Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. (born 1938) is one of the most admired scholars of American art. He is the author of nearly a hundred publications ranging from studies of John Singleton Copley, Washington Allston, and John James Audubon to those devoted to Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer and many aspects of contemporary art and photography. He has served as curator of American art at Yale University, Harvard, and the Museum of Fine Arts, and has taught at those universities and at Boston University. His new book, Rethinking American Art, draws on his lifetime of experiences in the art world, as he describes the way artistic standards are constantly changing, and how scholarly trends mirror the art market. His book also sheds new light on many outstanding collectors, including Maxim Karolik and Alice Walton.

Now retired, he has spent the past few years writing a book that is a memoir but also a critical study of the canon of American art from its inception as art history through the present. The publication Rethinking American Art: Collectors, Critics, and the Changing Canon (David R. Godine, 2025) is insightful and sharply critical. It will appeal primarily to fellow scholars and curators but also that vast and undefined critical mass loosely referred to as the art world. 

As he astutely observes of the ever shifting canon each generation harbors the conceit that its taste and standards are definitive. Works that he regarded highly and proudly acquired are no longer on view. Younger, more woke curators have rehung the galleries of our museums. The old standards of quality and “masterpieces” no longer broadly apply as there is an effort to embrace the broadest swath of cultural experience.  The intent is to draw diverse visitors who identify their own heritage in what is displayed. A trend is toward wall labels that expand the context. Portraits routinely identify former slave owners. Recent scholarship includes artists like John Singelton Copley who owned slaves. 

As always these shifts in taste and aesthetics are reflected in the art market. Then, as now, it is generally the deep pockets of collectors that determine what is hung on museum walls. Decline of value and critical interest also dictates what works move to storage. 

As Stebbins writes, “People are inclined to view past changes in taste as unique misjudgments that will not happen again… How unthinking, how stupid, they think, not realizing that the pattern has been repeated again and again in the past and will be in the future. We now recognize that the process is a continual one. Each past canon was established for good reason; there are no mistakes, there is only history. Many of the favored artists of any period including our own will drop from favor, something that art dealers never tell their clients, or museum curators their boards.”

We met decades ago when he was an influential curator for the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. It has been common for museum directors to make broad decisions about acquisitions. Famously Perry T. Rathbone was defacto curator of painting. As such he made both brilliant acquisitions while missing the boat on modern and contemporary art. Near the end of his tenure Kenworth Moffett, a formalist, was appointed curator of contemporary art. That left the museum with depth in Color Field painting which has subsequently been devalued. As Stebbins observes Moffett should never have been a curator and instead devoted himself to writing books.

In general Stebbins pulls no punches in defining who had a good “eye.” One who did not was the mega collector Richard Brown Baker. Other than a handful of works the many he donated languish in storage. Stebbins speculates on the annual cost of their conservation. 

When opportunities arise museums are restricted by limited funding. Gifts often come with strings attached or are designated for acquiring classical coins or Japanese prints. To pursue expensive acquisitions curator may, with the permission of director and trustees, deaccession works. This is normal curatorial business involving weeding out and upgrading collections. The general rule is to trade like-for-like and funds may only be used to acquire works of art. 

Director Jan Fontein, an orientalist, gave Stebbins full authority in his field, American Art, as well as for a window of time European, modern and contemporary. While an authority on traditional American art, Stebbins insists that he had a good “eye” for everything else. It is arguable that no curator of a major museum will ever again command such a vast portfolio. When Malcolm Rogers became director with a mantra of “One Museum” Stebbins was offered the position of curator of Art of the Americas. He departed to found a Department of American Art at Harvard University.

I locked heads with Stebbins, reporting for the Patriot Ledger, when he swapped apples for oranges, two Renoirs and a Monet, for Jackson Pollock’s “Troubled Queen.” There was at the time no senior curator for European art. The image of the small Renoir, which is likely to have ended up in Japan, was the best selling post card for the museum gift shop. 

In the final pages of the book he boasts about the Pollock remarking that the Renoir would likely never make it out of storage. He neglects to inform the reader that it was two Renoirs and a Monet. They might have been applied to filling the many gaps in modern European art. 

What follows is an interview in which, in a recent e mail exchange, he recalled we were both “At the top of our game.” 

Charles Giuliano Were you appointed by Jan Fontein?

Ted Stebbins First he appointed John Walsh as the Baker Curator of European Paintings. It was the early months of 1977. Walsh urged Jan to appoint a curator of American paintings. Jan appointed me in the summer of 1977. I began that September or October.

CG Ken Moffett had started as the first curator of contemporary art, appointed by Perry Rathbone, in 1971. As Jan told me he was an Orientalist with no expertise in painting. There had been no curator of paintings since before Rathbone. This was the domain of directors. But Fontein felt that it was important to have curators.

TS Rathbone was pretty knowledgeable and he was his own paintings curator. He loved going into the market and buying European paintings.

CG My sense was that he was a generalist with no field of expertise. He was part of the group of future museum directors who studied with Paul Sachs at the Fogg Art Museum (Harvard). He was essentially a connoisseur/ amateur.

TS A great scholar is not necessarily a great curator. Perry had a hunger for acquisitions and he had a good eye. On the whole he bought wonderful things for the MFA. Rosso Fiorentino’s “The Dead Christ with Angels” (1524-1527) is one of the great Italian masterpieces in America. He showed the Susan Morse Hilles Collection and tried to get the Peggy Guggenheim collection to Boston. He and Hanns Swarzenski bought a great Brancusi which sadly was stolen in 1981. The museum proceeded to use the insurance money to buy European silver. What a shame. He had Swarzenski buying very good works of decorative arts.

(From a scholar who was in the room at the time I learned how the MFA lost the Peggy Guggenheim collection. She was insulted by a representative of the museum who made an anti Semitic comment. That terminated negotiations.)

CG The legacy of Rathbone and modernism at the MFA would have been different if he managed to secure the Hilles and Guggenheim collections. Together Perry and Hanns bought a late Picasso “Rape of the Sabine Women.” What is your opinion of that painting?

(Thomas Messer, then director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, was part of a plan to merge the ICA as the contemporary department of the MFA. He advised on some acquisitions but when Perry was hired that merger was abandoned. Messer left to be director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim which was then in a formative phase. As Rathbone was leaving the museum in 1971 Kenworth Moffett was appointed curator of contemporary art. Between Rathbone and Moffett the MFA missed the boat on modern and contemporary art other than formalism and color field painting.)

TS It was a weak acquisition. It was so much fun for them to have lunch with Picasso. Curators and museum directors are people and being with the greatest artist of the 20th century must have been an immense experience. At the time it must have looked like a very important painting. A little scholarship wouldn’t have hurt in this case.  

CG When I interviewed Fontein in 1984 he had visited the late Picasso exhibition at the Guggenheim which included the MFA picture. A colleague told him that “Rape of the Sabines” was to the late period what “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” was to early Picasso. He told me that if you are going to have a later work by Picasso it’s good to have the best.

TS There are different views. I prefer the earlier Picasso when he’s bolder and more inventive. It wouldn’t have been what I would have chosen but I can understand them choosing it and I can understand their argument for it being an important work.

