To the Editors:
Re: “The Whitney’s New Graves,” by Hilton Kramer (September, 1985).
I am writing in this matter not as a disinterested party. First as a trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art and second as a member of the National Council on the Arts on which I serve together with The New Criterion’s publisher, Mr. Samuel Lipman.
In the latter capacity I share many of the same principles and objectives of Mr. Lipman and his colleagues at The New Criterion as well as fellow appointees to the National Council. Foremost among these is a dedication to excellence in the arts and high standards of purpose and professionalism.
For that reason it concerns me when I find an extensive critique that belies these standards by the editor of a journal which so scrupulously exacts them from others. Needless to say, my own involvement with the Whitney will make my comments suspect. But, perhaps because I am so closely informed I am better able to perceive the lack of background work or scholarly balance brought to the subject at hand.
Mr. Kramer, quite naturally, has every right to his own opinion.. He obviously does not like the “Graves” solution to the much needed Whitney expansion. So be it. Perceptions and tastes vary. An example in an area more directly in Mr. Kramer’s purview, neither does he admire the painter Phillip Guston whose exhibitions he likewise savaged (“silly,” “clumsy,” “demotic,” “stumble-bum” etc.) at key junctures of his career. That Phillip Guston’s work since that time has emerged as one of the icons of American painting with enormous influence on work being done by many artists today has left Mr. Kramer unmoved. He has stuck by his guns. So much then for the vagaries of taste and an open mind.
Most glaringly it is the openness of mind that causes me much the greatest concern. Mr. Kramer who has been perceived by many as the aesthetic mandarin of the new political right stumbles over his very personal aesthetic prejudices in his rush to judgment. Using the Whitney expansion as a handy foil he launches an attack first on the Graves design, then with innuendo (the Gail Levin departure) and total lack of the most rudimentary acknowledgement of the Whitney’s achievements in art scholarship, he focuses upon the Morgan Russell papers imbroglio, without making any reference to the recent extensive monographs and exhibitions on Avery, Hartley, DeKooning, Crawford, to cite but a few, nor the Whitney Symposiums on American Art, the Tandy lectures nor the Whitney Independent Study Program and so on.
With calculated disdain he belittles and impugns the generously given corporate sponsorship of branch museums (“art boutiques” he calls them), again failing to point out the widespread recognition of their curatorial experimentation and achievement, attested to not only by a growing audience, artists and the press, but most particularly the museum field with institutions throughout the nation requesting that the branch museum shows be traveled to their facilities for exhibition and following the Whitney’s lead, in setting up their own branches.
His attack on the Whitney Biennial ignores the exhibition’s objectives. The aim of the Biennial is to display and summarize the works of art and ideas that have dominated the visual arts during the prior two years. Such a selection requires choices, of course, but in essence it is a report of the work being done in the field meant to inform not enshrine, as Mr. Kramer would have us believe.
Mr. Kramer now at the height of his indignation uses the Biennial as a vehicle to attack not simply the Whitney, but contemporary art. It would appear that to Mr. Kramer almost all that is happening in contemporary art is distasteful, vulgar, superficial, etc., and it is not simply the Whitney, but any institution, be it the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum etc., that dares exhibit or deal with those issues of importance to artists today. “Today” seems to be the root of Mr. Kramer’s problem, not the institutions.
In that I am addressing an issue of direct interest to the editor of The New Criterion I feel it not inappropriate to quote from the President’s recent remarks at the National Medal of the Arts ceremony, which Mr. Lipman and I attended.
“In an atmosphere of liberty, artists and patrons are free to think the unthinkable and create the audacious; they are free to make horrendous mistakes and glorious celebrations. Where there’s liberty, art succeeds!” Words that wouldn’t look bad even on the title page of The New Criterion.
Raymond J. Learsy
New York City
Hilton Kramer replies:
We must be grateful to Mr. Learsy for writing this extraordinary letter to The New Criterion. Seldom, if ever, is the public vouchsafed such a vivid and candid display of the kind of thinking which governs the deliberations of the Whitney Museum’s board of trustees on matters affecting that institution’s policies and objectives. In offering us this interesting specimen of boardroom cerebration, Mr. Learsy has made a welcome contribution to our understanding of the crisis which has overtaken the museum under its current leadership—though it is not, perhaps, precisely the contribution that he had in mind to make.
It tells us much, for example, that on the issue which is now paramount both for the Whitney’s board of trustees and for the museum’s many critics—namely, the program that calls for a vast expansion of the Whitney’s facilities and the fate to be suffered by the Marcel Breuer building in the execution of that program—Mr. Learsy has nothing to say. Neither the name of Marcel Breuer nor the building he created for the Whitney Museum less than two decades ago is so much as mentioned by this trustee who claims to be “so closely informed” about the museum’s affairs. This, I think, can be taken as an accurate measure of the consideration the board has given the fate of the Breuer building—which is to say, no consideration at all. Mr. Learsy, like other members of the Whitney board, seems to assume, moreover, that this attitude of indifference about the Breuer building is widely shared. But this is very far from being the case—as even he, at this late date, must now be aware. Apparently the “closely informed” Mr. Learsy, who sent us his letter of October 3rd, had not yet caught up with the fact that on October 2nd a petition opposing the expansion program and bearing the names of more than six hundred artists, architects, and writers—among them, according to a report in The New York Times, those of Edward Larrabee Barnes, I. M. Pei, Isamu Noguchi, and Arthur Miller—was delivered to the Whitney for presentation to its board. Surely even at the beleaguered Whitney the arrival of such an extraordinary appeal cannot be regarded as a routine occurrence. Yet twenty-four hours after the event this “closely informed” member of the board who claims to speak in the name of “issues of importance to artists today” had yet to hear of this historic challenge to the museum’s program from some of the nation’s leading artists. It would appear that some “closely informed” members of the Whitney board are less closely informed than others.
