Bonwit Teller Redux

In frustration and pride, I am reposting a Missive that I first published on November 15, 2020, 40 years after the event. Why? Because the New York Times published its basics on November 8 this year in an article about Trump’s destruction of the East Wing and other architectural ideas he has in tribute to himself around Washington, DC. Details were missing, and the one that was most important to me was my wife’s role in that story. So here is the blog, but first a preview photo:

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Missive 11-16-2020


WHAT HAPPENED AT BONWIT TELLER?

When the Biden victory was called that Saturday morning, my wife started crying and for many hours couldn’t stop. I had to explain to one person at the hospital that she was not in pain, but there were tears of joy. I was wrong!

Penelope told me later that when she heard Trump (I will never capitalize his name) was on his way out, she was reliving what he did to her and her institution 40 years earlier.

It was June 5, 1980, and Penelope called me totally frantic, “Get your camera and meet me at the Robert Miller gallery. My colleague’s gallery was right across the street from the Bonwit Teller department store, which was being demolished to make way for Trump Tower.

Built in 1929 by the Stewart Company, it was meant to be the last word in elegance in the French-inspired Art Deco style. Bankrupted following the Wall Street crash, the Stewart store was purchased by Bonwit Teller, who engaged the well-known architect, Eli Jacques Kahn, to redo the building in an updated American style. The entrance was modernized with a 20x30-foot bronze grill, but two 15-foot-tall figural Art Deco relief sculptures remained at the top of the façade. Penelope felt that the two elements were a wonderful illustration of New York’s architectural transition from 1920s Art Deco to what was to become known in the 30’s as the Modern style.

At that time, Penelope was the curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of 20th Century Arts, building the decorative arts (today known as Design) collection. When she learned that Bonwit Teller was going to be torn down by the new owner, Donald Trump, she contacted his staff. Getting him a serious appraisal of $200,000, which could have served as a tax deduction, she also offered great PR for his debut as a developer in Manhattan. She vividly remembers the personal meeting where he agreed to donate the grill and reliefs to the museum, saying, “It will be a great deal!”

The entrance grill disappeared first. Penelope was told that it had gone to a salvage yard in New Jersey, so the Met sent out a truck and registrar’s crew, but the salvage company knew nothing about it. Lately, it has been rumored to be in the Trump Tower dining room, which, at a couple of stories high, could accommodate it.

Then, on June 5, Robert Miller, the art dealer whose gallery looked out directly on the Bonwit Teller reliefs and who had made the appraisal, called Penelope at the Met to say he believed that they were about to jackhammer the stonework. Penelope, 9 months pregnant, (our son was born on June 14) jumped into a cab only to get caught in a typical Fifth Avenue traffic jam. “She “got out and ran, as well as a pregnant woman can, the 10 blocks to the Miller gallery. I joined her at my colleague’s gallery as Penelope declared, “I am going over there,” but Robert cut her off, saying, “They will recognize you. I will go”. Gathering all the cash in the gallery, he rushed down to find the foreman of the crew, offering to pay if they would preserve the reliefs. When he came back fuming, he said, “They won’t do it. The foreman said that the young Donald told him personally that the reliefs must be destroyed because some crazy lady from a museum up town wanted them”.

The story received several articles in the New York Times and on television at the time. A photograph I took was panned over by ABC, making it look like a video, but Robert Miller’s gallery director, got most of the photographic play!

The story is included in a book by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher called “Trump Revealed,” published by Scribner in 2016. It was revived in the NY Times and Washington Post and even made it to our local paper, the New Mexican, when Trump posed as a defender of history and culture after Charlottesville.

Back in 1980 Trump, using a technique we have unfortunately come to know well, contacted the press as a “Mr. Baron” of the Trump organization, making up stories that ranged from their having had had the sculptures appraised by three art experts who had found they had no artistic merit, to it would have cost too much to take down the reliefs, to someone on the street below might have been hurt during their removal.

Today, it is just more of the same!

Losses to Our Culture

I am sure that some of my readers have not been happy with some of my political commentary. However, when politics obstruct our culture and the arts, left or right, we should care!