CG I would like to explore the process of building collections particularly the Karolik and Lane collections. Maxim Karolik preceded you but you were involved in the Lane acquisition. What would the American collection be without those two great acquisitions?

What I had heard is that Karolik came to Rathbone and was advised to collect in this neglected and then affordable period of American art. From your recent museum lecture, hosted by Matthew Teitelbaum, I got a different sense of how that happened.

TS Perry had nothing to do with Karolik other than fighting with him a lot. The collection was fully formed and, in the museum, when Perry got there. Karolik and his wife, who was a decedent of one of the great Boston families, worked together on the collections.  Martha Catharine was a Codman but descended from Elias Hasket Derby (1739-1799) from Salem. He had a great house as well as furniture and silver. That was already in the MFA. Karolik helped her to build on an already existing collection. In 1938 they gave it to the museum. They were ahead of their time in insisting on a scholarly catalogue of the collection. That included furniture and some Copleys.

By then, his wife was eighty and he was looking around for something new to collect. He was in his forties and full of energy. He visited an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum called Life in America. It was 1939 and his eyes were opened to American landscapes and genre painting.

He started to collect Thomas Birch (1779-1851) a Philadelphia painter. Then, through Charlie Childs, Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) the Gloucester seascape painter. Then Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), Thomas Cole (1801-1848), John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872), George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), and William Sidney Mount (1807-1868), among others plus many works by folk artists. He started during the war years and the collection was virtually finished by 1945.

(Maxim Karolik, 1893-1963, an opera singer of Jewish heritage, was born in the Ukraine. A linguist, he taught himself English before emigrating to America. He met Martha Catherine Codman (1858-1948) during a performance in Washington, D.C. She was 34 years older. They married on the Riviera on February 2, 1928. They were largely snubbed by society. They lived in Newport where she died in 1948. They were equal partners in every sense.)

Very few people were collecting that material. There were a few but just enough to keep the dealers having lunch. Childs in Boston, Victor Spark in New York, and several others.

Those paintings looked so much like 19th century Russian paintings. That may have influenced him. That has astonished people because the most frequent comment is how American they are.

CG That’s a major point of the Robert Rosenblum, H. W. Janson text book 19th Century Art (1984). It widened the focus from a fixation on French art to include German, Russian, British, and Scandinavian art. In particular, it changed the thinking about the uniqueness of American Luminism (the focus of the Karolik collection). Using that as the new standard text changed how 19th century art was taught. Luminism as uniquely American was the thesis of Barbara Novak.

TS Exactly. John Wilmerding did a big show of luminism at the National Gallery.

(American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850-1875, 1980)

My essay in that catalogue discusses German, Danish and Russian paintings. I was saying, hold on a minute, American art was part of an international phenomenon.

CG The night before my master’s exams at Boston University, I reread that catalogue. As luck would have it one of two questions was to discuss American landscape painting from 1850-1875. The night before the next day’s exams, I read the Brooklyn Museum’s catalogue on The American Renaissance. That proved to be one of two questions I answered.  There was also the shift from the term luminism to the glare aesthetic.

TS You’ve got that wrong. Wilmerding was a champion of luminism. Except for my essay, the whole catalogue is based on luminism. Pretty soon after that William H. Gerdts, who died recently, wrote an essay called “The Glare Aesthetic.” It was about another group of painters just after the luminists. Wilmerding was strictly a luminism guy.

CG Regarding the Karolik collection, you mention Mount and Bingham who were not part of the luminist tradition. What was the Bingham in the MFA? Was it “Shooting for the Beef” (1850)? No, wait, it’s owned by Brooklyn.

TS I wish it was that’s a great picture. Very good, you just passed the orals. It’s owned by the Brooklyn Museum. When I was at Yale, I longed for that painting. A great Yale collector, Francis Garven, had sold it.

CG What was the Karolik Bingham?

TS He had a couple, “Wood-Boatmen on the Missouri” and we also had “The Squatters” (provenance Henry L. Shattuck, 1937). I sold one in not very good condition to buy the Stuart Davis (1892-1964) “Hot Still Scape” jointly with Mr. Lane, perhaps the single most important painting in my career.

CG What was the Mount?

TS He owned several including one called “The Bone Player.” (Also “Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride” and oil sketches “The Barn by the Pool” “The Fence on a Hill” and dozens of drawings.)

CG “The Bone Player” is one of the most important Mounts.

TS It absolutely is.

CG Particularly because of the sympathetic manner in which African Americans are depicted in his paintings.

TS There was so much caricature in art at that time as you know but Mount portrayed the black man as a fully intelligent equal.

CG As did (James Goodwin) Clonney (1812-1867) who you sold. (One of six paintings by Clonney all from the Karolik Collection.)

TS Somewhere in there I sold a Clonney but there were several others in the museum. I think that Clonney is more caricatured than Mount but we can argue that.

CG I first saw a number of Binghams in St. Louis.

TS That’s the place to see them.

CG  I’ve never been to Long Island to see the Mounts. We saw “Eel Fishing on the Setauket” in Coopertown at the Fennimore Museum. It conveys the wonderful relationship with the black woman standing to spear fish and the boy steering the boat.  

When you talk about great collections there is the frequent story of the one that got away. What was Karolik’s problem with (Frederic Edwin) Church (1826-1900)?

TS He thought he had a great one “The Finding of Moses” but by a minor painter. It was one of his few mistakes. He should have bought one or two others but for some reason Church was harder to grasp. When Barbara Novak wrote her book “American Painting in the 19th Century” (1969) she skipped Church altogether. Like all Harvard graduate students, we went straight to the MFA and studied the Karolik Collection. For some reason, Church was harder for her, Wilmerding, and I to grasp. For some reason Karolik was also weak on Sanford Gifford but that gap I managed to fill.

CG How did so many paintings by Church end up in the Wadsworth Athenaeum?

TS I’m not sure. Daniel Wadsworth owned all the Coles that are there. Church was from Hartford. But if those Church paintings are ones that Daniel Wadsworth owned, I don’t remember.

CG Where does Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) come into the Karolik Collection?
 
(There are 26 MFA works by Bierstadt of which 24 are in the Karolik Collection.)

TS The Bierstadts in the Karolik collection are very good. He liked Bierstadt a lot. He was the first to buy Bierstadt’s oil sketches. There are ten or fifteen sketches on paper like the one on the wall behind me. (This was a zoom interview and I saw the work behind him.) Nobody was collecting them. They were studies for paintings and didn’t seem collectable to people. Karolik was a pioneer in many ways.

CG Looking through the list of your acquisitions you also bought Colonial paintings including (John) Smibert (1688-1751).

TS There was a lady in Brookline who gave us a beautiful pair of Smiberts. I bought Benjamin West’s (1738-1820) great “King Lear” from the Boston Athenaeum. One of my first purchases was a charming Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) of a young woman “Anna Powell Mason.” It was at Vose’s and I thought it was the most beautiful Stuart I had ever seen. I went back to the museum which had 40 Stuarts and there was nothing as beautiful.

I built on strength. I bought a full length (John Singleton) Copley (1738-1815).

CG That was the “Nathaniel Sparhawk.”