Mr. Learsy has every right, of course, to defend the Michael Graves plan for the expansion of the museum. It might even have been interesting to hear what he had to say on this subject. But he offers no word on the Graves plan. And if he really believes that it is right and proper for the Whitney, which commissioned the Breuer building, to destroy it now in the interest of the expansion program, then he had, a right to say that, too. But on this issue—which was, after all, the issue which occasioned the article he purports to reply to in his letter—he is all but silent. Except for a single, facile reference to “the much needed Whitney expansion”—as if this were not the principal matter under contention and therefore the subject most in need of some illuminating intelligence—he simply ignores the whole issue.
What, then, does Mr. Learsy concern himself with in lieu of the main issue? The answer, alas, is: The New Criterion and the views of its editor. Now under other circumstances it might be flattering, I suppose, to be made the subject of a lengthy communiqué from a figure who claims so eminent a place in the councils of the nation’s cultural life. Yet on this subject, too, Mr. Learsy shows himself to be incapable of conducting either a reasoned argument or an even minimally informed discussion. Straightaway he invokes the work of “Phillip” (sic) Guston, who is said to have “emerged as one of the icons of American painting” but whose name, despite its iconic status, Mr. Learsy nonetheless has trouble getting exactly right. Guston, to be sure, was never mentioned in the article in question. Yet, eager to shift the ground of the discussion, Mr. Learsy introduces this name quite as if the art it represents were now safely beyond critical dispute—as if, indeed, the nature of Guston’s “enormous influence on work being done by many artists today” were not one of the most problematical issues in the art of the present moment. No doubt it will come as a shock to Mr. Learsy to learn that in the big world which lies beyond the parochial precincts of the Whitney, neither Guston’s art nor its influence is as universally admired or beloved as he seems to believe.
For Mr. Learsy, the fact that the Whitney has embraced and promoted a certain kind of art, both in the Biennials and in other exhibitions, is more than sufficient to settle all critical questions concerning that art—and art in general. This attitude undoubtedly stands him in good stead as a member of the Whitney’s board, but as a way of assessing the achievements of contemporary art it is ludicrous, of course, and betrays not only a remarkable ignorance about the art scene at large but a fundamental incapacity to understand what the tasks of art criticism entail. It was precisely out of a need to describe such a myopic—not to say opportunistic—approach to contemporary cultural issues, which gleefully substitutes the talismans of fashion for the standards of criticism, that the term trendiness had, perforce, to be coined. It therefore comes as no surprise that when Mr. Learsy addresses himself to the unpleasant subject of the Whitney Biennial, it is only on the grounds of fashion that he can think of making any sort of case for the exhibition. Wrapping himself in the mantle of something called “Today,” Mr. Learsy follows the Whitney lead in assuming that the real achievements of contemporary art are only to be found in the kind of carnival tackiness the museum is now so fatally enamoured of. This, to say the least, is not a position which can be taken seriously by anyone who really knows what is happening in contemporary art. This whole notion of “Today,” as Mr. Learsy and his colleagues at the Whitney define it, is entirely spurious—a fiction spawned by the juggernaut of publicity—and it is precisely because the Whitney has shown itself incapable of applying any other standard to its professional affairs that its name is now seriously compromised, its credibility shattered, and its future in doubt.
A mind so totally hostage to this debased notion of “Today” cannot, moreover, be expected to have the slightest glimmer of an understanding of what the concept of scholarship actually means, or of where the Whitney’s institutional responsibilities in the field of scholarship may lie. Certainly Mr. Learsy appears not to grasp even the rudiments of this aspect of the discussion. Though he may not know it, the sad fact is that the Whitney now has little, if any, connection with serious historical scholarship in American art. Virtually all of the most important work in this field is being done elsewhere, and what Mr. Learsy blithely refers to as “the Morgan Russell imbroglio” guarantees that this will continue to be the case. The Morgan Russell donation was a crucial test of the museum’s commitment to serious scholarly research. The Whitney had accepted responsibility for an important archive of unpublished material concerning the career of an artist who had been associated with the museum since its founding. It then promptly forfeited its right to this material. The fact that a member of the Whitney board of trustees does not even now, in the aftermath of the debacle, understand the implications of this lamentable episode is very bad news indeed.
What is finally most dismaying about Mr. Learsy’s letter is not even his own ignorance of the issues under discussion, but his transparent attempt to create a diversion—to shift the focus of the controversy away from the Whitney and its responsibilities, and make the views of the museum’s critics the subject of the debate. This discreditable strategy is bound to fail, however, for while spokesmen like Mr. Learsy are busying themselves with the task of impugning the museum’s critics, the Whitney’s own reputation has collapsed in ruins. Sooner or later—and the sooner the better, of course—it is to this ghastly situation that Mr. Learsy and his fellow board members will have to turn their attention.
Mr. Learsy’s pious invocation of President Reagan displays an ignorance of our freedom as lamentable as his ignorance of art. Even for Mr. Learsy, there surely ought to be a difference evident between the right to have poor taste and its a priori justification. The problem of the Whitney and its expansion plan is not illegality but wretched standards.