The most obvious case was highlighted in an article in The Guardian with the headline “Kennedy Center Ticket Sales Fall to Lowest in Years after Trump Takeover”. The Washington Post was cited on many of the details including the fact that 43% of ticket sales between September 3 and October 19 remained unsold! A year ago, over the same period 93% of tickets were sold or given on a complimentary basis. To be fair the fact that the President had called in the National Guard to Washington, DC. did not make people feel more secure, but Kennedy Center staff told the Post reporters that the week after Trump declared himself Chair and replaced the Board, sales had dropped by roughly 50%. We also know that some performers have bowed out of scheduled performances in protest. It becomes a downward spiral. With subscriptions way down, it discourages additional donations.

The administration’s directives to the National Smithsonian Institutions on what should be shown and emphasized and what not, has put pressure to fall in line on all 22,000 U.S. museums who have previously received grants for everything from exhibitions to updating their records.

Think about what it means to defund PBS (The Public Broadcasting Service). Some of the larger stations may find ways to survive but not those in smaller towns and rural areas. Children will miss out on PBS programs that provide free pre-school education. The beloved Sesame Street is just one of the PBS programs teaching basics like numbers and the alphabet, as well as social skills.

I am mystified by this war on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI). Maybe for once we should not be just using the letter abbreviations but rather what they stand for. What is left if you leave those words out of your life? Maybe the Left has gone to extremes with their wokeness but that is not a reason to censor plays, movies, books, and museum exhibitions, denying the foundation on which society is based and from which it learns. Happily, many arts organizations do not rely heavily on government funding, but even those will be strained to find private donations to cover any losses.

The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency to fund the arts and arts education nationwide and act as a catalyst for public and private support. It is the only organization that does so in all 50 states. Just one example is the Creative Writing Fellowship, created In 1966, which awarded up to $50,000 to published writers of prose and poetry. It was cancelled this past August. Many well-known writers, such as Louise Erdrich, Joys carol Oates and Isaac Bshevis Singer took advantage of the Fellowship early in their career and we are the richer for it.

The Greater Pittsburgh Art’s Council last month published an Art Blog on Cultural Policy reported, “On October 1, NPR reported on 550 celebrities who relaunched The Committee for the First Amendment a group first organized during the post-World War II Red Scare.” In the letter shared by NPR, the authors wrote: "This Committee was initially created during the McCarthy Era, a dark time when the federal government repressed and persecuted American citizens for their political beliefs. They targeted elected officials, government employees, academics, and artists. They were blacklisted, harassed, silenced, and even imprisoned. The McCarthy Era ended when Americans from across the political spectrum finally came together and stood up for the principles in the Constitution against the forces of repression."

As I have often said, history repeats itself …

The Heist

Need I say more? You already knew that I was going to write about the theft of the Napoleon III Jewels at the Louvre. I decided to write about it with the first announcement and then I could not avoid it, looking at French, U.S., British, and German press.

Everyone loves to read about art thefts, as I do. They seem to happen on a regular basis. Probably the most famous one being the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911, which was, obviously, eventually recovered. There have been a number of less serious burglaries that have happened there since, the most recent being the theft of a small landscape by Corot in 1998.

Seizing on some interesting details by putting many of these articles together:

The value of the jewels was put at one hundred and two million dollars immediately after the robbery though they were not insured since the Louvre like many other major museums are self-insured since values of their collections would be too great for any commercial insurer.

One camera outside the Louvre was facing in the wrong direction. Does that mean there was help from the inside by either reporting this fact to the thieves beforehand or, actually moving it before the robbery?

The perpetrators wore yellow vests looking like construction workers reached the second floor using an electric ladder from a truck, though they had brought kerosene to burn the truck with any evidence, in their rush they neglected to do so.

They broke through a glass panel in the door into the Apollo Gallery, threatened visitors and two guards to clear the gallery, broke into the case got out with 8 pieces and escaped on motorcycles, in case you are interested they were Yamaha TMASX models.

In the process they dropped a crown during their escape. It was created in 1855 for Princess Eugénie, Napoleon III’s wife with nearly 1,400 diamonds and 56 emeralds. which I would guess, though damaged, was both the most important, identifiable and valuable piece taken. The three other thieves were probably not happy with their colleague who dropped it!

