Porter Boardman Crane, widow of a paper millionaire and former governor of Ma.s.sachusetts and a founder of the Museum of Modern Art, who held a weekly salon in her apartment at 820 Fifth Avenue, where he hobn.o.bbed with the likes of Stephen Spender, Jacques Barzun, and Salvador Dali. As a handsome if severe single man with an aristocratic von von (which he kept, though his brother dropped it), he became a popular figure in Manhattan society-in many ways, the quintessentially shrewd and courtly museum curator-though he was never entirely comfortable with the role. (which he kept, though his brother dropped it), he became a popular figure in Manhattan society-in many ways, the quintessentially shrewd and courtly museum curator-though he was never entirely comfortable with the role.

Bothmer learned about the museum, the jealousies and rivalries between and within departments, and the peculiarities of its often peculiar staff. When the Renaissance and modern curator Preston Remington refused him the loan of some objects for an exhibit, Bothmer went behind his back to Taylor to get them; Remington swore eternal vengeance, and Bothmer returned fire, sniping that Remington was so self-involved he preferred looking at himself in the mirror to working. Bothmer was also frequently at odds with Taylor. He was disturbed by Taylor's pa.s.sionate dislike and glib dismissals of certain kinds of art. Although Richter was unintimidated by him, Bothmer found that other curators would call Taylor's wife to find out his mood before meetings; one senior researcher hid whenever Taylor came her way. Bothmer worried in turn that Taylor disliked him because he was an archaeologist; he'd heard the well-worn tale in which Taylor was turned away from a dig because of his formidable girth. Bothmer would joke that in 1948, when Taylor bought a portrait by Anton Mengs of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, it was because Winckelmann was the only archaeologist who'd ever been a.s.sa.s.sinated.

Bothmer's keen eye also noted the power of the trustees. At one point, Thomas Watson asked Alan Priest to find a job for a German prince. When Bothmer said in public that the prince was a n.a.z.i (he was), he was taken to the woodshed by Taylor, who, despite his anti-n.a.z.i stance, scolded Bothmer and warned him to never say a word against a potential benefactor.

In 1952, Bothmer got a photograph in the mail of a marble Aphrodite, a Roman copy of a Greek original by the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles that had surfaced in the continuing postwar treasure hunt. Bothmer went home to Germany to buy it and complained that Taylor would only pay part of his fare, since he also went to visit his mother. The museum refused to disclose how it got the statue.

Bothmer and Taylor weren't speaking at all during the final year of the director's reign. Bothmer believed he'd fallen out of favor because he was strong and challenged Taylor, who preferred a staff of cowed weaklings. Bothmer considered Ted Rousseau just such a character, so he wasn't surprised when he heard that the paintings curator wanted Taylor's job. Rousseau had thrived under Taylor, even though (or perhaps because) the director often contradicted him, fought with him, and put him down. But he was something of a lone wolf, without allies outside the Paintings Department, and Bothmer thought him something of a phony and an intriguer, too-but noted that these were unsurprising traits in a former spy.

THEODORE R ROUSSEAU J JR. WAS BORN IN F FREEPORT, LONG I ISLAND, in 1912, to a French mother and an American newspaper reporter father who soon quit for a job as a secretary to the mayor of New York. After World War I, Rousseau senior got a job at the Guaranty Trust Bank and was sent to Paris to run its branch there when his son was eight years old. He became one of the leading Americans in Paris before returning home after France fell to Germany in 1940.

Schooled at the Lycee Henri-IV, one of the most demanding public high schools in Paris, and at England's Eton, Ted junior enrolled at Harvard in 1930, but took a leave in 1932, a year after his mother died. Just after finis.h.i.+ng his soph.o.m.ore year, he'd eloped and married Virginia Franck, a Broadway dancer with an infant daughter who had gotten a Mexican divorce a month before from a wealthy polo player. Three days after they were wed, Ted's father yanked his leash and pulled him back to Paris, where he remained, enrolling at the Sorbonne to study art.

Her young husband gone, Franck turned to the newspapers in distress, describing herself as bewildered, yet still having the presence of mind to mention her latest play. "The bride said all the letters from her husband were affectionately couched but extremely vague concerning the future," said the New York American New York American, quoting Franck as saying she sympathized with Ted senior. "My parents were not enthusiastic the first time I married," she said. Though they were divorced on grounds of cruelty in November 1933, and she received a lump-sum settlement, three months later Franck told the papers it was news to her; she kept using Ted's name for years.

One year after his marital misstep, Ted junior returned to Harvard and graduated with honors in 1935. Rousseau then flitted through law and architecture school before landing at the Fogg Museum as a fine arts teacher. In 1938, he won a job at the newly opened National Gallery in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. He had a family connection there; in 1927, its founding donor, the industrialist, banker, and former secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, and Ted's father had been at opposite ends of history's first transatlantic telephone call.

In 1941, Rousseau joined the navy as a lieutenant. Details of his war service are scarce, and in later years he rarely spoke of it. He must have spoken to Tom Hoving about it, though. "He was in Portugal, as a spy," Hoving says. "And he parachuted twice into France during the occupation."

In the early years of the war, thanks to his fluency in several languages, Rousseau served as an a.s.sistant naval attache, doing intelligence work in the American emba.s.sies in Lisbon and Madrid. Both of those cities were way stations for the powerful seeking to cross the Atlantic to safety, as well as choke points for those who, Casablanca-style Casablanca-style, could not find a way out of the war zone. Among those who pa.s.sed through Lisbon were Andre Meyer and Pierre David-Weill, partners in Lazard Freres, the investment bank George Blumenthal had run for decades. As prominent Jewish bankers who had helped German Jews escape Hitler's regime, Lazard's partners were, for all intents and purposes, marked for death.

