Friday, Jul 25, 2008
Artwork that slams Rudy Giuliani's reaction to "Sensation" leads to a little dynastic squabble that may cause the family to withdraw its name -- and not-so-little fortune -- from the museum.
Mar 15, 2000 | In a way, the 1923 photograph in Sunday's New York Post told much of the story: heiress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, great-granddaughter of 19th century robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, standing at the top of a ladder, outstretched arm touching the shoulder of her sculpture of a tall, dashing man in breeches. He squints at the distant horizon, while Gertrude's eyes are lowered; she appears desperate, as if she is losing her grasp on her Art.
Seventy years after Gertrude founded the Whitney Museum of American Art in Greenwich Village, some of her descendants are openly talking about removing the family name -- and, more importantly, a sizable portion of its money -- from the institution. The rift is over a work of art by Hans Haacke, called "Sanitation," which was commissioned by Whitney director Maxwell Anderson for the museum's upcoming 2000 Biennial Exhibition. The installation apparently links Mayor Rudy Giuliani to Nazism, highlighting his denunciations of the recent "Sensation" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
"Sanitation" reportedly consists of quotations -- including three from the mayor about his opposition to "Sensation" -- printed in the Fraktur Gothic typeface favored by Hitler's Third Reich. Beneath the quotations, according to the New York Times, Haacke will place a row of eight to 12 garbage cans, each fitted with a speaker playing the sounds of marching troops. The 2000 Biennial Exhibition opens March 23.
According to the Post, Haacke's art has the Whitney "bluebloods seeing red": Feuding family members include Marylou Whitney, so angry she wants to disinherit and strip the family name from the institution; Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Conner, who called Haacke's work "a horrible thing that desecrates the memory of all Holocaust victims"; and Flora Miller Biddle, who disagrees with her relatives, writing in a letter, "'Sanitation' ... is a wholly legitimate and powerful work." Biddle's daughter, Fiona Donovan, also signed the letter.
"It is regrettable that so many have chosen to lash out at an artist who has consistently been a voice of social conscience," writes Biddle, who like Conner is a granddaughter of Gertrude Whitney. "This country should allow the free and unfettered expression of ideas through art."
If you think the rarefied Whitney clan was horrified to see itself depicted on two consecutive front pages of Rupert Murdoch's loud-mouthed Post -- "THE QUITNEYS," followed by "WHITNEY FAMILY FEUD" -- well, not exactly. The saga began largely in the New York tab's pages, thanks to an "exclusive" interview obtained by Gershe Kuntzman with a "tearful" Marylou, daughter-in-law of Gertrude. "They're trying to do what the Brooklyn Museum [of Art] did, which is raise ticket sales with disgusting art," Whitney told the Post. "So why don't they change their name to 'The Sensation Museum' and get my family's name out of it?" The 73-year-old heiress to the $100 million family fortune is also threatening to take the museum out of her substantial will.
This time New York's mayor has decided to sit out the funding fracas, telling a news conference, "The real concern of the city has to be when public money is being used. If this is privately funded, and I believe that it is, then the governmental objection to it passes away. The government has no right to intervene." But the pugnacious Giuliani couldn't resist taking a swipe at the art: "There is an issue here about demeaning the whole historical and contemporary importance of the Holocaust," he said.
Gertrude Whitney studied sculpture in New York and Paris, opened a Village studio in 1907 and in her career created public sculptures in Washington, New York, Saint-Nazaire, France, and Palos, Spain. A great-granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the American shipping and railroad magnate who acquired a personal fortune of more than $100 million, Gertrude's father (also Cornelius) was a financier and art patron. At age 21 she married Harry Payne Whitney, heir to an oil and tobacco empire. Fortunes merged and multiplied.
A year after New Yorks' Metropolitan Museum of Art spurned her offer to contribute her entire collection of American modernist artists, Gertrude founded a museum of her own. The Whitney, as it is known, opened in November 1931. The museum moved uptown 12 years after Gertrude's death in 1942, first to West 54th Street and finally to West 75th Street and Madison Avenue, where it still resides.
The Whitney dynasty also had strong connections to the arts, as well as politics, publishing and entertainment. John Hay ("Jock") Whitney was a multimillionaire publisher, financier, philanthropist, horse breeder and internationally ranked polo player. He invested in Broadway plays and used his financial muscle to help David O. Selznick obtain the screen rights to "Gone With the Wind" before its publication. He served as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain from 1956 to 1961. He acquired the New York Herald Tribune in 1958 and tried to revive the newspaper until it ran out of steam in 1966.
Jock was also interested in art; he was a trustee of the New York Museum of Modern Art from its inception in 1931 until his death in 1982. Like many of his relatives, he also had one of the finest art collections in the United States. The Whitney family has held some of the world's most valuable art, including works by Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Picasso, Monet and Renoir.
It's hard to imagine what the Old Guard Whitneys would have made of the work of Haacke, who has taken on tough pols like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Haacke is also known for creating a giant pack of cigarettes called "Helmsboro," with the words "Philip Morris funds Jesse Helms" printed on each one.
Anticipating the stink over "Sanitation," Whitney director Anderson released a statement Friday defending Haacke's work, citing a 30-year career that "has consisted of unceasing assaults on authoritarianism in any form, and of exposing the hidden vestiges of Nazism in Germany and Austria." But even Anderson admitted, "I personally recoil at the likening of these contemporary public figures to Nazis and regret the pain that this is causing many." The Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham Foxman, has also taken issue with the museum for its plans to display the work.
In response to her niece and grand-niece's letter, Marylou Whitney said, "The museum is free to associate itself with trash, but I have a right not to associate myself with it." The $1 million she had planned to give the Whitney this year will now be re-directed to the institution's cousin, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art in Cody, Wyo. "My checkbook is out right now."
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