Oral history interview with Lloyd Goodrich, 1962 June 13-1963 March 25

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Lloyd Goodrich on June 13, 1962-March 25, 1963. The interview took place at teh Whitney Museum in New York, NY, and was conducted by Harlan Phillips for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

Whitney Museum, June 13, 1962

HARLAN PHILLIPS: The great virtue of this procedure is that it is spontaneous. This is the mic here. It's very sensitive, but forget about it.

LLOYD GOODRICH: In other words, you and I can just talk.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes. Last week I spent a couple of days out in Nutley, New Jersey. Of course, this is 1962, a far cry from the turn of the century when it must have seeped first into your consciousness. I found the town removed—that is, it hadn't yet grown to the point where it is merged with other towns and was indistinct, a town which still preserved a quality which, I think, is reflected most in that lovely park and the brook through it leading to the town center. The latter is a sort of organized grouping of buildings around a square—the school, the town hall—

LLOYD GOODRICH:  My father had a part in preserving that park.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Really?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was fairly influential in the city and in the town government. I remember that he fought to have a park there.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's a lovely thing, supplied apparently with sufficient water—not every town has a brook. But I wonder in order to begin, we ought to fence the family in, put a frame around the spot itself. What do you remember about the town?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Of course that was where I was born, and where I lived until I was married actually, and I remember it as a town that had a rather unusual number of artists and writers, some of whom were friends of my father and mother. Their closest friends were the Marshes—Fred Dana Marsh, the painter, his wife who was also a painter, a miniature painter, and their three children, three boys, of whom the closest to me was Reginald Marsh. He was my best friend from the time that we were both born practically. He was a year younger than I, and we were very close always—right from childhood on until his death. I think he taught me more about art—well, I learned more about art through my association with the Marsh family than anything up to the time when I actually went to art school. It was a household where there was always some sort of art activity going on. It was down in what they call "the enclosure" which is the part you speak of which has the brook running through it. It was sort of a separate little enclave in Nutley inhabited by artists. Hawthorne lived there for a while—Charles Hawthorne, the painter. A number of other painters, writers, architects lived there. I don't recall all their names right now. I think that will come to me later on, but the closest to me, as I say, was the Marsh family. I used to spend a lot of time in their house.

Fred Dana Marsh was a pioneer in certain ways. He was one of the first people in America to paint industrial subject matter in a style resembling Brangwyn, the British artist. It was a realistic, very vigorous style, particularly the new building of skyscrapers which going on from about 1910 on, and Fred, who only died last winter, by the way—well in his 80s—was a very promising painter at that time, very skillful and with a great deal of vigor. Frankly he wasted his opportunities. He wasted his talent. He had too many talents. He was interested in music, for example, and he put together some wonderful phonographic equipment. He was also interested in the movies very early in the game, and I always understood that D. W. Griffith wanted to have him as an art director. This was from the very beginning, from the very early days of the movies, and Fred might have made a whole career of that too. As it was he just spent himself in too many different directions. He actually pretty much abandoned painting I would say by the time he was 45, but before that he seemed like one of the most promising painters of a traditionalist kind in this country. I remember seeing him paint this big mural he did for the Engineers Club in New York City of men building a skyscraper. He actually made a model. He was very ingenious. He had a kind of Yankee ingenuity. He built an actual model of this steel structure of a skyscraper with little plasticine figures of the men working. Then in their house they always had art magazines. They had Flegend Der Bletter, a German Magazine, Ugent. This was one of my first introductions to art.

Then in my own household, of course, there was a great deal of awareness of art. My father was a lawyer, but I think he was miscast as a lawyer. He was to my mind somewhat of a disappointed artist. He always was interested in art. He had many artist friends. He was a member of the Player's Club in New York, and one of its most frequent habitués—I mean he was there every spare minute he could find. There he had some artist friends people like Albert Sterner, Frederick Dawes Steel, and, by the way, both of them lived in Nutley too. Albert Sterner—well, next to the Marshes, I think the Sterners were our closest friends among artists there in Nutley. Albert Sterner was a very fine draftsman, portrait draftsman in a kind of Holbein tradition, drawing in charcoal. He did a portrait of my father, and he did one of my mother—all portrait drawings. He also did one of my oldest sister. Our families were very close. His wife was a remarkable woman. They were separated later, but for a while she was one of the first dealers in New York City to handle American art. She was associated with the Knoedlers for a while, then she had her own gallery, and in the end, she had a gallery with French & Co., a very cultivated woman. The Sterners were cosmopolites, even more than the Marshes. Albert and Margery Sterner had lived in Paris and London for many years, and they introduced our community a very cosmopolitan note. Albert was a wonderful talker—I mean one of the most brilliant, infectious talkers I've ever heard, a very warm human being, and his son, Harold Sterner, the architect who had become a very interesting architect, was also one of my closest friends. He was just about my age. Reg Marsh, Harold Sterner, Reg's older brother, James R. Marsh, and I were very close, and we all had artistic interests.

My father, as I say, had many artist friends through the Player's club, through Nutley. He did a little bit of writing, critically. I remember that he wrote an article—I see that you're nodding your head.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  An article on Robert Reed.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. Robert Reed was one of his closest friends. Robert Reed painted his portrait which we still have, and Robert Reed did the windows in the church in Fairhaven, Massachusetts which was right near where we go in the summers, very interesting windows done in an impressionistic color scheme, not in the old‑fashioned, medieval, color scheme, but brilliant, very—well, I think these windows should have more reputation than they do.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The timing of that particular article interested me. It's 1909.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Is that so?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, and it indicates that there were ten American painters who somehow resigned from the Society of American Artists. The reason isn't quite clear, and not given, but it appears to have been either out of protest against the then standards supported generally, or the desirability of dealing with color as masses of color and line as being important quite apart from what you were coloring. At least your father gives that impression. Reed was the leader of this group.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I wonder if they actually did resign, or whether they just started a group which had common ideas. As I remember it, they included Weir, Chase, Read -

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Simmons, Metcalf, Hassam -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  These people were all friends of my father, in fact.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  These were New Yorkers. Then there was Twachtman, and then three Bostonians—Benson, Tarbell, and Decamp.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  They asked Winslow Homer to join, as a matter of fact, but he declined and said that he wasn't a joiner. I think it was Weir who wrote him and asked him if he would join. I don't remember Weir as being a friend of my father, but I remember that Hassam was, Metcalf and Simmons, and then of course, another close family friend was Oliver Herbert who was one of the editors of Life Magazine, the old Life Magazine which was the great humorist magazine of the time like the New Yorker now—only I think personally it had better artists just as graphic art. I think their magazine had more character. I feel that the New Yorker now has just become a magazine where the illustrations are simply a way of illustrating a verbal expression and not a graphic expression; whereas I think in the old Life Magazine they had people who really could express themselves humorously in a graphic form. Oliver Herbert was an old friend of my aunt, Carol Lloyd, my mother's sister, and the whole family were close friends of my family, particularly Beatrice Herbert who was the well‑known monologist and a remarkable woman, a lovely person, a lovely sense of humor. Oliver I didn't know as well. I knew Beatrice very well in later life because she came down and settled in Rhode Island in a place we go in the summers, Little Compton, Rhode Island. She lived there for years, and we used to see a lot of her.

There was a thread I'm missing somewhere. I was going to follow up some more artist friends. Perhaps it will occur to me.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I began by— well, what was the economic base that supported this town? Was it merely a residential area?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was urban—yes. Most of the people we knew were professional people who commuted to New York. In those days you could commute by train. Well, what I was going to say was that another link to the art world was my cousin, David Lloyd, who was for a number of years American editor of the International Studio—that is, of the American edition in which that article you referred to appeared. Then he was also, and I don't know what the order of events was, but I think this was after he was editor of the Studio, was art critic of the old New York Evening Post. David wrote about art a large part of his life until he finally gave up art criticism and became a literary agent. He was my first cousin, the son of my mother's brother, Demerest Lloyd. By the way, his sister who is living, David Lloyd's sister, Beatrix Lloyd, was a novelist, a short story writer, and she spent a lot of time with us too. I remember in my childhood down in Rhode Island how Beatrix—she was older than all of us, and she was sort of a manager of our recreation, sports, and so on, and she thought up the idea of giving us military ranks so that we would make our beds on time and keep our rooms clean. We had all kinds of systems of awards, promotions, and things like this.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Self‑devised?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  By her, and by my—well, see, I was the youngest of five children. This is in chronological order and all of them about two years apart—Constance Goodrich, Frances Goodrich, who is now Frances Goodrich Hackett, married to Albert Hackett, and the two of them a writing team, playwrights and writers for the films. Next in order was my brother William W. Goodrich who was a business man, a real estate man. Then my sister Caroline Goodrich who is now Mrs. Maxwell Huntune, and myself. The youngest child has all the advantages and disadvantages that this incurred.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  When the novelty had worn off.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think it had advantages. Actually I was the only one in the family who didn't have a higher education—that is, my highest education was Nutley High School, but then very early in the game I had thought of being a painter. I think that this resolve had been formed when I was about ten or twelve years old. My father was very sympathetic about it. He gave me art books. He gave me Masters in Art, which was one of the best art magazines of the time in bound volumes, and I remember how fascinating this was to me and how I lived a good deal in the art of the past and the art of the masters. As I say, I very early decided that I would be a painter. I graduated from high school when I was just approaching 16—I think. You'll probably correct me on that, though I 'm quite sure of that. My father would have liked me to go to his college, Amherst, which was also his grandfather's college, but he did not insist. He was very open‑minded about it. He himself, as I say, had all these artistic and literary interests, and he said, "If you want to study art, you can go to the Art Students League for a year and see if you really think you want to do it. If you decide at the end of that, that you would like to go to college, then you can do it because you're young."

I passed my college entrance examinations, as I remember, but he did put one stipulation on it. He said, "I'd like you to take a course, an extension course at Columbia University in history."

He was a very historical minded person. He was interested, really, more in history and in literature than he was in the law. He should have been—well, in a way, I think he would have been a great teacher or maybe a college president. That was the kind of mind that he had. He did what I think was something quite remarkable. For a number of years every Sunday he would have the children of the neighborhood together from about 4 o'clock to about half past five and read poetry to them, reading them the classics in English and American poetry for about an hour and ending up with a short story to introduce a light note. This went on for about four, or five years, and it was very well attended. I don't think that it was compulsion too much on the part of the parents. I think they really enjoyed it. To me this was a basic part of my education. I think that whatever knowledge I have of poetry comes largely from my father in this form. Later on he formed a class of adults, an historical class. They called it The History Class. This was when I was in my teens. They used to meet once a month in each other's houses. Somebody would read a paper, and then there would be a discussion. This was my father's instigation too. I remember that he got me to talk once when I was about 17, the first time I had ever spoken in public. I gave a lecture on the whole history of painting which was probably the most naive lecture ever given, but at any rate, it was the first time I ever spoke in public. I used slides, and I answered some very stupid questions at the end, the way every lecturer does, such as why do Giotto's trees look like cauliflower, this kind of thing—you know.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Your father wrote a very interesting article which appeared in the Educational Review. This was the period of [inaudible] and the disruption on the Amherst campus. I believe that Amherst had arrived at the conclusion not to give a BS degree, and your father in this article commended them highly by suggesting that a BS degree was vocational, not cultural. In the light of what was since transpired, his view was somewhat limited. We are a technological society.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  What side was [inaudible] on?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I'm not sure what the rage was about, but as I understand it, he wanted to introduce the standards. This is my school too—Amherst College. The standards were, or the purpose of the standards were not acceptable to the mass of the alumni, and they, in turn, began burning brush fires here and there and made his stay a difficult one.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I had forgotten completely about that article.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's fascinating.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I must get a copy of it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The interesting thing is that he had a passion apparently for relevance. I suspect that his argument is autobiographical in the sense that it's a criticism of his own education at Amherst, and that for him life had consisted of unlearning what he had been taught, or adding correlation to a mass of uncorrelated information which he had absorbed, the thing that gave information direction, or sparked an interest for continuity. He argues in effect that education doesn't terminate when you get your sheepskin, that you should be prepared to the point where you can continually enhance your interest. One way to do this in his view was to develop a sense of relevance. It may have been a legal thing for him—I don't know, relevance being a legal term where you cut away other things to get to the nub. In a way the argument is like the earlier one on Robert Read. There it was a technique of vision that he talked about, and it may be a technique of vision here, looking back and seeing how one could add substance to understanding and how best to order it. An historical basis was one study in which his judgment gave one a skeleton into which one could fit the information one absorbed as one kept on growing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He had a very strongly developed historical sense. One of his pet projects was an historical chart. It was in about eight sections from the very beginning of man's history. He divided it up into periods—you see, with vertical columns for the different nations and so on, and the chief events synchronized, or related in time to show what was going on in one country at one time in relation to other things. I remember this chart played a big part in our childhood, not that he forced it down our throats at all, but it was already hanging in his study, and we used to study it. He tried to market it and did his best to get a publisher for it, but never succeeded. He had a great desire to do this kind of thing and never quite made the grade as far as publication is concerned. Anything he did publish was quite occasional and fragmentary.

He was a most sympathetic character, but a man whom I'm afraid was not terribly practical in many ways. I don't think he was ever a great success as a lawyer. His father had been a very dynamic figure in the legal world. He was a judge. I should know exactly what his rank was. He was presiding judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York State, as I remember, and I think he was appointed by President Taft to the Hague Tribunal. I believe that's right. I should have these facts. I remember him as a little man with sort of a Charles Evans Hughes beard and very vital, very vigorous, an extrovert, and my father, I think, may have felt a little bit the overpowering influence of a more practical person—let's put it that way. Anyway, I think my father made a living at the law, but I don't think he ever made a great success at it.

He tried for a federal judgeship one year. It couldn't have been federal. It must have been New York State, and this was the occasion of my first experience at living in New York City because he had to establish a residence in New York City. The year must have been 1916 to 1917, that winter.

 He was a great friend of David Goodnough who, I believe, was president of Johns Hopkins. The Goodnoughs had a house on Riverside Drive at 77th Street or 76th Street, and we occupied that house one winter while my father established his residence.

This was the first time I ever lived in New York City. I hated the city actually. I loved the country, and I looked forward with great dread to living in New York City, and yet I enjoyed it a great deal. I was studying art at that time, and I went around to exhibitions, went to concerts, and my expectations were not at all fulfilled about New York City being such a Terrible place. Funny, but Reginald Marsh, who of course became the New York City painter par excellence, had very much the same feeling when he was a boy. We both loved the country, and I think he really hated the city when he was young. What he did in his later life, the fascination of the city—gave a kind of edge to his work, a kind of a sense of fear that made for intensity. Reg and I saw a great deal of each other always. We went down to—well, let me; I don't know whether I'm following the right order.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There's no order really. Let it flow with interest takes it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  From my childhood, my family used to go to Rhode Island for the summers, to Sakonnet, also to the township of Compton. They began going there maybe when I was three years old. Except for one or two summers and especially two summers up at Greenwood Lake which I remember distinctly when I was about twelve, I guess—except for that, our summer place was always Sakonnet, and it still is for me. I have a summer place there now. My children were brought up there, and I spend as much time as I can up there. It was the happiest time of the year for me. It was a lovely spot, outdoor life, nature, birds and the whole poetry of existence in nature which means a great deal to me. When I was quite young, and I think I must have been about ten, the Marshes moved down there too. Fred Marsh built a house down on the harbor. He was a great boatsman, loved to sail, went puttering around in a motor boat he had. He practically lived on the water. We went fishing together. We went swimming and everything else.

Reg and I had a habit of taking long walks. We once walked—about 1919, I guess it was—from Sakonnet to New Bedford, then over to Martha's Vineyard, from Martha's Vineyard back to Woods Hole, and then back to Sakonnet. We walked 42 miles in a day and a half once. 24 miles the first day which was a half a day, and 28 miles the next day. We slept in barns. We did the same thing once later in Massachusetts. We went to Springfield and walked over the Mohawk Trail, getting hitch hikes some and working our way over to the Hudson River.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's a grand walk, isn't it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was—beautiful, beautiful. So Reg and I were very close friends. He had a gift that I never did have in art. He was a draftsman, a natural draftsman. He had a natural sense of character, of form. There was no hesitation. I think this came from being a child of two artists, and one of them, his father, a very facile and very skillful artist. Right from the beginning Reg could draw. I had a color sense. I was not a draftsman. My leanings were more in the direction of color and emotion, particularly in the field of landscape painting. In the beginning I suppose this was partly because of the interest in English poetry which I got from my whole family environment, particularly my father. My first taste was very much for the romantic painting of the 19th Century. This was aside from the Old Masters, but the pre‑Raphaelites, Watts and so on.

Living in Nutley at the time was a young English painter, Edwin Palmer. My father was very much interested in the local Episcopal Church. He wanted to make it a little sort of a treasure of art which is a very unusual thing for an Episcopal Church in a suburb, and he instigated—well, he and a number of other very cultivated people in the town, raised money and employed Palmer to do a series of murals in the church. I think there were maybe ten or twelve murals, very much in the style of the British—not so much the pre‑Raphaelites, but the second generation of English romantic painters such as Shannon and Ricketts. Both of them, by the way, were great friends of Palmers, and Palmer used to talk about them a great deal to me. This was a kind of modified Venetian painting with English romanticism mixed up in it and very pleasant of its kind and very suitable to the church. I saw the painting of these murals right from my childhood on, and my father played a very active part of it. We were all very proud of it.

My father actually was an agnostic, I think. I remember overhearing him say to the clergyman who was present at our table—we were having Sunday dinner right in the middle of the day—that he just didn't believe in God. At the same time he had this sort of ceremonial feeling about the church. That was still another artistic influence in my childhood.

I would say my first taste and viewpoint in art had been the art of Greece and Rome. I was tremendously interested in ancient history. That was the one subject at school that really meant the most to me, that and Latin. I used to make drawings, reconstructed drawings of the Forum, things like this, models of catapults, shields, and swords. This is when I was a kid. There was that element, the love of the classical world. Then there were the Old Masters and, as I say, in modern times the British tradition, but very soon came something quite different which was modern art. When the Armory Show came along in February, 1913, I was still a senior in high school, but I was already convinced that I wanted to study painting. I remember going to the Armory Show. I think I must have gone three or four times, and to me this was a great revelation. Of course, it was completely contrary to everything I had seen previous to that time. I remember now that before the Armory Show, or before modern art was at all known in this country, my father had taken me around to see shows occasionally. He had taken me up to see the big [inaudible] exhibition at the Hispanic Society and this was a tremendous experience in the art world and in New York City. Here was an artist who had all the facility in the world, this great sense of light, and it was made to order for the American public of course. It was tremendously successful and popular exhibition, and I remember being taken there by my father and getting a great kick out of it. Then the following year came the [inaudible] exhibition at the Hispanic Society, and I was a little disappointed because this was tragic and dark, more Spanish in a way. One of my father's great admirations was Paul Dougherty, the marine painter, who had the same, optimistic, sunlight kind of art that [inaudible] had. This was the background of my introduction to modern art in the form of the Armory Show. I don't think I had seen any modern French painting before the Armory Show.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Even at Stieglitz's gallery?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't think I went to Stieglitz's gallery until afterwards. I did go very early. Stieglitz's gallery was pretty advanced for the average gallery goer in New York City. Somewhere along the line I remember going to the old Daniel Gallery and seeing, I think, one of the first American modernists, Samuel Halpert, seeing a show of his work. Whether this was before the Armory Show, or afterwards, I really can't remember. It was just about that time. Halpert's show was quite a revelation. He had been in Paris, and he had become a post‑impressionist, but the Armory Show was a real eye opener to me. It was extremely exciting. I think the cubists and things like Duchamp, The Nude Descending a Staircase—those things didn't mean as much to me as did the post‑impressionists, particular Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Redon. Redon is not a post‑impressionist, of course, but the three post‑impressionists were a link between what I had known before and what was going on. This, of course was very [inaudible], as they would say, because by this time all of them were no longer living, I believe. Van Gogh had died in the 19th Century and so on, but it shows at least the kind of atmosphere in which the Armory Show came like a bomb shell. Cézanne was hardly known in this country. He was known by a few painters, people like Prendergast, people who had lived in France. Gauguin was practically unknown. The same was true of Van Gogh. The special issue of Arts and Decoration which was devoted to the Armory Show gave a kind of genealogy of the modern movement which would be impossible nowadays. It was pretty primary, but it was then news to the art worlds that there was this great independent tradition in French art which had culminated in the post‑impressionists and the modernist. This special issue, by the way, was done under the editorial supervision of Guy Pene du Bois who was also a good friend of my father's' in fact, the old Marsh studio in Nutley had housed in order Fred Dana Marsh and his family, Clinton Palmer—I'm sorry I got his name wrong; Clinton Palmer was his name, not Edwin Palmer—Guy du Bois. Du Bois had the same house. Guy was not only a good painter, I think, a very fine satirist, but also a highly intelligent man and also a very fine writer, a critic. He painted a portrait of my father as Malvolio in what play?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Twelfth Night, isn't it?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, Twelfth Night. Going back to the Armory Show, the beginnings of—well, I think it must have been very shortly after that that I began to go down to Stieglitz's Gallery and to see the shows there. I remember a show of Oscar Bleumner, for example, and I remember that it struck me as very, very tough stuff. It was. He was a German expressionist, and his color was very powerful, unveiled, and his forms were very hard and definite. I remember overhearing Stieglitz talking to a couple of artists who must have just arrived in this country. They were Frenchmen, and I don't know who they were. I've always wondered. But they were all making fun of American architecture, and these two Frenchmen were saying, "The ridiculousness of these huge skyscrapers which look like cathedrals! You can't really see their architecture at all. All you can see is the entrance in a Gothic pattern, and this thing is soaring above you."

This was the gist of what they were saying. I don't know who they were. My first year of study was in the winter of 1913‑1914 at the Art Students League. I went through the regular grind up there. I studied antique drawing. My first teacher was, as I remember, Leo Malzina. Then I had George Bridgman. We were drawing from casts—a deadly routine. I was studying half a day at the Art Students League, and then the afternoon I went up to Columbia and took an extension course in 19th Century history.

I remember the first criticism I got from Bridgman. Of course he turned out students by the tens of thousands, I guess. Nobody ever had as many students as George Bridgman did, teaching anatomy, drawing from a cast, and so on, a very skillful, academic draftsman. He took my drawing and just rubbed it all out with a chamois cloth and began to draw it himself all over again. I said, "Well, Mr. Bridgman, I don't see it that way!"

He said, "Consult an oculist!"

That was my first criticism. Anyway, my eyes were perfectly good. That was my first year. My second year I began studying painting.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's a great experience you had with Bridgman. It's more proof that seeing after all is individual. It was something he apparently didn't understand.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Bridgman had a formula. He couldn't have taught if he hadn't had a formula. Teaching as he did, I suppose, several hundred pupils a week, he had to teach them a certain kind of drawing, tricky but knowledgeable. He was a great old boy, and people loved him up there. He taught longer than any other teacher in the whole school except another teacher with whom I studied later, Frank Vincent Dumont.

The second year, as I remember the League, I began to study painting with Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Kenneth became, I think, the teacher who had by far the most influence on me and on many of the other painters. His classes were never very big, but they were made up of the people who were more interested in art, more interested in what I feel are the essentials of art than they were in just the craftsmanship, skill, brush work, and so on. Miller based his teaching on the old masters. He was a remarkable personality, one of the most clear‑headed speakers and thinkers on art that I have every come in contact with, a philosopher in art who continually thought about form, about the design, about these elements as they occurred in the art of the ages, and he would go off in all directions. Basically it was a Renaissance form, but he also explored oriental concepts of form. He had a very remarkable mind, rather disconcerting to a young person because his mind was of such an adult level. He would say things like—well, I remember his once saying to me, "Well, the passage in that picture is worthy of Renoir."

This was pretty unsettling. If I had been older, I think I could have understood better what he meant. I'm probably telescoping things because I studied with Miller, I remember, the second year of study at the Art Students League, and then I went the third year to the National Academy of Design for some unknown reason to me. Then I came back to the Art Students League and studied again with Miller. My memory is that I studied two years with Kenneth Hayes Miller, and I think that it was in the second year with him that I had as classmates Alexander Brook, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Henry Schnackenberg, and several others who later made their names. Then in the women's—well, the classes were then not co‑educational. It was considered indecent for men and women to be looking at the same nude model, and of course, there were certain advantages for the men in that because the male didn't have to be completely protected. In the women's classes at that time I remember studying with Miller were Peggy Bacon, Betty Burroughs, Molly Luce, and quite a number of others who later made their names. Miller was a remarkable teacher in the number of students who had later made their reputations.

My first year with him, I think, I was very young, and I was sort of torn between the modern thing and this classical teaching of Miller—Miller's viewpoint was fundamentally a classical viewpoint. Then for some unknown reason—I never could reclaim it to myself—I left the League for a season, a year, and went to the National Academy of Design. This was an aberration I don't quite understand. I think it may have been that I was beginning to think of making a living at art, and I may have felt that I could get a better craftsman's training up there than I did at the League—technical drawing and training. Anyway, I think it was a wasted year in a sense. I studied with Douglas Vogt who is a very fine academic teacher. I don't think I learned very much that had to do with the essence of art at all. I think I probably gained a certain amount of skill. It was a far more rigid school than the League. The League was very much of a laissez‑faire kind of a school. I mean, at the Academy you had to prove your merit. You had to submit work in order to get it in at all. I did this and got in. On the other hand, I made a good friend up there, Ivan Opffer, a Danish cartoonist, my exact opposite temperamentally, an extrovert, a vigorous, physically vigorous guy with a great sense of humor, great skill in caricature and this kind of thing. He's now living abroad, I think.

That summer which must have been the summer of 1915, I think—no, 1916; in other words, the summer after my study at the National Academy—well, during that winter I had met Hamilton Easter Field. Field was a remarkable man who has never been given the credit that he deserves, I think. He was a man of a good deal of substance. He was not wealthy, but he had a comfortable living, an old Brooklyn family. He owned about four or five houses on Columbia Heights, 106, 108, 110, as I remember, a beautiful place, looking out over the harbor and the skyline of New York. He was a painter in a somewhat dilettante fashion, and he lived a great deal abroad. He had become acquainted abroad with the modern movement. He had adopted more or less the sculptor, Robert Laurent, who was French born as his pupil and almost his son. Laurent started out as a frame maker. He lived in the Field household. His father and mother were part of the household too. Field had had many friends among advanced artists, the advanced artists of that day. Through him I met Bernard Karfiol, Abraham Walkowitz, Maurice Sterne, all of them close friends of Field.

Field had musical interests too. He played the piano in a rather amateur way, but he also had very advanced tastes in music for that day. I mean, through him I first heard Stravinsky, Scriabin, Debussy, and so on. He also introduced me to supering in the opera. My first performance in Aida was in a very select five man squad of Egyptian soldiers who chased a tenor across the stage with spears. This was all part of an education that was parallel to the art education, a broadening way beyond anything I got from my home at all. I remember the great excitement and thrill of first hearing Charpentier. To me it was a new kind of music—alive in a way that music had never been before. The same thing was true of Debussy, and particularly Russian music. Through Field I first heard Boris Godunov, and took part in it, and to me this kind of music—well, everybody who was in the arts at that time received a tremendous excitement in the breaking of the classic pattern and the emergence of a new sensation in music, new feelings, new emotions. Then there was Borodin. I also took part in Prince Igor, I remember. We could hear it too, not too well, but pretty well, and we could participate in it. I remember seeing Isadora Duncan dance at that time too. She was then in her old age. She was very heavy. She had a troop of girls who were, of course, much younger, much more spry and very beautiful, but Isadora Duncan dominated everything—there was something great that you could see there, that you could feel. It wasn't in her pupils at all. It was something basic. She hardly moved. She didn't run around the stage the way her pupils did, but every gesture was felt with meaning.

Well, getting back to Hamilton Field, he started in his old house on, I think, 110 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn, a gallery called Ardsley House, and there he showed a number of the early modernists. As I remember it, he showed Karfiol, Walkowitz, Halpert, I think. Field also was a great connoisseur of Japanese prints, and through him I first got to know Japanese prints really well. He was the executor of the Francis Lathrop estate, as I remember it. Lathrop had been a painter, and evidently a man of means, and he had formed this big collection of Japanese prints. Field was the executor. I think he later sold them in the American Arts Association in the 1920s, as I remember it.