Meyer escaped to New York early in 1940, and Pierre followed two years later, but Pierre's wife, Berthe, and their two children stayed behind because her son by her first marriage had been captured by the n.a.z.is and sent to a concentration camp. They spent the rest of the war in hiding in southern France. She met Rousseau, who was working with the French Resistance, when he was sent to tell her that her son had died in captivity. Though she was much older, they formed a deep bond and would become lifelong lovers.

All of this impressed Hoving, who would cultivate Rousseau and become one of his best friends. He says that as a young man, Ted was so handsome that the debonair leading man Douglas Fairbanks Jr. once remarked, "If I only looked like Ted, I'd really be in business." So it's hardly surprising that by 1945 he was engaged again, this time to the far more acceptable Rosemary Warburton, the stepdaughter of William K. Vanderbilt. She'd made her debut in 1938, alongside the most famous deb of all time, Brenda Diana Duff Frazier, and regularly hobn.o.bbed with Hearsts and Astors. But again, marital happiness eluded Ted. After a long engagement, during which their wedding was thrice scheduled and postponed, they called the whole thing off in March 1946.

Ted would never dip his toes into matrimonial waters again. "He told me that the only woman he ever loved was a Gypsy girl in Spain," says another of his lovers. Between the engagement and its ign.o.ble end, Rousseau had become one of the key figures in the far more n.o.ble Allied effort to find, identify, and return art that had been looted by the n.a.z.is. In 1944, he joined the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of today's Central Intelligence Agency. Promoted to lieutenant commander, he was a.s.signed to the OSS's Art Looting Investigation Unit as one of three operations officers charged with questioning n.a.z.is and the party members, bankers, and art professionals who'd helped them, focusing on Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring's collection and that taken from the French Rothschild family.

Back in Spain, under the cover of his old navy job, Rousseau met and won the confidence of Goring's banker, Alois Miedl, and over several months gleaned significant information about the looting scheme. After Germany's surrender, Rousseau and his colleagues set up shop in Altaussee, a salt-mining town near Salzburg, Austria, where vast amounts of n.a.z.i loot had been hidden in a mine. They interrogated prisoners of war, including Adolf Hitler's photographer, Goring's curator and private secretary, a Munich dealer who sold art to Hitler even though she had married a Jew and become one, too, and Kajetan Muhlmann, who ran Dienststelle Muhlmann, the agency that organized the n.a.z.i art plunder in Poland and the Netherlands. Though the work was hard, and distasteful, it would also prove rewarding, providing evidence that would be used at the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

When his OSS unit was dissolved in 1946, Rousseau moved on to a five-month tour of duty in j.a.pan, "the nature of which was, and is, secret, beyond the fact that it had nothing to do with art," said The New Yorker. The New Yorker.10 Back in America and now a known quant.i.ty to the monuments men and fellow art heroes Taylor and Rorimer, Rousseau was named an a.s.sociate curator of European paintings at the museum, first working under Harry Wehle and then taking his place two years later. Bothmer was convinced that the Machiavellian Taylor had pushed Wehle out to make room for someone who would be beholden to him-and even better, a golden boy with aristocratic bearing and priceless social-financial connections. Wehle was given the consolation prize of a position as counselor and adviser to the department. Precisely two days later, Rousseau's father was named a commander in the French Legion of Honor. Back in America and now a known quant.i.ty to the monuments men and fellow art heroes Taylor and Rorimer, Rousseau was named an a.s.sociate curator of European paintings at the museum, first working under Harry Wehle and then taking his place two years later. Bothmer was convinced that the Machiavellian Taylor had pushed Wehle out to make room for someone who would be beholden to him-and even better, a golden boy with aristocratic bearing and priceless social-financial connections. Wehle was given the consolation prize of a position as counselor and adviser to the department. Precisely two days later, Rousseau's father was named a commander in the French Legion of Honor.

Not long after that, Rousseau junior set off a furor when he made an intemperate remark to The New Yorker The New Yorker for an article that celebrated his promotion. In 1945, without input from the army's arts officers, Lieutenant General Lucius Clay, General Eisenhower's deputy, had floated the idea that some of the art recovered by the Allies should be sent to the United States for safekeeping; the implication was that it might then be available to make reparations to the victims of the n.a.z.is and even as spoils for the victors in the war. Most of the officers involved in the recovery effort protested; Rorimer even submitted his resignation, which was refused. Nonetheless, that December, 202 paintings, mostly from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, were sent to the National Gallery for storage, and early in 1948 put on display there. for an article that celebrated his promotion. In 1945, without input from the army's arts officers, Lieutenant General Lucius Clay, General Eisenhower's deputy, had floated the idea that some of the art recovered by the Allies should be sent to the United States for safekeeping; the implication was that it might then be available to make reparations to the victims of the n.a.z.is and even as spoils for the victors in the war. Most of the officers involved in the recovery effort protested; Rorimer even submitted his resignation, which was refused. Nonetheless, that December, 202 paintings, mostly from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, were sent to the National Gallery for storage, and early in 1948 put on display there.

That's when Rousseau spoke out, suggesting that some German art, even looted art, should should end up in American hands. "America has a chance to get some wonderful things here during the next few years," he told the magazine. "I think it's absurd to let the Germans have paintings the n.a.z.i big-wigs got, often through forced sales, from all over Europe. Some of them ought to come here." end up in American hands. "America has a chance to get some wonderful things here during the next few years," he told the magazine. "I think it's absurd to let the Germans have paintings the n.a.z.i big-wigs got, often through forced sales, from all over Europe. Some of them ought to come here."11 Ironically, Rousseau's rash statement probably ensured that the paintings would be returned to Germany-and they were, after a victory lap through American museums in 1949. He would never be so candid again. Ironically, Rousseau's rash statement probably ensured that the paintings would be returned to Germany-and they were, after a victory lap through American museums in 1949. He would never be so candid again.