The remaining pieces are so well known they would be most difficult to sell so there is the fear that the jewels will be removed and then still difficult to move as they have been cut in the manner of the 19th century. An expert diamond cutter would have to be found to make them look like modern cutting. Of course, any such desecration will erase some royal French history. Adding my two cents there are collectors with hidden collections who may have paid the thieves in advance. In that case how much less would they pay without the missing crown?

Immediately after the robbery occurred the excuses and blame commenced. The government had not funded enough guards; the cases for the jewels were new and not equipped with enough security devices; dysfunctional alarms (which has been contradicted by French officials); too few perimeter cameras as well as the afore mentioned misfocused camera. The Louvre Director, Laurence des Cars, then submitted her resignation but, refreshingly, it was not accepted. Because of the notoriety and it was, after all, the Louvre a government enquiry has naturally begun.

The police had taken 150 DNA samples and within days one suspect who had a record was apprehended at the airport, then another was arrested and shortly after another 5, though there was no sign of the missing jewels. One of the 5 was believed to be the third of the four thieves and, ostensibly the others were those behind the theft. According to the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, the first two “partially confessed” with no explanation. I had to ask myself whether that was like being a little bit pregnant!

As of the end of last week she added, “Brick by brick, the investigation is taking shape and closing in on those who may be involved”. Interpret that as you may but there is no doubt we will be hearing more as the days and weeks go by.

Buried Treasure

I am fascinated by stories of works of art, objects, and literature discovered in unlikely places and works sold for a few dollars because the owner did not recognize them for what they were. They have been discovered in kitchens, barns, and basements, but buried in a garden is something else again!

This story seems unique in that the object was found in the ground and came from another country. You may have already read about the couple in New Orleans who were clearing the underbrush in their backyard when they came upon a gravestone. What was most unusual was that its inscription was in Latin. It began “To the spirits of the dead from Sextus Congenius Versus” and continued to say that he had served in the military for 22 years and died at age 42.

The couple were naturally curious and consulted with a professor at Tulane University, who contacted other scholars in Louisiana and abroad to solve the mystery. They were able to figure out part of the puzzle and learned that the gravestone had been laid some 1,900 years ago in Civitavecchia, a port about 100 miles north of Rome. They knew it was discovered in the 1860s, and in 1910 was in a municipal library. Then, in 1918, it was recorded in the Museo Civico in Civitavecchia, which was destroyed during the bombing in World War II.

How did it get to New Orleans, of all places? This is where modern technology can help in historical research. The story went viral, and a couple who read it remembered that the woman’s grandfather had brought it back after the war and had it on display in a case in his home. It was passed on through the family, and the granddaughter and her husband put it in their backyard, planted a tree behind it, but forgot about it when they moved. It will eventually be returned to Italy. Obviously, I have shortened this story, but for all the details, just Google it!

The above seems to be a unique story in the sense that the object was found in the ground and from a foreign country. But there are many stories more closely related to the United States that are exciting to read about, and we might even learn history from these discoveries.

For instance, just last year at the Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico, civil engineers discovered under over 6 feet of sand about 70 items, including skeletal remains, an early ground stone, and a series of community campsites with remnants of mesquite charcoal dating from over 8,000 years ago.

A manuscript of an unpublished short story called “Temperature” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, written in 1939, was found in plain sight in the rare book archive at Princeton University. Have you ever had a document you felt should be kept, but just did not know where to file it? I imagine the owner, in this case, thought leaving it in the library made it more likely to be discovered when the time was right.

Sunken cargo ships and World War II planes that crashed have been found in the Great Lakes. The most unusual discovery in those cold waters is probably the two-story house that a moving company in Minnesota attempted to transport across the ice of Lake Superior, but the ice did not hold, and the truck and house sank! When the ice melted, a salvage team brought them up from the water. Imagine reporting that one to your insurance company!

The strange life of objects is always worth following.

What Goes Round Comes Around

I love following how taste changes, how the younger generation looks at things differently than we did. No matter what age you are, you look at the younger people and don’t understand. I can give you an analogy that pertains to many areas of life: My mother took some medicine that had been declared bad for her at one time, and then later was told to take it. She said, “If I live long enough, what was bad for me is good for me again”!