Field had a school in Ogunquit, Maine, and he asked me if I would like to spend the summer there, and he made the terms very easy for my father and mother financially. I roomed up there in the colony, shared a room with Ivan Opffer. The room above us, as I remember—it was kind of a dormitory—was inhabited by a succession of artists. I remember that Walkowitz had it for a while. Maurice Sterne had it. I remember early in the morning hearing clump, clump upstairs. It was Maurice Sterne getting out of bed, putting on a pair of heavy shoes, going out and drawing rocks which are very picturesque all day long, and coming back with magnificent drawing after magnificent drawing—line drawings of the rocks. Field and Sterne were great friends. Sterne was a very cosmopolitan person who lived a great deal in Rome. Sterne was not only a painter, of course, but also a sculptor.

I had a summer in Ogunquit which was a great experience of the kind of teaching which was more maybe to my taste than Miller at that point. I mean it was more linked up to modern art, more emphasis on emotion, color, the instinctive side of painting. Miller was more intellectual. And at the end of that summer I remember that I went back to Miller at the League. That was the best year I had as a student. I got the most out of it, through Miller and through these fellow classmates I've spoken of. We had very good times, and it was a talented group. The following year I was beginning to become anxious about my future financially— I mean whether I would make a living at art, and this is something that plays a great part in the career of the young artist. I was concerned. I compromised in my mind by thinking that I might be an illustrator—a silly idea. I'm absolutely temperamentally unsuited for it. And so I studied in my final year at the League under Frank Vincent DuMond, who was an academic painter, completely different from Miller, who was a very skillful technician. I thought I was getting with DuMond the kind of technical basis for doing acceptable illustration. The other half of the day, as I remember, I studied with—well, I think it was Thomas Fogarty. This was a straight illustration course, a completely misdirected effort.

Meanwhile, we were in the War. I was a pacifist. I used to even sit in theaters when they played the Star Spangled Banner and not get up. This was a stupid little gesture, but it was done from conviction. People around would say, "They think they're funny! What are they—socialists?"

This was before communists, of course, but I was very troubled about the War. I was troubled about the relations between pacifism which I believed in and the necessity I saw that one had to go fight. I was going on 21. This was when I was 20—well, 19 or 20. At the same time there was a kind of a crisis in my relation to art, not only the question of financial support, but also, I suppose, a deep questioning of my creative ability. I think that an artist who is a born artist doesn't have these doubts. He knows that he can transform nature into art. I didn't. I saw nature. I saw art. I didn't see the transition I could make between the two. In other words, I didn't see my ability to transform what I saw in the visible world—and I saw it very acutely, I think—into an art that had anything to do with the art I knew. I have often thought since then that if I had had the greater drive, the greater creative drive, I probably would have made this transformation and possibly could have become a painter with a certain amount of standing because with all due modesty I think I had a certain amount of skill. I had a good color sense. I was rather more sophisticated in certain ways than my fellow artists at that time, but I think my critical sense was getting over‑developed.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You mean your self‑critical sense?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  My self‑critical sense. I think you put your finger on it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We haven't explored the other side of your family, but from what you've said so far of Goodrich, there was the consequence of the clash of temperament between a judge, severe, vigorous, and a man who was imaginative, probably tender -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Very much so.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  —and never wishing to superimpose a view, a fellow who opened a window and just let the air tumble in the way it's supposed to—you know, without standing outside and giving it a sense of direction, so that it's quite possible, I think, that the Goodriches represented perhaps a series of ideas that were related only in the sense that that's what a brain is for—to generate them and talk about them, exchange about them, or think further about them, or expose someone else to them with the result that you got such a sample that sometimes the variety of choice blunts interest because there is so much that you can be interested in—like pacifism, or any idea with respect to education, or art—your Dad writing about Robert Read, for example. I'm not sure why he did, only in the sense that the timing is of interest to me because The Eight are already challenging theretofore‑accepted modes—1909.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I was quite unaware of it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This article is an indication that there was a challenge somewhat earlier—1898—by ten painters. In short, it isn't novel that people depart from organizational setups, that experience is unique. I think this is what your Dad is saying, and where experience is really unique, it has to find its own way. Some who have a flair, as these people had, a technique of vision are compelled, no matter what the consequences, to pursue it. Interestingly enough, The Ten differ widely both in temperament and style. The only thing they shared in common was the sense of beauty they had, or this vision on how to look at nature.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, they were basically impressionists. Was Chase a member of that group?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Chase later became a member.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Chase was older.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's right, but Twachtman died.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  About 1900?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's right, and Chase filled his position. The number may be arbitrary. It may be 20 for all I know in terms of radiation—you know, how influence roams.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, but they called themselves "The Ten American Painters."

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In questions of choice, decision‑making, the Goodriches appear to be those who reserve judgment—that you can't know all the answers.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, I think what my father gave me was as much literary and historical as it was artistic, and in a funny way this was an impediment to being a painter. A painter has to be, to a certain extent, a single‑track mind. In the beginning he certainly has to have a drive, and again in this I contrast Reginald Marsh and myself. He had this tremendous drive always—all his life long. It killed him because he did work too intensely, and too hard. He taught when he didn't need to and so on. He had a teaching urge in him too. I never had that drive. I think my whole artistic motivation was more in the realm of emotion and in a certain way in the literary content in art. To me Gauguin was a very attractive figure when I was very young. Here was a man whose subject matter seemed so idyllic and who was so extraordinary and beautiful at the same time in expressing himself in a modern idiom. Nowadays Gauguin doesn't seem so exciting. He seems a little sweet, maybe not on the same level as Cézanne or the great formal creators of design. But this was part of the just of my giving up painting. It was first in the form of thinking that I would make my living in illustration. Then there intervened the War, and I was torn in the same way between the claims of my country and my beliefs in Pacifism. I solved them at first by going to work for five months in a shipyard. My father was a lawyer who specialized in Marine law, and he had a good many clients who were ship builders from Maine and up in Mystic Connecticut, to take me on as a worker in a shipyard in Mystic, and believe me, it was some work too. We started to work at ten minutes after seven in the morning. We had 35 minutes for lunch, and then we worked until quarter of six at night. This was the schedule five days a week, and then we had a long half‑day on Saturday. It was the most strenuous kind of physical work, very healthy and very good for me.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Very good for man. It really is.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Reginald Marsh was still at Yale, and when the term at Yale was over, he asked me if I could get him into the shipyards. I think I went up there in April, 1918, and Reg came up there, I think, in June, after the academic year at Yale. He and I worked in the same gang called the "bull gang"—in other words, anything that everybody else didn't want to do, we did it carrying heavy objects from one place to another, unloading freight cars, this kind of stuff. I must say that it was a lot of fun. We had quite a group of college boys there. Rumsey Marvin who was also at Yale at that time and who is now out in Columbus, Ohio, was in our same gang. We worked very hard, but it was good for us.

After about five months of this I had to make the decision whether I would continue or join the Army, and I decided at this point to join. It may have been that the draft was calling me. I can't quite remember. I know that I did appear before the draft board and was examined physically and the doctors discovered a heart murmur which no doctor since has ever found. It may have been simply a temporary thing, due mainly to hard physical work. Anyway I was rejected. In the meantime I had put in an application for the officer's training camp at Fort Lee, I think it was, in Virginia, and the reply came through in the affirmative; that I should report, but thy this time the War was practically over, and I had been rejected already on physical grounds by my draft board. Somewhere in there I remember that I went up to Harvard in some kind of training program, and this I just can't remember. There must be something very disagreeable connected with it because I just can't remember. I remember going up there with an awful lot of young men who I think were applying for some kind of officer's training camp, maybe R.O.T.C. something like that, and feeling very depressed and very much out of things. I didn't like this. Finally—well, I don't remember what happened. I know I didn't get in whatever it was. Then, of course, the War was over, and by this time I had decided that art was not my métier. That was a mistake. Then of all things I went into the steel business.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Before we enter the steel business I'd like to go back and pick up some threads that we seem to have overlooked. We've talked for over an hour, almost two, and we haven't mentioned your mother yet. A boy usually has two parents to start with. She represents, again, I would think, a spur in terms of idea because her family is a family with ideas of many kinds, some of them even in conflict with others. I don't know what you want to include here. Perhaps this is the kind of intellectual luggage for which one is in no wise responsible, but to which one falls heir. This is true certainly of the Goodrich side and I suspect equally true of the Lloyd side. You didn't have a Ouija board to pick and choose your parents. Suddenly you're in an atmosphere that has been created by others, some of which you internalize without knowing it. This may, in part, account for the pacifist drive.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, I think I might say a final word about the Goodrich element. The Goodrich side of the family was conservative, except for my father. My grandfather was a Republican, and my father's two sisters were quite conservative people, married conservative men—well, at least one of them did. The other married a clergyman who was one of my favorite uncles. I won't go into that, though he was a wonderful guy, very un‑clergyman‑like in many ways with a wonderful sense of humor. Anyway, that whole side of the family, all our cousins on that side of the family, were all conservative—to us, to my family, were quite conservative people. On the other hand, my mother's side of the family was much more liberal, much more advanced in many ways. Let me say at this point that my father was the most progressive member of the Goodrich clan. He was quite unlike his brother‑in‑law, or his father in his interests in cultural matters, or in his politics. He was a Democrat, and practically a socialist. I mean he was on the borderline.

On the Lloyd's side of the family there was a long tradition of liberalism; in fact, more than that, radicalism in many ways. My mother was the youngest of five children. Her three elder brothers were respectively Henry Demarest Lloyd, one of the pioneer writers on social and economic matters in this country from the liberal standpoint, who wrote about the Standard Oil Company, Wealth Against Commonwealth, the expose of the way John D. Rockefeller Sr. had made his money. He wrote many books, and his name is beginning to appear more and more in the history of American thought. He was my eldest uncle on my mother's side. Second was Demarest Lloyd who was quite a successful playwright. I believe he was also the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune. There was a practicing literary tradition on my mother's side of the family. My father was a dilettante in comparison. He was a cultivated man who wrote when he could, but these men—well, Henry Demarest Lloyd was an editorial writer on the Chicago Tribune in the early days, a very able writer and a very brilliant man. His brother Demarest was a very successful playwright who died young. The third brother, John Lloyd was not any of these things. He was a businessman, a charming, lovable person who outlived all of them. He died in his 89th year, so I have a long‑lived family on my mother's side, much more than on my father's side. My father died in 1925 when he was 65. He had not been well for the last few years.

Well, there were three brothers. Then there was my mother's oldest sister, Carol Lloyd. She was a radical from way, way back and a wonderful person. She went abroad when she was quite young, lived in Paris and then in London, always did some writing, married a philosophical anarchist. He never threw any bombs, but that was his belief. His name was Lothrop Worthington, the Worthington family of Newburyport, Massachusetts, and, as I say, his belief was in anarchism. She very early became a socialist. She had a tremendous admiration for her older brother, Henry Demarest Lloyd; in fact, after his death, she wrote his official biography. She later became a Communist. She's the only person who, and I have firsthand knowledge of this, was a member of the Party. When she died she was one of the three owners of the Daily Worker—the other two being elderly American women of long American ancestry. The party had gotten them to buy the paper in order to protect the existence of the paper. Of course, this was long after my childhood. My aunt Carol was also a fiery person, a very passionate person with quite passionate beliefs, very emotional in her beliefs. I can remember the arguments between her and my father. She lived with us a good many years. She separated from her first husband and lived with us when she was writing the biography of her brother. I can remember the heated arguments because she was all emotional about politics. My father was very reasonable and historically minded. There would be flare‑ups, and it is very stimulating through, perfectly exciting to hear this kind of thing going on at the table. Very early in the game I was indoctrinated with socialism, and I took to it instinctively. I never became a member of the party because I wasn't a joiner of parties, but I voted Socialist year after year as long as there was a party that seemed worthwhile supporting at all.

My mother was a much gentler person than her sister. I may say that my Aunt Carol never had any children. My mother had five children and she was a person of remarkable vitality, but in a much quieter way than my aunt. She had a great deal of taste and knowledge in reading. She was a great devotee of Henry James. She read every novel of Henry James over and over again. She had a literary gift that she never really exercised, but she could have written very well, I'm sure, but she was too busy with five children to do this kind of thing. The children were evenly spaced two years apart, and it was a pretty full household. In those days you not only had a household like this, you had a cook, a maid, a hired man, a horse, and all this. Whenever we went back and forth from Nutley, New Jersey, and Sakonnet, Rhode Island, it was a real Hegira. It was an event, taking from three o'clock in the afternoon in Nutley the Erie Railroad to New York, then a ferry across the Hudson River; a hansom cab down to the Fall River Line boat; the overnight boat to Fall River; then a train to Tiverton, Rhode Island; and then a two horse, four seated wagon with our own horse fastened on behind down to Sakonnet about thirteen miles away, getting there about noon the next day. It was almost—well, it was 21 hours, and my mother had to superintend all this, and she did it wonderfully. She was a very able person. I think she was always very disappointed that I never continued to be a painter. She wanted me very much to be a painter, and when I gave it up it was a bitter disappointment to her, I think. She kept asking me always, "Aren't you going to paint some even if you are in business?"

I did do a little bit of it for some years, and when I began finally to get back into the art world, I think it was a great satisfaction to her to know that I was now doing something more creative. She was a remarkable woman. She died only four years ago in her 96th year, and she had faculties almost up to the end. She and my father saw eye to eye on very many things. They agreed on politics. She was a Democrat. He was a Democrat. She was much more moderate in her views than my aunt was. She shared his literary taste, but in a more personal kind of way. I mean she didn't have the kind of critical sense—no, I take that back. She didn't have the kind of historical literary sense that he had, but certainly books she loved a great deal, and she understood them. She was a great reader right up to the very end; in fact, the last Christmas she was alive I gave her a book. This is astonishing—you know, at the age of 95—well, either 94 or five, I can't remember. But she, I think, had as much influence on my wanting to be an artist and in my eventually getting to be an artist as my father did, a quieter influence, but a steady thing that continued long after his death. She was a person who took responsibilities. She was always active. She never let herself get old. At the age of 85 she used to refer to someone 65 as "that old woman." Until her last years she never had any sense of being an old person.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was she a gifted user of words in conversation?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Very much so.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Your father in his suggestions for a cultural course makes very much of—"clear, distinct speech, penmanship and correct English usage." Those were his announced aims.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I remember this. I remember how he used to insist on our pronunciation. There was a period when—well, I've forgotten just what the context was, but we all had to watch our speech up to a certain date, or other things were going to happen. I think I remember the 1st of December or something like this—you see, that if we weren't getting our speech better by that time, we were all going to get—well, this was all in humor —you know. We all talked the way kids do, very fast and indistinctly, and he was quite a person for elocution. He used to love that kind of thing, used to read poetry aloud; in fact, I remember he once took over the Town Hall in Nutley, New Jersey, and read aloud from Tennyson's Idylls of the King to the accompaniment of piano music composed by a friend of ours. This took a lot of courage in Nutley, New Jersey, at that time. It was considered effeminate, and he did it as a public performance. He also used to march in the Suffragette parades, and that took a lot of courage too. All of my family were suffragists—all of them, particularly my aunt, of course. She was a fiery suffragette! She had gone to college, to Vassar. She had been one of the earliest graduates of Vassar. All my sisters went to Vassar. There was that continuity.

I think that I always felt that my mother's family was my family. That was the kind of mind that I had and wanted to be. I admired my father tremendously, and I loved him, but his family was more alien to me. They did not have the same kinds of interests that I had. They seemed to me—well, some of them were kind of barbaric, philistines, and so on.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It may have been no more than a practiced austerity that they wore. It's funny—I don't know, but you can live with a group endlessly and not really see them. This is one reason, I suspect, why there's some confusion with respect to the drive toward art in your own case. I have the feeling that an artist has to be half way outside his own society because if he's too deeply a participant, the very fact that he participates dulls his edge. He can't see what he's doing—that is, whatever view he has not may not be able to push through, or explode through it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He has to simplify his life. He has to concentrate. He has to cut out certain things.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's right, so that in your family—it must have been like attending a seminar all the time. People who have ideas for some reason are compelled to express them, and there is this constant exchange. I'm not sure that you absorb anything from people with whom you agree. Learning happens only where there is clash apparently, or where there appears to be a clash of views. Heaven only knows what a youngster will hear. He may hear the exchange differently than intended, but certainly there is this notion that your family represented a richness of idea from which you could select.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was a certain amount of clash actually in my own artistic viewpoint and my father's because, as I say, he was very much in the impressionist tradition. His friends were all very much in that tradition, people like Hassam and so on. When the Armory Show came along to me this was a revelation, and I remember the arguments that we used to have at the dinner table at night, he being fair but rather horrified and rather shocked by it. He had gone to the Armory Show too. I think we might have even gone together, though I don't remember. I was very young, and very enthusiastic about the idea of modern art, these new things that were going on. Everything was very exciting. This was a new kind of vision, a new kind of emotion, and my father didn't see it that way. My elder sister, Constance, who is very much like my father and like me too—even physically we look alike—she was the most intellectual of all of us, I suppose. She was editor of the Miscellany when she was at Vassar, and she was a Phi Beta Kappa and so on. She took my side always in these arguments about advanced art in those days. We were pretty much in the minority. I remember distinctly that when I first declared my intent to be a painter, my elder sister Frances, now Mrs. Hackett, was just back from Vassar College, and she heard about my intention, she said to my father, "Nip it in the bud!"

This is funny because she is now the most creative member of our family. She's a writer, but I think what she was thinking was that it was quite impractical. She has always been successful as a writer. She was an actress herself for a while.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's a little disconcerting to have one's dream in a sense dismissed with the simple words—"Nip it in the bud!" Who provided the humor? Did your Dad have a sense of humor?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Very good, and mother too. My father had a very nice sense of humor. He always had a very light touch about things.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The household was managed pretty well by your mother?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Very much.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The sense of order?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Very much. My father was a more sociable person than my mother, and also he had certain—well, I mean he liked to take a drink, and my mother didn't approve of drinking at all—ever. He was a great smoker, and she didn't like his smoking. There was always a little bit of a feeling that he was a little more worldly than she, and he was—you see, there was no question about that. Also there was some feeling of his not being successful financially. The economic picture of our household, as I grew older, was one of diminishing resources—I mean, having lived on quite a scale, as people did in those days; servants and so on, we gradually began to cut down. We owned a Winslow Homer, for example, which my grandfather had bought back in the 1880s, and I grew up with this picture. I think that was the one reason I got interested in Winslow Homer. At any rate, we sold this picture about 1918, I guess. I wish that we had held on to it. It would have been worth at least 20 times as much as we got for it.

The influence of my mother's family was also more direct because—you see, my Aunt Carol lived with us, and my Uncle John lived with us later on, so that there was this personal thing too, which didn't occur with my father's family.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  So as far as you are aware, you never got close to the judge, did you?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He died when I was quite young.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Any impression that you might have of him?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No. My maternal grandparents lived in Nutley. I remember my grandfather, who was a clergyman, quite distinctly, and I remember our grandmother, who outlived him, living with us in our house, and this was a difference too. There was an old aunt who used to live with us, so that there was an involvement with my mother's family which I didn't have with my father's family.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's quite possible—well, people are going to speculate about this anyway. Historians will. We might as well speculate and have it "authentic" in a way. It's quite possible that a sense of discipline can work in two different directions. Take your Dad. It's one thing to be seized for the wrong reasons; namely a combination of fear, perhaps an inability at the time to counteract the power represented by a judge, that kind of tradition, the latter can get very positive. I don't know why, but they do, so the sense of discipline that comes with the study of the law in his case was like being seized by something of no interest to him, and action is a function of interest. Sometimes a revolution takes a long time to unwind, and when you couple that; namely, disinterest in the law with a different kind of discipline, the necessity of raising a family, sometimes the balance is hard to keep. The one prods you forward, and the other antagonism holds you back, so that perhaps your father could survive in his own estimate by drawing back and becoming an observer, selecting and sampling as one does with a box of chocolates, painters that he liked, writers that he enjoyed, you know, not quite turning to the right when you reach the corner, not quite, but there's a push in that direction. He was a native New Yorker, I gather.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Brooklyn.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Went on to school probably choices he didn't make or perhaps participate in. Maybe they were shaped and configured for him.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He went to the same college that his father did and Columbia Law School, as I remember.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  These can be ruts to a young man when his own imagination isn't allowed its own hand or at least a helping hand.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was a very outgoing person too. He played a very considerable role in Nutley, New Jersey, in the life of the community down there. I mean he was on the Board of Education. He played quite a part in town politics. He has his finger in a lot of pies, and he was president of the local golf club, for example. He played golf quite badly. Everybody plays golf badly. He was very active down in Sakonnet in various things like this—in the local golf club. He was a very gregarious person with many, many friends, far more gregarious than my mother was in a sense.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  How did he meet her?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was through his sister. My mother and my father's younger sister both went to Packer Institute in Brooklyn—maybe that they were in the same class, but I remember being told that he met her at the time of the graduation of his sister. I remember my mother telling me this. Packer Institute was in Brooklyn, and my mother was living with me at that time in New York, went to Packer for some reason. It was considered a very good college. My mother was quite scornful of it later on. She said to me later on, "You know what the entrance examination was?"

She said this in her old age. "The examination was simply that the President asked me if I could spell some word—intelligence—and when I spelled it rightly, he said, 'You're in.'"

She felt that this was terrible.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I suppose when you closet—I don't know how we do these things—but when you closet two traditions as represented by the two families in your father and mother, and where they lived in close proximity to the tradition that was kind of built in dynamo, even if it isn't represented by your mother, and you have conveyed the sense that while she had views she was much more subtle in their assertion than her sister, or the Lloyd family complex, which is a powerhouse family, from your father's point of view you're placing him in a context where he has perhaps a new substitute powerhouse for the judge sitting on the bench. When you add to this the close continuity with the Lloyd powerhouse, I can appreciate the difficulty a reasonable man will have defending not only the narrow ground he wishes to defend for the sense of prestige, but also against people a reasonable man really can't reach. It is difficult to reach somebody who has surrendered completely to an ill‑defined general term like "socialism", some set of principles, absolutes to be applied, and for one with legal training, and with all the human untidiness that comes into a law office, things are never quite that clear. To witness that class—I suppose you can see it better in retrospect than as of the time—and suddenly you're forced to choose between contending positions! Which are you going to choose? It can affect the five children differently. They can be subject to the same atmosphere of dispute with reference to idea, the care with which one argues his side, his point of view as against that fire in the belly which seems to demolish anything that otherwise might appear reasonable. This is excitement. It's like having flames for dinner, and you never really know what the assessment is. You never know, except that it was part of the air you breathed. You indicated, I think—well, did the church play any part in the family in Nutley?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. We all went to church, and my mother taught Sunday School. My mother really was a very religious person, devoutly religious, not obnoxiously so though at all. I think in later life possibly she became a little more skeptical, but she had faith. Her father had been a minister of the Dutch Reform Church who, I think, later on had no congregation. I think he went into real estate more than anything else, and at some point he was also in a book trade. I think he had a bookstore at one time. I'm a bit dim about this, but there was a religious background on his part and also on the part of his wife, my grandmother, who was very much like my mother, an idealist and a very sweet person, a believer. This, I think, had a lot to do with the idealism of my uncle, Henry Demarest Lloyd and my Aunt Carol's idealism. The church was quite a part in all our lives. I used to go to Sunday School and to church every Sunday. I began to be a skeptic pretty soon though.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, Saint Augustine was a sanctified crossword puzzle to me for years—no matter what the virtue of Sunday School was, I'm happy only in the sense that it didn't take. There is this. Well, it's like putting on a pair of shoes, part of the total picture, a small part of it. You do have this experience. It might have been wholly different if you had an exciting leader in the church, someone who could seize energies and direct them, and suddenly you find that your belief has behind it an accredited past; whereas if you experience sort of palls, hangs heavy, doesn't excite, wild horses can't keep you there.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The emotional side of the church service was always attractive to me. This little church made quite a point of the choir, its organ music, and the interior of the church with the murals and so on. There was a kind of richness about this; this is what attracted my father. I know that. It wasn't the belief. It was that which appealed to me until I began to get a little too much of it, I think. I'm afraid I don't go to church much anymore. If I do, it's usually to a Catholic Church where the ritual is so tremendously rich, the music is so great, and the voices so magnificent.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It didn't take. What of the school system? You got tangled with the school system right there in Nutley. Schools tend to be a place to which you go and expand at least knowledge of acquaintanceship which you can now no longer remember. Going is part of a habit, part of—well, a kind of discipline that you don't necessarily get at home. Maybe it's a collective compulsion for no other reason than to sit well-mannered in class—that sort of thing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We had a kind of continuity in our education because all five of us went to a private school run by Miss Hawley. She remained a lifelong friend of my mother and ran a private school. We all went through the sixth grade or so. Some of us went on to a little more advanced school elsewhere, but we all started there, and also my friends started there. Reginald Marsh started school there and the Sterners—well, this was the private school of the community. I went through the eighth grade, and when I had to go to public school—you see, there was no high school in this private school—I felt awful. I felt that I was going out into the great, unknown, strange world, and it was to some extent. The private school was a sheltered world. It had a family background. We had all gone there. I felt very badly about it, I remember, but I adjusted myself. I really didn't like it. I liked to study very much. I was a good student. I got pretty high grades all the way through, as I remember. I think I was considered a bit of a prig by my friends and a "swot"—you know, too much of a student, but this was the kind of an effort that meant most to me.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's hard to internalize these things—you know, the choice between following an army and being yourself is not an easy one to resolve. It's the more easily resolved, I think, when the army for whatever reason says, "There must be something wrong with him. He's not like us. He's too quick. He's a good student." This results in their treating you suddenly as though you were Typhoid Mary. This, I think, emphasizes, or sharpens one's own focus about school—that is, if you can study and you can do well, the tendency under these conditions is to do better work, not defensively but because you don't have the key for lack of another word to the great unwashed. You can't communicate for there are no words. There are no symbols, and while it emphasizes a kind of loneliness in thus huge, vast sprawlingness, at the same time you weren't without contacts that were stimulating, that did represent something you could sample.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  But I never was as gregarious as my brothers and sisters. I had good friends. I had close friends—people like Reg Marsh, his brother, and so on, but I was never as much of a mixer as my brother and sister who were just above me in age. Of course, my older sister seemed so much like an older person—I mean that hers was a different kind of world. She was in college when I was in school, but I did live very much a private life of literature. I took my studies very seriously. I was tremendously interested in ancient history and I read a great deal—the Iliad when I was about twelve years old, though not in Greek. I have no Greek. I actually enjoyed a lot of Latin. I enjoyed Virgil very much indeed.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's great!

LLOYD GOODRICH:  My parents fed this. They gave me books. I remember reading a great deal of Shakespeare which I did when I was about twelve or so. I can see how a lot of my friends in Nutley thought I was a real monstrosity.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was there anything particularly noteworthy about Miss Hawley's School from the point of view of procedure and approach?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was just a regular private school run by two spinster ladies where you got nothing—well, it wasn't a progressive school or anything like that at all. It was just a very good school giving you the three R's, and that's about all.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was there a heavy emphasis upon drill?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No, it was quite mild. There was the usual thing of that time—much more, I suppose, rigid than now, but compared to public school it was more personal, less rigid, I would say.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Apart from the fact that you felt that somehow an anchor had been cut away from you when you transferred to public school, you didn't have any difficulty marching right in.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  As a student—no. I never made any close friends in school. My friends remained the friends I had earlier—you see, mostly.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I think that's perhaps normal—I don't know what normal is, but you tend to accumulate and treasure what you accumulate until interest changes and then you become a list pruner for some reason, not consciously, but circumstance prunes the list for you.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The friends I made early and the friends I made in art school later were the real friends. Those in high school—no.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You mentioned Latin. Was there a special teacher, or just the subject—you know, sometimes someone really kicks open a window to something wholly new and makes it sing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was a pretty good teacher, and I can't remember her name. We had three, maybe four years of Latin. This was the old‑fashioned system.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Caesar, Cicero -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. We had four years—elementary Latin, Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil. The Aeneid was the most rewarding to me of all. Cicero was an awful subject to teach a kid. This was really rhetoric without any remorse.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And with a philosophical content which, I dare say, is even beyond some classical scholars, to say nothing of kids.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Next to that, history, ancient history and particularly French, not German. I had three years of German and two years of French. French came much more easily to me than German did, and I still read French with considerable facility. French is a kind of second language to me. I don't need to translate it back into English when I read it, whereas with German I do. When I came later to live in France, I found that my French was fairly easy. I've lost a lot of it since. Chemistry was a lot of fun. I remember that and plane geometry. Most mathematics I loathed, never got very high in it. In fact, they scared me.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  My great difficulty was having my father a teacher in the high school so that it didn't make any difference whether one was interested or not. There was the ever‑present necessity to—well, I don't know what it was—sustain the family banner, loosely defined, so that if one didn't have interest, it was required. It was, I suppose, a form of Calvinism—you know, one must work effectively. But you—you didn't see any other alternatives when it came to leaving high school? Did you ever think in terms other than being an artist, art generally and more particularly, a painter? Did anything else come up on the horizon, or was this just a smooth transition?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I can't remember that it did—at least not at that point. Later on—yes. When I began to have doubts about my creative gift and other doubts about finances, then I began to think of other alternatives.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was then necessity as distinct from germinating an idea through interest.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. It was not anything that I was going to do by choice or desire. It was necessity. It was necessity that I went into the steel business. Let's see now, I went into it just at the fall of 1918, just after the end of the war. At first it was an export company which was incidentally in the steel business. Then I went into a thing called the Consolidated Steel Corporation which was the export representative of about twelve independent steel companies. It was the independent's rival to the United States Steel Corporation's export agency. I can't remember the name of that. I think it was called the United States Steel Products Company, as I remember, and the Consolidated Steel Corporation was a banding together of the independents to compete in the international market. I was in this business for about—well, let me see, three or four years anyway. I had the good luck to have several businesses fold up under me. The first one was the Vulcan Steel Products Company. This was my first employer in the business world, and it just went to pot, and I got out and went into this other Consolidated Steel Corporation. Luckily for me, that corporation folded after a while. I was then pretty much on my own. Then I joined my old friend, James R. Marsh, who is Reg Marsh's older brother. He was making ironwork. He designed it himself and got an ironworker with a shop to make it. We were in partnership on a very informal basis.