Though he did get credit and a write-up in Time Time magazine, early in 1954, for the reinstallation of the forty-four refurbished paintings galleries, Rousseau was still too young and green to get Taylor's job, which pleased Bothmer; he'd been pulling for his friend Rorimer, whose dedication equaled his own-they both often worked on weekends. Rorimer's long daily walks through the galleries, clad in a Brooks Brothers suit and army jump boots (and later, thick-soled orthopedic shoes), trailed by an a.s.sistant noting every dust ball, wilted flower, and burned-out bulb, appealed to Bothmer's authoritarian sense of duty and order. Bothmer probably didn't appreciate another Rorimer habit-walking through new exhibitions in a bathrobe before changing into a tuxedo for openings-quite as much, but as time went by, he and the new director grew closer. magazine, early in 1954, for the reinstallation of the forty-four refurbished paintings galleries, Rousseau was still too young and green to get Taylor's job, which pleased Bothmer; he'd been pulling for his friend Rorimer, whose dedication equaled his own-they both often worked on weekends. Rorimer's long daily walks through the galleries, clad in a Brooks Brothers suit and army jump boots (and later, thick-soled orthopedic shoes), trailed by an a.s.sistant noting every dust ball, wilted flower, and burned-out bulb, appealed to Bothmer's authoritarian sense of duty and order. Bothmer probably didn't appreciate another Rorimer habit-walking through new exhibitions in a bathrobe before changing into a tuxedo for openings-quite as much, but as time went by, he and the new director grew closer.

Unlike Taylor, Rorimer shared Bothmer's love of ancient Greek vases, so shortly after the Rorimer ascension Bothmer was able to conclude a deal that he'd dreamed of and schemed for since 1951, when the larger-than-life newspaper tyc.o.o.n William Randolph Hearst died. Among Hearst's countless possessions was one of the largest collections in private hands of painted Greek vases, hundreds of them. Bothmer had heard of them when he studied at Berkeley but had never seen them; indeed, only five scholars had since they'd been swallowed up into the famous Hearst estate, San Simeon, in California, in 1935. As Bothmer came to understand it, Hearst had promised them to the Smithsonian but didn't actually own them; the Hearst Corporation did. They were among the few possessions that had survived a ma.s.sive sell-off of his collections when his finances went awry in the late 1930s. Late in 1956, Bothmer became the sixth scholar to see them when he pulled off a coup and bought sixty-six of them (along with fifty pieces of majolica), chosen from photographs, for $75,000, and then traveled to Hearst's castle to pack and s.h.i.+p them to New York.

Accompanied only by the Hearst estate's secretary and caretakers, he dislodged the vases from atop bookshelves in the publisher's hundred-foot-long library, where they'd been secured with piano wire to protect them from earthquakes. Each vase was checked and double-checked, at least until the secretary let one fall and was so chagrined she shut herself in her office and never emerged again. Back home, Bothmer cleaned and restored many of them himself and then mounted an exhibition in the spring of 1957. His eye was good; only one had proved to be a forgery. Simultaneously, the Hearst Foundation gave the museum a number of things, including three British period rooms and a marble statue of Hermes. Two years later, on the very same day in July 1959 that Rorimer named Thomas Hoving, fresh out of graduate school at Princeton, the a.s.sistant curator of the Cloisters, Bothmer was promoted to curator of Greek and Roman art following Christine Alexander's retirement.

Although Rorimer didn't want a vice director, he listened when Bothmer suggested he hire Joseph Veach n.o.ble, who'd come to ask his opinion of a Greek vase and since become a friend and traveling companion. They would hunt vases together in Greece that n.o.ble would buy, and through him Bothmer had the vicarious pleasure of collecting. Bothmer's encouragement resulted in a suggestion that n.o.ble apply for a job supervising the museum's operations, security, and gift shop. Rorimer met him and hired him immediately. Despite his amateur's interest in Greek pottery-he'd not only collected it but also performed spectrographic a.n.a.lysis of glazes, and attempted to reproduce ancient fired pots in a shop, complete with kiln, in his Maplewood, New Jersey, bas.e.m.e.nt-n.o.ble had no museum background, so curators called it the n.o.ble Experiment.

In fact, while n.o.ble was hired to spare Rorimer from quotidian administrative tasks, his art-science avocation proved to be his greatest strength. In 1959, he decoded and reproduced the recipe for the glazes used on Greek pottery, and later n.o.ble's research and investigations would help uncover the greatest frauds in the museum's collection, the three monumental terra-cotta sculptures, allegedly Etruscan, bought four decades earlier by Gisela Richter, that sat near the museum entrance. Unfortunately for n.o.ble, the museum gave him sole credit for the discovery, when in fact it wasn't entirely his.

Iris Cornelia Love was a great-granddaughter of Isaac Guggenheim, the mining magnate whose brother Solomon founded the Guggenheim Museum, and the granddaughter of a wealthy stockbroker. Raised by a British governess in a Park Avenue apartment and on a seventy-five-acre farm in Goshen, New York, she rarely saw her cultivated but emotionally distant parents. She'd spent her youth hunting for Indian artifacts in the country and, when she was in the city, visiting the Greek and Roman galleries of the Met, where many friends of her parents' worked. She studied cla.s.sical art and archaeology at Smith College and told one of her professors of her childhood suspicion that two of the much-beloved Etruscan warriors were modern fakes-there was nothing else resembling them in the field-and made their stylistic anomalies the subject of her senior thesis.