Which brings me to this headline that I so enjoyed reading in an article by Vivienne Chow in the October 6 issue of Artnet, “Why are Young Collectors Buying Old Art?”. Needless to say, young people usually like the art of their day. Young collectors are dazzled by the hype that accompanies record prices; that same press attention is one reason some mega millionaires and billionaires compete to set records and bask in the publicity.

This article focuses on the Frieze Masters Fair for art before the 21st century. Started in 2012 by the organizers of the annual Frieze fair for contemporary art, which has been a fixture in the London art scene since 2003, the “Masters” Fair is now run by Emanuela Tarizzo. She was formerly director of the Tomasso Gallery in London, which sold European sculpture, old master paintings, and ancient art, with a specialty in Renaissance bronzes. Ms. Tarizzo speaks of the common language of art, how it can bring together various cultures and tell “the broader story of humanity”. The 2009 graduate of the Courtauld Institute looks forward to a “dialogue with contemporary audiences”. 

Tarizzo is hoping to bring knowledge and rigour to strengthen the fair's position as a bridge between the past and present.

Photo by Elaine YJ Zheng

The article points out that auction sales of Old Masters have grown by 24% globally during the first half of this year. What do you know, it says this is partly due to the material that is being offered! This is not to say that now the younger generation of collectors will suddenly abandon the contemporary and focus on collecting the old, but, as they are being introduced to it they are open to mixing older work in with their contemporary acquisitions.

In this respect, art fairs are so valuable as they present a broad range of available works without the pressure. If you visit an art gallery, you will see what the dealer specializes in. Auctions are organized around special areas of art. You have to understand what you are looking at, the context and condition of the work, whether the estimate is in line with similar work, and finally, what you are willing to pay for it. Here are illustrations of a gallery, which was once mine, an auction, and a Frieze fair.

I was trained that it was best to specialize, even in our private collection. When we bought our first Native American work of art by a Hopi Indian and I said to my wife, "Now we can start a collection of Indian art." She practically yelled at me, “NO”, we cannot learn about all Native American art. We need to focus on one of the many different cultures. We chose to stick with collecting Hopi, deepening our understanding by visiting the Reservation. Years later, we broke that rule but still concentrated on the Southwest Indians. Would it have been so bad to learn about the Indians of the Plains as well?

At an art fair such as TEFAF in Maastricht and FRIEZE in London, you can compare and contrast, seeing what the art dealers are showing and learn about various kinds of art. You will encounter serious collectors who have come to add to their collections. You will find that dealers are eager to talk to you, not just to sell but also to cultivate possibly a future client. One of my clients used to talk about being able to learn from dealers and getting an education in art and the market for free. The truth is that the best art dealers are passionate about what they deal in and love telling people why.

To be fair, it is intimidating to walk into a gallery if you are not well-versed in its specialty, and we never want to embarrass ourselves. But the dealers and auction houses now have a new ally, the internet. You can preview from home the offerings of auction sales and dealers’ stocks. Excellent images are available, and Google or Reddit may provide answers to questions. Today’s generation can go to a fair, a dealer, or an auction house with a new degree of confidence, better prepared to evaluate what they are looking at from eras and places that would previously have been foreign to them.

With 120 dealers from 26 countries, I will finish with three examples from a recent Frieze Masters Fair.

To The Holy Sepulcher

There is one advantage to writing every week ... getting Press privileges at various museums. On our recent trip to New York, I was able to take advantage of this perk for the press preview for “To The Holy Sepulcher: Treasures from the Terra Sancta Museum” at the Frick Collection. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is Christianity’s most sacred building in that it is believed to be the site of Christ’s burial and resurrection. The title of the show starts with “To” in order to show that, quite naturally, the Holy Sepulcher has been a destination for pilgrims of several Christian denominations for over 2,000 years. Catholic rulers over centuries sent magnificent gifts, most in the form of liturgical objects, to this holy repository. They continue to be used in ceremonies, and, in that sense, they are part of a living museum where the collection is both permanent and itinerant.