TS Yes. The museum had 50 Copleys but no full-length portrait. When you are a curator of that kind of collection you want to cement it as the absolute best. To see Copley people absolutely have to come to Boston.

CG As I understand it Copley and portrait painters charge by how much of the body is in the picture. As well as how many individuals. So, as a full-length portrait, the Sparhawk would have been an expensive portrait.

TS Copley also charged by size. You could buy a miniature and that was much less. You could buy a pastel the size of a book. He charged more for the larger pictures because the sitters’ arms and legs and backgrounds were difficult to paint. If you paint a couple it’s much more because you have to blend them together.

CG I wonder if he charged more for all the fruit in “Mrs. Ezekiel Goldthwaite.” He was a shrewd businessman starting as a teenager.  Yale owns Smibert’s “The Bermuda Group” which is a complex composition. He holds up well.

TS That’s one of the landmarks of American art.

CG He was trained in England so do you think of him as American or British school?

TS He was American enough. We were short of artists and needed everybody we could find and write about. Whistler, Sargent all those people were equally American.

CG (James Abbott McNeill) Whistler (1834-1903) claimed that he was born in St. Petersburg where his father worked as a military engineer. When reminded that he was born in Lowell, Whistler responded “I will be born when and where I choose.”

Prior to the Lane Collection with the Karolik Collection how does the MFA compare to other American museums in the area of American art?

TS In 1980, when I had been there a couple of years, the best collection of American Art was the Metropolitan Museum’s. Boston was second, and The National Gallery third. By 2000, twenty years later, with the Lane Collection and all these other additions, I acquired 400 paintings, about a fifth of the whole collection. By then you could argue that the MFA had the best American collection.

In those 20 years the Met did very little. The National Gallery with John Wilmerding and curator Nick Cikovsky were very active. By 2000 the MFA and National Gallery had the major collections of American art with the Met now in second place.

CG In my 1984 interview with Jan Fontein I quote a comment from you at that time saying that within the next ten years the MFA would have the nation’s best collection of American art.

TS I don’t remember saying that. Even for me that would be a bit of hubris because collecting takes a lot of luck. But it’s right that I was ambitious.

CG  How did the Lane collection come about? Speaking of luck where would the MFA be without the Lane and Karolik collections?

TS I kept noticing when I went to shows like Marsden Hartley. I was seeing great pictures that said “Lent by the William H. Lane Foundation.” Who was this? I discovered that he lived near Worcester. I wrote to him and said “I would like to come and see you.” It was a day like today crisp and clear. John Walsh and I drove out. We had a noon appointment. I knocked on the door, barely touched it, and it flew open. This big guy, shaped like you, said “Where have you guys been?”

We staggered back and thought, oh my God, are we late, “I thought our appointment was for twelve.” He said “No, where have you been for the past twenty years?”

CG That seems like a good question.

TS Then I discovered that, I think you have this in one of your interviews, Perry Rathbone, whom you underestimate, had discovered who he was and put him on a committee. Then Lane gave one of those colored Franz Klines (1910-1962) to the MFA.

(Susan Morse Hilles, gave a major Kline, “Probst 1,” 1960 to the MFA in 1973)

At some point Perry told Ken Moffett to go see Lane. He went and saw the collection and Bill (Lane) said “What do you think? What can we do together?” According to Bill, Ken said, “I don’t think there’s much here for the MFA.” I hate saying that because it’s so sad.

CG As much as we liked Ken, he was narrow.

TS He was narrow but is it possible to be that narrow? How would you turn down Kline, (Hans) Hofmann (1880-1966) (Arthur) Dove (1880-1946) and (Charles) Sheeler (1880-1965)?

CG In my interview with Fontein I asked, in view of the weakness of the collection, why was Moffett’s turning down gifts? He asked for an example and I told of how Moffett turned down the pick of (Philip) Guston’s (1913-1980) studio. Moffett was not interested in his current work and asked for an older abstract expressionist work. That request was rejected and years later the museum acquired a Guston which was likely not as good as what the artist had initially offered.

TS That’s the sadness and mystery of Moffett who was a very nice man as you know. When I got to the MFA he was the first curator to invite me to lunch. He was a serious and good scholar but he should never have become a curator. He was perfect as a scholar who could have written all the books he wanted about his specialty. But a curator needs a broad vision.

We’re inclined to blame Ken but that was exactly the point of view that the MFA wanted when they hired him in 1971.

CG What you really mean is that’s what the trustee Louis Cabot wanted.

TS Yes, Louis Cabot and a group of other collectors. But ever since Michael Fried’s 1965 exhibition, at the Fogg, Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and Frank Stella. Boston area collectors had been in love with color field; that was modern art as they saw it. The Fogg immediately bought a big Morris Louis (1912-1962). By the time that Ken got to the MFA that was Boston’s taste and where they wanted to go, Color Field paintings.

CG During that time when you visited American museums that was what you saw in lobbies and contemporary galleries.

TS I have spent a lot of time sorting out the differences of taste between New York and Boston. It’s interesting to see what a curator can do like Sam Hunter (1923-2014) at Brandeis in his five years (1960-1965). Every other Boston collector and curator rejected the ‘crudity’ of Pop art and New York taste, sadly. That was a decade earlier than Ken. The Rose still has the best collection of modern art in the area.

CG I was an undergraduate when Hunter was the first director of the Rose Art Museum. As a journalist for The Justice I wrote about him, particularly for ignoring undergraduates. He held a huge Poses Foundation colloquium after graduation. Many New York artists came and were put up in the dormitories. It was a who’s who from Motherwell to Guston. I lived in Brookline so I saw what other students missed. The entire NY art world came for his Larry Rivers opening. The champagne never stopped flowing and Larry played sax with his jazz ensemble.

With a gift of $50,000 from the New York collector Leon Mnuchin, and his wife Harriet Gervitz-Mnuchin, Sam made numerous studio visits and bought some 25 works. Hunter told me he might have bought a single work but wisely spent it on emerging artists.

Bill Seitz was director after Hunter. We had lunch with Frank Stella at the Faculty Club.  Because of student and faculty involvement with radical politics giving to Brandeis dried up. There was a minimal budget when Carl Belz took over at the Rose.

I often visited and interviewed Belz. He pulled out thick acquisition folders which we went through. The most Hunter paid was $3,000 for the Jasper Johns (B. 1930) painting “Drawer.” A Claes Oldenburg (B. 1929) “TV Dinner” was a couple hundred dollars. When Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz tried to sell the collection in 2009, it was estimated to be worth some $300 million. The collection was founded in 1961 and had grown to 7,000 works. The MFA in that period pales by comparison to the Rose. It is a great example of how vision and risk taking are crucial to establishing great collections.

TS There should be a statue of Sam Hunter next to the Rose. He’s never gotten enough credit.

CG I knew and liked Ken. We could not have been more different in taste but had a very cordial relationship. At the MFA he was open to working with guest curators.

TS What curators did he work with in Boston?

CG John Arthur did a very successful Richard Estes (B. 1932) show. Chris Cook, then director of the ICA on leave from the Addison Gallery, did a Douglas Huebler (1924-1997) show. It was a time when the ICA was in transition at the Parkman House on Beacon Hill before its move to Boylston Street.