Harold Parsons, an American art adviser living in Rome, had come to the same aesthetic conclusion and wrote privately to Rorimer in 1958 saying he would soon provide definitive proof that the statues were phony. But the museum, aware that Parsons had a grudge against a competing adviser who'd been Richter's agent on the purchase, made no public acknowledgment of his suspicions and left the sculptures on prominent display; after all, the great Gisela Richter had said they were real, and sporadic claims to the contrary in 1937 and 1954 had never gained traction.

Iris Love moved on to graduate school at the Inst.i.tute of Fine Arts, where she continued her investigation into the statues, eventually concluding that they were indeed fakes. In 1971, she told an interviewer from the New York Times New York Times that she'd told Rorimer she was going to publish her paper on February 15, 1961, in an NYU magazine. In response, she said then, Rorimer preempted her, tersely announcing the truth in the that she'd told Rorimer she was going to publish her paper on February 15, 1961, in an NYU magazine. In response, she said then, Rorimer preempted her, tersely announcing the truth in the Times Times of February 14. "I wrote a detailed responsible press release and Roland Redmond squashed it," says Don Holden, who worked in the museum press office but would quit over this episode. "Redmond said, 'Let's dodge it.' The museum did not look good." And it made an enemy by giving no credit at all to Iris Love. of February 14. "I wrote a detailed responsible press release and Roland Redmond squashed it," says Don Holden, who worked in the museum press office but would quit over this episode. "Redmond said, 'Let's dodge it.' The museum did not look good." And it made an enemy by giving no credit at all to Iris Love.

Thirty-five years later, Love, whose subsequent archaeological finds in Turkey and Greece burnished her reputation, offers a more detailed version of the events, which still rankle her, saying that Rorimer had gotten wind of her paper and tried to get a copy through her father, an old friend. When that failed, Rorimer invited her for lunch, tested her knowledge of antiquities, and tried to tease a copy out of her directly. But he obviously already knew what it said. "Never mind," he responded when she said she didn't know where it was. "I don't need it."

Then he summoned Joe n.o.ble. "My interests were such that I would try to verify ancient things and raise questions that needed to be raised," said n.o.ble. On learning from Rorimer that the warriors were under stylistic suspicion, he sc.r.a.ped some of the glaze off the rear end of one of the statues with a penknife and sent it to an outside lab for a.n.a.lysis. Its tests showed a chemical in the glaze that had not been used until the nineteenth century. n.o.ble's findings formed the basis of the museum's terse announcement on February 14.

Eight days later, Parsons revealed that he'd found the surviving member of the group of Roman forgers who'd created Richter's statues sixty years before-even better, he'd signed a confession. Bothmer immediately flew to Rome to investigate, carrying "a shoe box with a plaster cast of a hand missing a thumb," says Holden. The forger had broken it off and saved it. "It fit the hand and that was the end." Gisela Richter, who was in Rome, cried when Bothmer gave her the news. A year later, the three statues, and seven slabs decorated with reliefs made by the same forgers, were moved to a study gallery referred to as "a kind of morgue."12 According to Bothmer, Love soon insisted that she should get the chance to print her findings in a museum publication. Instead, Bothmer and n.o.ble published their findings that December, infuriating Love by mentioning her only in pa.s.sing.

THE ETRUSCAN WARRIOR DEBACLE, EMBARRa.s.sING THOUGH IT was, was no Cesnola scandal. For once, the museum was ahead of the press, if not of Iris Love. And the museum's relations with the city were far better than they'd been in either the Cesnola or the Moses era. Gifts and purchases continued to arrive with the regularity of the seasons; a ma.s.sive wroughtiron screen from the cathedral at Valladolid, Spain, for instance, came from Hearst's foundation. And in June 1960, Rorimer and Rousseau proved their knack for cloak-and-dagger stealth hadn't been left behind in wartime Europe when they announced the acquisition of was, was no Cesnola scandal. For once, the museum was ahead of the press, if not of Iris Love. And the museum's relations with the city were far better than they'd been in either the Cesnola or the Moses era. Gifts and purchases continued to arrive with the regularity of the seasons; a ma.s.sive wroughtiron screen from the cathedral at Valladolid, Spain, for instance, came from Hearst's foundation. And in June 1960, Rorimer and Rousseau proved their knack for cloak-and-dagger stealth hadn't been left behind in wartime Europe when they announced the acquisition of The Fortune Teller The Fortune Teller, a rare painting by Georges de La Tour.

"Charlie Wrightsman, a.s.serting his philistine habit, wanted to buy it," says Hoving. The dealer Georges Wildenstein wanted "half a mil, a lot of money back then, and Charlie said 250, and Georges, not happy, said, 'Screw you.' Charlie said he would give the Met 250 if they would put up the rest. Wildenstein came down to 350 from 500, and the Met bought it."

At that time, only about twenty paintings by La Tour, who worked during the reign of Louis XIII, were known to exist, and there were only nine in America, of which only three were considered absolutely authentic. When the news that the Met had bought another one was announced, with no details or price given, journalists and art scholars scurried to find out both, and an outcry just like that which had defeated Rorimer's Cloisters years earlier stirred Paris again, as art experts and politicians railed against this latest blow to French patrimony. Only this time, Rorimer had already won.