In the meantime I was being psychoanalyzed. My whole problem of whether to continue to be an artist or not had come to a head when I was about 19 years old. I had had a psychic experience which—well, at that time I should have been analyzed. I think it would have helped me to decide earlier what I was going to do in the world. It was a nervous crisis, a depression, a melancholia—all, I think, connected up with the profession of painting and my ability, or non‑ability to carry on in painting, and other things, naturally. I got over it without any outside help at all. It was really a very severe crisis in my life though. It reoccurred again when I was about—I think it was about 1924, and this time it was so severe that I did need psychiatric help. In the meantime my older sister Constance had gone through the same thing. She had been analyzed, and my parents who again were very understanding about this, said, "If you want it, go ahead."

I've forgotten how I got in touch with the doctor who did analyze me. He was Dr. Leonard Blumgart who had been analyzed by Freud. I was analyzed for about two years on a two day a week basis, and this to me was the most educational experience of my entire life. I think that's a mistake for those who are not analyzed when they really need it. It should be done as young as possible. I don't mean that everybody should be analyzed, but in the case of certain people to whom it's a real need, it's basic. I think I can say that my analysis was successful. I don't know enough about analysis to know whether there are many cases where there is a miracle cure. I don't think there are. I think it's a question of a relative clearing up of problems, a relative clarification of self‑knowledge—never complete self‑revelation, I'm sure—at least not in my case, but it made all the difference in my ability to cope with reality.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I have the sense that analysis provides a language to enable you to verbalize problems which have existence and which have never found words before. It's like an inventory. There just isn't enough time in daily living to make a day's end assessment. If you could make a day's end assessment, perhaps you could put things, experiences, in some kind of psychologically viable scheme, and shuck the problems that way, but who has the time? At the end of the day you get ready for the following day's blight on humor, or whatever it is. Analysis provides at least a way in which you can externalize about caves, depressions which in some way have never found words before and have this with someone who is in a position to provide the nexus that sticks the various incidents together, or points to the locus of contradictions, whatnot. I think you're right. It's perfectly unsettling to read the number of young people in our schools today who fail, for whatever reason, into this category of "disturbed." It defies economic background.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  In my case the particular neurosis which we uncovered was very closely linked to the visual world. I had a sun neurosis. I became extremely depressed on very sunny days, particularly in the late afternoon, and the way we finally clarified it as much as we could, it was the father‑son relationship, the son father worship, or whatever you want to call it. I had had a sunstroke when I was a very small boy. I was down at Sakonnet one afternoon on the beach when I was about five, or six years old, and I remember my mother telling me later that I had been quite ill. I was blonde and was very susceptible to the sun, but of course it goes very much deeper than that. I mean it's the sun as a source of life, the sun as a source of everything else. Well, I won't go into a self‑analysis at this point, but the analysis did clarify a great deal that had puzzled me very much in my failure to be a painter. I think if I had had it earlier, I might have gone on to be a painter, but in any event, I strayed. It was an experience which was fundamental, and I think I came out of it a much better adjusted person—I hope. I came out of it to marry my first wife and to live a very happily married life.

Blumgart was a remarkable man. He was one of the pioneer analysts in this country, a very sensitive human being, a very understanding human being, no coarseness, a very fine mind. He died just a few years ago.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I have the impression that it's like climbing into a shower where the showerhead is designed to just let the rain fall gently. It's a cleansing. While the difficulty is still there, it becomes more manageable—you know, somehow you get a truck and you can load these things and move them around where prior to that time, you were on the truck being moved or driven without knowing why. It can be related to such tiny detail. A keen observer—you know, you'd have to be in the household you've described. There are distinctions that are facial, mannerisms, and one has never put them into words. They're just there. They're etched in experience, and one never talks about them because you never make the day's end assessment. You don't have time.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  What analysis does is make it absolutely essential that you should become aware of your unconscious problems. It brings them out. You can't avoid it. It's a tremendously powerful educational experience with the most vital motivation which is self‑preservation of one's mental health. One thing that happened was that I ascribed to this the fact that I did go on to become a writer. The clarification of mind which came with analysis helped me a great deal to express myself and to get back my early interest which was in art which I had been suppressing. I thought to myself, "I've given up art. I'm finished with art. I never again will be in the art field."

Actually I didn't even go to see exhibitions in the years I was in business—only occasionally. I turned my back on that side of things, and analysis helped me to realize that this was not very sensible, that this was not me at all, that I was suppressing something, and simultaneously while I was being analyzed, as I say, the various steel businesses folded up under me. And I had gone into partnership with my friend Jack Marsh. We were making ornamental ironwork. The advantage of this was that I could give a certain amount of time to analysis. It was a very free time element there. It was flexible. That folded up. Jack went on to further his career, and I gave it up. I'm glad I did. That was not my métier either. But in the meantime I had met my present wife. We were engaged without really knowing it, I guess, until—well, we knew it or at least the last year, or two we knew it. I married her about two years from the time we first met. My analysis terminated, and I married her within about a month. I got my first job outside of the steel business and the ornamental iron business which was the Mcmillan Company, publishers. My wife was a teacher at that time—a teacher of costume design, costume illustration at the YWCA in Brooklyn, and she was getting $45 a week. I was getting $35, so she outclassed me at that point, but I made it up after a while. We lived first in Brooklyn on the Heights. Of all things I was in the religious book department at Macmillan's. The subject matter was not to my taste. It was the re‑publication of sermons. Every preacher in America, after he had delivered enough sermons, wants them collected and published. It's a matter of his prestige and everything else. It was a way of learning the trade of book making, and I learned a lot about printing. That always fascinated me. I took an extension course up at Columbia University in the evenings in typography for a year, and I learned a great deal that way. In the meantime I began to write. It started as I remember with -

Well, in the first place, Hamilton Easter Field had started the Arts Magazine about 1921. He had financed the whole thing. He was editor and publisher and everything else in it. My friend Alan Burroughs was his associate editor, and Hamilton Field was a close friend of Bryson Burroughs who was then curator of paintings in the Metropolitan Museum. Bryson had two children, Alan Burroughs and Betty Burroughs who is now Mrs. Thomas Woodhouse, and a sculptor. They became very close friends of mine and my wife's. Field died, I think, in 1923, and his magazine was then taken over by Forbes Watson who was subsidized by Mrs. Whitney. I don't want to go into the history of the Whitney Museum at this point, or the Whitney Studio Club, but she had supported so many things that had to do with American art that the Arts Magazine seemed like a very natural thing to buy, as she did. Forbes Watson was a very close friend of hers and of Mrs. Juliana Force who was director of the Whitney Studio Club, a very close friend and advisor of both women. He was then art critic of the New York World which was one of the best papers we ever had in this country, I think, and he combined the job of being editor of the Arts and art critic of the World. He was a very vital, humorous and amusing person, a wonderful fighter, a lot of fun, and he became one of my best friends.

He had been looking around—well, I'm ahead of myself. Alexander Brook who had been at the Art Students League with me had a considerable gift for writing. He writes extremely well. He hasn't done it in some time, but at that time he was writing articles for the Arts and book reviews and so on with a great deal of spice and flavor in his writing. He and Forbes were good friends, he as a contributor to the Arts and Forbes as editor, and they were looking around for people to write for the magazine, people who had a fresh viewpoint on American art. There were a couple of books on modern art that they wanted reviewed, and just as a kind of trial, I think, Alex made the suggestion to Forbes, "Why don't you see whether Lloyd Goodrich could do this."

So he gave me these books to review, and I wrote a long review which they liked very much. It was a very conservative viewpoint. Right "bang" in the beginning I went after modern art and took a pretty stodgy viewpoint of it in certain ways—looking back on it, but at least I think the reviews were clearly expressed and written, and they seemed to please Forbes. Well, I began to review books for him. Then he asked me to come in and see him and asked me what I'd like to write about in the form of articles, and I think the first article I wrote was really an extended book review on William Morris Hunt, the 19th Century painter. It happened that there was, I believe, an anniversary, 100th anniversary of his birth, I think, and there was a book published on him at the time, and this was an occasion of a re‑assessment of Hunt. This, I think, was my first article aside from book reviews. Somewhere along there I wrote an article on George Inness. Maybe it was the third article I published, but the first really long piece was on Winslow Homer, and to this I devoted a great deal of time. This was all work done at nights and on weekends because I had this regular job at Macmillan at the same time.

In the case of Homer, to me he was the most attractive artist I had written about to this point, although there was one other article on the painter, Leon Hartl, but that came later too. I think the Homer article was before I joined the staff of the Arts Magazine—yes, it was, and I think that I was one of the first writers to reassess Homer's early work. Before that, Harry Wehle of the Metropolitan Museum, who was Bryson Burroughs' assistant and a friend of mine, had written two very perceiving articles in the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin—I think it was 1923—about Homer's early work which at that time was considered very provincial, very sort of amateurish. The important things in his opinion at that time were the great sea pieces that he did in his later years after 1883, but Harry and I were the first people to write about his early work with the realization of its peculiar quality, its peculiarly American native flavor. In this article I laid considerable stress on the early work. A lot of the illustrations were his early pictures.

At the same time I got interested in the Hudson River School which also at that time was considered a very provincial and very limited kind of thing, something to be ashamed of in the history of early American art, something that you sort of swept under the bed—you know, this was sort of a mistake that we had made in growing up, and the positive virtues of the Hudson River School were not appreciated. I got Forbes to agree to let me write an article on the Hudson River School, and I had a lot of fun with it. I mean it's a wonderful subject, and it had not been written from a—well, let's say, sophisticated viewpoint before; in fact, it had not been written about at all up to that point. In this article I wrote about it in somewhat of a critical and semi‑humorous vein because it did have that aspect of ridiculousness in some ways. At that time my great admiration in literary criticism was Lytton Strachey. I had read Queen Victoria and Eminent Victorians, and I liked his viewpoint, his looking back on the past with some mockery and also a sense of the intrinsic quality which, I think, you get in Queen Victoria. In the end you get a picture of Queen Victoria which is a very affirmative picture, and yet there's all the side issue of humor and the ridiculousness. I suppose I had somewhat the same attitude toward the provincial phases of American art as embodied in the Hudson River School, but I also had a feeling for them as the first nature poets in American art. I can remember with great pleasure when my good friend Katherine Schmidt who had become Katherine Kuniyoshi; she married Yasuo Kuniyoshi. She'd been at the Art Students League with me, and she had a very fine critical sense,—well, she's hard to please, and I remember how pleased I was when she said that she thought that there was real passion in this writing about the Hudson River School. I felt that myself, that I was telling about something that meant a good deal to me in terms of an American looking back on the American past, a neglected phase of the American past.

In the meantime, I had looked around for other—I don't remember where this comes in, but I think I was looking for another position in the publishing world, possibly—no, wait. I know. Before I got my job with Macmillan and had left the partnership with James Marsh I went to see a good many publishers. By that time I had decided that publishing was my métier for a while anyway. I went to see a good many publishers and among others I went to see William C. Brownell at Scribner's, and he was the grand old man of American criticism, very conservative, very traditionalist, but a man with a style and everything else. He happened to be a great friend of my family. He came from the same part of the world in Rhode Island that our family had been to, and he was a friend of my mother. His wife was more a friend of my mother than he himself, but in any event, I saw him. He was very courteous. He was a wonderful old man, very dignified, Olympian, and when I published my first piece, or my second piece—the article on Homer—he had said, "I'm sorry. There's no opening at Scribner's" and then I had gone on and gotten a job at Macmillan. I thought that when I did publish my first, or second thing naturally as a young fellow is, I was very proud, so I sent him a copy of my article on Homer, and he wrote me the most marvelous letter which I should have framed some time. It's the kind of a thing that a young man should always have happen to him. I remember that he said something about, "when you make your reputation, be kind to us Victorians."

It was a very encouraging letter, and I've always remembered it with gratitude when I read some of the jibes that more radical critics have taken at Mr. Brownell and his whole generation.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you get much in the way of illumination and direction from Mr. Watson? You've indicated that the Arts was sort of a free market place for ideas.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And that if you had a point of view, this was an opportunity for its expression.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  A great deal—well, his main interest was in modern art, but aside from that, he was very definitely in favor of American art and contemporary American creation. At that time—and I'm talking about the year 1924, when I first got to know Forbes and got to write for the magazine—the whole situation of American art in relation to foreign art was quite different from today. The big collectors were all buying—well, if they were advanced, they were buying Matisse, Picasso, Leger, and soon, the School of Paris. The American artist was very much the stepchild of the art world. People like Max Weber, Karfiol, even Marin, even the Stieglitz group had no real standing except in a small audience. There was the Stieglitz audience which did give a high position to Marin, Demuth, Hartley, O'Keeffe, and the other members of that group. It was a little esoteric in terms of the whole American public, or even in terms of the American art world. It was very much a small closed circle, and there was a certain amount of feeling that Stieglitz was—to put it mildly—exaggerating the merits of these artists, that there was a kind of intellectual snobbism connected with it, not so much intellectual snobbism as artistic snobbism, that these were the only people who counted. That was one element in the American picture then. Aside from that, there was a very much broader and less defined liberal movement going on and many painters who were not advanced, but independent—I'm thinking of people like Alan Tucker, for example, who became a very good friend of mine and who was very close to Forbes Watson. They were close friends. He was very close to Juliana Force of the Whitney Museum. Alan was quite typical a whole trend which was liberal, but not advanced. He was—well, I suppose if he had any links with modern art, it was Van Gogh particularly, but he was a highly intelligent man, a very sensitive man, a very aware person and very, very open‑minded, always a fighter against academicism, against restrictions, in favor of freedom and self‑expression

I think we don't realize now what standing the academic world had at that time. The National Academy was the one artist organization that had real standing, stability, and prestige, and the rest of it was an amorphous kind of movement that consisted of individuals. They really had no society of their own. I don't think that there was any society that represented that whole trend—I'm speaking of art societies until the formation of the—well, I think its first title was the Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, founded about 1930. That's not the right title. I'll think of it later, and I can go back to that when I refresh my memory better. The nearest thing to any focus of the liberal forces was the Whitney Studio Club, and this is a matter of history, of course. It was founded in 1918, an outgrowth of Mrs. Whitney's interest in American art and particularly the younger generation. The club was a very gay place, a place where almost all the younger progressive artists of New York City were members. There were constant openings, exhibitions, and parties going on, and Mrs. Force was a remarkable woman. She was a dynamic person with the most extraordinary gift for attracting talent and brains around her, picking up ideas, putting them into execution, a catalyst, and more than that, a doer and a fighter, and it was a day when fighting was needed because the forces of conservatism were very heavily entrenched, and the younger artist didn't have an awful lot of chance compared to what he has now. There were only a few dealers who would handle the work of a younger man who had any progressive tendencies. Outside of Stieglitz, his circle, there were a few people like Montross. I'm not picking up some of the older dealers. Montross was a remarkable old boy. You'd think he was the most conservative person in the world, and he looked it. He looked like a clubman. He had a big gold watch chain across his stomach, and he had handled in the past a great deal of quite conservative American art, but he began to show the most advanced things all of a sudden. There was a little transition. He showed Bellows, for example, and he was one of the earliest dealers who recognized Ryder's work, showed his work and bought it. He showed people like Walt Kuhn and so on, people who seemed pretty advanced for that time. This was very unexpected, and this was a very old gallery which had existed for a long time. The Kraushaar gallery also was fairly liberal. This again, was an old established house. John Kraushaar was the senior partner in it, the father of Antoinette Kraushaar, the present proprietor of the gallery, and he showed The Eight particularly—Prendergast, Luks, Guy du Bois, Glackens, and the other people. John Sloan was with the Kraushaar Gallery for years. This was the liberal, but not the advanced forces at the Kraushaar Gallery. It was one of the centers.

Then of course there was the Daniel Gallery, and Charles Daniel who is still living—and I think that someday the Archive should record his memories—had come in from business with a certain amount of money, and he started one of the first advanced galleries in New York after Stieglitz, and to a certain extent he depended somewhat on Stieglitz for leadership. I don't think personal leadership so much as some of the artists that Stieglitz had started he took over later. But Daniel within a few years became the leading dealer handling the work of somewhat advanced younger artists. My memory is that he opened about 1912, and as I said earlier, I remember seeing an exhibition of Samuel Halpert's work in the Daniel Gallery when it was down, I think, on 45th Street, and this to me was a great revelation. I mean even after the Armory Show—well, partly because it was a one‑man show, an American, it had a kind of impact. But Daniel ultimately took on Kuniyoshi and Pascin, I believe, Benton in the beginning, Alexander Brook. He had a big list of some of the best artists in the country, and then there were dealers who existed for a fairly short time. Stefan Bourgeois, for example, had a gallery which particularly showed the work of advanced Frenchmen. There were beginning to be more and more galleries which would take on advanced work, but they were still numerically small compared to the old established galleries. Dealers like Knoedler, one of the oldest and most solid galleries in America—I don't think they handled any progressive American work for many years. There were no dealers—well, maybe Daniel and one or two others who would take a young man of progressive and advanced tendencies and give him his first chance. It was too chancey then, and nothing like what goes on today, where you have scores of galleries that will take a chance on a young painter. Well, it was partly in response to this that the Whitney Studio Club was started—you see, because Mrs. Force and Mrs. Whitney felt that there should be some place where young American artists could have a chance to show, and this was all done on the basis of great wealth behind the whole enterprise. Exhibitions were given, one‑man exhibitions, and in many cases the first one‑man exhibition that these young men had, and they were not entirely young men. There were some older independents who had never had any recognition at all. There was a continuing series in the Whitney Studio Club down on 8th Street, first on 4th Street and then on 8th Street—a continuous series of these one man shows all without any cost to the artist. Not only that, but there was a very strong drive to sell his work. From almost every show Mrs. Whitney bought pictures, and this was the nucleus of the future collection of the Whitney Museum. Mrs. Force was the active head of this. Mrs. Whitney and she were very close friends. Mrs. Whitney, of course, was a sculptor, a traditionalist sculptor, but a woman of very remarkable breadth of mind and very, very generous impulses, rather reserved, really an aristocrat, didn't like to get in fights. That element Mrs. Force furnished. The combativeness that was necessary at that time Mrs. Force furnished. Mrs. Whitney didn't always agree with what was shown and so on, but she was remarkable in that she would say, "If you think it's right, we'll do it."

She would never fail to back us—I'm using "us" in the sense of our later association. She never failed to back Mrs. Force up in anything she believed in.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Hadn't she supported financially to some extent the Independent Shows?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, she had. Of course her involvement went way back. In the first place the famous "Eight" show at the Macbeth Galleries in 1908, they sold altogether seven paintings out of the show, and she bought four of them. These pictures now are all part of the Whitney Museum collection, and about 1910, she had started the Whitney Studio which showed at first rather conservative artists, but then gradually more and more advanced and always with the idea that this was to help the rising generation. This was done without the hampering influence of conservative juries. There was always a feeling of close relationship between her and the artists, the creative artists, the most creative artists of the time, and there was—things were made financially very easy for the artist. If an artist had succeeded in getting an exhibition in one of the older conservative galleries, it was probably because he had to pay for it, but there was nothing like that in the case of Mrs. Whitney's, or Mrs. Force's projects at all. On the contrary, as I say, there was a constant assistance to the artist by purchasing. Then Mrs. Whitney had from the very beginning helped the Society of Independent Artists financially—I mean, she made up the deficit year after year starting about 1917, and that continued until I think about the time that the museum started, about 1930. John Sloan speaks of this in his book—The Gist of Art, and I think that was the case.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I believe that she had some acquaintance with, or certainly some art relationship with Henri.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes—well her friends, her and Mrs. Force's friends were The Eight particularly—Sloan, Glackens, Luks, Henry, George Bellows and Arthur B. Davies. I never met Arthur Davies, but one felt that he was a moving spirit in so many things that he never showed his face in at all. I'm sure that he had some influence on the Whitney operations from the very beginning. Certainly Henri did, and Mrs. Whitney had paid for the decorations of the Armory Show—the floral arrangements and so on. That was in 1913, but there was always this continuing involvement in any progressive movement in American art. Her purchasing of the Arts Magazine was part of this whole patter, part of an expanding involvement in directions of the Whitney Studio Club in exhibiting and purchasing and helping out in that way, the idea of publication through a magazine which stressed American art and which was very open to younger artists.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What about the sketch class?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Sketch classes—well, the whole atmosphere of the Whitney Studio Club was built around the artist. That's the reason the place existed, because of the artist and not in any formal way at all, nothing like a dues paying place where you had to be elected after you were about 50 years old. They were taken in right away if they had any talent and given a chance to show, and there was a very strong parallelism between the Arts and this kind of activity because I think the Arts was the first to publish articles on a number of young Americans who later made their mark. It was a very welcoming atmosphere, editorially speaking, and this was my beginning to be involved in the whole field.

I was not a member of the Whitney Studio Club. I came into the Whitney picture through the Arts—you see, first, as I say, by writing a book review and then by writing articles, some of them on the past of American art. Then I heard that Forbes Watson wanted to have an associate editor. I think Robert Allan Parker was associate editor, and for some reason he was leaving, and Alex Brook recommended me, and I went to see Forbes. We got on well together, and he said, "Now it's simply a question of my getting Mrs. Force and Mrs. Whitney to agree to it.

They were subsidizing the magazine completely. I don't know what the figures were, but I'm sure that in many years the magazine ran a deficit into the tens of thousands because it expended it as it went along. Well, there was a long waiting period when I was on tenterhooks because I was getting very bored with the publishing business. I was writing more and more when I could and this looked to me like the one thing I wanted to do, be associate editor of this very lively magazine, and finally in the fall of 1925, after about six months of Forbes trying to get a decision, I gather, I did become associate editor. I was associate editor from about November, or December, 1925, to the fall of 1927.

Then I'd never been abroad, and I began to feel that this was absolutely necessary. Although my main interest was American art, I still felt that it was essential to have some European experience. My wife and I had been working hard and saving our money, and in the fall of 1927, we had accumulated about three thousand dollars in savings—maybe a little bit less. I became what was called the European editor of the Arts, and that involved a certain number of different kinds of duties. I was supposed to gather material from other writers in Europe. I was to write articles myself, and I was to push the circulation of the Arts in Europe. My wife took care of a lot of things. She went around Paris selling the Arts to book sellers, and so on. Every country I'd go to I would take it to the biggest wholesaler and introduce him to it, and I got some very, very hostile reactions—believe me!

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Really?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I remember taking it to— you see, I had a whole file of the Arts. It was really a good‑looking magazine. It had standards, but it wasn't known in Europe. The International Studio was known. The Art News was known. We took it to the biggest wholesaler in Italy, in Milan, I think it was. I didn't know much Italian, but I knew enough to know what he was saying, "Imataccione de la Studio" and dismissed the whole thing—Imitation of the Studio! What do we care about this! I think he thought I couldn't understand any Italian at all.

I took it to a big wholesaler in London and this was a real pleasure because I had secured for the Arts an article on Delacroix, and this man said, "I don't see why the British public should be interested in this magazine. For example, who cares what the Americans think about Delacroix!"

I said, "As a matter of fact, this is the greatest authority in the world on Delacroix."

Well, he'd never heard of him. The attitude there toward American art was quite different from what it is now—believe me, and we ran into this continually in our stay abroad.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was this out of absence of contact with American art?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Ignorance and lack of any—well, there were no books on American art except the historical things like Isham's History of American Painting, this kind of thing. Then there was nothing in print that could be sent across the Atlantic that had to do with the new forces in American art.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's very amusing because near the end of the Frankfurter book there comes a time when he teaches a course in Federalism at Oxford, and he had difficulty finding a copy of the American Constitution.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was a great lack of knowledge about anything that went on in America at all—quite a different attitude from today.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  An apparent unwillingness to even venture.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Dismissal completely—complete dismissal! I mean it was just "Who cares!" this was marked in every country I went to practically—in France, less possibly in Paris because a great many Americans had lived there, and we had a Paris correspondent on the Arts—Jacques Monet, who was a very amusing person and a very good painter. He was a painter and a writer who had been educated in England, and I had edited his articles on my side of the Atlantic for months before I finally met him in Paris, and he knew—well, he'd been in America and he knew American art and also, as I said before, he wrote for us, and he opened many doors for me when I went to Paris finally.

We went over there in November 1927. We lived in Paris until February, 1928—my wife and I. We went to Italy for two months about three weeks of which we were in Florence and all the time I was doing a certain amount of work for the Arts, and I was also getting around seeing things and then there came a kind of falling out with Forbes Watson—little bit of a case of out of sight out of mind. He had another associate editor by this time. I think it was Virgil Barker who had been my predecessor as associate editor and well, frankly, the Arts wasn't paying its contributors, and this was embarrassing to me, you see, because I had gotten these articles from abroad, and I wrote Mr. Watson, and it annoyed him. He wrote me a letter which just sort of convinced me that I would not devote too much time to the Arts anymore; that I would improve my opportunity for seeing things instead of working too hard for the Arts. So the rest of my stay I just pretty much went around, traveled and absorbed European art, did a certain amount of writing. We went from Italy to England for about three weeks, then to the Low Countries, Belgium and Holland, then back to France where we took a bicycle trip down the Loire Valley from Chartres to Tours, a wonderful trip. We also bicycled a great deal in Holland which is the perfect country for bicycling, and there we were joined by Reginald Marsh and his wife and his then wife, Betty Burroughs. We all had a good time together, and finally the trip ended up with about a month and a half in Germany. I returned to this country—I think it was late in September, or early October, 1928, after eleven months abroad.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There's just no substitute for a wanderjahr, is there?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Nothing.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's too bad it's delayed in a way. I had mine on the United States Army which is a bad enough way to wander particularly in the Infantry, but still, the notion that there are other cultures, other ways. It's like opening up a whole new garden.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Absolutely, and to me, of course, it had been there in my mind in the form of looking at reproductions and books and so on, reading about things, but the first hand contact was something that you never can have any substitute for.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Suddenly paper walks.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I can never forget my first year in Italy. This was the earth. This was the basis for all our arts since the Renaissance—it seemed to come out of Italy. I must say that I felt awful coming back to this country. I was just so depressed beforehand. I'd gotten used to Europe and its civilization, it's awareness of art and things you could see. At that time our own country seemed more provincial than it does now, and I particularly remember coming back and landing in New York and looking at the architecture of New York City and thinking, "This is chaos. This is a city that has no visual sense at all. This is a civilization that can't have any visual sense, because they couldn't put up one building right next to another with no relation to the other one."