When the Evans Wing was closed for renovation Ken was assigned to curate the MFA’s temporary galleries at Quincy Market. One of his most amazing projects was the Anthony Caro (1924-2013) York Series of metal sculptures. They were displayed on Mass Avenue on the grassy area in front of the Christian Science Church.

TS The Caros were wonderful and stand up well.  

CG Of course there is a great tragedy of what he was trying to do. His strategy was to make formalism the focus of the contemporary collection. The crown jewel was to be the Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) masterpiece “Lavender Mist” (1950). It was Merrill Rueppel who rejected that acquisition.

TS Who actually ended it was Betty Jones who was the head of paintings conservation. She loved to give negative opinions about pictures. She did the same thing when the great John Trumbull (1756-1843) “The Sortie from Gibraltar” from the Boston Athenaeum was offered for sale. The Met bought it immediately after the MFA turned it down. She did that with “Lavender Mist” and the trustees in that situation were looking for an excuse not to go ahead. She was a much beloved and trusted person at the museum. That was the end of it.

I wasn’t there at the time. But if the curator and director really believe in something, they can get it done. As you point out the director didn’t back it but the curator has to be willing to fall on his sword. That’s your legacy. That’s what you live for; to get that work into the museum.

CG Ken told me the story chapter and verse. He went with the truck to Long Island to pick up the painting from (Alfonso Angel Yangco) Ossorio (1916 –1990). He convinced the collector to sell Pollock’s masterpiece for under a million dollars. Then the disaster with the acquisition’s committee. In his version they called in “the new man” (Rueppel) and he was the one who raised the issues of the stability of the surface. What if some of the paint flaked off? That’s when the conservator was called in stating that she had no experience with that kind of painting.

Imagine the contemporary collection if its centerpiece was “Lavender Mist?” Also, he had a very good David Smiths (1906-1965) “Cubi XVIII” (and “Vig VII).

I understood that Wayne Andersen of MIT had proposed the “Cubi” for City Hall Plaza. That didn’t happen. In fact, there are no works of art on that vast open space.

TS I don’t know about that.

CG Going back to Lane he may be described as eccentric. Everything he bought had to fit into his station wagon. He was on a mission and loaded it to bring works to New England libraries, small museums, and schools. His intent was to use the collection to educate people about modern art. When an exhibition ended, he packed it up and drove it home. That had been going on for years before its acquisition by the MFA.

Most of the work was purchased from the Downtown Gallery.

(Edith Gregor Halpert (née Edith Gregoryevna Fivoosiovitch) 1900–1970. Her Downtown Gallery was founded in 1926.)

TS That’s correct but he went to other galleries as well. When the weather was nice, on weekends, he would drive to New York in a big old Chevy station wagon. And yes, the works had to fit. He would take a dozen or so pictures and look at them during the week. He would select one or two and take the rest back the following weekend. So, it was constant looking and learning.

CG He visited the studio of Franz Kline.

TS He knew Kline well.

CG The colored paintings were in the studio during a time when the artist was evolving to black and white paintings. Lane preserved a transitional period.

TS Exactly. Lane was an instinctive scholar. He never graduated from college but he wanted to know the roots of the art. When he bought an artist, he wanted to know what the early work looked like. He did the same with Hofmann and Dove.

He asked Kline for advice. He said, I’ve got you and Hofmann, who else should I be collecting? Kline said you should go see Jackson Pollock. Lane went to the Broome Street Bar. Pollock already had too much to drink and was rude to Lane. He went home and never bought a Pollock. That could have been a turning point (for the collection).

CG There were famous collectors who were bargain hunters. They would visit studios and try to strike deals to buy a number of works at cut-rate prices. That often resulted in acquiring a phase or moment in the artist’s development. That happened notably with Walter Chrysler and Joseph Hirshorn.

I worked with Lester Johnson on a traveling exhibition of his work. He told me how (J. Patrick) Lannan came and said “How much is this one? How much is that one? Then how much for all of them.”

TS Roy Newberger would do that. He would visit a gallery exhibition and buy the whole show.

CG Did Lane do that? Was he a bargain hunter?

TS  Not at all. He never bargained and always paid the price that was asked. The strange thing is that the most he ever paid was the same amount that was the most that Karolik ever paid. Which was $2,500. Edith Halpert showed him the Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) of the deer’s head. It was a classic O’Keeffe. Lane said “OMG I can’t believe it is still available.” He thought he was very lucky because everyone else with education and taste was buying School of Paris.

My theory is that great collectors are often outsiders like Karolik and Lane.

CG Another bargain hunting collector was Walter Chrysler. He had a museum in Provincetown before establishing one in Norfolk Virginia.

TS He was known for collecting fakes.

CG I have done research on Provincetown artists. He bought them in depth so the museum is key for that research.

If we may move in a different direction. You sent me some of your essays as well as a video disc of the MFA interview with Matthew Teitelbaum. Reading histories of the early years of the museum, its directors, trustees and collectors, there is the perception of a commitment to collecting the artists of Boston from colonial times through the present.

The museum has had major exhibitions celebrating that legacy including New England Begins; The Seventeenth Century, Paul Revere’s Boston, Back Bay Boston: The City as a Work of Art, The Bostonians: Painters of an Elegant Age, 1870-1930, The Boston Tradition: American Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Paintings by New England Provincial Artists, 1775-1800, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940.

These survey exhibitions end between 1930 and 1940. That’s precisely when there was a paradigm shift and the leading Boston artists were immigrants and individuals of Jewish heritage. There was a recent show of Hyman Bloom: Matters of Life and Death but the MFA has no interest to create a survey of Boston artists in the post war era.

During your MFA lecture you discussed anti-Semitism that Karolik experienced. You collected Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951) and Edmund C. Tarbell (1862-1938) in depth but not the Boston expressionists; Hyman Bloom (1913-2009), Jack Levine (1915-2010), and Karl Zerbe (1903-1972).

TS I particularly liked Zerbe’s work. Lane and I had a long negotiation about what he was going to include in our acquisition. I got the Hyman Bloom of the female corpse which I always liked. And I got two Zerbes including “Job” a wonderful painting. You and I disagree on this but I thought this represented them well. I was never enthusiastic enough about their work to form a large collection of their work.

CG This is the first time that I’m hearing this. To be honest I’m astonished. Those are such important acquisitions. The Bloom female corpse is a major picture and one of the great pieces in the Lane collection. What was your role in that?  The “Job” is also a great Zerbe. How did that fall in place?

TS There they were in the Lane collection. Very few pictures were on the wall (of his home). He had a storage area in his house, like in a museum, where everything was on racks. I should pull out for you from my archive a couple of earlier proposals. I would write to him and say we would like these sixty or seventy pictures. He would write back and say “You’re an idiot.” (laughing) So I would start again. I can’t exactly remember the sequence.

CG In what sense were you and idiot?

TS I don’t think he used that word but he would say you’re on the wrong track. I was asking for too much of this and not enough of that. I wasn’t doing well enough by Sheeler say, or Dove. Honestly, I forget the details of that. For a future conversation I could probably reconstruct it.