The paintings curator Rousseau had had a previous run-in with a foreign government, when he and Redmond acquired a painting of Saint Sebastian by the Florentine Renaissance artist Andrea del Castagno in 1948. By the following spring, the Italian government was claiming it had been improperly exported, but Taylor insisted he'd seen an export license before buying it from the art dealer Knoedler. An investigation led to the arrests of a lawyer and two employees of the Italian government's art export office and futile demands for its return. Eventually, the damaged and overcleaned canvas would be reattributed to a lesser artist, Frances...o...b..tticini.

Rousseau had learned a lesson and was disingenuous, at best, when he told the press that the La Tour painting had "just turned up in France" and been sold by a family of country n.o.bility to the dealer Georges Wildenstein, who had exported it according to French law.13 While none of that was false, it obscured a much better story. The French family had likely acquired it in 1802, when they bought a fully furnished chateau in the Loire region. Its provenance was forgotten as it was pa.s.sed down through the generations to a General de Gastines, who died in 1948. The next year a Benedictine monk recognized it for what it was and brought it to the attention of the Louvre, which tried to buy it but was outbid by Wildenstein, though he was said to have paid only about $20,000 for it. In 1950, the painting was allowed to leave France briefly on loan, but the Louvre's paintings curator made sure it was returned. Wildenstein then held it for years until the paintings curator retired and Redmond and Rousseau learned it was available. How? "Reporters don't reveal their sources and neither do we," Rorimer later told While none of that was false, it obscured a much better story. The French family had likely acquired it in 1802, when they bought a fully furnished chateau in the Loire region. Its provenance was forgotten as it was pa.s.sed down through the generations to a General de Gastines, who died in 1948. The next year a Benedictine monk recognized it for what it was and brought it to the attention of the Louvre, which tried to buy it but was outbid by Wildenstein, though he was said to have paid only about $20,000 for it. In 1950, the painting was allowed to leave France briefly on loan, but the Louvre's paintings curator made sure it was returned. Wildenstein then held it for years until the paintings curator retired and Redmond and Rousseau learned it was available. How? "Reporters don't reveal their sources and neither do we," Rorimer later told Time Time, though he admitted such news came via "a letter, a phone call, a whisper," and even from American diplomats, all part of "a business fraught with difficulties-wiretapping, fraud, forgeries."14 Most likely, the source was Wildenstein himself. Most likely, the source was Wildenstein himself.

Don Holden, as museum press manager, knew the truth was not his business. "People who understood museums said, 'You must understand, there's a lot of skulduggery and payoffs and smuggling and this is normal procedure,' " he says. "Rorimer, who had been [in the war], understood that, too."

After an investigation led by the French minister of culture, Andre Malraux, it emerged that the painting had actually left France two years earlier, right after Wildenstein donated a fragment of a Claude Monet painting to the Louvre. At the time, the Education Ministry had responsibility for French museums, and the minister's chief administrative a.s.sistant had signed a doc.u.ment authorizing export, apparently in thanks for the Monet. It was thought that this trip, like the last, would be temporary. Eighteen months later, however, the painting reappeared at the Met, leading Le Monde Le Monde to deem the affair "exceptional, strange and troubling." Eventually, the outrage died down enough that another La Tour would be allowed out of France, and Wildenstein would be elected a member of the prestigious Academy of the Beaux Arts for his contributions to French culture. to deem the affair "exceptional, strange and troubling." Eventually, the outrage died down enough that another La Tour would be allowed out of France, and Wildenstein would be elected a member of the prestigious Academy of the Beaux Arts for his contributions to French culture. The Fortune Teller The Fortune Teller, on the other hand, remained controversial and was denounced several times as a fake-and forever after, rumors that he took kickbacks from Wildenstein would dog Rousseau. Despite all the questions and complaints, The Fortune Teller The Fortune Teller is still attributed to La Tour and considered one of the museum's masterpieces. is still attributed to La Tour and considered one of the museum's masterpieces.

Rorimer had truly calmed the waters at the Met from the roiling seas of Taylor's time. No one complained about the Hearn Fund anymore, now that Robert Beverly Hale was spending it. And then Rorimer hired him an a.s.sistant. Born in 1935 to a family of Belgian diamond brokers, Henry Geldzahler was a young fan of the American Museum of Natural History, which was near his home, until he switched his allegiance to the Met at age twelve, when art became "a consuming interest," he said. At age fifteen, he was sickened and yet riveted by an Ars.h.i.+le Gorky exhibit at the Whitney Museum, and so began a lifelong love affair with contemporary art. He returned to the Whitney often and got "terrible headaches because I hadn't sorted out anything about quality yet ... It took five or six years of doing that before I was able to walk in and say ... that amuses me; that revolts me; and so on."

His next stop was Yale, where he studied Byzantine art and decided on a museum career, believing that his multicultural background-bouncing between "an orthodox Jewish Hebrew environment" and "a privileged New York environment"-was a perfect preparation. "I was a European in America," he said. "I was a Jew at Yale ... I think that kind of experience in a funny way also helped me at the Museum with the trustees and artists because there also I'm mediating between seemingly irreconcilable forces: the avant-garde on the one hand and the totally entrenched Hudson Valley trustees on the other. It's the kind of thing I'm able to do ...Ellsworth Kelly in the morning and Brooke Astor in the afternoon ...I consciously decided that it would be better for me to go to Yale and learn how to deal with American aristocrac ... Trustees are nothing but older Yalies."15 After his second year at Yale, Geldzahler volunteered at the museum and in the summer of 1954 got a job working in the Paintings Department. Rousseau was away, but he got to know Rorimer and Hale, whom he considered a gruff, silky, and eccentric patrician. He spent several late after-noons talking to Rorimer at length about his dream of a museum job. "I told him that my parents said that since I was Jewish it would be hard for me to advance myself in a field like that," he recalled.