After Paris where there was this harmony—you know, that's the thing that struck me first. The very first week abroad landing in Paris, my wife and I just walked around the city all day long, just amazed at this harmony that we'd never seen in our own country, the feeling that the whole thing was a product of a continuous civilization which had grown harmoniously from one style to another, but never breaking in their traditions. Just visually, the relationships of the heights of the buildings, the styles, the whole feeling of an ordered city as against the chaos of New York and any other American city as far as that goes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We seem to use our buildings and our blocks, the spaces between our buildings, as punctuation—you know, a period, or an exclamation point. It's not a little bewildering, and I can imagine the effect of the settled nature that people have in Europe, though they can argue better than we do on a street corner. In France, it's a rare joy to see people rigorously exchanging views, but you're right! There is a climate that has behind it a deep awareness of its past, not to the point where it becomes a bore—it's just accepted.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  To me Paris is the most exciting modern city I ever lived in. The pace is tremendous. The way the taxi drivers drove. The whole of it was quickness and life. You felt the same thing in Berlin too. Berlin seemed closer to an American city of any city we saw on the continent, and I think that it is. I think the eastern half of Germany—well, even the climate is somewhat like ours. It's dry. It has more sunshine. It's a little more bleak. It hasn't got the feeling of the ocean around it which you get in France and in England, of course. But I'm glad we had that year, and I only wish I hadn't been so conscientious in the beginning working for Arts Magazine. I did do a certain amount of writing. I wrote the first article I think in English, or maybe the second, on [inaudible], the romantic painter. I wrote some exhibition notes, and so on. I did a certain amount of translating. I got an article on Leger and translated it. I think I helped that year to get a certain amount of foreign material for the Arts that they wouldn't otherwise have gotten, but when I came back I found out that the situation was somewhat different from what I left.

There was something of a rift between me and Forbes Watson, I regret to say. I regret it, but it didn't happen right away. It came a little bit later, but in the meantime he had gotten people working—well, I found that I didn't quite have the same position I did when I left. I wasn't second in command. However I was second in command—yes, I'm wrong. I mean that there were other people who shared the responsibility and a little bit more than I had before. However, I had a very free hand. I must say for Forbes that he always gave everybody a free hand. He would never censor, never edit, never obstruct in any way. He was a wonderful man to work for, very affirmative, very humorous, very alive, lots of fun and always with some kind of cause that he was pushing and fighting for. He and Mrs. Force, of course, were great friends and partners for years in the Whitney Studio Club and later in the founding of the Whitney Museum and then in the Arts Magazine, and it was through him that I met her.

In those years, maybe about 1928‑1929, aside from social contacts at parties at the Whitney Studio Club, I think the first professional direct contact was when I was asked, she asked me to write forwards to a couple of shows at the Whitney Studio Galleries. There was one on floral painting which I enjoyed writing very much, and she liked it very much. There was one on the circus in paint. There are two exhibitions which she had, and she wanted a special catalogue with forwards, and this was the way I got to know her, through this contact, through actually doing some work for her. In the meantime I had been writing a great deal for the Arts, more than I had been able to do before I left. I guess it was on account of these people I had just been complaining about. Probably there was more help. I don't remember really. Anyhow, I did have a freer hand. I had, I think, more facility in writing, wider experience, and I felt sure of myself. I think in those days I wrote some of the best criticism I've ever written on the broad field of modern art, not just the field of American art.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  At the time you were writing articles at Macmillan, it's quite true that it was an evening or a weekend affair, but when you came on the magazine, there was a lot to do. It may have been a pioneering enterprise, though it had behind it a certain number of years, but a limited staff and you had to cover all the shows, all the galleries, what was going on, and this is like sampling a daily steady diet of change and trends, getting to know galleries, operators, dealers, painters. If you have a ready card index in your head, this is easy, but it's not always easy.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was a simpler art world then than today too. I mean it was—well, there were considerably few galleries. Only a fraction of what there are now. They had been longer established, most of them were older galleries. You got to know the people. What the Arts stood for—and this was the personality and the viewpoint of Forbes, and I agreed with it and backed him up on it, and we worked together very harmoniously for many, many years—in the first place he was a messiah of the modern movement. He appreciated very greatly the best of the modernists from abroad. I mean he was a great admirer of Matisse and so on. On the other hand, he was tremendously interested in American art, the coming forces in American art, particularly the younger artists. Where there was a conflict he would take the side of the younger Americans. At that time the things to buy and collect were the big names from abroad, the School of Paris, and Forbes fought always to get American art recognized in the same way, and the Arts continually published material on American artists, coming artists. We had a section called "Young America", for example, every month—long and very well written articles on figures like John Marin who has since become much better known than he was then.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Or Glenn Coleman. You wrote on him.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Coleman I wrote about. Deutsche, Burchfield—we got artists to write. We got Edward Hopper to write on Burchfield and on Sloan too, and the emphasis was at least half on the American scene, and this wasn't true of the other art magazines of the time. We were considered as sort of a crusading magazine, and then there were all these issues coming up—of attempts of the National Academy to grab part of Central Park for their new building, and Forbes just loved that kind of issue. It was just made to order for his kind of pen. He had a very, very strong vein of sarcasm in his makeup. He was a good fighter, and he could make fun of, or ridicule things like nobody's business. It think he enjoyed this even more than he did the actual affirmative criticism. I think he enjoyed the in‑fighting.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I wondered whether the cast of his mind was more negative than constructive. Well, you know, that's a balanced thing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, well it was more—well, let's put that maybe it was more toward upholding progressive ideas and the idea of freedom, or self‑expression, than maybe the actual involvement in a work of art itself. In other words, he was a critic of issues, and he was interested always in the personalities of the artists. He was not an esthetician.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But this is the period generally, isn't it, where the established routines, modes of thought like Pouter pigeons are being deflated generally. This is true in the academic community where people like Beard and others were re‑writing American history, and by re‑writing American history exposing other forces and conflicts and factors which other and earlier historians had largely ignored, and all this always is a challenging kind of thing. It's true of law schools. During this period they were examining their relevance to the outside world. They had become almost like a tool industry without a sense of what was going on outside, working toward the necessity of enriching their offerings in terms of experience. It was a very fruitful period in terms of idea, although it's looked back upon—nostalgically by some—as the "age of the red hot mamas", but even writing by way of novels there was a new excitement, extensions from Sinclair's The Jungle.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes. All this was going on, criticism of the -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  In literary criticism you get America's Coming-of-Age by Van Wyck Brooks. The re‑discovery of America, I think, was closely parallel to what was happening in the field of American art criticism. I remember, for example, Virgil Barker writing an article on Burchfield. I think it was an article, or maybe it was just a review of an exhibition in the Arts around 1927. In any event, he was just saying how parallel this was to things like Sinclair Lewis, like Main Street, and so on, but he said that it was much more authentic, more inside the subject, the American scene, that there was more externality in Lewis's treatment of it, but that there was a very close parallel. Of course, at this time there was among the artists themselves a very strong nativist movement—Benton, for example. Benton was a fiery little guy, still is, and I admired him as a painter. He could express himself very well in words too—you know, and we got him to write a series of articles on the principles of design in the Arts. These were the verbalizations about his ideas of Renaissance design in relation to modern subject matter. I may say that all the drawings in it are by me—I think maybe from his sketchy designs, but I remember that I redrew all of it. That's a side issue, however, but we did publish Benton several times.

I was around when he did those murals for the new School for Social Research in 1928, 1929, and I admired them very much indeed. I recognized their defects—I mean they were terribly crowded. They were over‑emphatic. I wrote an article about them and also about Orozco's murals in the new School for Social Research. Incidentally I appear in Orozco's central panel in that New School mural series because I knew Orozco and I went down there to see him painting. He was painting fresco, true fresco with the plaster wet, and you had to do it right then and there. His composition was the races of the world gathered around a peace table, the colored races, the white races, and so on, and he was waiting to paint the portrait of Dr. Johnson, the director of the school, as the representative of the Anglo‑Saxon type of complexion or something, and Dr. Johnson hadn't shown up, so Orozco said, "Sit down!"

I sat down, and there I am at the peace table, a very good likeness. I'm very proud of it. Well, I was so interested in those two parallel mural projects which were quite pioneer for their day that I wrote a long article for the Arts about them, and this is one occasion when Forbes and I split up, I'm sorry to say, because he thought that I was being too favorable to Benton, though I think my piece was quite critical.

As I say, I admired Benton, and this was the time when the Whitney Museum was planning its renovated building down on 8th Street, and I talked to Mrs. Force about Benton as a mural painter, and she was a wonderful person for picking up ideas, so she decided that she'd like to have Benton do a series of murals for the Whitney Museum. I took her over to the new School and showed her Benton's murals. It's a long, involved story and I won't go into it now. Suffice it to say that Mr. Benton's account of it on the financial end in his book is absolutely erroneous, and someday I must correct this—not now, though. He actually was paid much better than he says he was, but he did do this series of murals, The Arts of life in America for the Whitney Museum.

I was talking earlier about the nativist movement in American art. It was a very conscious thing at this time, and my good friend Reg Marsh was a very strong part of it because Reg was steeped in the American scene right at the peak of it—the New York scene. Although he's been abroad a great deal, he'd studied the old masters and everything else; nevertheless, his great interest was in life around him. That was Kenneth Hayes Miller's great interest too, strangely enough. Although Kenneth was a classicist, his subject matter was drawn right from 14th Street, and all of this was much more conscious and articulate than it had been before in our country, and it's a thing that doesn't exist anymore, I don't think, not in this form. I think it's been transformed into a different kind of awareness of the American spirit, an awareness of the essence as expressed in abstract expressionism, for example, but no more on subject matter. In those days, of course, it was a question of subject matter, and among my good friends, for example, was John S. Curry. All of these people—well, I don't say that they were all good friends, but around Kenneth Hayes Miller who continued his influence on people long after they left his classes. Every Wednesday Kenneth used to have a tea party. It was very harmless. It really was a tea party, and all his old pupils would come there and have a chance to get together and talk. It was a very nice institution. It went on for about eight or nine years, maybe more, and Marsh used to come there, Betty Burroughs, Marsden Hartley showed up occasionally, Art Young, the cartoonist, Edward Lang, William Palmer, Isabel Bishop—all of these people who had in some way been associated with Miller. It was quite an occasion each week. It was interesting.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He had the continuity of attractiveness.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Very much. I think he influenced his pupils more after they left him than when they were studying with him.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You say as much in a foreword you wrote.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He had this very remarkable gift for intellectualizing about American art, for verbalizing about it, and producing theories which were arresting and which required thought. This was very stimulating to older people even more than the people who were studying with him at the time, I think.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He was jarred, wasn't he, by the directions in which art was going?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was very anti‑modern, very anti‑modern.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Despite the keenness of his mind?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was very anti‑modern. Well, I wouldn't say that completely. Yes, he was. The basis of his whole system was the Renaissance concept of form, and although he did go off into oriental art and so on, he had a kind of Puritan severity of thinking about the nature of the work of art. It had to be form. It had to be three‑dimensional. It had to have this, or it didn't exist for him at all. So much of modern art was on a contrary tendency towards surface qualities, toward two dimensionalism, toward pure physical sensation, and this he didn't go for at all. Marsh was very much of the same viewpoint. Marsh could be very strong about modern tendencies and in fact, I was very definitely in a conservative trend in my thinking at that time, and I think I said it in words quite frequently. Some of these words I now regret very much. I think I was shortsighted. What I wrote about Marin, for example, in the Arts were words that I think I would like to—well, I wouldn't take them back, but I think I would modify them. What I was doing was really attacking the idolaters, the whole feeling of—oh, you know, that "this is the only man that counts in America today." Marsden Hartley had practically said that in a forward in one of Stieglitz's catalogues, and this I went after.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was, in effect, the absence of procedural standards which led to a conclusion with which you wouldn't share. I can understand this, and I couldn't erase that for beans.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Thank you very much. It was a reaction.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Sure.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was a reaction in the first place against the very great weight given to European modernism as against new trends in American art and then against the exclusiveness of certain advanced modernists, the feeling that only they counted. I suppose I'm more democratically minded.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I was going to suggest that this might have sounded pretty much like your Dad who would say in an argument, "Just a minute. You might be wrong!"

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Possibly.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Where he was confronted by the fire, passion, belief that knows no limitation at all which may have been associated in his mind with your mother's sister.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. I hadn't thought of that. There is a parallel. Maybe my judge grandfather is coming out in me too—the judicial weighing of things. I think at this time I was too apt to react against over‑praise, or over‑popularity.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Or the absolute statement, one that doesn't contain the necessary qualifying remarks. To confront the notion that somebody can come to this kind of a conclusion in a catalogue—I read that with some humor because I like Marin, but at the same time I could understand why—well, I would take the same point of view, have done it in seminars when people used words like "greatest", or "best"—these are so loose as to be meaningless in the total stream.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I remember writing quite a nasty piece about Picasso about 1929, something like that. It dealt with the curious anatomical development of Picasso's work, and this piece I would like to have forgotten in the literature of art because it is definitely a negative viewpoint, and I've changed my mind from it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We'll let that one go on by to illustrate capacity for growth, shall we? As a matter of fact, we've all but finished this tape, and the hours have just flown by.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  For heaven's sakes! I have a date at two o'clock, I'm sorry to say, but I had no idea!

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's gone, and it's been rather painless, hasn't it?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

Whitney Museum, June 25, 1962

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The last time you indicated that your first performance with reference to the presentation of an idea was study that you had made and presented to a history club in Nutley.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In which you discoursed on the history of art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The entire history of western painting in one lecture.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Even so, what interests me more, apart from the fact that you gave this talk, was that you must have prepared it. You said, I believe, that you used slides.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  How did you come by these? How did you structure your talk?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  From the Metropolitan Museum, as I remember. Those were the days when everybody used great big cards—you know, well they didn't have the 2 x 2 slide, nor did they have any color, of course, but these were black and white 3 x 4, I guess they were, something like that. It's the size they still use, but nothing like the kind of visual presentation you can get nowadays—nothing. I don't remember getting them from the Metropolitan, but I must have. That would be the only place I could get them. I remember that I used to go to the Metropolitan quite a bit.

My friend Reginald Marsh told the story—I don't believe it—about his whole class, my whole class and his, I guess, being taken to the Metropolitan when we were all kids by Miss Hawley who ran this private school I went to in Nutley. This was below the eighth grade because I left her school when I entered public high school, and Reg said that I took over the class and went around and talked about the pictures, and Miss Hawley couldn't get a word in edgewise. That's what he told me. I must have been about twelve years old—I don't know, but I sounded like a terrible little prig to me. In any event, I guess it was in the blood already.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  With a reference to the slides, did they shape so far as you can remember, and configure the lecture you gave?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I've still got a copy of the lecture. I don't know where it is. I wrote it out very carefully—I still do. I don't entirely trust myself still with speaking extemporaneously and beside that, I think a lecture is a visual performance which must be planned just as carefully as a stage performance. It should be primarily a visual adventure with commentary which goes absolutely with what you're showing on the screen. To me this is the only way to make art come alive, except showing it, and I wish TV would do this. They haven't got around to it yet—definitely not.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This would indicate—I think you were 17 at the time—that you had done a fair amount of reading.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think I had. I think I have said that my father gave me a set of that old magazine, Masters in Art, which was a very good magazine in its day. It was primary. It took one old master after another in the past and gave short account of his life with about twelve illustrations. I also remember friends of my father and mother, friends who knew that I had this leaning toward art, giving me books that had to do with art. I remember a very sentimental book on Italian painters of the Renaissance by Charles Brook that they gave me and at an early age, this sort of thing means a great deal. It's kind of an opening of windows. The actual seeing of pictures I don't remember so much of. We're talking now of my teens, my early teens. I think I came to art a good deal through books, reproductions, magazines and also through the experience of knowing the Marsh family and my father knowing a good many painters.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The Marsh household, I think you later describe, as a household with books and whatnot related almost entirely to art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  And also the whole practice of art going on there which I could see.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But the writing element—part of the Goodrich gene, whatever it is, is related to writing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I'm told I was pretty good in English at school. That was one of the courses I got best marks in, and I think I always enjoyed expressing myself verbally. My father had this gift also. He was a very good speechmaker, for example. He wasn't shy.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He was a good example.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Actually I think I started out much shier before an audience than my father had been. My father had a streak of the amateur actor in him—I think I spoke about that earlier—and he enjoyed performing. I had it in me too, but I guess it was harder to some cut. Now lecturing is enjoyed very much, except that it still occasions a considerable tension beforehand because, as I say, I want to put on a good performance and say something solid and not just go meandering around.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There's something reminiscent of a New England Puritan streak in this—that is, looking back on it, the notion of not wasting time, saying something relevant, correlating material—this sort of thing is what I mean by "Puritan." It may be your Dad. I mentioned that article I found of your Dad's on schooling where the emphasis was placed on relevance and continually re‑working your material with reference to new idea, correlating your material which makes of your wisdom a kind of living thing as distinct from something which you park outside and never refer to again.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  If this has any relevance to what we're talking about, I've always written rather hard, rather laboriously everything I've ever written. Everything I've ever published, I think has been written and re‑written at least six, or seven and sometimes more times. In the beginning when I was a professional critic for the Arts Magazine, I used to start out with no clear idea of what I was going to say, but a mass of material undigested, a glimpse of truths usually taking a visual form—that is, I could see the picture I wanted to write about, but I couldn't put it yet in words. I would start by just writing disconnected words, adjectives, ideas and so on without form, and in the beginning, as I say, this was quite a laborious process, and it consisted of doing it first this way in a completely free association without form, then doing it again with form coming into it a little bit, a little bit more order of ideas and again and again and again—usually, as I say, at least six times. This is a method which, as a matter of fact, I still use when I'm writing about something new which I have not written about previously. On the other hand, nowadays a good bit of my writing starts forth from points which I have reached in the past, if you see what I mean. In other words, I can now—well, I think my ideas are more clarified. I know what I think. A certain amount of my writing now actually is putting together things of the past -

[The phone rang.]

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You were saying that now that you have taken positions in the past, you have an idea how your ideas were formed, and therefore they are points of departure which relax tension to the extent possible in that you do have points to begin with.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I've got something to take off from—ideas already somewhat formulated and so on, but still if I'm doing something from the ground up, it's somewhat the same process that I've described earlier except that it's easier. I mean that I have more confidence now. I think if I may say so, one reason I wrote with very considerable labor and difficulty in my early years was because I was writing rather solemnly. A lot of it was material which had not been put into print before on American art, going back into the past of American art, based on research which was new, such as my book on Eakins and Homer and so on, all of which required a great deal of original research which I find extremely rewarding. I wish I could do much more of it now, but I think that was one reason that the writing did not come easily. I was not facile.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was there much in the way of criticism of your work—that is, were there people who were sources of views as to how to express an idea? You know, it's one thing to have an idea; quite a different thing to express it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  You mean at home? No, because I wasn't writing professionally until after I was married.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Your dad must have said, "Finish your sentences!" at one time in your life.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think my English teacher probably took care of that in high school. I didn't do any professional writing until I was married and had left my family, so that whatever training I had as a writer came to me partly as inheritance, partly by the example of my father. I say "my father" because he was the person who was closest to me as a writer. My mother's family were professional writers too, professionals, not amateurs like my father, but after all, my father was the one closest to me of anybody who did any writing, and I guess I got a great deal from him and then from reading. I was always a terrific reader. I mean—well, I was rather unsocial as a boy, and did an unusual amount of reading. And although I didn't write very much except pieces in school, that lecture we spoke of and so on, nevertheless I always—well, I think I had the feeling that I was going to someday.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Where did you get the sense of fairness in criticism? This is an almost wholly disinterested view, almost like a scientist, not quite because you're involved, but holding yourself from conclusions long enough for ideas to jell and get a hearing. Where did you get that from?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Thank you very much. I think I see what you mean. I think that criticism has to have a basis of objectivity, of the accumulation of evidence, of meditation, of really thinking about a thing in as disinterested a way as you can. On that basis then, you form the opinions. Of course, a lot of the writing I have done has been fairly factual writing anyway—I mean, my two major biographies of Eakins and Homer had been built on the basis of fact. I don't believe in a biography, or a monograph on an artist being just a subjective expression. I think the main thing is accuracy, accumulation of first hand material, going back to original sources, never expressing an opinion that you can't back up with evidence. This may be partly the legal background of my family—you see, my father was a lawyer and my grandfather was a judge. I think this may be part of it, and I think there's not enough of this kind of thing in a great deal of writing these days, on American art particularly. There has been too much of a tendency to simply write the critic's subjective reactions of things without any real objective basis in the relation of the artist to society, to his fellow artists, the history of art and so on, a little bit too much—well, praising or damning. My philosophy of criticism is fairly objective writing. At the same time I don't think the critic should be dull. It shouldn't be just an accumulation of facts. In the end he's got to form opinions and pass judgments, and I hope that I'm able to combine the two, but what has always interested me as a critic and a writer is to make an original contribution in the way of biography, history and factual material.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I keep trying to put this in the family context. It's quite possible that you may have heard more heat than light on a specific topic at the table since you had present a human dynamo in the form of your Aunt where she had fierce feelings as opposed to your Dad's more tentative, searching views, saying, "Well, what are the relevant factors", or looking for a more reasonable point of view. I find even in the early criticism in book reviews that you wrote, an effort to do justice to the man who wrote the book and at the same time trying to give the reader of the book review some estimate of what your views were with respect to where the books fit in the stream. There's an element of fairness. I wondered what the wellspring of it were.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think it probably is the fact that my father was really an historian in his thinking. That was the basis of all his interest in cultural matters. It basically was historical and to some extent literary, but history was his passion among several passions. I've told you about this historical chart that he worked up. He was tremendously interested in American history. I remember the volumes by John Fiske and Channing and so on that filled his library. He had a very good historical library in Nutley—excellent historical library. He read history continually and he had this history class for adults later on when he was in his last years. I think that history, poetry and the stage were his great interests really and less the visual arts. But history always came first. He should have been a professor of history, a teacher of history actually.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Apart from interest in and the accumulated wisdom you get from books, he does bring to his study, his interest, a procedural sense. He must—that is, what may appear to a more fiery nature as too tentative a mind, almost a form of weakness to someone who is by nature fiery, is a much deeper mind because it isn't quite sure. It's waiting to accumulate evidence, or other relevant factors which might appear on the scene as part of the complexity. It's never quite a closed issue with a reasonable man as it is with somebody who is a firebrand, so this must have been in the home somewhere whether they were talking about Woodrow Wilson, or T.R. or x. I don't' know what instinctively enters your being except that there is this exchange of view, as I understand it, inside the home, and while you may contribute in terms of choosing sides, there must come a point where the choice of sides becomes relevant to what you yourself can accumulate, and this is a quiet thing if for no other reason than to avoid the clash of view. We said initially, I think, that an artist has to have a set of blinders. He has to rudely rip out those things which are not in keeping with his vision, or his drive, where he wants to go, so that in that sense an artist can't be a reasonable fellow—by definition. They may be reasonable, but in terms of thinking -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Not very many that I can think of are reasonable. I mean "reasonable" within the limit they set themselves. Actually I think artists are the most interesting people in the world to talk art to. I've had artist friends, I'm glad to say, and I've gotten a great deal from them. I feel that part of whatever I may have contributed as a writer has been largely due to my friendship with artists and the fact that I studied art, that I had as a teacher a man as intelligent as Kenneth Hayes Miller, and that I had among my closest friends artists as intelligent as Reginald Marsh, Katherine Schmidt, Henry Schnakenberg, Betty Burroughs, Molly Luce, Bryson Burroughs, people who were not only artists, but also thought a great deal about art, had theories about it, interesting theories with which I agreed. I always felt in my earliest writings, I think, that I was sort of submitting this to the approval of these people, that I wanted to say in words, in print, something of what we had talked about, thought about in the way of an understanding of art. They were all to some extent traditionalists, and I think Miller was the guiding spirit, and yet they all broke away from him to some extent. They all rebelled the way one does against a father. Even Marsh who remained his close friend all his life—there was almost a father‑son relationship there—combined great respect and a rebellion now and then, a certain amount of humor about Kenneth's idiosyncrasies and so on. Marsh and Kenneth were in many ways complete opposites. Miller was an intellectual painter in the tradition of Allston, La Farge and the other painters in this country whose cerebral processes, I think, outweighed their creative urge. They possessed remarkable minds, were remarkable analysts of the art of the past, but as creators, they sometimes were lacking in that urge that a more narrow and less intellectual person can have. Marsh, on the contrary, was an instinctive artist right from the ground up. I mean he could draw skillfully when he was a very small child, and he had this remarkable gift for seizing character, for seeing things as a visual sense. Miller and Marsh were complete opposites temperamentally, and yet they were very devoted to each other. I think that Miller gave Marsh a great deal in the way of discipline, broadening his whole historic basis and appreciation of the old masters. In a way, I think that what Miller gave Marsh was a little bit too much for Marsh. I think it lead him away from that instinctive, creative drive, the ability to record reality closely and powerfully which Miller didn't appreciate particularly. I don't believe that Miller ever encouraged this side of Marsh, and I believe this element in an artist's makeup is very important. It's very much denied nowadays when we have painting which is largely abstract and subjective. Observation, the observation of the real world and a recording of it, has always been basic in the past. I don't think that it will ever stop being basic, and Marsh had this gift to a preeminent degree, a gift, which I said earlier, I didn't have myself, and I think it was one of the reasons I didn't continue as a painter.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Miller has an entrancing background—related to the Oneida community—John Humphrey Noyes, a small community, socialistic in a way, but apart from the main stream of America, so I don't know what its effect on Miller was, or whether anyone has tried to assess it, but with that as a point of departure to become an intellectual painter in terms of idea—you know, that's -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, the Oneida community, remember, was a very practical community.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Indeed it was.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  They made a lot of money, as you well know—community silver, preserves, and what is it—bear traps, something like that. As a matter of fact, Kenneth Miller lived on this all his life. He was never a success. As I understand it, he had a steady income from his share in the Oneida community, I believe, which was a very good thing. It made it possible for him to paint and to teach and to be the kind of influence he was without having to worry too much. This is my understanding. [The phone rang.]

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Something comes out of what you've just said which intrigues me, and that is the source of your own feeling about recipes. You have a distinct antipathy to them as revealed in some of your early book reviews. One in particular, The Enjoyment and Use of Color. There's a comment in the review of that book to the effect that teaching color should begin with the study of music, affording the child unlimited opportunities to express instinctive feeling for color and form as distinct from recipes. You then go on and make some—

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I wrote this?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, and then you go on and make the reference to that species of the human race known as the art student who is all too eager for recipes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I do remember that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You know, there aren't any easy answers, and instinctive feeling while intensely subjective, may be part of the creative process. I don't know—that is, the leap of the mind as distinct from the carefully thought out work. If we stopped and asked ourselves, "If I do thus-and-so, such-and-such will happen." On the other hand: —well, you know, we'd stand still. This is very interesting—that the study of color should begin with the study of music.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think I always felt that in the teaching that I had seen in my day as an art student that there was an awful lot that went on at the Art Students League which was just recipes. I talked about George Bridgman, for example, my first teacher, no my second teacher. He had a recipe. I suppose he taught in his lifetime several thousand pupils, and he taught them basic drawing the figure and the cast in charcoal, and he had a formula like nobody's business. The figure was always posed with the hip thrown out in a certain way. There was a little quirk the way you draw the action lines and so on. He knew anatomy. Bridgman was a good draftsman. He knew anatomy. He gave lectures on anatomy at the Art Students League, and he taught thousands of students to draw. He didn't teach them to paint. This was a purely drawing course. I don't think the League ever had a teacher before, or since, who taught so many students certain basic things, but it was all according to a formula. I suppose that may be one way to turn out as many students as that and make them skilled in certain ways. Probably the exceptional man who turns out to be a great draftsman could get over this, but a lot of them just learned tricks, and I think maybe that was what I was talking about in recipes.

It was probably a reaction against that because there was every difference in the world between the teaching of a man like Bridgman and the teaching of Kenneth Hayes Miller. Miller never had that kind of formula. He had much deeper formulas, formulas relating to design, to the relationship between color and form, to methods of painting. For example, the usual practice at the League in that day was direct painting.  In other words, you painted in the general Sargent style with a fully loaded brush, and you just banged the thing into the canvas. You didn't under‑paint, or anything like that. This was the usual method of teaching there as practiced by Frank Vincent DuMond, with whom I studied, and a number of others; indeed, most of the teachers there. Miller was very exceptional in that he taught his students to under‑paint. In other words, they would first draw from a model, a composition, and also he used materials and more of a whole setting behind the models than most teachers did. He thought of the painting even done in the class as a composition, as a design, as a thought‑out design, and the monitor in the class was always very careful to arrange the model with a certain amount of good‑looking material, draperies, and so on, different colors and different forms, to make sort of a composition. Right from the beginning Miller wanted his students to think of the picture as a design, as a whole, not just a copy of something in front of them, but a thought‑out design, and the technical process was first a drawing in which the design had been worked out in black and white, then an under‑painting, as I remember, in umber, or a brownish color—I can't remember just what paint we used—but it was then a monochrome under‑painting, you see. Of course, this was the basic method of the old masters—that is, the Renaissance masters—and Miller consciously based his system on this.