CG Who bought the Bloom? Who bought the Zerbe? Did he buy those paintings?

TS He owned them.

CG So you weren’t involved in their purchase?

TS No. (off mic) I’m looking for my catalogue of the Lane Collection. He bought the Bloom from Durlacher Brothers in 1958. That was a pretty late acquisition. By then he had mostly stopped. He already owned them and I had nothing to do with their original acquisition.

CG He never bought a work by Jack Levine.

TS No. He didn’t like figurative painting. He was interested in abstract painting.

CG Aren’t Bloom and Zerbe figurative?

TS They are more abstract than Levine. Basically, Lane was very much an abstraction guy but he must have seen the abstract strengths of Bloom and Zerbe. Levine was an excellent painter but didn’t have that same sense of underlying abstraction. It’s possible that’s how Lane viewed it.

CG Did you see the MFA’s Bloom show?

TS My protegee Erica E. Hirshler did it.

CG Did it change your thinking about Bloom?

TS She did a fantastic job and I also saw the Bloom show at the Alexander Gallery in New York. I read Erica’s book very carefully. She made the best possible case for Bloom. I took a lot of different people through that show trying to get people to look at it.

CG The question is, did it change your opinion of the artist?

TS It enriched my view. There were a lot of paintings I had never seen before. It didn’t change the way I would rank him.

CG Ok, how do you rank him?

TS I rank him as a very interesting not quite great painter. Because of his local background, absolutely worth showing at the MFA and worth acquiring.

CG When you were a curator at the Fogg Art Museum did you ever visit the prints and drawings room and view the juvenilia of Bloom and Levine? As teenagers they were students at Harvard of Denman Ross.

TS I did. They were both terrific draughtsmen.

CG When you were a Fogg curator why was it never discussed to show that work?

TS I thought there were better things to show.

CG (laughing) OK. But considering the importance of these two artists, that they were native Bostonians, their unique relationship to Harvard and the Fogg. Their relationship to Denman Ross. One could think of so many reasons to organize an exhibition of their work owned by the Fogg. It’s a tremendous oversight not to show that work.

(Hirshler included some of the Fogg’s Bloom drawings in her MFA exhibition.)

TS I didn’t do it. I’m guilty. In another five or ten years (at the Fogg from which he is now retired) I might well have. They are very good drawings and I love showing things that haven’t been seen, underrated and so on.

CG How do you respond to the notion that you failed to collect Boston artists after the era of the American Impressionists? How can you be such a supporter of Benson, a saccharine, mediocre painter, and fail to see the genius of a painter of corpses? I can’t understand that.

(The 1969 publication “American Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” lists eight works by Benson, six by Tarbell, one by Bloom, two by Jack Levine including one from the WPA, and none by Zerbe. The Lane collection doubled Bloom to two works and added two by Zerbe. The museum continues not to have a major work by Levine. It is anticipated that the Hirshler exhibition will result in gifts of works by Bloom.)

TS Nobody is perfect. I was only in charge of contemporary art (at the MFA) for two years. Mostly my bailiwick didn’t include the Boston expressionists. When the Lane collection came, I might say I could have gone into that. But I thought I had more important things to do.

(When John Walsh left for the Getty Museum, and with a hiatus in the contemporary department, Theodore E. Stebbins, chaired three departments. He seized the opportunity to acquire American and European modern and contemporary art. There were huge gaps to fill when works that now command millions were relatively affordable.)

CG You were interested in the group of Northampton realists.

TS I’m glad you noticed that they were worth noting and recording. The realism that Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000) and others practiced shouldn’t be forgotten. I have great respect for abstract art but I don’t think it’s fair or right to neglect talented people like that. They were very honest and dedicated artists.

CG Greg was a genius of his generation. No less so his first wife Frances Cohen Gillespie (1939-1998). Also, Jane Lund (B. 1939), Randall Deihl (B. 1946), and Scott Prior (B. 1949).

TS I got a great Scott Prior of his wife “Nanny and Rose” (1983) on their porch.

CG You acquired a group portrait by Randall Deihl.

TS That painting “Lust for Life” is a great visual summary of those artists. I got to know them. They are connected to Boston. In a way they were local artists and homogeneous enough a group to make sense of. I didn’t see anything like that in Boston.

CG I was embedded with the Boston art world and greatly disagree. Did you look at Henry Schwartz (1917-2009), Gerry Bergstein (B. 1947), (Bob Ferrandini, and Domingo Barreres)?

TS I didn’t think much of Schwartz’s work but I liked Bergstein’s. He’s absolutely one of the best Boston painters. I had one in the exhibition of Boston collectors.

CG You’re holding up the catalogue. Who were the important collectors? Other than Graham Gund and the Paines (Stephen and Susan)? I regarded Gund primarily as a checkbook collector in the sense that he was buying already established, blue chip artists.

TS Checkbook or not, in this catalogue (Boston Collects 1986) you see Graham owning some fabulous works.  Some of the best artists in America including Frank Stella (B. 1936) at his absolute best. He owns a great Jasper Johns (B. 1930) a couple of (Mark) Rothkos (1903-1970). He was after big game. You can’t talk about would you rather have a Rothko or a Gerry Bergstein? I was trying to catch up to help put the MFA on the map.

CG Your point is well taken. But we are talking about great collectors like Maxim Karolik and William Lane. In a sense they were first responders. As you have commented, what Karolik collected inspired you and other graduate students at Harvard. The collector had discovered luminism not curators and critics. You learned of those artists through his vision. The same may be said of Lane who was unique in buying artists before taste, criticism, and the market caught up to him.

Gund, and wealthy collectors like Eli Broad (whose collection was shown at the MFA) did nothing to establish the career and reputation of the artists they acquired. When they bought work, it went to the highest bidder. Compare that to say, Robert Scull, who bought from studios and established the market value for Pop artists. There was great resentment when he cashed in on that body of work. Like Charles Saatchi he used the money to refinance collecting the next generation.

Dorothy and Herbert Vogel were people of modest means who filled an apartment with works of minimalism. The artists became their friends. What they acquired for a pittance became priceless. They were true collectors.

Karolik and Lane were risk takers. They were ahead of the curve. They were taste makers who made the MFA what it is today.

TS You’re absolutely right. What Karolik and Lane did is hard to imagine. Don’t forget that Lane did it again when he discovered photography in the late 1960s. He formed the greatest private collection of photography in the world.

CG What about the Wagstaff collection?

(Samuel J. Wagstaff Jr. (1921-1987) was a curator, patron and collector. In 1973, with the assistance of his lover Robert Mapplethorpe, he believed that art photography was significantly undervalued. Over the next decade, he assembled one of the most important private collections of photographs in the world. He sold his collection to the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1984.)

TS Sam was a very good collector and adventurous in later decades. Lane was there in the late 1960s. So, they are very different. I love the Wagstaff collection. In collecting, how a few people get into things before anyone else does, is one of the great mysteries.