"Don't ever again tell that to anybody" was Rorimer's touchy reply. Despite Blumenthal and Lehman, and despite his own success, Rorimer knew that there was truth in what Henry's parents had told him; he could be whoever he wanted, but there was no need to discuss it. As Henry told the story some years later, Rorimer was named director shortly after this conversation and responded to Henry's note of congratulations with one reading, "Now you see what I mean." (Rorimer's penchant for secrecy also led some to think he was a repressed h.o.m.os.e.xual and sponsored the h.o.m.os.e.xual Geldzahler and other promising young men as a way of acting out his taboo desires.) Geldzahler grew to feel that Rorimer lived a tragic "fantasy that he owed his success to his concealment of his Jewish origins."16 For Geldzahler, who'd grown up in the postwar world, his religion proved to be an advantage. "The trustees at the Met still have a bit of an anti-Semitic cast to them," he wrote. "Even though there are some Jews on the board of trustees they're always clean Jews. Money gets clean if it's washed by inheritance taxes a few times ... Lehman was on the board ... and people like that ... because they came over in 1848. But I think as far as the staff goes it's not much of an issue anymore ...Most of the great collectors of contemporary art are Jewish. It's natural to have a Jew as curator ... There are certain a.s.sumptions of humor and of background that you take for granted."

Rorimer kept his eye on young Geldzahler. After a junior year in Paris at the Sorbonne and the Inst.i.tut du Louvre, Henry graduated magna c.u.m laude from Yale in 1957 and went on to Harvard to get his Ph.D. He summered in Provincetown, where he met Franz Kline, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Ivan Karp, a dealer who worked for Leo Castelli, getting his first sniff of the art rat pack. Henry was working as a teaching a.s.sistant at $1,200 a year, frustrated over a recent failure to get an entry-level job at the Whitney in the fall of 1959, when Rorimer visited Harvard and, out of the blue, offered him a job.17 When he said he really wanted to work at the Whitney, Rorimer "turned gray with rage," Geldzahler would recall in a 1991 lecture, but then promised the younger man he would hear from him soon.18 A month later, Rorimer sent a letter and asked him to come to the Met on his Christmas break. Again, he offered the young scholar a curatorial a.s.sistant's post attached to Hale in the American art department at $5,000 a year. Accepting the job meant abandoning his doctoral thesis on Matisse sculpture and his Ph.D., but Geldzahler didn't care. When his father agreed to pay his rent for a year, Henry accepted. But there was a condition: he had "rather a disgusting little beard," he said, and Rorimer told him to shave. A month later, Rorimer sent a letter and asked him to come to the Met on his Christmas break. Again, he offered the young scholar a curatorial a.s.sistant's post attached to Hale in the American art department at $5,000 a year. Accepting the job meant abandoning his doctoral thesis on Matisse sculpture and his Ph.D., but Geldzahler didn't care. When his father agreed to pay his rent for a year, Henry accepted. But there was a condition: he had "rather a disgusting little beard," he said, and Rorimer told him to shave.

"Why?" he asked.

"You haven't earned it," said Rorimer. Once he shaved, he was said to resemble a cross between the actor Charles Laughton and Porky Pig.

Rorimer warned that his new job would be a challenge. "There's nothing for you to do here," he said. "We don't expect to be seeing very much of you at the museum because your job is contemporary art and we don't have any." Geldzahler took him at his word-and never regretted it. He went back to Provincetown that June with a new sense of purpose.19 "For the first four or five years my job at the Met was to continue my education at their expense," he later said. It was essentially on-the-job training. But first there was on-the-job hazing. His first day was July 15, 1960, and like any new employee he showed up at 9:00 a.m.-and found himself alone. An hour later, the a.s.sociate curator and museum archivist Albert Ten Eyck Gardner wandered in, called Henry into his office, and began giving him a.s.signments, all concerned with nineteenth-century art. The new employee started trembling and, gathering up his courage, refused. "I was hired by Mr. Rorimer to work with Mr. Hale," he told the much older man in a shaky voice. Gardner never bothered him again. He felt he'd saved himself from being kidnapped by the forces of the past.20 At first, Hale was unsure. When Rorimer told him he'd hired Henry, "Bobby said, 'G.o.d in heaven,' " says his wife, Nike. "But they got along very well." After a couple months of going through the storerooms, rehanging a few galleries, adding a slightly more contemporary point of view, the pudgy, blond-haired, blue-eyed a.s.sistant curator started going out-visiting galleries and studios and doing what would later be called networking. He never stopped. "The word got out that I'd go anywhere," he said. Soon enough, he seemed to be everywhere.

