this shop. I haven't made it exactly a secret that I'm not too keen about the available candidates in the field. No matter how much they prate about their administrative abilities, they don't strike me as being nearly on a par with men who've been out in the big hard world of business competition. And yet museums have become big business, and theyâve got to be run accordingly. Not that I minimize the artistic function. Perish the thought! I have no idea of throwing out the baby with the bath water. But what I really wantâand what I hope I can persuade my board to acceptâis a man who can sell a product as well as buy one. I know you can sell this institution. Youâve already proved that. Hell, what more does a museum need? Somebody who can tell you how many angels can stand on the head of a pin or how many choirboys Michelangelo buggered? Fella, you're the answer to a maiden's prayer. Not that Iâm exactly a maiden.â
Mark had prided himself on being nobodyâs fool. He had suspected that behind the chairmanâs pale, smiling face, behind the large, commanding nose, the sleek black hair and watery blue eyes, behind the whole vigorous, alert and well-tailored figure, there probably existed a spirit of ruthlessness and inexorable advantage-seeking. Sidney Claverack was one of those men who never had to raise their voice, though Mark was sure that he could if he had to. His charm, his wit and his innate reason ableness, his gentle, ineluctable, pulverizing reasonableness ("You
do
agree with me, old man, donât you? I knew you wouldâ) could be counted on to bring one around, while the heavier ordnance was left unused in his arsenal, though not to rust there, never to be allowed to rust there. For there just always might be somebody who simply would not be convinced that the present power structure was the right one, for the arts as well as for business, or who stubbornly refused to be persuaded that the man who could not give the public what it wantedâor what its public relations counsel told it to wantâwas a fool who had no place either as an agent or beneficiary of philanthropy. But Markâs business had always been precisely to deal with such public fiduciaries as Sidney. He had to know what he was about.
He also knew that Sidney was a new but increasingly familiar type of trustee in the world of the cultured institution. Instead of devoting his primary ambition to his own business, like the older generation of museum sponsors, and giving his not-for-profit wards simply the benefit of his disinterested wisdom and money, he had left the management of his law firm, in which he had early achieved the first position, to his younger partners and gone on to identify the Museum of North America with himself. It had not, it was true, been his first choice. The United States Senate had been his earlier and perhaps more appropriate goal, but he had lost the race to a Democratic opponent after the expenditure by his backers of so vast a campaign fund that he had not deemed it feasible to raise another. And then, resolutely, spiritedly, he had turned the prow of his battle cruiser to the harbor of the visual arts.
Nor did Mark see anything wrong with this. Why should the arts not be entitled to the best from the world of entrepreneurs? Had not Sidney Claverack put together for his own account a distinguished collection of modern American paintings? Was it not his avowed intention to quadruple the endowment of the museum and bring its attendance to fourth in the city, conceding only the unchallengeable supremacy of the Met, the Modern and the Natural History? When Carol Sweeters had pointed out to Mark that in a recent show of Canadian art at the museum, Claverack had managed to slip in an undue number of canvases by a young painter whose works in his own collection might be expected to appreciate in value by the association, Mark had put it down to that curatorâs well-known
Mark had prided himself on being nobodyâs fool. He had suspected that behind the chairmanâs pale, smiling face, behind the large, commanding nose, the sleek black hair and watery blue eyes, behind the whole vigorous, alert and well-tailored figure, there probably existed a spirit of ruthlessness and inexorable advantage-seeking. Sidney Claverack was one of those men who never had to raise their voice, though Mark was sure that he could if he had to. His charm, his wit and his innate reason ableness, his gentle, ineluctable, pulverizing reasonableness ("You
do
agree with me, old man, donât you? I knew you wouldâ) could be counted on to bring one around, while the heavier ordnance was left unused in his arsenal, though not to rust there, never to be allowed to rust there. For there just always might be somebody who simply would not be convinced that the present power structure was the right one, for the arts as well as for business, or who stubbornly refused to be persuaded that the man who could not give the public what it wantedâor what its public relations counsel told it to wantâwas a fool who had no place either as an agent or beneficiary of philanthropy. But Markâs business had always been precisely to deal with such public fiduciaries as Sidney. He had to know what he was about.
He also knew that Sidney was a new but increasingly familiar type of trustee in the world of the cultured institution. Instead of devoting his primary ambition to his own business, like the older generation of museum sponsors, and giving his not-for-profit wards simply the benefit of his disinterested wisdom and money, he had left the management of his law firm, in which he had early achieved the first position, to his younger partners and gone on to identify the Museum of North America with himself. It had not, it was true, been his first choice. The United States Senate had been his earlier and perhaps more appropriate goal, but he had lost the race to a Democratic opponent after the expenditure by his backers of so vast a campaign fund that he had not deemed it feasible to raise another. And then, resolutely, spiritedly, he had turned the prow of his battle cruiser to the harbor of the visual arts.
Nor did Mark see anything wrong with this. Why should the arts not be entitled to the best from the world of entrepreneurs? Had not Sidney Claverack put together for his own account a distinguished collection of modern American paintings? Was it not his avowed intention to quadruple the endowment of the museum and bring its attendance to fourth in the city, conceding only the unchallengeable supremacy of the Met, the Modern and the Natural History? When Carol Sweeters had pointed out to Mark that in a recent show of Canadian art at the museum, Claverack had managed to slip in an undue number of canvases by a young painter whose works in his own collection might be expected to appreciate in value by the association, Mark had put it down to that curatorâs well-known
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