CG Do you believe that the museum has an obligation to collect the artists of Boston; to support local galleries and the art community? This has been the case in other cities. Most notably in Chicago and of course New York or LA. That in turn enhances the national reputations of artists and communities. To some extent that exists with the former Boston Now exhibitions of the ICA currently the annual Foster Prize. There have been annual New England surveys of the De Cordova museum. The MFA has the sporadic Maud Morgan Prize for women artists.

TS I know that’s your favorite subject. I admire what you’ve done with that. The Boston artists need a champion and you, Sinclair Hitchings, and some others filled that role admirably. (Marjorie) Jerry Cohn was the long-time print curator at Harvard. She spent a lot of time going to see local artists and buying prints. That was a fantastic, wonderful thing. The local printmakers were connected and recognized. Their works are now in Harvard’s distinguished collection.

For me, I had limited responsibility in contemporary art for a short time. During that period, I wanted to acquire the best available modern artists. I had a brief opening to do that. Buying Boston school painters wasn’t on my agenda. Sorry to say.

(Those artists have been collected by the Boston Public Library, the Danforth Museum, The De Cordova Museum, Fitchburg Art Museum, The Rose Art Museum and The Provincetown Art Association and Museum.)

CG I liked your comment that you were a big game hunter. There’s nothing wrong with that.

TS Boston had so far to catch up. Still has.

CG That game wasn’t big because you made it big. It was already big. You just had a big rifle.

TS I had a nice-sized rifle. The 1980s was a great moment in time. Works by great artists could still be bought for a few hundred thousand dollars or less. Like Warhol, Lichtenstein, Richter, those works cost millions now.

CG Does that describe the (Anselm) Kiefer (B. 1945, “Untitled” 1984)?

TS We got that (from Marian Goodman Gallery) for about $70,000. At the time that was a ton of money. I don’t think the (George) Baselitz (B. 1938) was much more.

CG In my 1984 interview with Jan Fontein, I quoted from a then recent Boston Globe article with MFA curator Amy Lighthill. She stated that “You can buy twenty Doug Andersons (B. 1954) for the price of one work by Chuck Close (B. 1940).” Who hired Amy?

TS I did.

CG If you describe me as a champion of Boston artists, she certainly had that role. She was close to artists and the community.

TS Amy is a very wonderful person. As you say, she was very dedicated to artists. But in retrospect, hiring her was a mistake of mine. I could have hired anybody. When I met Amy I was so excited. She seemed good. I should have looked for a better trained, more intellectual, young modernist. It wasn’t Amy’s fault at all. She did well and was nice to work with. I feel badly about this but I put her in a position she wasn’t quite equipped for. Looking back, what it meant for history, I didn’t do her a great service, or the museum.

On the other hand, she did a wonderful show of Sean Scully (B. 1945). He is a very tough painter whose reputation continues to rise. She also did a very good Leon Golub (1922-2004) exhibition. Those are two excellent shows that Ken (Moffett) would never have done. Ones I wouldn’t have thought of doing myself.

CG Wasn’t she close to the Northampton group? Wasn’t it through Amy that the museum acquired Gillespie’s “Imaginary Pregnancy?”

TS I don’t think so, though it’s possible. I went several times to see Greg and his wife Peggy. I don’t remember Amy being part of that. But I could be wrong.

CG I had negotiated with Nielsen gallery to curate an exhibition of Gillespie’s psychedelic paintings. They didn’t sell, but it was very interesting work and I was excited about showing it. Just before the show he died (suicide) and the project was cancelled.

TS That was such a shock and I still remember when I heard about it. Did you see the show we did with Greg and Fran’s work?

(Life as Art, Paintings by Gregory Gillespie and Frances Cohen Gillespie, 2003-2004. From Harvard’s PR “In conjunction with the exhibition Life as Art, a fully illustrated catalogue-the first publication of the Fogg Art Museum’s new department of American art-has been produced. The publication includes essays by the Stebbinses on the lives and work of the Gillespies, and an essay by Fred Licht, curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, on the dark side of Gregory Gillespie’s work. The catalogue draws on Gregory’s unpublished journals, which were made available by the Gregory Gillespie Trust, and an extensive series of letters from Frances to her friend the novelist Zane Kotker, who shared them with the authors.

“In November 2002, the Harvard University Art Museums established the department of American art at the Fogg Art Museum and appointed Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., as its first curator of American art. The exhibition is organized by Stebbins, along with his wife, Susan Ricci Stebbins, an independent scholar; both shared personal and professional relationships with the Gillespies.”)

CG I was close to Fran and included her in a 1988 traveling exhibition (Maris Gallery, Westfield State College, Montserrat College of Art and The Dodge Gallery, Northeastern University) Here’s Looking at You: Contemporary New England Portraits (James Aponovich, Gerry Bergstein, Mira Cantor, Randall Deihl, Elsa Dorfman, Frances Cohen Gillespie, Jane Lund, Scott Prior, Suzanne Vincent, Kelly Wise and David Zaig.)

The painting by Frances was “Leah-Rome” which she sold to Ellen Poss. She had started it in 1985 and kept working on it until the last minute. Just before her untimely death she formed a relationship with a scientist. She seemed to have reached real happiness. I’m so pleased that you acquired a painting (“Purple Gloxinia”) for the MFA.

TS When my wife and I were in Rome she was spending a year there at The American Academy and we got to know her well.

CG You talk about that two-year window of collecting for the MFA. How did that come about? You expanded your portfolio from Heade to Kiefer.

TS My introduction to art started 1960-1965 with Robert Neuman (1926-2015), Albert Alcalay (1917-2008), and Pace Gallery which Arnie Glimcher started (on Newbury Street) in Boston in the 1960s. That’s when I was attending Harvard Law School. I immediately met these painters. I still like the work of Bob Neuman who is a very underrated Boston painter. The sculptor Mirko was also at Harvard.

I had background and enthusiasm in the contemporary field. I had worked with Bill Lane which was all modern art. There was a lot of pressure on Jan Fontein that the contemporary program wasn’t going anywhere. At some point he asked me to take it over. I’m glad I did it but I regret that Ken Moffett (1934-2016) was treated badly by the MFA.

CG Not just the MFA. There was a lot of concern about the contemporary program from the Boston art world. Pam Allara, a Brandeis professor and critic, made harsh public statements.

TS It’s a shame as Ken was a very decent guy. He shouldn’t have been in the job to start with.

CG Was he forced out?

TS Oh yes. So, there I was and John Walsh had left (to head the Getty Museum). What you should ask me is “Where did you get the money to buy Warhol and Kiefer?” When Walsh left, I became head of the paintings department. European and American painting were in one department. Then I also became head of contemporary art. So, it was at my discretion how to spend the acquisitions money for paintings. I spent it to get the best for the museum. On Kiefer, Gerhard Richter (B. 1932), Francesco Clemente (B. 1952), Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015). I bought a great Joseph Stella (1877-1946) of the “Brooklyn Bridge,” Warhol, Alice Neel (1900-1984) “Linda Nochlin and Her Daughter Daisy.” I acquired works by California artists like Joan Brown (1938-1990) and Robert Hudson (B. 1938).

CG Can we talk about the museum’s politics at that time. There was a lot of pressure on Jan Fontein and dissatisfaction with his overall performance and administrative skills. There was talk of a tearful breakdown during a trustee’s meeting. That’s second hand information. When I did an interview with him in 1984, he was then 59-years-of age. He was surprised when I asked his plans after retirement two years from then. He wanted to know where I heard that?