The New York school Hale had championed in the 1950s had become the establishment. Geldzahler sought out younger artists. "And within a couple of months, I had met Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd ...it went on like that," Geldzahler recalled of his days as a self-described little twerp from the Met. "My entrance coincided with a reshuffling of the cards, as it were, or a reinvention of the game. Abstract Expressionism was dominant, but in 1960, the color field painters and a new abstraction, Kelly, Reinhardt, Albers, Stella were coming along ... and of course, the unpredictable media craze that erupted around Pop Art began the following year. It was possible, by going around the studios with [the art dealers] Ivan Karp and Richard Bellamy, in '59, '60 and '61, to meet these guys and introduce them to each other ... Many of them didn't know each other."21 Warhol, in turn, introduced him to David Hockney, who became a close friend and frequently drew and painted him. "I never thought I was beautiful until David started doing my picture," Henry once told a friend. Warhol, in turn, introduced him to David Hockney, who became a close friend and frequently drew and painted him. "I never thought I was beautiful until David started doing my picture," Henry once told a friend.22 Most mornings, Geldzahler would go to the office to report in to Hale. "I'd say, yesterday I saw a young artist named Andy Warhol or Frank Stella or Larry Poons or Jim Rosenquist and this is what their work looks like," Henry recalled. Now and then, he'd bring Hale with him to meet an Ellsworth Kelly, Rosenquist, or Jasper Johns. But he didn't buy much art-yet. "I learned a lot from [Hale] about patience," Geldzahler continued. "When I got to the museum I was really raring to go. I wanted to build a collection and put on shows. He said, 'Henry, just take it easy. We're here to put out fires. We're not here for anything else.' "23 In fact, by networking so relentlessly, Geldzahler was collecting kindling to set future fires. "America realized it had missed Abstract Expressionism, American art was drifting away from America, and then along came Pop ... that market just boomed from the beginning," says Nike Hale. "I remember our first c.o.c.ktail party at [the noted Pop collector Robert] Scull's house. Everyone was in black tie. Bobby said, 'My G.o.d, something has changed.' " American art had come into its own.

Geldzahler grew particularly close to Warhol. At their first meeting, he'd carefully eyed Warhol's own collection of art and objects, then offered him the chance to see paintings by the American primitive artist Florine Stettheimer stored in the Met's bas.e.m.e.nt. "Anyone who'd know ...that I loved Florine Stettheimer had to be brilliant," recalled Warhol, who went to the Met the very next day. "Henry was a scholar who understood the past, but he also understood how to use the past to look at the future. Right away we became five-hours-a-day-on-the-phone-see-you-for-lunch-quick-turn-on-the-'Tonight Show' friends." Geldzahler inspired Warhol's Death and Disaster paintings by showing him a tabloid front page about a jet crash. "A few years later," Henry recalled, "I said, 'It's enough of disaster; it's time for life again.' " He picked up a magazine off Warhol's floor, flipped to a picture of flowers, and said, "Like this, for instance." Warhol's signature flower paintings were the result.24 In 1964, Henry sent Rorimer a memo a.n.a.lyzing the Met's contemporary art holdings and needs. He recommended a separate department of international contemporary art, increased funds for purchase of important missing European moderns and sculpture, to supplement the Hearn bequest (deemed insufficient to buy art in the new market), and increased courting of collectors. Rorimer told him it was the best memo he'd ever gotten and then "put it away and I never heard of it again," Geldzahler recalled. "I never really thought he understood exactly what I was doing but I know that he believed in me. And that seemed more important. He was like a father or uncle figure that sort of patted you on the shoulder and said 'Fine work, my boy,' but didn't really know."25 By 1965, the New York Times New York Times would be describing Geldzahler, by then an a.s.sociate curator, not as a curator but as an "art-world luminary." would be describing Geldzahler, by then an a.s.sociate curator, not as a curator but as an "art-world luminary."26 That year, he was allowed to help hang his first show, Three Centuries of American Painting, a five-hundred-painting survey of American art from Colonial times to Jackson Pollock. Henry was put in charge of the twentieth-century portion of the exhibit and wrote part of the handbook for the show as well. He recalled that Hale let him have his way and he ended up doing most of the work. "A total disaster," counters Nike Hale. "Bobby had to rehang it. Henry knew nothing about museums, had no qualifications. He'd been geared for the academic world until Rorimer showed up. He was a total innocent in that world." That year, he was allowed to help hang his first show, Three Centuries of American Painting, a five-hundred-painting survey of American art from Colonial times to Jackson Pollock. Henry was put in charge of the twentieth-century portion of the exhibit and wrote part of the handbook for the show as well. He recalled that Hale let him have his way and he ended up doing most of the work. "A total disaster," counters Nike Hale. "Bobby had to rehang it. Henry knew nothing about museums, had no qualifications. He'd been geared for the academic world until Rorimer showed up. He was a total innocent in that world."

"Henry liked being a fish out of water," says Robert Littman, a curator friend. At the Met, Henry could swim in exotic waters uptown and down.

Out on the Pop scene, roly-poly Henry, dressed in double-breasted jackets, riding boots, leather ties, and sungla.s.ses, with a cigar clenched in his still-babyish face, became a star, moving seamlessly from Claes Oldenburg's Happenings of 1960 into the Warhol films of four and five years later, popping up at gallery openings and readings in between. Indeed, it sometimes seemed he was in the newspapers more than he was in the museum. "There was a little bit of talk in the middle sixties about how 'he never shows up,' " he acknowledged, but added that "it was a marvelous way into the irrational workings of the art world." Unbeknownst to him, though, some of the trustees wanted his head.