Then on top of the under‑painting, after it was dry, would come the actual painting in color. He was teaching a method which goes back centuries and which had been completely discarded by most modern painting since Impressionism. He was very conscious of this and talked a great deal about it, talked about how modern painting had lost this traditional structure not only in the sense of design, but also the actual technical sense of building forms from the ground up. This is the method he taught all his pupils, and many of them still continue it. I have not been in touch with my old friends as painters as much as I should be. I don't know whether they still continue this painting and over painting method. I think probably many of them do. But in this, as I said, Kenneth Hayes Miller was an exception. Most of the teachings at the League at that time was very surface painting, even the best of them, and it's interesting to me, although I had no contact with him at the time, that John Sloan who taught for years at the League and was one of the most popular teachers there. He had a bigger following than Miller because Sloan was more kind of magnetic, sociable person than Miller was, and humorous, a man who was good company, and so on. Miller was always considered rather austere. Well, he was austere. Sloan, when he came to teach—he had taught for years, but I think about 1928, Sloan began to teach more or less in the method of the old masters, too. He came around to very much the same ideas that Miller had had even before that. I don't think that there was any direct contact with him. I think that as far as I understand it, this method of building the form as he did through under painting came to Sloan pretty much by first‑hand study of the old masters just the way Miller had done, but Miller had done it earlier. Sloan was not a part of my picture when I was an art student. I don't think he could have been teaching at the League. I'm sure I would have seen him around if he had been there because he was not a man whom you did not notice. I think he came to the League after I left.

This is getting back to what you were saying about recipes. I suppose my comment was a reaction to that kind of teaching of which I had seen a good deal at the League and through which I went myself foolishly in studying with Frank Vincent DuMond in my last years there and with an illustrator whose name I think was Fogarty. I was deliberately going out to try to paint in an acceptable kind of way in order to make my living as an illustrator—great mistake!

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  If it was wise to assume that you could be an illustrator, it was best to get the -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. It was not a pure assumption.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Subsequently you write an introduction to a catalogue of a fellow who came to the Art Students League in 1914—David Morrison who had an interesting background of his own, though I don't believe you studied with him.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Oh, no. He was a fellow student of mine with Kenneth Hayes Miller.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Oh, was he?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. He and Alexander Brook were very close friends. They were a case of exact opposites, too. Dave Morrison had been a preacher, a very sweet guy, one of the nicest people I ever knew in my life, really unworldly, outgoing and generous. He was kind of a minister in rebellion, I think. He'd taken up painting and he was very serious about it. He and Brook got to be close friends. They were complete opposites because Morrison was rather an innocent kind of person in a way, unworldly in a sense, and Alex Brook was a very lusty human being from the beginning, sort of an instinctive painter from the beginning. He was one of the most talented members of our class. Right from the beginning he and Kuniyoshi (this is the Miller class) were two of the best painters that we had at that time, a great deal of facility, both of them. Kuniyoshi was painting very strange things. I don't think any of us understood what he was doing. I'm not sure he did. I don't think Kenneth Miller did, and yet Kuniyoshi said always that he got more from Miller's teaching than he did from anybody, and I think that's probably the case. Just the way Marsh got a corrective to the sort of unselected kind of naturalism that Marsh could have gone into: similarly, I think, Kuniyoshi got a corrective to the kind of sensuous, sensation painting that he could have gone in for. Both of them got from Miller this basic sense of form, or striving for a sense of form which they evolved in completely different way. I think also Alexander Brook got from Miller the qualities that one finds in Brook's early work aside from this great sensuousness, the compositional sense. The feeling of form again, I think, was inspired by Miller. Henry Schnakenberg was another classmate of mine, and his work has always been founded on this feeling for form, for form growing out of reality which is Miller's particular philosophy. I'm trying to remember some other students that were there when I was there. Of course, as so many just dropped by the wayside.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Katherine Schmidt was there.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  She wasn't in our class, you see, it was a man's class. These were the days before co‑education, and the girl's Miller class included Katherine Schmidt, Molly Luce, Betty Burroughs, Anne Rector who is a very talented painter and who later married Edmund Duffy, the cartoonist. I think Dorothy Varian was a student of Kenneth Hayes Miller at that time.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Peggy Bacon?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Peggy Bacon—right. You could see that Miller had a rather extraordinary group of students.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I didn't know that Morrison was a student. What interested me most was the fact that he had been born in India—giving him a cultural dualism. He was a pastor in some non‑denominational church, Son of Man, or something like that, a splinter group, but later he joined forces to some extent with Hamilton Easter Field and was the secretary, or treasurer of the Field Foundation.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I had forgotten that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  For a long period of time.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The Salons of America?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was a very conscientious public spirited kind of man and as I said, a very, very attractive and pleasant man. He died young, as you know, but he played quite a part in all those goings on at that time.

By the way, another student there at that time was Robert Howard who had become, I think, one of the most interesting west coast sculptors. Bob Howard was younger than most of us, I guess. He was a tall, very good looking, blond, young man, very natural and simple. I saw him again for the first time in almost 40 years, I suppose, in San Francisco a few years ago, and we actually recognized each other. He has become a great power. He was a great power in San Francisco. He was a member of the Fine Arts Commission of the city. He comes from a very remarkable family—all artists. His father was an architect, his mother a painter, and all of the four sons were painters, or sculptors, and they all married artists. It's a family that goes off in all directions like the Marsh family only there are more of them. One of his brothers is Charles Howard who now lives in England.

Anyway, Bob Howard was then a very simple, ingenuous young man, very attractive, and I remember his appearing in a class play. At the end of each season at the League, each class put on some kind of a theatrical performance all in one evening—you see, each class would have about a quarter of an hour skit, something like that, and some of these skits were very amusing. I don't know whether the League still does this. I suspect they don't. I think it was a more cynical and sophisticated day. This was the day—well, Eakins, you know, every year at the end of the school year the Art Students League in Philadelphia where Eakins taught, had a big extravaganza. Eakins used to come out dressed like an organ grinder with a monkey, and stuff like that. Similarly at the League in my day, at the end of each season they used to have an evening of theatricals, and the Miller class composed the most callow, or cynical piece I ever saw performed on the stage in my life. It was all full of very deep cynicism and Nietzsche—we were all then fairly interested in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. It was a very cynical theatrical performance in which Bob Howard appeared as a fawn in a leopard skin playing a harmonica off stage—that was it. The girls' Miller class, on the contrary, put on a very dignified performance of the princess who can't sleep because of a rose leaf under the mattress. It was very beautiful and with music by—is it Scriabin? Anyway, a Russian of the time—Scriabin, I think, played by Miss Margaret Ten Eyck who was also a girl there at that time whom I also knew quite well. This was quite different from the boys' production. It was really quite a sophisticated piece of fantasy to a musical accompaniment. Molly Luce was the princess, and she looked the part. She was very pretty.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  How do you account for the cynicism?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Of the Miller boys?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, it was largely instigated by Alexander Brook, sided and abetted by Dave Morrison, the ex‑preacher, who was in sort of a rebellion against his whole background and going into a Bohemian kind of thing. Brook had a kind of a wild sense of humor and was very precocious as a painter and also as a personality. He was more sophisticated than the rest of us, and all of us were very much given to reading philosophy in a rather half‑baked way, I guess. I remember one student whose name I can't remember whose God was Schopenhauer, and we used to hear a great deal about Schopenhauer. This sounds awfully dated, I know, because Schopenhauer after all had been known for a good many decades before Miller's class discovered him.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The discovery by the Miller class is important for the atmosphere of the Miller class.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. There was a basic pessimism of course, a viewpoint which only youth could really stick very long.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This is of interest to me because in a larger context American religious and philosophical development from about 1890 on was filled with this boundless optimism about the perfectabilities. With the first shot of the First World War this optimistic thesis regarding the perfectibility of man came to an end, though many of those then practicing and preaching optimism didn't realize it, so it's very interesting that the Art Students League, more particularly, the boys' Miller class had a pessimistic viewpoint.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  This was before the war, too, or at least in the early stages of the war. I don't think the war touched us very much up to the time the United States entered the war. Personally—yes. I was terribly touched by it. I always read the newspapers from cover to cover, but I don't think we talked much about the war. This was before the draft, and none of us really saw it as affecting us particularly, but this kind of Schopenhauer pessimism preceded this change in the world situation. It was a basic kind of thing. I think it's one of the qualities which set us off from the more extroverts around us at the League. The Miller class had more introverts, had more people who were intellectuals than most of the classes.

Another student that I happened to think of was Derwood Parrish who was, I think, Maxfield Parrish's nephew, or grand‑nephew, a very attractive, young man. I think his sister was Ann Parrish, the novelist. Derwood Parrish was a very intelligent young man, quite sophisticated, and one of his close friends who was also, I think, in the class was Edward Nagel, and my memory is that his sister married Gaston Lachaise. I know there was a connection. I know that Nagel did portraits of Lachaise and Lachaise did portraits of Nagel and so on, the way they all did in those days. These people had interests beyond the ordinary learning of the craft of painting. We were all interested in painting to quite a degree. We all read more, I think, than most students did at that time in the League. It was quite a lively class and, in a way, going off in directions that Miller himself didn't sympathize with.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  A fellow who goes to law school and immerses himself in the subject, talks law breakfast, lunch and dinner—you know, and there's an enormous premium placed on getting control of the atmosphere in conversation, dominating it. There always seemed to me very little listening going on. I wondered about the atmosphere of the students outside of class at the Art Students League—you know, you sit around a cup of coffee in a cafeteria -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The cafeteria was right there. We had a restaurant, and a great deal of time was spent in that restaurant, believe me. My old friend Edmund Duffy, the future cartoonist—I don't think he studied with Miller; he studied with Bridgman—used to get through his day's work in about 15 minutes as I remember. By the way, he has continued this ever since in his professional career. He's one of the best cartoonists in the country, and he wastes no time. He had a natural facility, and I remember Duff being in the Art Students League restaurant most of the time. There were quite a few who did this in the League; in fact, some of them did this simply because they were really not talented at all. They just went there for social reasons, and they enjoyed the atmosphere, sat around most of the time and never did much painting. I remember that a friend of mine, Culbert McNear [ph], proved this.

Another friend of mine was Richard Coolidge. I've often wondered what became of him as a painter. He was a very interesting painter at the time. We all thought he was going to be the star of the class. It's a funny thing about who is going to be what in the future years. It's almost impossible to judge, I think. For example, the first year the Art Students League awarded the McDowell Fellowship—this is long after I left the League; I think it was around 1930, anyway the early 1930s. These were two traveling fellowships established by a man named McDowell—a very desirable thing, travel to Europe for a year without any strings attached—and they asked me to be the judge of the first year's competition. There were about 150 entries, and I picked two artists that I thought there was no question that they would be comers, the best. There was no question that they were the best, the most talented, really gifted, and then I also picked as alternates in case they couldn't take the fellowship, six others. Well, the two that I picked have never really made much reputation. One of those I picked as an alternate was Edward Laning, and he has made a great reputation. Strangely enough, I didn't pick him as the first. I think there's a certain natural facility that comes in youth that makes a man's work look very promising, very exciting, and it doesn't necessarily last. I think the hardest things to judge in the world, really, are futures in art. You may be right ten percent of the time, if you're lucky. My philosophy is that the 90 percent where you're not right doesn't matter. This is the background for the people who do matter. You've got to make all these mistakes. They're not mistakes at all. They are just failures to hit the target. The only way to my mind to encourage creativity is to spread the net wide and to support as much as seems good at the time in different ways and hope that even ten percent turns out to be important.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It may be that the wrinkle in this is in the nature of a class. If it's good for an artist to have a set of blinders, to be single‑minded, to have an instinctive purpose that has to somehow explode on to the canvas, he can't do it very well if at any time he begins to compare his work with someone else's work. Did you ever have that feeling—that is, you can know law school because whatever it is, 200 students get out on the track, and they run around the track, all taking the same thing, and where the laurels, ivy leaf, or whatnot go to those who run the swiftest. In art school where self‑expression and blinders count—and they wouldn't count in a law school because you want to milk your associates dry of every kind of talent you don't have to enrich your own—class is something apart from that.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think I see what you mean. Possibly the fact that so many of the members of the Miller class were intellectuals you might say; anyway, people of taste. And young men of considerable taste and knowledge not only in the art of the past but also other arts, may have made them less creative. I don't think so, because you got a rather high proportion of people who really amounted to something later. It was a small class, mind you—I don't believe there were at the most 25 students at the top of those classes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What I had in mind was the fact that when you acted as a judge and you picked two on the basis of what was then presented, and developments ceased. The fact that developments ceased may be equated with the young artist being chosen and saying, "Well, I've done thus and so. How is it related to what someone else is doing?" In short, I suspect it's possible for an artist to be a good artist only if he consents not to become a research historian in the field of art. When he begins to compare and contrast, he may lose whatever it is, that urge, that instinctive thing you talked about here.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think that a basic facility showing very early can be either a flash in the pan, or it can be a permanent thing. In the case of Reginald Marsh, I think it was a permanent thing which was deep in his nature, it was more than facility. It was a real grasp of form, the form of the body, the form of the face, the head and so on. That's not surface facility, and it was, or is a surface facility that is apt to attract one in judging the work of a young person, and things like this don't necessarily last.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You must have had—I mean, the effect of Marsh on you, though he wasn't in your class, was he?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was at Yale by this time.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, but how about the facility he had compared with the hard work that you went through.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He worked hard. Reg worked very hard; in fact, he was constantly drawing always—his whole life time. I knew him all his life time. He had facility also to be a tremendous worker. He started, as you know, professionally for the Yale Record when he was either a freshman or a sophomore and became really—well, he made the Record one of the best college magazines of the time and from then on, he was also a professional, later on for the Daily News, the New Yorker, and so on. I would think that his career was somewhat parallel to Winslow Homer's because Homer also started as a draftsman, a black and white artist, a reporter in a sense. Then he later got into painting which is exactly the same evolution that Marsh went through, despite the fact that both his parents had been painters and he had been brought up in an atmosphere of painting. Painting to Marsh came rather late. I think it was partly because he studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts where their teaching in those days was very, very conservative, and based entirely on drawing and so on. I understand that he didn't get very good marks there, I think. I may be wrong about that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This may be to his credit.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Like General Grant graduating at the foot of his class at West Point.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Your own classmates, was there much time for the exchange of views?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Oh, yes. You mean outside of class? Oh, yes. We all saw a lot of each other, and we were all interested in a lot of things beside the art. We were interested in going to concerts, opera, theater, and in also going around a great deal to see exhibitions. Not together necessarily, but I remember visiting the shows, the exhibitions in New York—oh, from the very first year at the Art Students League, seeing things like the marvelous Renoir exhibition at Durand‑Ruel. Renoir was one of my favorite painters at that time. He also curiously enough was on of Miller's great admirations. Renoir was a completely diametrically opposed temperament, and yet Miller admired him probably, I think, for the qualities he himself lacked—you know. Miller was a tremendous admirer of Venetian painting, and Venetian painting with all its tremendous structural qualities had a kind of sensuousness that Miller required and had himself, but the exhibition world of New York City at that time was much more limited. It was also much more exciting to all us young people. We saw impressionists—their art a great deal. We were beginning to see modern painting from abroad. We saw more modern painting from abroad actually than we did other modernists in this country who still were having a rather hard time getting their work shown. Quite early in the game painters like Dufy, Signac and so on were popular and seen a good deal, but the American artists of a modern persuasion had a hard time getting his work shown. There were only a few galleries that would handle it as I indicated last time.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Is there—you go to a gallery and what you see is the consequence of a process which if it's any good at all is so unique that it's hardly possible to duplicate it. How does—well, in varying degrees the teachers with whom you were associated had these recipes, some of them more subtle, some deeply philosophical, but it was exposure to a process. When you see a painting, you're not looking at the process at all.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's the end result.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, a wholly new process begins in the seeing. You may invest a picture with ideas and thoughts that were not intended by whoever painted the picture. This creative process is an awfully elusive kind of thing to impart as a structured course, unless you're going to be an illustrator. Creativity, the will power, that kind or urge—I don't know where it is found. I haven't the vaguest idea. It has always amused me somewhat that in the creative world they have such things as art schools, writing schools.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There's a great debate as to whether they accomplish what they're supposed to. Whistler said, "Art happens."

I don't agree with that, but it does have its element of truth. It's inborn, or it isn't. I don't think so because painting has a certain basis of craftsmanship that can really only be learned in company with others and more experienced minds. It's seldom that you find a painter like Renoir who was a draftsman from his infancy almost, and this was partly because his family were painters of porcelain, so that he did have that craftsmanship element in him from his early years. No. I think that in the long run actually it's the innate gift that counts. An artist can be helped a good deal by the kind of teaching he has. He can also be injured a great deal. I think there are many cases of artists who became over‑intellectualized by the teaching of a man like Miller. I know that some of Reg Marsh's friends felt that Miller's influence on him was not good, that it had taken a great natural talent and made it too self‑conscious, too much concerned with the past, too much aware of Rubens, too much aware of Michelangelo, Rembrandt. I don't think I agree with that. In any case, there's always some disadvantage in every advantage.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In the school situation the net effort is to turn out carbon copies—really—isn't it?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  What point of view are you talking about?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Tools, techniques, not necessarily approaches, but the effort to impart a commonality of experience upon which these students can draw to enable them to theoretically come across the line at the same point. Where the variations occur, it's due, I suspect, to what they bring with them, uncontrolled by the school atmosphere—like Brook and Kuniyoshi.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, I think Miller encouraged individualism.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He did?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, more than most teachers. He wasn't teaching an easy receipt. He was teaching something quite fundamental. It may have been that you can't teach his kind of thing completely in an intellectual way, but nevertheless it was a noble attempt, or noble project—the intention was great; whereas, with most teachers at the League at that time, academic painters, you get a very surface kind of thing, a rubber stamp quality there. I don't think there was anything very rubber stamp about the Miller class. In the first place, Miller attracted people who were individualists, and I think he encouraged individualism, although he was a man of iron will, and he did try to impose his set of values—no question about it, but then every teacher does.

The interesting thing is that one could always recognize a Miller student's work in the early years, and this was one reason for the attack against Miller. I mean people, his enemies in the art world, said, "Of course, all the Miller Students paint in this old masterish Renaissance kind of way, with under painting, and this gives their work a Miller quality."

"A Miller student" in a way, was a term of opprobrium in certain areas of the art world in those days, but all of these men, Miller students, outgrew this and went off in the direction of individualism. They all retained something of Miller's teaching, but they became personalities more than the students of most teachers, and I'm taking into account the very small size of the Miller classes because they were not ever large classes, and they were seldom financially successful, I believe. I know that later when I was on the Board of Control of the Art Students League, there was a constant attack on the Miller classes by other members of the board who were students of other teachers, on the grounds that Miller was not paying his way and so on. Marsh and a few others were also on the Board of Control with me in those years, and there was a regular battle every year to try to get Miller out of the school. We stood up for him, fought against it, and won. Finally, I think, the other factions came to see that Miller, in spite of the fact that his classes didn't actually pay as well as the classes of some other teachers, was a prestige matter for the school, that this meant something that nobody else was giving, except later on John Sloan and also George Grosz.

I have no experience with George Grosz as a teacher, but I gather from what I can hear that he is the same kind of deeply structural teacher. He certainly was a painter.

The League was a remarkable school. The great thing about it was the liberty of choice that it gave you, the fact that you could, if you wanted to, go right into the most advanced classes without any preparation, and then you were by yourself. You could throw yourself right into the water and sink or swim. This wasn't true of most schools in those days, and I don't think it's true even today, but it has always been true of the League. There's no set curriculum. In a way, it's a series of individual studios. As I say and as everybody knows, it's also a cooperative school run on a non‑profit basis by its own members, not a corporation, or a museum, or anything like that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Initially when you went there you had a part‑time bit. You went up to Columbia in the afternoon.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. My first year.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Well, if this is a free lunch counter in the sense that you could choose your people, you took, I guess, Leo Malzino.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Leo Malzino and then George Bridgman.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The first year?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think so. It may have been Bridgman for a little while and then Malzino. I can't remember. Anyway, these were both teachers. I was taking a course in antique drawing, drawing from a cast, and this is very conventional. I think I did it because I didn't know any better and partially because maybe I had to prove myself—you see, my father had given me a choice: If you want to be an artist, try it; if you don't feel that you want to, then I would like you to go to college.

That was more or less his attitude, but he did not bring any pressure to bear at all. The reason I probably studied antique—well, I think it was somewhat in the air of the times. Nowadays I don't think they teach very much in the antique, but then it was pretty much the accepted thing. I was being rather conservative about this. As a matter of fact, I got a scholarship. I think I did. At the end of the first half year I got a scholarship which gave me free instruction for the rest of the term, so I did have a certain amount of facility in drawing. The second year—memory plays you tricks—I think I probably began to study with Miller and the third year I went to the National Academy. The fourth year I was again with Miller, and the fifth year was this abortive attempt to learn illustration. After that, it was business.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There seems to have been, and it may well be that this is part of the pattern unless you have a deep urge in the sense that Marsh had it, a sampling sort of approach, isn't it?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Malzino, Bridgman, Miller followed by this departure for the National Academy of Design.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That I can't explain to myself. I really don't understand it even today.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It may be—you know, a subjective realization of limitation.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think I was very unsure in many ways. My own painting in those years aside from the work of the school, was pretty much in the impressionist tradition. I loved color. I loved landscape. I painted mostly landscape in the summers in Sakonnet, and it was a little beyond impressionism in its color scheme—I mean, another great admiration of mine was Van Gogh, and I painted very highly colored, naturalistic landscape with not much emphasis on form, mostly on atmosphere, color, sun light, and so on, quite contrary to Miller's teaching, quite contrary. I now realize that my painting was more in the vein of the American painting which I had seen from childhood on and which my father stood for—the school of Hassam and so on, the American impressionists, though I felt that they were rather weak imitators of Monet. For that time I thought that. I've changed my mind since—my particular admirations as I remember them in those days, my personal admirations, were for Renoir, Monet, Pizzaro, Van Gogh, Gauguin to some extent, Cézanne not yet. I think I missed an element of poetry in Cézanne that I found in the others, found in Renoir particularly. The lyrical quality of Renoir was particularly attractive to me. This hooks up, you see, with my literary background. Monet was an extension of my own taste, I may say, beyond the pre‑Raphaelites towards the more contemporary kind of lyrical feeling in painting. This was my personal kind of painting at that time. Even the last paintings I did which were done by 1930, had somewhat of the same qualities. They were landscape, and the emphasis was on color, light, and mood, less on structure. And the strange thing is here I am as a critic, constantly pounding in the idea of structure.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I wondered about that.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's puzzling. I think in a way it represents the old thing of making up your own deficiencies by emphasizing what you yourself are not particularly good at.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's what I meant when criticism becomes completely disinterested. You hold yourself out at arm's length and say, "This is what, or where I'm looking." That doesn't take a set of blinders, because if you had a set, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference—you know, "This is it!" Self‑mesmerization in what you do, but when you can hold yourself at arm's length and then be critical about what you see and what you've done, that's where judgment comes in.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true, and I think that's one reason I gave up painting, the fact that I was self‑critical.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did your Dad ever comment about the fact that your paintings had taken during summers, for example, when you were painting landscapes?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't remember his doing so particularly. I know that my family, my father and mother, were always very pleased about my work. My mother had more feeling for it—I mean, I think I said earlier that she always wanted me to continue as a painter and was always somewhat disappointed that I hadn't. She always laid more stress, I think, on this side of my career, on the fact that I could have been a painter. I don't think this continued indefinitely because later on when I made more success as a critic and later as a museum person, that was the main thing to her as far as I went, but for a long time she would ask me every now and then, "Don't you do any painting? Don't you feel like doing some painting?"

There was a creative thing about her and the Lloyd family. If my father had lived, he would have taken most pleasure in my writing and in my editorial and museum work, and so on.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But you don't remember any verbal reports?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't—really.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Being a reasonable fellow, he might have withheld judgment, and that withholding of judgment might have been a source of uneasiness.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No. I don't think so. I don't think I was terribly interested in what my family thought about my work, and I think that's being young. After all I was in a professional atmosphere.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  If he was reticent about it, he was at least smart enough not to say, "My little boy is the smartest little boy that ever lived!"

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He wasn't that kind anyway.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In any event, you broke with this.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  With painting?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, and perhaps your schooling is an extended illustration of why you broke with painting—the number of people with whom you chose to work, their area of specialty, illustration which, in essence and in your case, may be no more than watering down idea. Breaking with painting seemed to be in the stream.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, at least I'm glad I had the sense to realize that I couldn't be an illustrator, because the trade of illustration calls for exactly the qualities I didn't have—the ability to seize an action, a moment, to illustrate an event, the kind of thing that Marsh was very good at. I never did have it, and I was an idiot to think that I ever could have succeeded at it. It was really, really a blind trail I followed in that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Your interest in painting landscape is almost a vacation from a family that was historically minded, wasn't it?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, it was part of the whole family life in a way, because we all loved Sakonnet, and that's where I did most of my landscape painting. My father loved it down there, and my mother particularly. I was painting that landscape when I was painting in the summer. I was painting this kind of thing, and it was very much family. I see what you mean—well, after all, the historical thing was an intellectual thing.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's right—idea.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It had nothing to do with the content of my own work. I can't remember whether I ever did try any kind of painting which had to do with whatever feeling I had in history, what they then called ancient history, I used to make drawings, water colors of the Roman Forum, pictures of Roman soldiers and of Greek figures and so on. This was very much part of the intense interest I had in high school in ancient history which next to English I think was my chief interest. But when I came to professional work, I never followed this up at all. I was learning a craft still, and the landscape painting thing was partly a visual training of the eye, seeing something and putting it down. The relationship between nature and the painted canvas was all absorbing, and it didn't give me any more time to go into subject matter. I was pretty young.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I want to dilute my comment because now that I think about it, it's quite possible that you amplified the nature of the historical basis of the family's thinking as represented by your father, and to some extent by the other side of the family, too, though unlike your father, they were more representative of that past in history, shapists. Your father was sort of a removed critic on the side who could see history in a larger sweep, but there's something of mood, something of beauty in history, too, and the painting of landscape may be no more than seizing a spot which the family enjoyed in an effort through color which you loved and through the mood which you could create in terms of light and darkness, to illustrate the fact that history also enjoys its most elusive ingredient, a context.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, and it went way back in me as a child, too. As long as I can remember as a child I loved nature, and I think I may have been rather unusual in this way in that I was a Wordsworthian. My father was a Wordsworthian, and his tastes in poetry—to him, Wordsworth was the greatest modern poet, and I remember that Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth meant a great deal to me as an adolescent, and I looked at landscape, the actual landscape, the real world of Sakonnet, somewhat through their eyes. I remember that particular times of day, particular lights could suggest lines of poetry to me, things from Keats and Tennyson, and so on, so that the painting of landscapes, when I did begin to paint in the summers as a student, was a natural development of a thing which I had had from the beginning.