In fact, he was gone three years later. I heard that the plan was for Jan to be forced out and that Walsh would become director. It came as a surprise when Walsh departed for the Getty. So, arguably, Jan survived a bit longer.

Fontein left earlier than he could or should have. There seem to be a couple of reasons in play. Often museum directors leave after completing major brick and mortar projects, acquisitions, or programming. That also occurs when directors loose the confidence of curators and trustees. There was an undercurrent that shortened Jan’s time and then a revolt of curators that quickly routed Merrill Rueppel who followed. When Walsh went to the Getty, Clementine Brown (MFA PR) said to me, “He’ll be back in a couple of years.” If he could be MFA director why would he want to go to the Getty?  Walsh was the presumptive heir at the MFA and that was a lot of pressure on Fontein.

TS That’s quite accurate. John was a very attractive, well-spoken guy. He was well liked and respected. He did good shows, Chardin, and others at the MFA. He was talked about as the future director. There was no question about that. That must have made Jan nervous, though he was a pretty secure guy. Everyone assumed that Jan would leave in a year or so and that John would become director. Then he suddenly left for the Getty which, arguably, is one of the top museum jobs in the world. Yes, Jan might have stayed longer, and surely wanted to but I don’t know any of the inside details. I just don’t know what forced him out.

CG Around that time great pictures by Manet and Cezanne were showing up in the galleries as loans from a private collection. I investigated and found that they were acquired by a Boston billionaire, William I. Koch. They were acquired through his foundation. I pulled the tax records at the charity desk of the attorney general. The documents revealed that Walsh, while an MFA curator, was paid some $25,000 annually as a consultant. That was then equivalent to a third of Fontein’s salary as director. We reported it in coverage for the Patriot Ledger. I called for comment and asked Fontein if he knew of this arrangement? He said that he did which greatly surprised me. By then, Walsh had just been appointed to head the Getty.

TS Fontein did know. That arrangement had to be cleared by the director and Howard Johnson, the chairman of the board. I remember the discussion. They OK’d it. So, you were wrong on that one.

CG What’s your view of that? Isn’t it the job of curators to cultivate and work with collectors?

TS Yes.

CG Was that arrangement ethical?

TS I’m too close to John to have an opinion about that.

CG You say that everyone knew about it.

TS Howard and Jan knew about it. Beyond that I don’t know who knew.

CG You came up in my interview with (art dealer) Mario Diacono. He didn’t speak well of the Boston art world, to which he made few if any sales, but praised your interest and support. (Purchase of a painting by Ross Bleckner.)

TS It’s so sad. One of the great tragedies of Boston is that they missed the boat, not only on Mario, but countless other aspects of modern art; anything made after the Armory Show of 1913. I told Jan, “It’s not too late” this was the early 1980s. “It’s not too late to rectify our position in the modern art world. In that field we are about the 60th or 70th ranked museum in America. It’s embarrassing. For the next decade all of the museum’s acquisition funds should be spent on modern art. He said “OMG. The curators would kill me. The trustees would kill me. I could never do that.”

CG You actually had that conversation?

TS Yes, basically, for the two years when I was in charge, that’s what I did. Then Kathy Halbreich (from MIT’s List Visual Arts Center) was appointed curator of contemporary art, soon followed by Trevor Fairbrother. They didn’t have the funds I had and Jan didn’t make the effort to get it for them.

CG You said that Jan was helpful to you in terms of acquisitions.

TS He loved objects. He liked people. He loved collecting. The director is all powerful. If he doesn’t like your proposal it’s dead in the water. It doesn’t go to the trustees unless the director approves. Jan approved everything I proposed. He understood it and wasn’t just rubber stamping. With Lane I said “I’ve got this great collector who I’ve visited a couple of times. He’s been badly hurt by the museum and needs to know we’re serious.” A month later I drove Jan and Howard Johnson out to Bill Lane’s house. We came hat in hand to say that we were sorry about that happened before. We’re here to say we love you and we love your collection.  Jan was an active guy.

CG Of the 400 works you acquired how many were from Lane?

TS The Lane collection included a hundred works.

There are only two reasons to acquire something. You’re adding to strength or filling in gaps. You always use one of those two arguments when trying to persuade the trustees. I tried to do both.

You criticized acquiring Benson, Tarbell and those people. They were Brahmins without a doubt but they could produce. Three quarters of their paintings are pretty bad paintings. I was after the top five percent and the MFA didn’t have their very best work. I felt it was my duty to acquire them. Some we got through gifts. Some we purchased.

CG If they were the best Boston artists of their generation why would you not extend collecting to the next generation?

TS We already had that discussion. I don’t know. We already talked about that.

CG You’re not going to budge.

TS No. I would like to please you but I would do the same again. Someone like Hyman Bloom doesn’t have the national or international legs. He doesn’t have the grandeur of a great artist. He literally lays out everything in front of your eyes. What the art world is looking for is subtlety and abstraction. Complexity. With Bloom it’s very interesting, beautiful and powerful. But he doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. He seems to me to be a follower of Soutine, and not a modernist in any way. He didn’t grow over the years.  You and I just see that differently. I admire the paintings but don’t see them as deserving of a national or international reputation.

If you go to Chicago you will see a whole gallery of Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (1897 –1983). He’s sort of Chicago’s Hyman Bloom. He’s a better painter and deserves to have paintings on view at the Museum of Modern Art. Bloom doesn’t quite reach that level in my view. That’s how I see it.

CG We’re beating a dead horse. But Boston (particularly the MFA) dropped the ball on supporting its (post war) artists. Period. Bloom’s reputation today would be different if the MFA and ICA did more to support its artists. There were some Bloom and Boston expressionist shows from the ICA of Stephen Prokopoff, to DeCordova, Danforth Museum, and Fuller Museum of Art.

If major institutions provide limited support for Boston’s artists how can we expect museums beyond the city limits to take an interest?

TS Not it wouldn’t. MoMA gave Bloom every chance in the world. They showed him in 1942. He was shown at the Venice Biennale. The art world goes to Venice and they all saw the work. There were traveling retrospectives in the 1950s and not enough people saluted. In Boston or out of Boston. Bloom had every chance. He wasn’t neglected but not enough people reacted.

CG I appreciate your point of view and am grateful for the opportunity to talk with you. I enjoy the push back. There are few opportunities to engage with someone with knowledge and passion. Too few even care.

TS But you care and I care so it is a pleasure.

CG I delight in this opportunity and the insights are invaluable.

Let’s turn our attention to the relationship between the MFA and ICA. In the 1950s, when Thomas Messer was director of the ICA, there was a plan to merge with the MFA as a department of modern/ cotemporary art. Messer would become an MFA curator. In fact, he advised on some acquisitions which have held up well. This is discussed in an Archives of American Art interview between Messer and Bob Brown who then headed an AAA office on Beacon Hill. Rathbone killed that.