In 1966, Life Life magazine had run a spread, "Henry Here, Henry There ... Who Is Henry?" that included a photo of him in a bathrobe smoking a cigar; magazine had run a spread, "Henry Here, Henry There ... Who Is Henry?" that included a photo of him in a bathrobe smoking a cigar; Time Time called him "a quasi-somnambulant rotundity in prison stripes afloat in a rubber raft in an Oldenburg Happening mounted in the swimming pool of a Manhattan health club." called him "a quasi-somnambulant rotundity in prison stripes afloat in a rubber raft in an Oldenburg Happening mounted in the swimming pool of a Manhattan health club."27 Some trustees, already wary, called Rorimer, "saying, isn't it time to let me go," Henry recalled. "And he felt that it wasn't, thank goodness." Even though his artists were confined to a single gallery that, it was later said, "moved from area to area like unclaimed baggage," Rorimer protected him and gave him regular promotions and raises. Some trustees, already wary, called Rorimer, "saying, isn't it time to let me go," Henry recalled. "And he felt that it wasn't, thank goodness." Even though his artists were confined to a single gallery that, it was later said, "moved from area to area like unclaimed baggage," Rorimer protected him and gave him regular promotions and raises.28 That year, Geldzahler, though only thirty, asked Rorimer for a one-year leave of absence. He'd been asked to curate the American art to be shown at the next Venice Biennale international art festival, but couldn't partic.i.p.ate in a commercial venture as a museum employee. Rorimer agreed to let him go. So he left, accepting a one-year appointment as program director of the National Endowment for the Arts. First, though, was Venice, where he made a splash announcing his opposition to art prizes just before they were given out. None of the Americans won. "Venice was political and social h.e.l.l," he wrote to a friend.29 He came home and was diagnosed with an ulcer. He came home and was diagnosed with an ulcer.

The festival also lost him Andy Warhol's friends.h.i.+p when he didn't choose to include the artist, some of whose paintings he owned and whom he'd been in daily contact with for six years. Henry appeared in a number of Warhol's films, including Henry in Bathroom Henry in Bathroom in 1963, in 1963, Couch Couch and and Batman Dracula Batman Dracula in 1964, in 1964, Tiger Hop Tiger Hop in 1966, and most famously the July 1964 film in 1966, and most famously the July 1964 film Henry Geldzahler Henry Geldzahler, in which he sat in Warhol's Factory smoking a cigar for over an hour. Not only that, Geldzahler was close to Warhol superstars, including Edie Sedgwick and the handsome Paul America, who gave him his first dose of LSD.30 "I tried everything once or twice," he said. When asked how he survived the Warhol scene, Henry said, "I can't be manipulated. If anything, I suppose I'm a manipulator. I'm like one of them, but I hope with a kinder heart. And my position is that people are handkerchiefs, not Kleenex, to be used again and again, not used once and thrown away." "I tried everything once or twice," he said. When asked how he survived the Warhol scene, Henry said, "I can't be manipulated. If anything, I suppose I'm a manipulator. I'm like one of them, but I hope with a kinder heart. And my position is that people are handkerchiefs, not Kleenex, to be used again and again, not used once and thrown away."31 Warhol was not destined to be one of Henry's handkerchiefs. After the Life Life article, Henry decided that if he took Warhol, then just entering his Velvet Underground phase, to Venice, it would have turned into a media freak show. "It was just a career decision I made ... to cool my relations.h.i.+p with him for a while," Geldzahler said. He knew that Bob Hale was about to retire (which he would in June 1966) and he'd lose his shot at Hale's job if he didn't play his cards right. But instead of being honest about it, he didn't even tell Warhol he'd been chosen to curate the Venice exhibit; his friend read it in the paper instead. The next time someone asked Warhol about Henry, he replied flatly, "Henry who?" article, Henry decided that if he took Warhol, then just entering his Velvet Underground phase, to Venice, it would have turned into a media freak show. "It was just a career decision I made ... to cool my relations.h.i.+p with him for a while," Geldzahler said. He knew that Bob Hale was about to retire (which he would in June 1966) and he'd lose his shot at Hale's job if he didn't play his cards right. But instead of being honest about it, he didn't even tell Warhol he'd been chosen to curate the Venice exhibit; his friend read it in the paper instead. The next time someone asked Warhol about Henry, he replied flatly, "Henry who?"32

GELDZAHLER WAS STILL AT H HARVARD WHEN TWO OTHER, EQUALLY consequential new arrivals stuck their noses under the Metropolitan's tent. Charlie Wrightsman and his wife, Jayne, had made their first gift of money to the museum and loans of art (a Savonnerie carpet and a recently acquired Vermeer) in the spring of 1955, their quiet entrance belying the profound influence they would soon have. By 1956, Charlie's name was in play for a board seat; he was elected that fall, and years later would be replaced by his wife. Though she stepped back to become a trustee emerita in 1998, Jayne still served on the acquisitions committee and as an advisory member of the executive committee at age eighty-eight. consequential new arrivals stuck their noses under the Metropolitan's tent. Charlie Wrightsman and his wife, Jayne, had made their first gift of money to the museum and loans of art (a Savonnerie carpet and a recently acquired Vermeer) in the spring of 1955, their quiet entrance belying the profound influence they would soon have. By 1956, Charlie's name was in play for a board seat; he was elected that fall, and years later would be replaced by his wife. Though she stepped back to become a trustee emerita in 1998, Jayne still served on the acquisitions committee and as an advisory member of the executive committee at age eighty-eight.

Charles Bierer Wrightsman was born in 1895, the son of Charles John Wrightsman, an Oklahoma oilman, lawyer, and politician. One of the nineteenth century's original oil wildcatters, the first Charles drilled wells, hit gushers, and built an oil company. As a lawyer, he helped create the oil depletion allowance, a tax credit to encourage exploration. He'd begun his political career when Oklahoma was a territory, served as the p.a.w.nee County attorney, and would run for the U.S. Senate several times but lose, once due to an apparently unwanted endors.e.m.e.nt by the Ku Klux Klan, the second time losing to Thomas P. Gore, a blind ex-senator.

Young Charlie's sister drove the only Rolls-Royce in Oklahoma.

After an elite education (Exeter, Stanford, Columbia), Charlie became a navy pilot and met his first wife, Irene Stafford, a socially prominent girl from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in the winter of 1921 in Miami. By then, Wrightsman, who'd been an asthmatic child, had grown up into a professional polo player who flew his own planes. "He made money scouring the Southwest