I don't know whether I spoke of it before, but I was an amateur ornithologist when I was a kid, too, and I used to love to recognize birds and observe them and so on. I still have a little book which my father gave me when I was about ten years old. In it I wrote down faithfully when I had first seen the species. I still have this book, and I still add a little bit to it. I'm not an ornithologist on the level of my friend Alfred Barr across there at the Modern Museum who really knows a great deal about birds, but I've always enjoyed it since I was a small child, a love not shared by my other boy friends. They always would rather throw a stone at a bird than look at it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Unhappily.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I still have a pair of glasses and go around bird watching every now and then when I can.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I wondered why -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  May I speak about—I don't want to interrupt you, but while it occurs to me. Did I speak last time about a series of abstract pictures I did when I was a young man?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Not at all?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I can't quite place the time, but it was when I was at the League, or the National Academy. My memory is that it was when I was about 17, 18. I used to come home—I'm trying to place the time. It could have been as early as the time I studied at Columbia. I remember that I was living for a time in my aunt's house—Carol Lloyd, down on East 10th Street, I think it was—you know, for ease of study and so on. It wasn't the whole winter, but it was several weeks or a month, something like that, and I used to go home in the afternoon to her place and do pure abstract drawings, in pastel, consciously. I suppose these were among the earliest abstractions in this country, but they don't exist anymore, I don't think. I don't know where they are. My memory is that they were very much based on color, that there was no element of imagery in them at all, that I was creating patterns of color. I don't think that I had any conscious master in mind at all. As I look back on it, I seem to feel that they were closer to—well, let me collect my thoughts a minute—early Kandinsky, maybe, kind of a visual music, or maybe something related to the Synchromists, although there was no attempt to incorporate imagery in them at all, as I can remember. It was pure, pure abstraction. I wish I could remember when I did them. I did this about a month or more, I remember in the afternoon, after being at school, or at Columbia. It was quite early in the game, and that was all—that phase was over.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I wish you could find them.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I wish I could too because they might be of great historic interest. I think they were a little sweet in color and a little formless. That would be my critical judgment looking back, but as an experiment, they were a little bit intellectual as an experiment, because there was no teacher in this field at the League at all—nothing like it. Nobody there was teaching, as they do now, abstract painting.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  At the time, if it is when you were 17, or 18, where did the ideas come from?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's what I can't remember, except that I was very much interested in modern art. And yet most of the modern art I had seen was not pure abstract. I had seen mostly post‑impressionist art—that is, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, to some extent Matisse who was never purely abstract, Picasso was not then much thought of except as in a very advanced cubist phase. I think this was about the time that Picasso was going through a cubist phase—that is, first known as analytical cubism, a kind of monochromatic breaking down of form and then synthetic cubism that was more colored. It could have been that I had seen some of Picasso's synthetic cubist works which began about, and my memory is 1914, or 1913. There was maybe a certain relationship here, though I never tried to incorporate actual elements the way Picasso did in his work at that time. I remember very distinctly an exhibition of—I say "distinctly", but I don't remember whether it was Albert Gleizes, or whether it was Raoul Dufy at the Bourgeois Gallery which I saw with Hamilton Easter Field. This must have been about 1916, and I remember being much impressed with the color quality, the abstract color quality and the sensuousness of the painting, and this may have been one element in this experiment of mine, this series of experiments.

Of course, Field had an influence on me as a teacher. Here were two very different personalities—I'm speaking of Miller and Field. And actually I didn't study with Field nearly as long as I did with Miller. I met him first as a friend and a man who had very wide interests in music and all kinds of advanced things in those days. He had his own gallery, as I said earlier, and his whole trend was toward the modern and particularly toward French modernism and its representatives in America, certainly quite opposed to Kenneth Hayes Miller's whole philosophy. These two strands seem to have run together at the same time. The only thing is that—now I come to reconstruct it—I think it explains itself chronologically. I'm being an awful detailed bore about my own career, I'm afraid, but my memory is that I studied with Miller my second year at the Art Students League, then through an aberration I went to the National Academy. In the meantime, I had met Hamilton Easter Field, and he had sort of introduced me to the modern movements—I think more than anything had done except the Armory Show. I think the Armory Show was the first eye opener to me and then Field's friendship and his interests. He had a collection himself—not anything very advanced, but there was about him a spirit of a cosmopolitan person who had lived a great deal in France and in Rome, whose atmosphere was international and at the same time American, and very much dedicated to helping younger American modernists. I saw a great deal of Field in those years—the year that I was at the Academy and afterwards.

Then the summer following the year I was at the Academy, I went up to Field's class at Ogunquit and spent the summer there. You see, I hadn't been studying then under Miller for a year so that this is another path which didn't necessarily conflict chronologically. But when I went back to Miller in my fourth year I don't remember seeing as much of Field, or having him have so much influence on my tastes. But I know that my interest in landscape and particularly impressionistic landscape, and a mild kind of post‑impressionism was very much stimulated by Field because that was his own taste. As a painter, that was the kind of painting he did, and it was very attractive to me. Later I got to the more severe kind of discipline of Miller deeper than I had in the year I had taken previously with Miller.

I was pretty young. I mean, as a youngster you go off in all kinds of directions. I remember that part of this was also the fact that I was doing a great deal of reading of French poetry at that time. My French was pretty good, more as a reader than as a speaker, and I read enormously in 19th Century French poetry, the romantics, and particularly the symbolists, Verlaine, Mallarmé, and so on. It was quite a passion with me. I felt that the French had said in poetry, in these few people, something that English poetry had not yet said, that they had been the avant‑garde in poetry in the last third of the 19th Century and that the English had not, that the English had begun to repeat themselves a little bit until the symbolist movement and what was that movement called that Amy Lowell stood for in America and in England—imagism, which was really quite heavily influenced by French poetry, particularly by Baudelaire. But this was part of the whole pattern of an interest in French culture, French art, and French music.

French music meant a great deal to me, as did Russian music. These two things seemed to me to be new voices which I hadn't been used to in the old music. I always liked music. I remember that there was a player piano—one of those old things with paper rolls. You sit there and pump. And this was in the house on Riverside Drive that my father occupied for the year that he was trying for a judgeship. There was a big library of classical music, symphonic music, Brahms and so on, and I used to play this player piano at great length to the annoyance of my family. But it meant a lot to me. Hearing for the first time Russian music—I remember particularly hearing Boris Godunov for the first time with Field as a super, I think, and the tremendous thrill I got out of this new note in music, this new sensation, this new freshness, this new power that I had never felt before in classical music. Parallel to this Russian music was the French modernist Debussy, and I remember how much I loved Charpentier and the opera Louise and how much it meant to me—this is all part of a young man's—well, plodding development.

At the same time I was reading Jean Christophe by Romain Rolland, and this to me was a very exciting experience, this kind of revelation of an artist's life. I must re‑read it now. I don't think that it would sound as good now as it did to me when I was about 19 years old. All of these things were going on at the same time. I had taken piano lessons as a kid—two years. I suppose everybody took piano lessons in those days—my three sisters did. I think my parents spared my brother because he was probably hopeless, but they did give me piano lessons with the same teacher at home. I even remember when I was about twelve years old—no, I guess about ten years old attending a recital to an entirely private audience, thank God! It was held in my teacher's house, and I played a duet with another little boy. I can't remember his name—anyway, the playing of music hadn't stuck with me at all, except for a while, curiously enough when I was going through this phase as an art student, this interest in new music. I borrowed the score of Boris Godunov from the public library and tried to pick it out on the piano. I did succeed in striking a few chords and that was about all. At that time music was a very important element in my life, as was poetry and literature in general. I read George Moore constantly in those days. I remember particularly Hail and Farewell—you know, the trilogy about his life as a young man, and this was one of my favorite books of the time because he told about life in Paris as an art student and all the friends he'd known—Manet, Degas, Renoir and so on. Of course, it still reads awfully well. I think Moore is a very much neglected writer with a real flavor and the whole Irish part of Hail and Farewell was always meaningful to me, too. I read all his other novels, too, and his short stories.

I always wished that I had written a letter to George Moore when he was alive telling him how much he meant to a young man. I never did though.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You added immeasurably to Kenneth Hayes Miller—you know in terms of influence with this association with new things, new developing ideas, ideas which are universal in a way, stemming as they did in this case from other cultures. I wondered when I began reading some of the articles you wrote apart from the book reviews, though the book reviews themselves are of interest in the same way, where you obtained the general awareness and grasp—you know, your comments indicate far more than you learned at art school. I object only to the fact that the articles weren't footnoted, which may have been in the tradition of the day.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I regret to say that my book doesn't even have an index which was really unforgivable.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This expands a wholly different kind of horizon, one without blinders, because if you can sample poetry—and I know what that can mean—it sets up all kinds of propositions that may have nothing to do with painting in a way.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  True.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You know, when you sit down to a seven course meal, it is forgivable, I think, if perhaps at one sitting you overlook the salad. There's so much to be had, and all these ideas, this seven course meal, may come with such a tremendous rush! It's somehow related to hunger; in any event, there's a great spur to reach out and absorb. Jean Christophe is great—you know, and you just can't wait. There's only 24 hours in a day, and that's the only unhappy thought you have when you're eating and drinking fully of something new.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  One of the things that strikes me now—and I'm talking about literature—is that, curiously, I escaped the usual English fiction that most of us were brought up on. I never read Dickens, for example, to any extent except in high school when I had to read A Tale of Two Cities. I read Shakespeare avidly very early, and I read English poetry. I never read a great deal of it until much later. French fiction meant a great deal, but I think this was all a kind of rebellion against the Anglo‑Saxon tradition. I'm linking it up now with the fact that as a very callow youth I thought that the pre‑Raphaelites were wonderful in painting, and this was connected up with English poetry. When I got away from that, I got into the field of more recent French developments in painting and sculpture, and they were linked up in my mind with French music and French poetry and French fiction. This was probably true of a great many younger men in those days, that the French influence in all these fields was more exciting to them than the things they had been used to in the Anglo‑Saxon culture. Of course, it's not exactly new. There had been a great deal of reading of French fiction particularly in this country, almost from the time that it was first published, but I think the combination of French poetry, which was not known very much in this country, and the new music from France and French painting and sculpture, and the new developments there, this was a tremendous magneticism, something that was all linked up with the development of modernism in this country the roots of which go back to France.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What strikes me about it is the nature of curiosity, and probably with you curiosity has a thoroughness about it. I remember you saying about ancient history and the design of various columns and so on. Curiosity seems to be total immersion rather than a more sampling, so that when you come abreast of something like La Mere for the first time, it's a question to you of what kind of research added to the pleasures that exposure to something wholly new affords, but—you know, it's novels, it's poetry, it's plays, it's painting, it's music, and it becomes as total as you can make it as a field of research and interest. Miller in that sense was talking about an age that was all but gone. He was putting new wrinkles on it to be sure, in a way which might be usable in the current context, but what was even deeper as a spur to your action and thought were the new things that came along. Assuming the two strains antithetical, you could discard Miller, and you may have gone to the National Academy of Design as a rebellion against Miller for all I know.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I could have.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  So that the exposure to the new with Hamilton Easter Field is like changing all the colors in the garden.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  True.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  With new thoughts, new ways of looking at things, music the likes of which you enjoyed and you know, something that is a real meal. Boris Godunov is great stuff. It was just coming on the scene in those days, being introduced, being heard as something wholly new, as freshness, and it was in effect, modern as distinct from Miller who was not modern in the same sense. You may have had an uneasiness about your relevance to the times which Field helped developed for you, and I suspect your Dad, too, lurking in the background with his sense of relevance. At least he must not have worked against it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He certainly didn't work against it, but he was not particularly interested in it. This discovery of Russian music—I remember at Carnegie Hall hearing a production of Scriabin's Prometheus, I think it was, and it was accompanied by a color organ—it might have been Thomas Wolfert playing simultaneously with the music. This was when I was about—oh, 19 years old and not hearing it just once, but twice. They gave it in the same afternoon twice because they felt you couldn't get it the first time. This was entirely on my own, or with my fellow students.

I don't know just why, but it had nothing to do with my family at all. My mother was always very fond of music, however. She was a steady concert goer to the Philharmonic right up to her early-80s and so was my Aunt Carol Lloyd. They used to go together and were regular subscribers. I keep thinking that in a sense I was always a bit of a maverick among the Miller students because I did have these likings for the more advanced trends, particularly in French art. When I went to Paris in 1927, I was very much taken with the work of Leger which had not been seen in this country before. I met Leger, and I went to his studio and felt that his work which he was doing at that time, which I think was among the finest work he ever did, was among the more vital things being done in France and the most French. At that time I had a very strong feeling for nationality in art by race, for the racial, cultural background, and it seemed to me that Leger, this Norman character, who physically looked like a dock worker, or a peasant, was producing these tremendously powerful abstract compositions. It was quite an eye‑opener to me. I remember getting an article on Leger by Vladimir Georges, the French critic, for the Arts at that time, and I also remember Reginald Marsh who was also in Paris then saying, "What do you see in Leger—this is terrible stuff!?"

That's not fair to Marsh. He felt he had seen this kind of thing and rejected it; whereas I was being naive about it which I was.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Taken in?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. Well, it was partly because at that time I was a professional critic after all. As you said before, an artist can have blinders.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It is of interest, I think, because this may account for the fact that it was impossible for you to really make a choice—you know, break with a tradition completely.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  You're speaking now about the -

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The switch to business.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, because there was too much going on.

DR.PHILLIPS: Yes. You can't take all outdoors, or it can be an oyster, but there was no catalyst whereby you could use it then, and the thread which ultimately runs through it is the written tradition, the criticism, and the fairness. You absorbed the new and vital as existing thoughts, pulses in a culture. You know that they're there, and you can see them more broadly. It gives you a broader basis for judgment before you get through, but at the time, you're tugged in 17 directions as to whether you're going to make your living as an illustrator, a practical matter, or whether you're going to continue being litmus paper for ideas and impressions, sound, a look, or whether you're going to continue as a painter. It's very interesting to me because I wondered why two boys -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  May I interrupt for a second? What you were saying about the practical question. This was always quite a consideration for me. My family didn't have much money, and I think I've given you a picture of a family whose resources were dwindling and always lurking in the background is this feeling—you know, that the good days were passed financially speaking, so that I was very conscious always as an art student of the need to make a living. [The secretary interrupted us.]

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I've forgotten for the moment precisely where we were. Let me play it back.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I remember. I was talking about the urge, the feeling, the necessity of making a living. I think this played quite a part in the whole thing. If I had had the kind of creative drive that many much poorer, financially poorer students had, I would have conquered it. I would have gone right ahead. But being brought up in a middle class background comfortably and having security in the past and less security now, this would have sided me with the idea of attempting illustration which was a stupid idea. Thank God I didn't continue it!

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  With the drive and dwindling resources you might have had to cut yourself off from other things that you enjoyed—poetry, music.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  True.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  So it may have been the large urge for being drenched in modern impulses of a cultural nature whether they be poetry, reading, or otherwise, which also made for the switch to something practical—that is, how can I reach that minimum whereby I can afford to indulge myself with sampling those things I've come to enjoy. In a sense you did go to graduate school.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You really did.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, I was brought up in a kind of luxurious way mentally—I mean, there was a richness in the background of my family life.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, that was enjoyable, but impractical when it came to putting eggs and bacon on the table.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Sure. It couldn't pay for the shoes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It would have to be a form of curiosity. Your love of nature, and you've indicated it with birds and the fact that you and Marsh tramped the Mohawk Trail. Why would you rip out that many hours to tramp that many miles except out of curiosity about time, place and circumstances that you see, and that's not blinders.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The weekend before last I was up on Cape Cod. My wife drove up to Provincetown with me along the same route that I had walked with Marsh, that trip around Buzzards Bay, and I tried everywhere to see that farm we slept in, and I couldn't find it. Your memory plays you tricks. Of course, it may not be standing any more. I remember just about where it was Marion, Wareham, around there, but I couldn't find it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There's adventure, even romance in a trip like that—you know, up ahead just around the bend. This is the spur. The fact that you were doing something most people would regard as somewhat silly—you know, when would two boys who could play whatever, or amuse themselves, walk the Mohawk Trail.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  A wanderjahr.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's right, a unique experience that cuts across the grain of everything you had before in a way—wholly new. It's not structured by anyone except in so far as you carry that structure with you which the family represents. What price would you pay to sleep in a barn—just for fun, for sheer excitement, and the discovery of something new?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  As a matter of fact, there was some precedent for this. I don't know whether I went into the fact that as a kid we used to do an awful lot of sailing down around Rhode Island, cruising in a 21 foot dory without any cabin. My elder brother who was a very good sailor and always loved the sea, owned this vessel, and Jack Marsh and an uncle of mine, Uncle Edward George, who was a minister, and myself—we used to go off for four, or five days in Narragansett Bay, sleeping on the floor of this darn vessel with blankets, but no mattress, or anything like that, with a suit case for a pillow and under a tarpaulin, no cabin, cooking our meals out of Heinz soup cans, things like this, and loving it. This was a great experience, and I was about fourteen at this time, I guess. I liked this very much. It was wonderful cruising around up there in Narragansett Bay, and we all kind of reverted to nature, loafed around the boat, and we covered a lot of the Bay.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's the kind of experience that you catalogue as first impression with all the excitement that first impression conveys.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Sakonnet is a marvelous place for sailing, and in my adult life I've had a couple of small boats myself and enjoyed it tremendously until I found that it took too much time to take care of them. I remember once sailing with my brother when I was only about 18, I guess, or less, from Woods Hole over to Sakonnet, sailing a very handsome—"knockabout" they called them in those days—a cabin sloop designed by John Alden. He was a distant cousin of mine, and he asked us to sail this sloop, to bring it back to Sakonnet Harbor for him. We got stuck in a fog in Woods Hole, and we stayed there until all our money gave out. Then we decided that we would just have to get back to Sakonnet, so we started off in the middle of the afternoon in a driving rain and fog, and it's a wonder we didn't pile up on the shore. As a matter of fact, we did go on the rocks. I was up in the bow watching, and we came about just in time. We finally brought this vessel in. It was quite an experience. This was an expensive vessel—you see.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's fairly treacherous water just to go out of Woods Hole on a clear day.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It is that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Well, in any event, whatever the pressure was, it was too much to contend with at the time. Necessity lurks in the background, and you break away from this tradition you were building up. Now I don't know—business may be distasteful in retrospect, and doubtless it is, but the point is that it is another kind of experience, even if it's only negative. You should be encouraged for having had a negative experience, but I was wondering what kind of work you actually did—take the Vulcan Steel Products Corporation. Here you were in the midst of a corporate entity, in a way, this is an American creation.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I was only a minor cog in the wheels. I was a clerk in the beginning in the traffic department which had to do with ocean shipment particularly because we were engaged in international export. I never got down to a ship, or saw a railroad train, but I took care of routing and stuff like that, arranging for ocean shipment, particularly of steel products, and also the financial end—that is, passing bills and so on. I remember all kinds of work involved in claims, too. We put in a series of claims to the United States government for a refund of export taxes. I can't remember the details. I spent many nights, I remember, working on an overtime basis going over old bills.

Later on when I went with the Consolidated Steel Corporation I was in the claim department. I was claim clerk with two people under me. I was part of the accounting department, as I remember, and I enjoyed some things about this very much. It's awful to think of, but I did to some extent. I enjoyed writing a letter, for example, especially if it were complicated, had something to say, making a claim against somebody, or entering a defense against a claim. I suppose that this was the legal side coming out. You could get involved in the minutiae of a job like this and take a certain amount of satisfaction in it; whereas the job as a whole really is quite repugnant to you. It's a funny thing with what the human mind can do, and I think I got a certain amount of solid satisfaction—you know, I was making my own living, being able to buy my own clothes, and so on which, as a student, one never did, paying my own way, but as for any satisfaction for anything beyond that in business, it didn't occur to me. I think maybe in dealing with financial matters, even though on a very modest scale and having to sort of organize things, too, a little bit, I may have contributed a little bit to the administrative work I did later on, but nothing fundamental. To my mind, it was a blind alley, and I think I said three years wasted, but maybe not—I don't know.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  My only suggestion would be that even if it was no more than a nine to five chore, you weren't being self‑indulgent, and an artist, or so it seems to me, has to be self‑indulgent for whatever reason. Time must have been precious to you all along—there were just too many things to do—you know, an artist not only has blinders, but he does what he wants to do whenever and under whatever circumstances he can put up with, or wrest from an unsuspecting public, whatever it is. He is about as free, individualistic and self‑indulgent as they come which may not have been in your make‑up at all.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't think it was. I think I always wanted to be occupied. I had a lot of things I wanted to do.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Nine to five, where you're doing something required by someone else?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I'm trying to remember how much of the art world I saw at that time. I don't think I did see much. I don't remember going to galleries particularly, or museums. I don't remember reading much about art. I remember reading a great deal, but more for the pleasure of appreciation, or literary satisfaction. To a certain extent there was music, but I think I was kind of avoiding the art world. That's my feeling right now. I suppose it was a sense of having failed at it—you see. Actually, it wasn't until I met my future wife whose interests were artistic that I began to go around to galleries. I did this with her before we were married, and of course, I'd always kept up my friendship with Reginald Marsh, with his wife to be, Betty Burroughs. Reg and Bets became the closest friends of my wife Edith and myself—even before we were married. He was married before I was, as I remember it, about a year before, and we saw a great deal of each other. This drew me back gradually into the art world, even—well, this was after I had left the steel company. I don't remember the exact dates, but I could work them out sometime, but there was an interval of about two years after I left the business world when I was with James Marsh in this manufacturing of ornamental iron work. Here again, I suppose, it was gradually edging back into art because Jack Marsh designed all his own stuff. I did a little designing—not very much, but it had to do with creating objects. I've forgotten whether I went into this question of ornamental ships designed by Fred Marsh.

Well, Fred Marsh was a very ingenious guy. He had concocted an ornamental galleon which was a sort of flat relief in plaster which was supposed to hang on a wall—a pure gadget. I hate to think of it. Somebody had to paint these things all different colors. You don't know how many hours I spent painting these Maltese Crosses on the sails of these galleons, the color of their hulls, gilding and finally varnishing them. I did this—gee whiz! The things you do! This was part of Marsh's business, selling these things, and they sold pretty well. We advertised in the magazines, the interior decoration magazines, the art magazines with pictures of this gadget. It was a business, but again, a blind alley.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you get into the selling end at all?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Somewhat. I was more in the running the office—that kind of thing, just Marsh, myself, and a secretary. Marsh was being financed in this venture by his father, I'm sure. I didn't continue with him. I wanted to be a partner which would not have been a good idea because I had no money to put into it myself. It was his business, so in the end we parted company. And that was the time I got into the publishing business.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Through this business experience you had to deal with people—all through this. To what extent had people figured through high school—not much. You were out of step, or thought you were out of step.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think that people figured more when they were professionally involved with me—in other words, my fellow students at the Art Students League. I always felt a little bit not part of the gang primarily when I was a boy in school. I was rather solitary and a great reader and a student. I think I worked harder on my studies than most of the kids did and enjoyed them more. The most gregarious life I had, I think, was in the summers, the outdoor life with certain friends down in Rhode Island. There were friends my own age, about four of us, boys of my own age, including Reg Marsh, Jack Marsh, and so on. But in the winters, my life as a high school student and as a student at art school was not very gregarious.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did this change in the steel industry?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No. I had no real friends in those companies.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Compelled to deal with people, however, just by the necessity of the corporate structure?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, yes. I got on all right. They had some office parties, those awful things where you get to meet people you never met in your life before.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And never see again—yes. You learned, I suspect, for whatever reason to expose as little of your personal skin as possible.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think so at this time. I would say so.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Though business did have the effect; the knowledge that comes with paying your own way.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And the choices which are involved in such independence—plus an awareness that whatever business is, and it will differ with every corporation, it is the people who make it as distinct from the incorporation papers, or charter.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  As I say, I was a very minor cog. I never got into the selling end, or the executive end of a business. The people—if I may say so, of my class in those two corporations were salesmen, people who knew the steel business better than I did. I was engaged in the details of a clerical operation. It was just as well that I never got any deeper into it, or I never would have gotten out of it.

DR.PHILLIPS: I think that you said last time that the happy thought you had was that several businesses failed underneath you. I don't know whether these corporations were those.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right, and there were three of them, as a matter of fact.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In any event, the net effect is a kind of holding operation in a way—you know, getting a good taste of economic necessity.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Putting one foot in front of another.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And getting away from the excesses—that sounds like a hideous word and I don't mean it as such, but by comparison the excesses of self‑indulgence which artists traditionally enjoy, no nine to five, no bell punching, no sense of responsibility within a larger structure—almost an amusing irresponsibility.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I didn't lose track completely. I always kept in touch with Marsh and his future wife. Another person with whom I kept in constant touch was Edmund Duffy who is one of my best friends. We saw a great deal of each other. He is a very attractive and amusing person with a very lovely sense of humor. You know his work. He was three times Pulitzer prize winner, a cartoonist of the Baltimore Sun. He'd been a friend of mine in the Art Students League very early in the game. Duff always had a knack for having money. He was always able to make a living in spite of the fact that he had no money in his background at all. He always landed on his feet in every situation, and very early in the game he became quite a successful illustrator, a great admirer of Boardman Robinson and of the French tradition. Duffy and Marsh became close friends through me and deadly rivals. They both were doing the same thing, and Reg used to tell me all kinds of stories about going into a newspaper office and finding that Duffy had just been there and gotten the job to do when there was nobody around. They were close friends, but, as I say they were bitter rivals when it came to getting the freelance work done. They both had great facility and a very good graphic sense. They were made for this kind of career—you know.

Duff was more sophisticated than the rest of us. He used to cover the theater a lot and did drawings in the theater, and he always had free tickets. I used to go to the theater with him all the time in those years; in fact, I remember we used to go practically every night and twice on Saturday. He never could get enough of the theater. He had a real passion for it, and he also had the same kind of literary taste that I had, except in a somewhat more worldly way. He was Irish by descent, and he was a great admirer of the Irish writers, playwrights, and so on. He was also very much more up on current fiction and things like this. He was the first man who ever spoke to me about Sinclair Lewis, for example, and he was a great friend of Mencken down in Baltimore. Duff was always very knowledgeable about the world, a great dresser, got all his clothes at Brook's Brothers—even when he couldn't afford it, and later on got them all in England. He became very successful, of course, and we were very close friends for a good many years. Later we didn't see as much of each other I'm sorry to say, especially when he went down to Baltimore But he married another good friend of mine, Ann Rector, who was also a member of the women's Miller class, so that I didn't lose contact with that kind of world. Only it was on a more limited scale, and it was no longer as a participant, as it was when I was a student.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you see the Irish Players when they came?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't remember. I do remember a French group. I have forgotten the name of the director, but he was one of the great directors. I remember going to hear plays. I remember going with Duffy to see John Barrymore—what was that Tolstoy play? Redemption, wasn't it? Oh, Barrymore was our idol in those days. He had all the romantic qualities that we admired as young men. Also, Duff was a great mimic. He used to do John Barrymore—and very well indeed. I mean, he did it with humor and great admiration. I remember seeing The Brothers Karamazov played by the French company. We saw Shaw. I don't remember the Irish Players particularly though. Of course we saw an awful lot of junk, too. Duff was a professional, pictorial recorder of the theater. At this time my sister was on the stage, too—that is, for a while. She was married to Robert Ames, the actor. I don't remember seeing much of her at that time because she was travelling a great deal in stock companies.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you continue your contact with Ufer?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, I did, but less. I think he went abroad at this time. He got a grant from Otto Kahn—you know, the philanthropist and patron of the arts, to live and work in Paris, and I lost touch with him. I saw him again when I was in Paris in 1927, 1928—the first time I had seen him in years. I didn't see much of him during this business period, and I didn't see much of Hamilton Easter Field either. Field died, of course, in 1922, and I hadn't seen much of him in the years before. I went to the services for him.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The shyness and reticence you had at school seems to have turned you toward those people with whom you did have some kind of continuing relationship, who were witty, the acid wit of Ufer, the Irish wit of Duffy, and Marsh who was not shy in witticisms.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was shy personally, but a very amusing person with a lovely sense of humor and an edge to it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The best kind.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was also another marvelous mimic.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Really?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Just one of those inborn things—you know, just quiet, subtle and actually accurate. He could take somebody off so that you could actually know who they were. He could even walk like somebody, including people he knew very well. I remember his imitating his wife walking once, and we all burst out laughing it was so funny—including herself. He had a marvelous eye.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You've helped me a great deal today. I wondered how you were able to include so many ideas in the book reviews you wrote and now that I know you read voraciously, sampled new experiences widely, and you had a multiplicity of interesting—

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I guess I did read a lot.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It makes a difference. To become a critic when writing book reviews is not easy. Somebody throws you a book and says, "Write me a book review" —you know, you may knock yourself out, but your reviews came quite steadily, one after another in the field of art, biography, general cultural things—a book like Tradition in Jazz.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I had forgotten that—a man called Patty, an old conservative. I remember now. At the same time I was also doing a certain amount of writing at Macmillan's—blurbs for religious books, writing reports on manuscripts, and stuff like that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That is a wholly different complex. The book industry I want to come back to another time—the whole nature of book making and printing, again a creative thing. The history of type is fascinating, or the relevance, if any, between the manufacture of books and the awareness on the part of human beings is fascinating, a topic yet to be explored, really explored—the printed word from which all kinds of mischief has ensued, but this I want to come back to. I think next time we'll start with Macmillan.

