Anne d'Harnoncourt

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ANNE D HARNONCOURT

7 S E P T E M B E R I 9 4 3 • 1 JUNE 2OO8

PROCEEDINGS OF TH E AMERICAN PHILOSOPH ICAL SOCIETY VOL 156 N O 3 SEPTEMBER 2012



B I O G R A P H I C A L M E M O I R S

N N D H A R N O N C O U R T was born to a family distinguished

r^L in the arts. Her father, René d Ha rnonco urt, was for nearlyJL J L twenty years director of the Museum of Modern Art in NewYork and the famed Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt washer cousin. After attending the Brearley School in New York City, shetook her B.A. at Radcliffe College (1965) and her M.A. at the Cour-tauld Institute of Art, London University (1967), and began her careeras curatorial assistant at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1967 to1969. After serving two years as assistant curator of twentieth-centuryart at the Art Institute of Chicago (196 9-71), where she married Joseph

J. Rishel (APS; currently Gisela and Denis Alter Senior Curator of Eu-ropean Painting before 1900 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art andsenior curator of the John G. Johnson Collection and the Rodin Mu-seum), she returned with her husband to the Philadelphia Museum,where both took up full curatorial appointments, she as curator oftwentieth-century art (1972-8 2). In 1982 she was named the George D.Widener Director, and in 1997, upon Robert M ontgomery Scott s re-tirement, she became the George D. Widener Director and chief execu-tive officer of the Philadelphia Museum. Her sudden and quite un-expected death in 2008 in the fullness of her career and at the height ofher accomplishments sent shock waves throughout the museum and itssupporters, the city of Philadelphia, the national and international artwo rld, and her thou sands of friends everywhere.

Anne made her mark quickly as a curator, notably as a specialist onMarcel Duchamp. In 1973 she co-organized with Kynaston McShine amajor retrospective of the artist s work , also shown at the Museum ofModern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago and accompanied by an

indispensable catalogue. She also oversaw, in collaboration with theartist s widow, Alexina (Teeny) Duchamp, and stepson, Paul M atisse,the installation of the a rtist s sensational last work. Étants donnés:1) La chute d eau, 2) Le gaz d éclairage, also publishing, with WalterHopps, the fundamental study of this unsettling work. She organizedthe important exhibitions Futurism and the Avant-Garde (1980) andJohn Cage: Scores and rints (1982), all the while building the Philadel-phia Museum collection through acquisition of works by Jasper Johns,Brice Marden , Agnes M artin, and Ellsworth Kelly, among many others.

As director, she was especially effective in acquiring for Philadelphiaworks important to the cultural and artistic patrimony of the city,among them John Singleton Copley s ortrait of Mr. and Mrs. ThomasMifflin (1773) and Jean-Antoine Ho udon s wonderful Bust of Benja-min Franklin (1779). Most famously, T homas Eakins s masterpiece.The Gross Clinic (1875), commissioned for the Jefferson Medical Col-lege and in danger of leaving the city through sale by the college was



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saved for Philadelphia by Anne's brokering of a joint purchase with thePennsylvania Academy of the Eine Arts. Less well known, but of im-mense importance for the city, was the acquisition through the gener-ous gift of Muriel and Philip Berman of 2,500 Old Master drawingsand 42,786 Old Master prints from the former teaching collection ofthe Pennsylvania Academy.

She was by inclination and training a scholar of modern and con-temporary art, and under her directorship the museum twice representedthe United States at the Venice Biennale, with exhibitions of works byJasper Johns (1988) and by Bruce Nauman (2009), both of which won

the Leone d'Oro. Anne's great love, however, was for art itself

She rel-ished the opportunity to wo rk in a major museum with collections em-bracing the widest range of artistic expression, from the great traditionsof European and American art, to decorative arts and crafts, to cos-tumes and textiles from around the world, and art from India, Korea,China, and Japan. She was especially thrilled by the acquisition andexhibition of the seventeenth-century handscroU by Hon'ami Koetsu,Poem s from the Shinokin Wa kashu. Under her directorship the mu-seum acquired by bequest some eight hundred works from Stella Kram-

risch, her near-legendary older colleague as curator of Indian art, aswell as some ninety m iniature paintings from Alvin O. Bellak, includingThe Poet Bihari Offers Homage to Radha and Krishna (ca. 1760-65)by the master painter Nainsukh of Guler.

Anne d'Harno nco urt embraced the low of folk and outsider artas much as the hig h of modernism, and she had a global outlookbefore it became convenient or fashionable. Her passion for Mexicobegan, as she put it, before she was born, for her father worked therefor several years, later helping to develop local arts and crafts. At thePhiladelphia Museum of Art she supported no fewer than thirteen ex-hibitions dedicated to Latin American art, from Diego Rivera to TinaModotti to Erida Kahlo, not to mention the highly innovative Trea-sures: Art in Latin America 1490-1820 curated by Joseph Rishel. Inrecognition of all this, in 2007 Mexico awarded her the Decoration ofthe Aztec Eagle, which she greatly cherished. She and Joe shared abid-ing friendships with colleagues in Mexico, and her death is deeplymourned in that country.

