{"id":82992,"date":"2012-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/character-intellect\/"},"modified":"2024-03-22T08:51:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T12:51:57","slug":"character-intellect","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/character-intellect\/","title":{"rendered":"Character & intellect"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/font>t was big news in the world of journalism when Hilton Kramer left The New York Times<\/i> in 1981 to become the first editor of The New Criterion<\/i>. Few could understand why the chief art critic of the newspaper of record should choose to leave his post to edit a fledgling magazine of art and literature, and fewer still why he wished to ally himself with the conservative foundations that provided the seed money to launch the enterprise. How could Hilton Kramer, an eloquent voice for abstract expressionism and high modernism, enter into an alliance with conservative business leaders whose range of interests (it was said) did not extend much beyond free enterprise and supply-side economics? Hilton\u2019s critics had a point: It was an unusual alliance. They doubted it would last for very long. As things turned out, it was Hilton Kramer more than anyone else who made it work.<\/p>\n

I had just joined the staff of the John M. Olin Foundation in 1981 when the original grant was made to fund The New Criterion<\/i> for the first three years of operations. (The Scaife and Smith Richardson Foundations were the other early donors.) Shortly thereafter Hilton and his small staff set up shop in the offices of the Olin Foundation in midtown Manhattan while they searched for a permanent base of operations. For the next two or three years, the staffs of these two operations mingled on a daily basis as they went about managing their far different enterprises.<\/p>\n

It was from this vantage point that I was able to see Hilton in action exercising his many skills, not just as a writer, but as an editor, administrator, politician, and diplomat. Hilton was there just about every day during this period, working in a small office at a desk piled so high with books and papers that it was sometimes difficult to discern amid the clutter if he was actually in there. Yet for one whose preoccupations were so abstract and intellectual, Hilton conducted himself in a most businesslike manner. He was always dressed neatly in a coat and tie; he gave clipped and concise answers to every question; he was not given to small talk or wasting time. To us he seemed obviously a man of probity, propriety, and proportion. From time to time he offered sound advice about the writers and academics who approached the foundation for funds. Apart perhaps from his messy desk, he had no trouble getting along with the business figures who frequently visited our offices. In all this, one could see why the frauds and pranksters of the counterculture rubbed Hilton the wrong way and why he was appalled by the publicists and critics who gave them cover. In the balance, he may well have preferred the company of businessmen.<\/p>\n

The New Criterion<\/i> has now prospered for more than three decades, far longer than even many of its friends would have forecast in 1981. The magazine\u2019s longevity is due to many factors, but not least because it was founded well and by a man of unusual strength of character and intellect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From \u201cRemembering Hilton Kramer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1473,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tags":[635],"department_id":[563],"issue":[2987],"section":[],"acf":{"participants":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_65fd9fbaa0408","label":"Authors","name":"participants","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"user","value":null,"menu_order":0,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"role":"","return_format":"array","multiple":1,"allow_null":0,"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"participants","_valid":1}},"page_number":{"simple_value_formatted":22,"value_formatted":22,"value":"22","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_647e2bc0c860c","label":"Page 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