Whitney Museum, June 28, 1962

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Last time we filled in, in general, the climate you accumulated quite apart from interest in art, the climate which interest created, music, reading, people who—you know, showed you something new, or introduced you to something new, and life for you has never been quite the same. We also took up in more detail the various businesses which happily failed underneath you. We presented a picture of a complete departure from painting, and, I think, in a way we documented not the contradictory influences, but the richness of the influences on you of poetry, literature, music, painting, and so on, so that there were a lot of factors operating on you which may, in their own way, have puzzled the will, rather than freed it. The departure was like a vacation, depressing in a nine to five sense in the steel industry, and this was coupled with the other problem we talked about the first time, the analysis problem. There comes a moment when you head back into creativity again, only this time it's writing, interestingly enough in the Macmillan Book Company and, more particularly, in their religious books department. As I understand it, you shopped around a while.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. I went to see several publishers. I think I spoke earlier of seeing William C. Brownell, the old, great conservative critic and how kind he was to me, but there was no job for me where he was the chief editor. It's a depressing thing for a young man to go around looking for a job. I mean, you feel lost. But my sister had worked at Macmillan's at one time. I knew somebody there, and they gave me a book to read and write a blurb on. I remember that it was called Nineteenth Century Evolution and After. That states it, doesn't it?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  All‑embracing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was by a man who was trying to reconcile the evolutionary theories of Darwin with the Christian Revolution, a valiant attempt. In any event, they liked what I wrote, and I had a job. Marginally it involved writing, reading, and particularly the production of books which fascinated me from the beginning. In order to learn more about it I began to take night courses at Columbia in typography, not just typography, but the whole printing business. This was just for a year, but I think it gave me some ground work in the technique of printing.

By this time I got married. My wife and I were married about a month and a half after I got this job at Macmillan's. She was making $45 a week as a teacher and I was making $35 at Macmillan's. I joined Macmillan's in the fall of 1923, that is my memory, and Edith and I were married in January of 1924. I left Macmillan's in the fall of 1925. In the meantime I had begun to do outside writing, beginning with book reviews. The first published things I wrote were two books on art and this was, I think I have said earlier, through my friendship with Alexander Brook who had been one of the writers on the Arts.

At this time, I didn't know Forbes Watson, or Mrs. Whitney. The Arts was subsidized by Mrs. Whitney, and Mrs. Whitney's art activities were always channeled through Mrs. Force. Mrs. Force was her right hand man in all her artistic and art activities, and the two of them together worked together in a remarkable combination. Mrs. Whitney was an aristocrat, a very generous person, somewhat shy, not liking to get into rows and the kind of fighting that is necessary when you're pioneering in a field that we were then; whereas Mrs. Force was a born scrapper. She was a wonderful person. At this time I did not know either of them, and I did not know Forbes Watson. I first met Forbes through my work on the Arts. I went to see him, and he gave me these books to review. My memory is that I first met on the Arts Virgil Barker who was associate editor, and Virgil is one of the finest scholars in American art. At that time he had already begun gathering material for his book on the history of American painting, and he was a man of real scholarship, had a very fine style, great perceptions, and a nice sense of humor. He became one of my closest friends.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I wondered about that because even in this early day—and this is not to denigrate any of the other contributors and there were contributors quite beyond those who were listed as editors, or contributing editors, Brook, Henry Schnakenberg, others contributed pieces from time to time, but Barker's had a consistency. He was in the magazine with long articles, and he went to Europe quite frequently.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He and I ultimately were associate editors. Barker was associate editor. Robert Allerton Parker was associate editor for a while. I think that Parker was going to resign, and for that reason, I think—well, I don't know, but the record would show it. I don't remember what the sequence was, but I believe that Barker was the associate editor when I was writing my first pieces for the Arts. I know that I met him at that time, and we became very close friends. I admired him a great deal, and he admired me. Our wives like each other. He's rather ill now, I understand. He lives in Florida and was a teacher at one of the state colleges there. He's a man of great distinction and a man who was a very thorough worker. Everything he does, he does extremely well. Anything he writes he writes extremely well. He hasn't done a great deal of writing. I wish he had been able to, but he's always been involved in various kinds of administrative work, teaching, and so on, and he writes rather slowly.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Really?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He gathers enormous notes. He spent years and years gathering material for this book of his on American painting—what is the title of that, American Painting, History and Interpretation. I think it's called, and he was already gathering material for it when I first knew him in 1924, and the book wasn't actually published, I think, until the late 1930s. Actually the history of the publication of that book was—this was after I had left Macmillan, had left the Arts, and in fact, was with the Whitney Museum. Macmillan asked me if I would write a book on American painting to replace Samuel Isham's History of American Painting which up to that time had been the most complete standard history of American painting, and I was just so involved in so many things, other books, administrative work, and so on that I just couldn't see myself doing it, taking the time, much as I would have liked to, but I knew that Virgil had done a great deal of work on this magnum opus of his, and I recommended him to Macmillan. I'm glad to say that they signed the contract and gave him an advance. Unfortunately they did not illustrate the book the way it should have been illustrated. Macmillan is a Scotch firm, or was—they have now been absorbed by Collier—and they skimped on this. I read the manuscript, and I wrote the report on the book recommending it highly, that it should be published, but urging them to illustrate it very fully. At that time color was not a common thing in art books, so that it might have been too much to ask for color, but at least the book could have had much more and better printed illustrations. I'm afraid that's what kept it from becoming a financial success which it was not. But the text, I think, is still the most perceptive from the standpoint of a man getting inside of a work of art and getting into the mind of any artist than any general history of American art I know of.

The only exception I would make would be my colleague's, John Baur's book on a more limited period called Revolution and Tradition in American Art which he published—again, this is a repetition of what had gone on before. This book of Jack Baur's is the last volume, I think, or one of the volumes in The History of Twentieth Century American Civilization published by the Harvard University Press. It's not just a history, but a study of American cultural civilization in its various aspects, each volume devoted to a particular field. The Harvard University Press asked me if I would do the volume on Twentieth Century American art, and again I was unable to see my way clear to do it, but I recommended John Baur whom I had met at the Brooklyn Museum some time ago. He had become a close friend of mine. I admired him a great deal as a writer, and Jack did this book which I think is one of the best books on Twentieth Century art. This repeated itself again when the Maxim Karolik collection in the Boston Museum was being assembled and about to be exhibited for the first time. They did do a tremendously complete catalogue of the Karolik collection, and they asked me to write the introduction. Again I couldn't find the time to do it, and again I recommended Jack, and he did a marvelous job on it. He and I have sort of passed the ball back and forth between us for some time. Of all the scholars in the American field, I would rank him among the top. But going back to the Arts -

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  First a word about Macmillan. This was in an area to which you brought interest only as necessity is—that is, as I understand it. You didn't have any particular enthusiasm for the religious thing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No. It was the only job open there in an editorial capacity. I didn't want to go into the sales department. I didn't think I was—well, I don't like selling things.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In the editorial part, did they have a book of standards—what Macmillan does that is uniquely Macmillan? Did you make reports on these collections of sermons and speeches?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was a small department. I had a boss who was a retired clergyman—a Mr. Murray. He was a universalist, had been a preacher. He had a secretary, and I was his assistant, and that was it. I was a sort of jack of all trades. I read manuscripts and reported on them. He did most of that himself, of course, because he had the religious background which I didn't have, but occasionally I would read manuscripts. I did a certain amount of editing. Believe me, some of these books needed editing! I did all the advertising material with them, writing the blurbs for the jackets, writing leaflets to be sent out to the entire Christian profession in the country. That was my first printed writing, I guess, those leaflets, extolling the volumes of sermons of various people. They published some distinguished people, I must say. I don't remember who they were, but it was one of the most active religious book departments in the country, and it had its marginal benefits for my future work, learning something about the book business, learning a great deal about printing, having some experience in typography and so on. The actual manufacture was done by some other department which manufactured the books for the entire company, but one had to be in touch with them and help to select the style and things like this, all of which was very good training for anybody who would do any writing in the future at all, so that I don't consider this time as waste as I do those years in the steel business.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you get much in the way of pointers on the effective creation of a blurb?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's awfully hard to measure this kind of thing. You just throw it out and see what happens. There was no control. Maybe they have them nowadays. Maybe they have all kinds of I.B.M. machines that do even that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In short, nobody gave you any idea as to what would, or what would not reach the clergymen out in the middle west?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think I did that all by rule of thumb and, of course, Mr. Murray, my boss, knew the ministerial profession, and he looked over all the copy I wrote, gave suggestions, gave me ideas and so on, but it was pretty much just diving in and seeing what came out.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was this division, the religious books department, a mail order house?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Largely, but also, of course, Macmillan did a big business through their salesmen in bookstores, and they had their own bookstore down on Fifth Avenue. The religious books were handled by their salesmen just like any other books, but there was more mail order in that field than there was in another field because of the nature of the beast, the fact that clergymen are scattered all over. Every town has some, and they're apt to buy their books through mail order rather than bookstores because bookstores don't stock religious books. It was largely a mail order business. I furnished the content for people, but I don't actually have to do any running about.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you get any sense as to the book market?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  At that time Macmillan was booming, and their religious books department was doing very well. I was surprised to see what a market there was for this kind of publication. Later on Macmillan went through the doldrums and finally was absorbed by Collier just in the last couple of years. The time I was with them my understanding was that they were the second largest publisher in the country, the first being Doubleday Doran. I don't know whether it was that name then, but it was Doubleday's anyway. Macmillan was also in the college text book field, and here I understand they were the biggest publisher. The only rival I remember in the field of the text book as a whole was Ginn & Company. The backbone of Macmillan's business, I think, was the college text book field. The general publishing was very active, but not as much of a money maker.

I got to know the people in the editorial department of the general publishing quite well, too, particularly Harold Latham who was the editor‑in‑chief, a very pleasant and nice person. We became quite friendly. I was always hoping that I would be transferred to that side of the business and get out of the religious books department, but before that happened, I had this offer from the Arts Magazine which, of course, was much more interesting to me.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It always struck me as a frightening prospect to sit as an editor or to have anything to do with "editorial judgment" in a book house like Macmillan, where you either accept or reject a book with reference to some reader who sits on your desk and just haunts you—you know, the book buying market, the reading public. I don't know whether Macmillan got deeply into the economics as to the number of outlets they might have, or where they were. Today I don't believe they would sneeze without knowing within certain tolerances what a book is going to do.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Actually Macmillan was a pretty shrewd operator at that time. Usually they had books subsidized. What they'd say to a clergyman who had written a book was, "Can you get your church to buy so many hundred copies for distribution to the congregation?", or "Can you get your denominational organization to distribute it?" They usually managed to get a certain subsidy, or at least a sale which would guarantee them that they would not lose money on a book.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's that first copy that costs.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, and if you can get it back, you're pretty well set.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you get any sense of size in terms of an organization and BEING lost in it? I don't know how large they were at that time.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was pretty big. It occupied a whole building. They moved while I was there. We were in old quarters on 66th Fifth Avenue all cramped together, and in the meantime they built this building which is still there at 60 Fifth Avenue, and we moved into it. It was a pretty big outfit, several hundred employees, I would say.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Were things reaching the point where they were getting beyond manageable proportions? I think that's the nature of life.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Possibly, though the big publishers, if they are well led, are managing to keep on going. McGraw‑Hill started with a purely technical basis, scientific books and the how‑to‑do‑it books, and McGraw‑Hill is now one of the biggest publishers in the country and going into the art field. They have an active art department now.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I'd like to have a piece of their technical magazines. They have been superb for years.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  They have this solid basis from which they can branch off in different directions.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  They have selective circulation. You just can't buy their magazines because you're interested. The magazine has to have some relevance to your job.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Macmillan didn't do much in art publications at that time; in fact, they did very little until we finally, years later, signed a contract with them to publish our books of the Whitney Museum, but that's a later story. I had a hand in that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There wasn't much in terms of art books at this time, except foreign imports, was there?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was mostly foreign import. Of course color was unheard of practically. It had been done for years, but it was considered a most expensive operations. Even books on art with a great deal of black and white illustrations were a rarity. The picture book idea had not yet become popular, not to the degree that it has nowadays. The emphasis was almost always on the text illustrated with not very many illustrations and not very handsomely presented, but as far as I can remember, most of our art books were imports from England—you see, we were then affiliated with the English Macmillans, and by this time the tail was wagging the dog. The American Macmillan was considerably more important than the English company which was a very old company, as you know, but the English company has survived; whereas the American company has been absorbed.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I believe the English publish sensibly.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's a very sound old firm—the English firm.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The English publish many more books than we do as a general rule. They publish them in a way where the costs are so much less. The paper is good; the binding is good, and they manufacture books to move them. We have, or so it seems, competition in who has the largest cover, the hardest cover, etcetera, and it's costly. I'm a scholar, and I'm allowed to bleat poverty with reference to the cost of books today—you know, it's astronomical! It does make you use the library more, but there's something about reaching over and pulling a volume off your own shelf.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, and especially art books which can't be circulated from libraries very much. So far as Macmillan goes, in general what I learned was helpful to me later on, particularly in writing, in the production of art books, and in publication in general, all of which I've had a lot to do with in the Whitney Museum. The Whitney was the first museum in this country to take on an active publishing program in the art field, and this was an intrinsic part of their program from the very beginning. I think that the experience I'd had at Macmillan with printing was also of great help to me when I became associate editor of the Arts Magazine. I didn't go in raw to the job. I did know something about printing, and I had to produce that magazine.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Were you with Macmillan long enough—I know that you worked with a retired minister in a specific division of the book company, sort of an eddy in the general stream, though useful, but in that period did you come up with ideas, new thoughts, in text and manufacture that conceivably you might do?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I'm afraid not. I don't think my heart was really in it. I may have suggested a couple of books. I don't remember. I was late in the trade, and it wasn't my field. Mr. Murray and I used to talk about ideas, and occasionally he would suggest stimulating some author to write a book about a particular subject, and we would go into the material to some extent. I don't think that I originated many ideas.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You didn't travel from New York to see authors?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Maybe you weren't there long enough to get all our feet wet.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It wasn't my field. I think if I had gone into the general field, what they call the trade book field, I think I would have had more of a role in meeting authors, suggesting books, and this kind of thing. I did a certain amount of this. I remember Lewis Browne who wrote a book called Stranger Than Fiction, the history of the Jewish people. He was a rabbi. I remember knowing him very well because he was an unusual type. He was much more broadminded and humorous kind of person than the usual clergyman you met. His Stranger Than Fiction was modeled on Hendrik van Loon's books with pictures, a popularization, this kind of thing; in fact, he was a friend of Hendrik Van Loon, and my memory is that he was the clergyman who officiated at the marriage of Hendrik van Loon and my sister, Francis Goodrich, I think. But as I say, it wasn't many months before I began writing on the outside for the Arts, about six months after I joined.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What were the circumstances—you had developed a developing interest in poetry and literature, a heated interest at this time in music too, but the religious book field did not present much room for these novel ideas. There's a fellow who appears in the Arts later, Dudley Poore, a poet who wrote some book reviews and some other articles. I don't know whether you bumped into him.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I didn't e no.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The circumstances under which you met Barker, as I understand it, were through Alexander Brook, your old classmate.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes—you see, Brook was a versatile man. He wrote very well, I think. He wrote in a very lively way and in a very challenging kind of way. He wrote particularly about his contemporaries, about modern art, and he was quite a regular contributor to the Arts. He was a painter primarily. He didn't want to become a writer, but he did know Forbes Watson quite well. The artists knew Forbes long before I did because Forbes was connected with the Whitney Studio Club in a purely unofficial way as a close friend, adviser of Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force, and this went back, I imagine, to 1918 when the Whitney Studio Club was founded; in fact, I think that Forbes met Mrs. Force before the club was started. I think I remember that now. I think it was when Mrs. Whitney was not first beginning to show the works of younger artists in her studio, in what was called the Whitney Studio, but when she had been doing it for some years and before she started the Whitney Studio Club. Forbes was at that time critic of the New York World, I believe. He may have been on another paper. I think Mrs. Force once told me that she and Mrs. Whitney had helped to get him his job on the World through their friendship with Ralph Pulitzer—that is, through Mrs. Whitney's friendship with Ralph Pulitzer, and Forbes was one of the most influential newspaper critics of the time. He was a fighter, and he was a very challenging and brilliant writer, and everything he wrote was fine to read. He had met Mrs. Force, as I understand it, through going to current exhibitions at the Whitney Studio, and he had been rather critical of what they were showing. He had a background of art back in Boston, and he came from Boston. His brother‑in‑law was Alfred Clinton Collins who had married Forbes Watson's sister. Collins was a young Boston painter, extremely talented, I think. He died young. He was of that whole group that was associated with Mrs. Gardiner, and among them was Berenson and several other young men whom Mrs. Gardiner probably helped in various ways. I always understood that Mrs. Gardiner gave Berenson his first start. Anyway, Collins had been part of that group. I never met him. He died before I even knew Forbes. He was a traditionalist painter, but a very alive and sensitive one. His portrait of Mrs. Collins, his wife, who was Forbes Watson's sister is in the Metropolitan Museum, and I think it's one of the best portraits of that period, 1890s, or the 1900s. So Forbes had had this background of art. I don't think he ever studied art. He may have. I don't think so, but his wife was a painter, Nan Watson, who is living still, a very talented and very attractive painter of flowers whose work was shown at the Whitney Studio Club several times.

In any event, Forbes had this interest in art from way back, and I don't know his background as a writer. When I first met him he was already an established art critic on the World and editor of the Arts which had been bought by Mrs. Whitney. She had started a corporation called the Arts Publishing Corporation and had put her money into it. Forbes was the editor with a succession of associate editors. My memory is that Robert Allerton Parker, who was associate editor, was resigning, and they were looking for an associate editor. Brook knew me—wait a minute. I'm looking ahead of myself. They were looking for somebody to do book reviews and to do general writing. Brook knew me from Art Students League days, and he was a contributing writer to the Arts, and he suggested me to Forbes as a writer, so to try to test me out, I suppose, they gave me these books to review. They seemed to like what I did, and then I went beyond that and said, "I'd like to write some articles for you."

As I remember, the first article I wrote was actually—if my memory is correct—based on the publication of a book on William Morris Hunt. It was the 100th anniversary of Hunt's birth. This was 1924. Hunt was born in 1824, and I felt that he was a figure in American art who had been forgotten, a very interesting figure, one of the most intelligent and informed American artists of his generation, a man who had been a kind of a prophet in his day as a person, as a kind of character, a very striking person with many friends in Boston, a teacher of La Farge, Henry James, both of whom studied painting—you know, they were all friends of William Morris Hunt, a highly intelligent and very attractive man. I thought the publication of this book was important enough and the centenary of his birth was important enough to resurrect him and to write a full length article about him, which I did. I think that was the first article I published in the Arts, as I remember.

Then I suggested doing a much longer article on Winslow Homer, not based on any particular event, or publication, or anything like this, but just because I thought that Homer was a major American figure. The Arts was quite naive in those days—you know, it's a wonderful time to look back on. We didn't mind just barging in and writing articles on Constantin Guys and people who have become famous since. They weren't then—you see. Even the articles were much less knowledgeable then than they are now, and you could do things that would seem nowadays pretty obvious.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The Arts had a sort of catch‑all motto—"to present the vital, creative art of all periods as well as we can. This is our only aim"—that simply stated—"which would give opportunity."

LLOYD GOODRICH:  In this country there were two publications, two art magazines which were to some extent rivals—much older magazines. One was the International Studio, and this was primarily an English magazine with an American edition, and at one time my cousin was editor of the American edition. This was long before I began to write about art. The other magazine was the Art News which really was at that time an art news magazine. It was not a critical magazine as it is now. The only real competitor, as far as I can remember, was the International Studio, and its basis was European, so that what was very much needed was a publication devoted to art in the United States, at least to the art world in the United States. It wasn't to be narrowly limited to American art, but it was designed for an American public, and I think this was the reason that Mrs. Whitney was interested in acquiring it, subsidizing it, seeing that it could be published, and getting Forbes to be the editor. She felt that there was a need for an American based magazine. Well, it paid a great deal of attention to American art, much more than any other publication of the time did, and particularly to the young Americans. There was a very close relationship between its policy, the kind of art it liked and published, and the kind of art that was represented by the Whitney Studio Club—the younger generation of American artists, liberals, progressives, modernists, independents as against the Academy.

At that time there was a rift between those two camps that doesn't exist anymore—I mean, not to the same extent. The Academy was very powerful as entrenched in the Academy of Design and in similar organizations throughout the country, and they had far more power than they do now. They had the dealer's galleries pretty much lined up. The museums paid far more attention to them than they did to the rising generation of more liberal artists and particularly the avant garde of that day, the real modernists who were still having a very hard time of it as individuals. Except for Stieglitz's gallery there wasn't any real support. Of course, Stieglitz, as you know, had some money, and he helped his artists financially, and the Whitney Studio Club—I don't know whether I told you about that before have I? No.

My first contact with the Whitney Studio Club was through the Arts and through Forbes Watson, but they had been in existence since 1917. I was never a member of the club. I don't know who was a member. If you went there, you were a member—that's about what it amounted to. Nobody ever paid any dues, and I didn't frequent the place particularly until after I began to write about its exhibitions, about 1925, for the Arts, but the Arts frequently wrote and published articles about shows at the Whitney Studio Club and about the artists who were shown there and were acquired by Mrs. Whitney and in the more general field; in other words, historic art. As I say, the art public was naive at the time compared to what it is nowadays, and we didn't mind publishing an article on El Greco = you know, just a general article on El Greco. Nowadays an art magazine would have to have an angle such as did El Greco actually paint the left toe of such and such a figure—you know, this kind of thing. We were not publishing scholarly articles in the ordinary sense. Many of the people who wrote articles were artists themselves.

The artists viewpoint was a very important thing in the Arts always. For example, when we did an article on American Indian Art, and this was one of the first times that American Indian Art had been written about as art, not as ethnology, the writer was Henry Varnum Poore who was a painter and potter, one of the finest potters in the country, a very intelligent man, and he happened to be tremendously interested in Indian Art. Well, he and I went up to the Museum of the American Indian and selected a group of things to be photographed, and my memory is that Kuniyoshi did the photography. Kuniyoshi was then the professional photographer of works of art to keep himself going while he was painting. This kind of thing was pioneering. It was an artist's appreciation of something in the past, something that was rather new to the consciousness of artists at that time. Similarly when Virgil Barker went abroad, he always wanted to do a study of Pieter Bruegel the elder, and Bruegel was not at that time as highly thought of as he is now. This was an age of discovery of certain figures who began to assume major proportions. I think there had been books on Bruegel in English—I'm not so sure. There had been books in German, of course—Max Friedlander had written on Bruegel, but we just gave Virgil Barker the green light to go ahead and do a long article on Peter Bruegel, not any particular aspect of Bruegel, just Bruegel as a whole. He did a very fine piece which we published as a book. It was my idea, as I remember, to do this as a book using heavier paper, having an overrun of it, changing the title page, and so on, and I'm glad to say that an English publisher bought a whole set of sheets of it and published the book in England which was a great boon to us.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I think you're right—at once the discovery of an art reading public and the discovery of art from a historical sense which hadn't been done before.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I found in the issues I looked through treatment of any number of the youngsters who had been in your class with Kenneth Hayes Miller. They were treated in terms of their early work.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We had a series called "Young America."

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's right.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The first thing written on Marsh was in the Arts. Henry Schnakenberg wrote an article and so on. but I think the Arts Magazine appealed to artists more than any art magazine had ever done in this country—at least in the Twentieth Century. I know that all the artists I knew at that time were subscribers and great admirers. There was a kind of excitement about the magazine which you didn't get from the International Studio, from the old magazines, an air of discovery.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Freshness.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Had there been any relationship at all that you know of between Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force, or Mrs. Force and Hamilton Easter Field who had originally founded the Arts Magazine?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I just don't know—not to my knowledge. There might have been because Allen Burroughs was Hamilton's associate editor, and Allen's father, Bryson Burroughs, was a friend of Mrs. Force and Mrs. Whitney, but I think it was probably more the fact that here was a magazine that had been started by Hamilton Easter Field originally and had been a very lively magazine. I guess I didn't speak about that angle because Hamilton Field who was also art critic of the Brooklyn Eagle, had some money, and I think he acquired a magazine called Touchstone and merged it with the Arts. I don't know whether he turned the Touchstone into the Arts, or started the Arts and merged it with Touchstone. Anyway, at one time the title was called the Arts and Touchstone. Hamilton was a very slap dash editor. He had so many irons in the fire. He was a painter, a collector, and he was doing everything—throwing together a magazine at the same time. Allen Burroughs, I think, did most of the actual production end of it, but it was not a professional job I don't think, but it was a very lively magazine. He published all kinds of things that nobody had ever published before in the modern field, and he laid great stress on American art, too. In other words, there had been sort of not exactly a policy, but a kind of atmosphere produced by the old Arts which was taken over by the new Arts. Hamilton was much less discriminating and much less critical than Forbes was. He wasn't quite so cynical as Forbes was. Forbes had a very healthy cynicism, a very good corrective to being taken in by things. Field was a very ebullient kind of person, very enthusiastic about things, and sometimes what they published was not very good, but it was always fun, interesting and so on, a little amateurish.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But sometimes when you break new ground, one has to -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was a pioneering thing—that's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Keep it fluid so that it doesn't become fixed. It's alive.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. I think the reason that Mrs. Force, Mrs. Whitney, and Forbes Watson thought about the Arts was because it had this atmosphere. It was going begging. Field had died young. He contracted pneumonia, and I think he was working too hard myself. He was just spreading himself all over the place, and at that time pneumonia was not something that you took lightly. At that time there was no penicillin. I've forgotten, but there was a length of time between Field's death and the resumption of publication of the Arts. In the meantime, I supposed, they were negotiating for the purchase of it. All the time that Forbes was editor of the Arts, he was also critic of the World which meant that although he was a general supervisor of the Arts and its policies and he did as much writing as he could for it—he wrote an editorial for it every month—Forbes was a very quick and very easy writer, but he was a journalist, and he never met a deadline, may I say. That was one of my problems, to see if I could get his articles, or his editorial out of him in time for the magazine to come out at least in the same month. May I say that we had a very bad record of coming out always at the end of the month and sometimes even—I regret to say, the next month, but this was the nature of the operation. We had a very small staff. There was just Forbes, myself, a business manager, William Robb, an awfully nice person, secretaries, and that was it. It was up to us to get out a magazine, and Forbes, as I say, was sharing his time with the World and us. It was pretty rugged in the months—not months, but years after I became associate editor and the time I went abroad as European editor.

I joined the Arts—I think it was December, 1925, and I went abroad in November of 1927. In those two years I worked extremely hard because it was not only—well, it was the entire operation of getting out a magazine, and I was doing everything.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You had to put it to bed?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. I had to go to the printer. I designed it. I went over to the printer, and I sat there while all the sheets came off the press, read proof, and so on, and it was my job to see that the magazine got out, and it was fun. I seldom enjoyed anything as much. My wife didn't see me very much in the evenings when the magazine was being put to bed, but I must say that it was a very rewarding experience.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What did William A. Robb as manager add to the staff?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He sold advertising and took care of all the bills and everything else. He was kind of a steadying fly wheel in the operations, and he was—well, kind of a mainstay so far as the practical end of things went. I was purely editorial and production. I did do a few things, as I remember, in those two years. I redesigned the magazine. It was not a terribly professionally looking job at the time I became associate editor. It was pretty stereotyped. The illustrations were all certain sizes. In my opinion the type was too small for the size of the illustrations. The cover had a couple of heavy black bands across it. It needed some streamlining, and it needed to look more attractive. Instead of being stuck with either a two column wide illustration, or a single column, or a full page which was the kind of choice we had in the old magazine, I began to make a three quarter page, runarounds, and tighten and set in different measures, this kind of thing, trying to make it more flexible, using the larger type, trying to make the whole thing better looking visually. I changed the cover, cut out a lot of useless black lines, and concentrated on the name and the illustration which was on the cover. I tried to use illustrative material on the cover which would be printed in black and white, a line cut and not a half tone. We did stick to that blue cover which became quite famous, and, in fact, it's appeared in more paintings by American artists—that magazine kicking around, standing on a table with brushes around it, stuff like this—you see, the artists were subscribers to it. They loved to read the Arts, and they looked forward to the publication of it. All the artists I knew at that time talked a great deal about the Arts. They said, "This is wrong! Why do you give space to that kind of thing!"

It was kind of a much more intimate relationship than any I've met since in the publishing field.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  If nothing else, you learned that you couldn't please all of them at the same time.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  My friend Reginald Marsh would pick up an issue and say, "Here's six pages wasted right here—to give this space to this English artist."