In the first half of the 14th century, the Pope created the Custody of the Holy Land, an organization of Franciscan monks entrusted with the care of its religious sites and these holy objects. The Custodians miraculously succeeded in hiding the treasures, protecting them from centuries of regional conflicts and upheaval. They were only discovered by art historians through the research of Alvar Gonzales Palacios in the 1980s. Xavier Salomon, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Frick, worked with Fra Stéphane Milovitch, Chairman of the board of directors of the Terra Sancta Museum, Director of the Cultural Heritage Office, Custody of the Holy Land to organize this exhibition. The Custodian spoke at the press preview, explaining the plans for a new museum at the site, open to the public.

Most of the photographs here are mine, taken at the press event, the only time that photography is permitted at the Frick, because in the relatively small spaces, particularly on the newly opened second floor, where the art would be at risk with people backing up and jostling each other.

A miniature 18th-century model of the Church introduces the exhibition.

From that point on, I was overwhelmed by the monumentality of the works, in every sense of the word. Many of the objects are over life size and obviously created by the foremost artists of their day. Moreover, most of the gold and silver work of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe was melted down, so many of these survivals are unique.

At the beginning of the show is an incredibly exciting object. This huge silver relief (67 5/16 X 78 9/16 inches) was created in 1736 in Naples and represents the essence of the site as Christ’s body rises between sleeping guards. The chased detail down to the mock wood frame becomes an integral part of the majestic whole. My second image, showing someone reading the label, is to give an idea of its scale.

Photo courtesy of the Frick

It was decided that the exhibition would focus on textiles and metalwork from the collection. Although I am concentrating on the metal work I cannot neglect examples of the textiles, that includes the set of vestments in the altar scene in front of you as you enter the show; one of the vestments with the Coat of Arms of Louis LXV, created in 1741 of Lampas, brocade liseré and satin ground; finally a detail of the coat of arms from a different vestment. All look as fresh and vibrant as when they were made, and the quality is incredible. (Images (3) Entry, Vestment and detail Coat)

Getting back to the metal work, this is one of a pair of Torchères made in Venice in 1762 from the Al San Lorenzo Giustinian Workshop. You can see how tall they are from the guard standing next to it. A detail shows the workmanship. Seeing them up close rather than from further back in a church or cathedral was incredibly exciting.

A singular, magnificent object, the Throne of Eucharistic Exposition, is given pride of place in the installation. The tour de force of gold, gilt copper, glass, and precious and semi-precious stones was made by the goldsmith Antonio de Luarentiis in 1754. Emblazoned with the arms of King Charles of Naples and his wife, Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony, It was sent from the Kindgdom of Naples to Jerusalem the following year to serve as a setting for the presentation of the rulers’ gifts of a monstrance or this crucifix in gold, lapis lazuli, glass, quarts and jewels, alternating in place according to the religious occaision.

I am not sure if a museum exhibition can give you a spiritual experience, but this one certainly inspires awe.

Quotes for These Times

I collect quotes and have done so for decades. I do not collect on one subject, but just the quotes that have some special meaning to me. In the past, when I wrote on this subject, my Missives accentuated the arts. But these are difficult times, and what is happening in the world, and particularly in the United States, is not new, just more extreme. I have indicated the original authors when they were indicated in my original notes. My comments will be in italics.

Unfortunately, this is a truism:

"It's the nature of warning signs that they are ignored."

Books have been written on this subject, but do people listen?

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." 

(Archbishop Desmond Tutu).

A scary prospect for us all:

"It is dangerous to be right when the authorities are wrong." 

(Voltaire) 

We have seen this in so many places in recent times: “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

(Nietzsche)

This one I had to think about for a while, but when I could think of examples, I understood:

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

(Voltaire)

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist." 

(Hannah Arendt)

This may not be true for all, but it is for me:

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that the nobody believes anything any longer” 

(Hannah Arendt)

When we read the news these days, we must remember that:

"The pen is only mightier than the sword if you are allowed to use the pen."

(Mark Steyn)

&

“Freedom of the Press is only guaranteed to those who own one."

(Journalist, A.J. Liebling)

I believe I remember an example of this from a few years ago:

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and holding a bible." -Generally attributed to Sinclair Lewis

Let us hope that Winston Churchill was right when he said:

"We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have exhausted all the other possibilities."