TS This comes up every decade or two. I’m sure that Rathbone killed it for a whole variety of reasons we could talk about. Boston is a richer place with both institutions. You can’t attach a small adventurous institution onto a larger cumbersome one. It doesn’t work. It’s better that they didn’t combine. Look at what Jill Medvedow has accomplished.

CG I’ve heard those arguments and disagree with them. There are two points. The ICA after Messer, then Sue Thurman, for a time nearly perished. Since the 1960s there were instances of triage. For a small enterprise it was a chronic overachiever but there was a constant struggle to survive.

Had the merger gone through the MFA would have had a strong modernist program a generation before launching one in 1971. The few acquisitions that Messer was involved with give a glimpse of what might have been.

Rathbone insisted on being his own curator which was hit and miss for modern art and mostly miss for contemporary art. Because he knew Max Beckmann (1884-1950) he had a taste for German expressionism. Despite the fact that Perry was treated badly, and ousted by the trustees, he donated his Beckmann portrait to the MFA, as did curator Hanns Swarzenski, the portrait that Beckmann painted of him.

(In 1946, Beckmann painted a double portrait of Curt Valentin, an art dealer who directed the Buchholz Gallery in New York, and Hanns Swarzenski. Upon Valentin’s death in 1954 it passed to Dr. Swarzenski who gave it to the MFA.)

In general, particularly the Busch Reisinger Museum, and what (James Sachs) Plaut and Messer showed, Boston’s taste was for Northern European art.

Moffett was appointed in 1971. I quote you as telling me in the 1970s that “The MFA recognizes 20th century art now that it’s almost over.” Do you recall saying that?

TS No, but it sounds so good you can keep quoting me.

CG You worked with David Ross on the Binational. It was a rare instance when the MFA and ICA collaborated.

(In 1988 the MFA and ICA jointly presented The BiNational: Art of the Late ’80s in cooperation with the Stadtische Kunsthalle and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen of Dusseldorf and with support from the Mass. Council on the Arts and Humanities, AT&T Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The multi-venue exhibitions presented emerging American and German artists. The MFA team included Stebbins and Trevor Fairbrother. David Ross, Elizabeth Sussman, and David Joselit comprised the ICA’s.)

TS I don’t remember it in detail but it was an extraordinary experience. David Ross was a totally fun, charismatic person to work with. He connected us with an excellent German team headed by Jurgen Harten. Later, he had a Pollock/ Siqueiros show and I persuaded him to add (photographer) Edward Weston (1886-1958). I sent a selection (from the Lane collection) and they fit in beautifully with the abstract painters.

CG Let’s talk about Pollock’s “Troubled Queen” (1945, acquired 1984).

TS I saw it in a gallery I had never been to before (Stephen Hahn). I thought that’s an ugly, powerful, important painting.

CG When “Lavender Mist” was turned down Ken later bought a smaller drip painting (“Number 10” 1949) which he maintained was a very good Pollock.

TS Yes, but it was not great enough by itself to show a major American artist. Here was a 1945 painting with a bit of drip in it and two anguished figures. I had to have it. That really enriched the collection and linked Pollock to earlier expressionist painters.

It’s a powerful painting. I remember when I showed it to Jack Gardner, an old trustee at the MFA. He said “Will it last?” I said, “Mr. Gardner, do you mean physically, its materials, or do you mean aesthetically?” He meant both.

.CG I recall being shocked when it just showed up hanging in the museum. I wondered where it came from. The wall label read “Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund and Gift of Mrs. Albert J. Beveridge and Juliana Cheney Edwards Collection, by exchange.” In exchange for what I wondered?

(By exchange, 28 November, 1984, with Stephen Hahn Gallery: Two works by Pierre Auguste Renoir; “Young Girl Reading” 16 x13” and “A Woman with Black Hair” pastel on paper, 23 x 18” and Claude Monet’s painting from 1884, “Autumn Scene” 24 x 29.”)

TS The Globe wrote an editorial criticizing the purchase. It was the only time I got bad press but the art world applauded.

CG I was at the Patriot Ledger where my editor, Jon Lehman, and I were about to post the Pollock story. We got a call from Clementine Brown (PR director for the MFA). In a friendly manner she said “Charlie, I heard that you have been poking around. What are you up to?” Jon nodded that we should ask her for confirmation of the deaccessions we had uncovered. She said she would get back to us so we waited to hear from her. The Ledger is an afternoon paper and we missed the deadline waiting for her call. 

The next morning the story ran in the Globe. She had betrayed years of trust working together. We ran a second-day story. That Sunday, the Globe posted the editorial you were mentioned in. They acknowledged that it had been a Patriot Ledger story.

Later Clementine apologized saying that Jan stood over her and insisted that she make the call. It was sure spite. After that I never trusted her for fact checking on stories. That’s a normal journalistic practice with breaking news.

TS Damn. You should have called me. We had sixteen Renoirs and that picture was never shown. To me, the one I sold was the least of them. Actually, it was a great trade.

CG At the time the question that I asked was about trading apples for oranges. In this case, French impressionism, for American abstract expressionism. Is that kosher?

TS Of course. Why not? They are all paintings. I would have traded a Chinese painting if I could have laid my hands on one.

CG (laughing) Boy it’s fun to talk to you. On your watch did you have a relationship with Barry Gaither.

TS Some. I always respected him. I went there.

CG National Center of Afro-American Artists on Elm Hill Avenue in Roxbury.

TS Yes.

CG In addition to important exhibitions Barry also made acquisitions including important Boston, African American artists. Did you ever visit Alan Crite (1910-2007)?

TS No. I knew about his work, Boston street scenes. I thought it was interesting but not MFA quality, top ranked art. 

(There is currently a Crite show at the Boston Athenaeum as well as one at the Gardner Museum. A museum spokesperson told me that the MFA has collected Crite in depth since the 1940s. This leading African American artist was a graduate of the Museum School. An exhibition at the St. Botolph Club occurred during Covid and nobody saw it.
Update; The Boston Athenaeum has a current, 2025, show of Crite.)

CG Of course a lot of work has now come with the Axelrod collection.

(In 2011 sixty-seven works by African American artists were acquired from collector John Axelrod, an MFA Honorary Overseer. Overall, he has donated and sold to the museum some 700 objects. The purchase includes works by almost every major African American artist working during the past century and a half. It was made possible with the support of Axelrod and the MFA’s Frank B. Bemis Fund and Charles H. Bayley Fund. Axelrod has also donated his extensive research library of books about African American artists as well as funds to support scholarships.)

You were involved in negotiations to retain a half stewardship of the Gilbert Stuart portraits of George and Martha Washington.

TS I’m glad you asked about that. I had just arrived at the MFA and learned a couple of years before the Athenaeum asked if the MFA would mind if they sold George and Martha? (They had been a long-term loan to the MFA.) John Coolidge, who was then president of the museum, said, “No, we don’t mind.” I got there and they were about to sell them to the National Portrait Gallery. I said “This is outrageous. They’re Boston treasures.” They had been purchased for Boston by something called The George Washington Trust. It was illegal, outrageous, immoral, and unwise. I created a huge ruckus. Half of the Athenaeum trustees were also MFA trustees. It was a very hard battle to fight.

CG You have earned your art combat medals and wear them well.