Anne's commitment to fairness, to equal opportunity, to the moralnecessity of making art available to everyone, found expanding meansof expression in her years as director. She supported the work of Afri-can American artists, and took an enormous interest in the historyof the United States, including the history and culture of slavery. Shedid more than make the museum a welcoming place for children andyoung adults: she consistently sought ways to support public education



336 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS

throughout the region. If Anne was, in the words of her Cou rtauldInstitute tutor John Golding, a latter-day, more dynamic version ofHenry James's most splendid heroines, dignified and patrician in man-ner, she was also a true child of the sixties. Devoted to civil rights forall, to gospel and popular music, from Odetta to Dylan, to Laurie An-derson, and , of course, John Cage, she w as a steady and genuine activ-ist. Her language was never political or clichéd, but was no less forcefulfor being diplomatic and concihatory. Just days after her death the

Philadelphia City Council passed a unanimous resolution honoring thelife of Anne d'Harn oncourt , noted civic leader, cultural advocate, and

Director and Chief Executive Officer of

the Philadelphia Museum ofArt. Among the many citations came recognition of the strength ofher leadership and belief in the power of art to provide meaningful ex-periences and enhance the lives of our citizens and our visitors fromnear and far ; of her launching, through a major exhibition of worksby Cézanne, a new era of cultural tourism to bring visitors to the city;and of her dedication to the power of education to change lives. MayorMichael Nutter described Anne as a great painting, burnished in theimage of our m ind, which will never truly go away. Such comments

would have been inconceivable when Anne took up the directorship ofwhat was then an institution divided among its constituents and in-

creasingly threatened with irrelevancy. They speak volumes about herpower to convey the values of the museum to city hall, to trustees andcollectors, to the seats of academic art history, to the local communityof artists, and, not least, to the public at large, bringing into harmonythe relationship between the museum and the diverse communities it

serves. By the end of her life, Anne had gone beyond being an outstand-ing director to becoming a true cultural and civic leader.

Anne's ability to inspire extended to successful fund-raising for themuseum and to the execution of the rem arkable plan to acquire andrenovate the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, named for thebenefactors who shared her vision. Ray Perelman and other formerchairmen of the board such as Phil Berman and especially Gerry Len-fest (APS) were mobilized in support of her long-range p lans for the re-installation and reorganization of the collections. Notable was Anne'sdetermination to guarantee funding for the library, for the museum ar-

chives (where she dreamed of researching and writing upon retirement),for pubhcations, and especially for curatorial positions. She saw themuseum as a whole, and knew just what it would take to maintain theextraordinary standards of civic pride, scholarship , and cura torial ex-pertise tha t she tirelessly fostered. All this was done because of her deepbelief that art matters in the life of a community and its citizens, andbecause the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its many publics deserved



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the best. Anne was thrilled by the numerous successes of her curators,

and she took extraordinary pride in the exhibitions and catalogues theyproduced (following every line in every manuscript with her unmistak-able blue felt-tipped pen to be sure that every word counted).

It is not surprising tha t Anne w as frequently asked for advice, serv-ing as a regent of the Smithsonian and on the boards of many organiza-tions, including the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., the Japan Society, theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Fabric Workshop andMuseum, and the John Cage Trust. She was happiest, however, whereshe could make a real difference, especially when that meant working

with artists and art, and she played a significant role in meetings of theinternational, and influential, Bizot Group of major museums. Annewas a global citizen, with special affection for Japan, France, Mexico,and England, but she was as interested in Chicago, Los Angeles, andBoston, as in any foreign capital. Her generosity with her time and en-ergy in traveling wherever ideas and art were to be discussed (whichshe shared with Joe) was as rare as it was taxing. It made a huge differ-ence to colleagues to have Anne and Joe appear in a museum to sharethoughts on a collection or an exhibition, even as their hospitality at

home in Philadelphia provided the foundation for trusting and mutualexchanges over many years.

Anne s legacy will be a long one. It is all the more important, then,to try to balance out the very special qualities of her hfe. It would be abetrayal of her abilities to associate her with such ancillary debates asthose over whether museum directors should be trained in managementinstead of, or in addition to, art history, or the position of professionalwomen, or the role of the blockbuster exhibition (although she hadviews on all those issues). W hether supporting high-profile exhibitionslike those on Cézanne and Barnett New man, or whether highly special-ized ones such as that devoted to the exquisite Italian draftsman andprintmaker Pietro Testa, her emphasis was always on quality, in thechoice of the objects to be displayed, in their installation, in the cata-logues recording them, and in the scholarship devoted to them. Anne scommitment to the arts was total and, in addition to the visual arts,included music and dance and, always, the politics of supporting them.It is perhaps in the cerebral illogicalities and rational spontaneities ofJohn Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Jasper Johns, who all knew andadmired her, and in the grace and beauty of George Balanchine that hersecret lay. Her sense of culture was also based in literature—in poetry,biography, and history, from all of which she studied her m oves, in dia-logue, one sensed, with the minds of others. Her intelligence was asprofound as her sensibilities were refined. It was also practical and ac-cessible, and people responded to that, as they did to her humor and



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optimism. She and Joe filled heir world with the Muses and with friends

and most of all understood that it was never abou t them but aboutthings of the highest importance based on shared values. Such clarity isvery rare especially in lives dedicated to service to institutions.

Elected 1988; Committees: Jefferson Medal 1993-2003; Membership V 1993-96

ELIZ ABETH CROPPER

Dean Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts

National Gallery of Art

CHARLES D EMPSE Y

Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque ArtJohns Hopkins University



C o p y r i g h t o f P r o c e e d i n g s o f t h e A m e r i c a n P h i l o s o p h i c a l P h i l o s o p h i c a l S o c i e t y a n d i t s c o n t e n t m a y n o t b e c o p i e d o t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r ' s e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p r i n t , d o w n l o a d , o r e m a i l a r t i c l e s f o r i n d i v i d u a l u s e .

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Anne d'Harnoncourt