I've forgotten the name of the English artist. He wasn't a very good artist now that I come to look back on it, but you make your mistakes—that's all.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, and I believe that you had here room and opportunity to experiment; whereas a magazine like the International Studio perhaps would not have permitted it. This was new, alive—as a matter of fact, I was struck by the number of full plates and illustrations there were in the magazine, pictures that you don't find any other place.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's rather staggering—just this record alone. In looking over the magazine—and I don't know anything about magazines, except whether I like or don't like them—there seems to be have been an effort not only to illustrate what was being said, but to show comparatives, too.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We tried to make it visually interesting because, as I said earlier, so many of these even famous names now were not yet really known to the art public here in this country. The art books were not very common. There was then nothing like the series of art books which, for example, Harry Abrams has been bringing out in this country—I mean sumptuous color books, picture books with text by authorities, that kind of thing. It didn't exist in this country at that time. Most of the art books, and I had a lot to do with the art books because that was one thing I was particularly interested in, the books which came to us for review, and I reviewed quite a number of them myself, whenever I could. They were chiefly—if my memory serves—pretty much British imports, or French books. There was not very much American publication in the field of art so far as books went, and, as I say, when there were books, the stress was never so much on the visual side, as it is now. Color was very, very rare.

Virgil Barker was always contributing to the magazine. He did a lot of book reviewing and very good book reviewing, very thoughtful and very solid book reviewing, and then he went abroad and became European editor, and it was then that he wrote his piece on Bruegel which we published as a book. I must say a good many things I wrote at that time for the Arts, reading them back, I see things I would want to revise my opinion on. I don't think the stuff I wrote—now, wait a minute; I think the things I wrote which were full length articles, especially the articles on William Morris Hunt, Winslow Homer, George Inness, and the Hudson River School, all of which I wrote before I joined the magazine, I think, I would not change much in those nowadays. I think I agree with what I said at that time about those schools and artists. The Homer article, in a way, was the germ of the book I wrote on Homer, the 1944 book. I said earlier, I think, that it was one of the first articles that paid attention to Homer's earlier work.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Where did you do the research for that article?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  In the public library. I went around a good deal seeing pictures, private collections as much as I could and also Knoedlers which had been Homer's dealer and had a tremendous file of photographs of pictures by him which they had received from him. Knoedler became his dealer in the early 1890s, and for about 20 years they were his dealers, and they had—which I didn't realize at the time, as I remember; no, I don't think I did—this very extensive correspondence from Homer which later became part of the basis of my big book on Homer. But at that time I wasn't aware of it as far as I can remember. I may have seen an isolated letter or two, but the main thing was that they had this extensive photographic file on Homer's pictures, including a number of early things which had come on the market and which they had handled This was the most extensive photographic material on Homer at that time. The Frick Library had not then gone into the American field; in fact, I'm not even sure the Frick Library existed. I guess it didn't. I did a lot of work at Knoedlers. I got the names of owners and collectors through Knoedlers and also through the publications which mentioned Homer and reproduced his work. I saw the pictures in the Metropolitan Museum. They have a big collection of Homer's work as did the Brooklyn Museum.

I also depended very heavily, of course, on William Howe Downes' book on Homer which he wrote in 1911—just after Homer's death. Downes had planned to write the book during Homer's life time, but he did not get around to finishing it until after his death. Downes I met later on when I was writing my long book on Homer. He was retiring at that time. He had been art critic of the Boston Transcript, a nice old gentleman, very generous. He turned over all his material to me without any strings attached at all which was very generous of him, and I talked to him a good deal. He had never met Homer, I think, which is strange. My memory is that at least he had never known him to any extent. He may have known him casually. He had never had a chance to talk to him, or to correspond with him, and in his book he reports correspondence between himself and Homer at the end of Homer's life when he asked Homer—evidently sent him a list of questions, and Homer turned it away, saying, "If I live long enough, I'll answer these."

It was something like that. That was Homer's attitude toward any publicity, or anything like that, so that Downes had depended pretty much on his own writings in the Transcript where he had reviewed exhibitions containing Homer's work and on past publications—articles back in the late '70s, '80s, and so on in which Homer was discussed, and on his knowledge of Homer's pictures. But the personal side he really didn't get very much first hand, and he didn't even, I don't think, have access to Knoedler's letters. I don't think so. He may have quoted a few, but I don't remember that he made any such use of them that I was able to later on in my 1944 book.

Actually the article I wrote on Homer was kind of a—well, much more fragmentary than anything I've done later on Homer. At the time I wrote the article I don't think I had an idea of doing a book on him. He just interested me as a most vigorous and powerful American painter. His subject matter seemed so native. What interested me particularly was his early work which seemed to me to have a kind of vision that was rather unique, a way of seeing aspects of American life in a very fresh way and putting them down with almost an intuitive quality that is a very precious thing to me and something that doesn't happen too much. This is a side of Homer that attracted me, that I tried to bring out in that first article.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You had lived with a Homer, had you not?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. There had been one in our household, a very good one, and I think that had kind of sunk in.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  A root anyway.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't think I appreciated it myself as much as we did after Hamilton Field came out to visit us one day in Nutley to spend the day. He looked at this Homer, and he said, "That's very fine, very fine."

He admired it a great deal, and I think this gave me a little bit of a fresh insight into the picture which I had grown up with. I had always loved it, but I had not seen it quite that way before. Nowadays to sit down and write in cold blood an article on Winslow Homer, not just some specialized aspect of Winslow Homer, but Homer's whole career and art, would be impossible. You couldn't do it anymore. This is the kind of difference in the climate of those days from what we have nowadays. The fact that you can't do it any more is partly because various people, including myself, did it in those days. I think my article on the Hudson River School was one of the first attempts to reassess that native manifestation, and I don't think today you could do it just that way again. The difference is that whereas that is an article of maybe four thousand words with ten or 15 illustrations, in 1945. I think we had an entire exhibition gotten up by the Art Institute of Chicago devoted to that Hudson River School with a catalogue of several hundred pages and many illustrations. That's the difference in the scale—difference between an early day pioneering look at certain aspects of American art—I'll take that back. That sounds egotistical. I'm sorry. What I mean is that the field then was much more open. It hadn't been written about from a contemporary standpoint.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Plus the fact that you were attempting as one of the purposes to educate the American public in American art, and it was pioneering. I wondered in terms of the acceptance of an idea—the Hudson River School—how easy was it to get acceptance of that idea from Watson?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's an interesting question because certainly it was not a school which was anything except to make fun of at that time. But Forbes had a lively mind, an open mind, and I think he thought this was an interesting angle and also the fact is that it was American. His whole interest, his great interest was in American art. I don't mean that he was a chauvinist, but he felt the lack at that time of a real critical devotion to what was going on in this country, what had gone on in the past, and when I suggested this it would include re‑discovery of some of the American figures of the past like the Hudson River painters. Of course, my article was not laudatory. It was rather making fun of certain aspects of the school which was necessary. At that time, as I think I said earlier, I was a great admirer of Lytton Strachey, and the attitude I had toward the Hudson River School painters was a little bit like Strachey's attitude toward Queen Victoria, starting out kind of making fun and then ending up with an admiration of the solid qualities that the old lady had. I came to feel the same way about the Hudson River School painters.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's not a caricature of the school.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't think it is. I think that there was a certain amount of warmth.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  When you put that school in its context, it has its own logic quite apart from any criticism you may have. You can't—what is it. We never talked about the nature of being a critic, but I suppose it involves a sense of discipline of not imposing on some earlier school the wisdom that you have from hindsight, a kind of snobbish quality of which you can take advantage since it's past, but to put it in its context and treat it gently as well as critically is a tough proposition.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's a literary art. It's an art form in itself—criticism as much as the work it criticizes. It has its own logic, its own order, its own set of ethics. In other words, you don't just say, "I like this, and I don't like that."

You build up a structure. You create a picture of the artist, or the period, or whatever it is, as objective as possible, but created with emotion. If it hasn't got emotion in it, if it hasn't got the love of what you're talking about, or sometimes the hate, then it isn't alive as criticism to me. It's just reporting. I had the good fortune when I first wrote to write about people I admired who interested me very much.

I remember at that time—I think it was before I went with the Arts. I had been doing this writing for the Arts, but I hadn't yet joined the staff, and I got to know William McCormick I think his name was. He was critic on one of the Hearst papers, art critic, critic of the Journal, I guess. He was looking for an assistant. He had read some of my stuff in the Arts, and he liked it. We had several interviews. This was before I joined the Arts, and I played around with the idea of becoming his assistant on the Journal. He asked me to write a test piece about paintings of English stage coach life for Christmas, and I'm afraid that's what kept me from joining the Journal because it just wasn't my métier at all. This was the difference. With the Arts I could pretty well pick what I wanted to write about. This doesn't mean that I didn't suggest a lot of things to Forbes Watson that he turned down and of course, in any job like that, any editorial work where someone is also writer on the staff, things come up that just have to be written about. For example, my article on Constantin Guys, the French graphic artist was stimulated by the—what's the name of that collection, the lawyer for the Armory Show, John Quinn. He just happened to have collected a lot of drawings by Guys, as I remember, and they were going to go on auction, and this idea for an article seemed like a natural. Constantin Guys had never been written about to any extent in English. I got interested, and Forbes got interested, and I went down to see Sara Cooper Hewitt who was an extraordinary character. You know the Cooper Hewitt who was an extraordinary character. You know the Cooper Hewitt family and all that. Well, as a young girl, I think, she'd been in Paris, and somehow she had an eye for things like that. She bought these drawings by Guys long before Guys was considered as an important artist at all, even in France, and she'd bought this magnificent collection of Guys drawings. I went down and saw them, and I asked her if I could write my article around them. Later I took Peter Juley, the photographer, down with me because they had never been photographed. I know we arrived a little early in the morning, I guess—it wasn't so early. It was around ten o'clock, but the house down on lower Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street had a great big circular staircase, and Miss Hewitt started coming down cursing at the fact that we had arrived at this hour in the morning. The language was quite something. I think she thought I was the photographer. Anyway, I placated her, and she was wonderful afterwards. She was really a salty character. But this was the kind of thing you could do on the Arts. You could take a figure like Constantin Guys and write about him without feeling that you were just repeating what somebody else had said. We never worried particularly about what had been written unless it was basic.

When Barker wrote about Bruegel naturally he consulted Max Friedlander's book, and he did all the scholarly things that were necessary, but his own judgments were not second hand. They were the judgments of a perceptive person who loved art and had his own ideas about it. Barker also had many artist friends and so did Forbes Watson. Forbes—well, I think that was one thing that particularly characterized the whole set‑up of the Arts, the fact, for example, that among Forbes' best friends were Eugene Speicher, Allen Tucker—very close friends they were; in fact, Allen helped financially with the magazine I think on occasion—Henry Schnakenberg, Alexander Brook and Guy Pene Du Bois who was also a writer. There were other names who occur to me but these people were very close friends of Forbes, Mrs. Force, and Mrs. Whitney and through them I met those I hadn't already known before. There was an unusually close relationship between the Whitney Studio Club and the Arts Magazine. I think it was the magazine that represented the artists' viewpoint much more than anything that had happened before. The Arts had a progressive kind of mind. Its policy was not very strongly avant garde art—you can see that from looking over the magazine. It did not correspond particularly with the Stieglitz group, and as a matter of fact, at that time the Stieglitz group and the Stieglitz attitude was something a little bit apart from the more numerous stream of new art in this country. Those were artists who had been picked by Stieglitz on the basis of great individualism and pioneering, and Stieglitz had a wonderful eye—I mean, to select out of all the artists that he had first shown, people like John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe—and he married Georgia O'Keeffe of course—Demuth and Arthur Dove. This was being a real judge. The whole operation of the Whitney Studio Club and the Arts which were intertwined was a much more democratic kind of thing than that. The idea was much more to play the field.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Or at least afford an opportunity, to grant an opportunity, an opening, a voice, a means.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, on a very broad basis, and to just sort of let the chips fall where they may, to give the chance to exhibit, to buy young artist's work, maybe, if he's good enough, to publish an article on him in the magazine—this sort of thing, and to do it with considerable breadth of viewpoint from pretty traditionalist painting which was alive and liberal to some more avant garde work. But I must say looking back historically that I think the whole Whitney enterprises, if you want to call them that, did somewhat neglect the avant garde in those days as exemplified by Marin, Weber, Joseph Stella, and the abstract painters in general. For example, when I was reviewing for the Arts I went to J.B. Neumann's gallery and saw an exhibit of Max Weber's work—this must have been about 1929, I guess—and asked Neumann for a photograph to illustrate my review. It wasn't to be a full article. It was to be part of the exhibition notes, the exhibition review. Well, Neumann refused to let me have a photograph. He said that Max Weber had said, "The Arts has never paid any attention to me and either they write an article about me, or I don't give them a photograph to publish."

This sounds like a very intransigent attitude, but you can understand that Max Weber had been very much neglected. He'd been about one of the earliest of the modernists to come back from Paris in 1908 full of new movements and he'd had a very hard time and it left marks on him. He hadn't been written about much at that time. This was before the publication of Holger Cahill's book on Weber, I imagine.

There was a little feeling always I know on my part and I know on Forbes's part toward the Stieglitz group—you know, that this was a little holy, holy, holy atmosphere. It was over praising. It was too exclusive. It was not our attitude—that's all, and we did have a tendency to take cracks at the Stieglitz group occasionally. I did in that piece I wrote about Marin. This is foolish looking back on it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I know that atmosphere contributes to this. I read a number of books on Stieglitz. I don't understand the exclusiveness, the unwillingness to share, almost sitting astride something never quite defined as distinct from wanting to put it out.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I don't understand it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was that aspect of it—no question about it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And yet with this very critical eye—look at his whatever they call it, stable—the people he had stagger.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He himself was a very magnetic person. He gave you the feeling that anything he said had some value. That's a rare thing. There was something about him and even though you didn't agree with him, you knew that it was from strong conviction, that he had a strong passion for the things he liked. I suppose that goes with being a prophet, and he was a prophet, no question about that. But he also could be quite annoying on occasion in a practical way.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I don't mind the passion, but passion to the point of mere possession is one thing, passion to break through to a larger understanding as to what this selected group is doing is a wholly different kind of thing. I don't get his unwillingness to share with a larger context, or to create a climate or humus into which this new will fall and find root. I don't get this.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  You get it on a theoretical basis, in a way, because I don't think any entrepreneur—if you want to call it that in the field of art—has ever had the literary following that Stieglitz did. You get people writing books all about Stieglitz. You get critics like Rosenberg—no, that's not his name, but the man who wrote Port of New York. He was a very fine critic, and he wrote for the Dial magazine. It's a well-known name, but it just doesn't occur to me at the moment—Paul Rosenfeld, I think. A lot of his writing about art revolved around the Stieglitz group and around the personality of Stieglitz himself. You find the same thing in that book; the number of tributes paid to Stieglitz during his life time from people who were very eminent in the field of letters and art is quite extraordinary. This man was a genius in his way.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Perhaps that's why I don't understand him. I'm willing to pay a price for a genius, but I'd like to know something of the terms.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's a little like what you said before—that the creative artist has to have a set of blinders. Stieglitz was a creative artist in his way. I'm not talking about his photography which is superb, but his role as a creator in the stimulation and helping of advanced trends. He had blinders, too. He cut out everything except a certain group. It happened that this group were tops, very unusual.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What this did to Marin, Arthur Dove—I'm not at all sure. It's one thing to corner the market, to possess, and quite a different thing to share, or market. Reading the books about Stieglitz it's a problem in my mind whether he was in business at all.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That was always the question in the galleries, I may say, because he did make it difficult to buy pictures. There's no question about that. He was a complicated person. We started to make a record of Marin's work, for example, when I started the American Art Research Council in 1942, and he cooperated absolutely fully—Stieglitz did. He turned all his information over to us. He let Rosalind Irvin of our staff go up there and spend days and days working at the gallery. He and Herman Moore, who was my colleague at the Whitney, my predecessor as director of the museum, he and Herman got on fine—always. I think it was because Herman was not a writer. He was not an artist either, and there was no feeling aroused. I had attacked Stieglitz in the past. Herman always had very cordial relations with him, and I did too later on. It was only during this writing period when I was gunning for Stieglitz, I'm afraid—not for Stieglitz, but for what I felt was the over‑adulation on the part of one member of the group for another, this kind of stuff. Hartley praised Marin to the skies, and I got my back up a little bit because I felt that Winslow Homer was a pretty good water‑colorist, too. It was that kind of thing. I suppose this was the kind of redressing which was me. I think I always had a tendency, when there seems to me to have been over praise, to go in the opposite direction. I suppose that's the normal reaction—you say, "Well, I'm going to hit everything, and give the other side of the case."

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What annoys me in terms of the books I've read is what appears to be a wall of separation between those, that small group that enjoyed each other's work, or seemed to, and the vast public that didn't have the opportunity to.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't think it built up consciously. It may have been later on, but in the days when Stieglitz was at 290 Fifth Avenue where he had that little gallery with the creaky elevator, it was the one place where you could see advanced art, and it did have a remarkable attendance for its size, and I was going to say it's inaccessibility. Actually it was then pretty near the center of things.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This is a guess. There's something comparable between Stieglitz as a leader and the chief surgeon of a large hospital. When he arrives in the morning the door opens and all the others are there to greet him, and he walks in in style with a retinue and whatnot. Then I suspect —well, some of the books indicate that he held a continual kind of seminar in terms of the exchange of ideas which would be extremely fruitful for the public who attend, but there seems to have been little sharing beyond that.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Sharing with artists and the general public? I don't think that by its nature it could have actually. They were like‑minded people who gathered there, and that was part of the spark.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You don't create a Buddha, do you, except to have it out on the side of the road. This is what I don't understand. Well, humans—take your choice. They evolve in strange ways, but it is a fact that he had a fantastic group of artists.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The proof of the pudding is in the eating and looking at it just in terms of what came out of this in the way of a collection, the Stieglitz collection is one of the most extraordinary collections—was, because he gave it away at his death. I don't know what the arrangements were, but it's been bequeathed in large part to the Metropolitan and a few other museums, and it's of extraordinary high quality within a very limited range of artists; whereas the Whitney Museum collection, the collection we inherited from Mrs. Whitney, formed on a completely different basis—I mean on a democratic basis—is; well, it's turned out to be maybe 75 percent not in the long run standing up.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But it's more representative.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, it's much broader, more representative. It's a principle I happen to believe in.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The other is a cultist kind of thing. I'm not against it as such. I believe we can afford to have such if that's what he wants to do—to keep people like Marin, O'Keeffe, and he had Weber for a while, too.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. He and Weber quarreled. Weber felt very bitterly about this, and when I got up that Weber exhibition in 1949, and wrote the catalogue which was also published as a small book, Weber spoke to me quite bitterly about Stieglitz. Stieglitz helped Weber in the beginning. They were very close. I think Weber even lived in the gallery for a while when he didn't have any place to live. I don't know what happened, but there was a very strong feeling on the part of Max Weber. Weber was a person who had very subjective feelings about other people.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This may have been a case where genius fell out—that's possible. I would suppose that when you find it possible to remain somewhat distant from the sun, you don't get quite as signed as you might otherwise be, if you operate in its orbit—you know, particularly a man like Stieglitz who apparently needed, or required the kind of message which this exciting group of people, whether they were in the literary field, poets, playwrights, or artists, gave him.

MR.GOODRICH: And let's not forget that he was the first.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Oh, yes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's one of the things that gave him his prestige and his magnetism, that he was the first to stick his neck out and show Matisse, Picasso, things like this, long before anybody else had the courage, or the insight to do it. Of course, he had advice—Steichen and Marius de Zayas who was a remarkable man. I guess he was either a Cuban, or Mexican cartoonist and a man of great insight, very fine cartoonist himself, and de Zayas played quite a part in advising Stieglitz, feeding him material, and Steichen did the same from abroad, too. Everybody does this, of course, just the way the Armory Show was gotten up in a kind of cooperative way with Walter Pach from abroad helping out Arthur B. Davies and Walt Kuhn to get the material in Paris and so on.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It may have been no more than a perversity in reverse in not having one's judgment achieve the initial kind of acclaim and fame to which a review by oneself would give it, so that Stieglitz may not have had the reception which he thought he was entitled to. I don't know. Whatever he was lurks in all kinds of mysteries. I don't know how, or why Arthur Dove existed as long as he did in the situation where you virtually couldn't buy one of his painting. They were always reserved—any number of stories of people going in and trying to purchase a Dove, and they just weren't for sale. I don't know whether it's comfortable living on a houseboat or not. I rather guess it isn't unless one is deeply in tune with that sort of thing. But Stieglitz's role assumes a God‑like quality which holds promise at its beck and nod. Books don't explain this about Stieglitz. They don't begin to. They hint, or they give some suggestions as to what the relationships were, but for me they never reach the heart of the problem.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think there's an interesting comparison here that one could make with Duncan Phillips—Duncan Phillips was quite a rich man, I gather, a pioneer collector. What reminded me of it was Dove because Phillips helped to support Dove for years, I think, and formed the biggest collection of his work anywhere, bigger than the Stieglitz collection, I imagine. And Phillips does this. Phillips, for example, helped Carl Cranz for years and years and years by buying his pictures. He collected his work, he bought his work, and he also helped to run a class down at the Phillips gallery which Cranz taught. Another painter that Phillips has done this for was Lee Gatch. I don't think it's been so much a personal thing there as buying his work and forming a collection. I suppose he has 30 Gatches, probably. Phillips did not begin to do this kind of thing as early as Stieglitz, but he was one of the very earliest collectors of modern artists in this country and on a broad basis.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It may have been very profitable for Stieglitz to deal exclusively with Duncan Phillips in the matter of Dove's work. I don't know what an Arthur Dove brought in the market at the time. I don't know, but to multiply the Duncan Phillips by ten, or a hundred, or a thousand, to give an artist what I assume an artist is really looking for, a broad reception and acceptability, is the aim, not to narrow it and keep it narrow all the time. That is the exercise of a strange kind of economic judgment, or possibly a God‑like quality where you can move people. It's a mystery to me, but I long ago confessed I didn't understand it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I didn't particularly know Stieglitz until later. I didn't really know him until I began to do reviewing for exhibitions for the Arts, and naturally I went into his gallery the way I did with any other gallery. We were friendly and so on. One of the things that was interesting, rewarding, and educational about the job as associate editor of the Arts was that he had to do so many different kinds of things. I reviewed books, exhibitions, wrote articles. I did a good deal of editorial work, pure and simple, reading manuscripts and getting them ready for the printer, that kind of thing, the actual production of the magazine itself, the physical production. It was quite an education in what you do in the field of art publishing, and this happened once a month, and, as I say, this happened pretty late in the month. We got some irate advertisers all right. People would say, "This exhibition which I advertised in your magazine was on three weeks by the time the magazine came out."

Forbes didn't care what he said. He was no respecter of persons, or of money, and occasionally he offended powerful dealers considerably. I remember one occasion. I won't give the name of the dealer, or the name of the museum, but a museum bought a Titian, and they were supposed to have paid a huge sum for it. Forbes in some way discovered that it was not entirely unquestionably by Titian, and he wrote an editorial about it which was very funny. But it lost us an advertiser and, in fact, you hardly dared go into the gallery for quite a while after that if you said that you were from the Arts. I think he was right. He was debunking because there had been a lot of holier than thou stuff about the acquisition of this Titian—you see.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There's something to a deflator—I mean, there's a role for a deflator. It's one thing to deal with reality and quite a different thing to be self‑massaged.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was a deflator when he wanted to be. You've read his stuff, and you could see how sharp he could be.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There was a time when the National Academy of Design announced through its president a drive to collect six million dollars to educate the American public.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I remember that one. That gave Robes his big opportunity.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It was fire and brimstone coming off that page.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He and Mrs. Force were very much alike in this way. They were both crusaders, and they were both highly articulate. They could be extremely sharp and biting, and they both carried weight not from their position, or anything like that, but because you could see that they both meant business.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It was very good in this instance that the magazine from the point of policy was against a private institution like the National Academy shaping and configuring the nature of beauty, or what aesthetic values were. But a short time later there was introduced in Congress by Representative Tinkham a bill to create a cabinet post for fine arts and conveying to the government or whoever was to fill the post certain powers. There was an immediate reaction against this. We weren't going to have the government tell us what art was or wasn't—an instinctive protection for the very fluid thing that the Whitney Museum stood for.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  When was this?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was in 1924.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Did Forbes write about that?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Oh, yes—blasted it to high heaven.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The strange thing is that later on he played a very active part in the government projects in art.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Then the economic basis had shifted.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. It was much more democratic under the Roosevelt Administration.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I don't know what the source of Representative Tinkham's bill was.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He probably suspected it was the National Academy, I guess.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It may have been a pincher movement, but in any event, Tinkham was not accredited in the art field. Let's put it on that narrow basis, and therefore his suggested bill required the kind of treatment which set the government apart from the stream of ideas in art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's the difference between that period and today. You took it for granted that if the government did anything in the field of art, it would be wrong, and that it would be on the side of the most conservative and academic interests. The difference is the intervening Roosevelt Administration and what they did in the field of art. There's till the same feeling, but it isn't nearly so well based as it was then. There was an official kind of art in this country, an official art world which has been pretty much shot to pieces since then, and we took part in shooting it to pieces.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The Whitney Studio Club appears to have been a fluid set‑up. Who was a member, who came—if you were drawn there you were presumably drawn there by interest, and if you remained you remained through interest because the Club had things available which an artist at the time couldn't afford—like a model, the sketch class.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think the main thing through the Whitney Studio Club was the exhibiting program. That was really the basis of the whole thing—the exhibition program and the social side. Mrs. Force was a highly sociable person. She loved people. She had very strong likes and dislikes, and she was one of the most amusing talkers I ever heard in my life—a real wit. I always used to say that the social temperature rose ten degrees when she came into the room. She was fun. She was sometimes very cruel in her humor, but it was never dull, believe me.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  She was a defroster. That's great.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right, and she had this magneticism, this energy, and she had no feeling for details at all. She hated details, and whatever differences we had were because she used to feel that I was too persnickety about details, but they had to be done by somebody. The main thing was that she was a catalytic agent. She'd pick up an idea, and in ten minutes be started on her way. Somebody else would carry it out, but she'd see the value of it, the need, and she'd make her decision right away. This was one of the reasons that she was of such great help to Mrs. Whitney and that the combination of these two women was so wonderful—one person of great resources, interest, and generosity, but who by herself would never have gotten involved in this kind of career, this active career on behalf of American art. She would have done some of it, but I don't think she would have created the structures that Mrs. Force did with Mrs. Whitney's backing and full cooperation.

In my own dealing with Mrs. Whitney I never felt that she was trying to block anything that we were trying to do. She always backed us up to the hilt even if she didn't agree with the kind of thing we were trying to do, or the kind of artists we were buying.

In the Whitney Studio Club there was the aspect of scalability. Mrs. Force loved parties, and loved giving parties. In those days living could be pretty plush even after the depression. She had a butler. She had an apartment in the upper floor of the museum. This was a little bit later, of course, and entertaining was done wonderfully, and it made things a great deal of fun, and it also had a big influence on the course of events, the kind of social give and take that she had a great gift for. You can always accomplish more by inviting someone to have a drink with you, or tea, and getting down to the business of talking because Mrs. Force usually had some kind of a thing in the back of her mind in all of this. She had a gift for attracting talent and brains around her, people who advised her, who helped her and on whom she depended, but whose advice she could throw over right away if she felt it was wrong. She was a very decisive kind of person.

Forbes Watson and Mrs. Force were very close for many years. He was really, I think, the closest adviser of Mrs. Force in all her activities, I would say, probably from about 1920 to 1930. Those were the days when the Arts was published, when Mrs. Whitney was subsidizing it. Forbes was helping a great deal with policy and things like that, bringing new artists to the attention of Mrs. Force and vice versa. It was a remarkably productive, creative relationship there. Later on I regret to say they quarreled. I think they were too much alike. It was a very bitter quarrel. I always felt very sorry about it. I think its basis was partly the fact that about 1929, or 1930, when Mrs. Force and Mrs. Whitney began to think in terms of a museum and when the museum was founded, Mrs. Whitney began to withdraw her support to some extent from the Arts, and Forbes was asked if he wouldn't go out and get support elsewhere a little bit more. He did. He tried to do it. I don't think he succeeded. It was a very difficult thing. People didn't like to put money into a deficit operation, especially if it's a publication. And that was what made the Arts possible, Mrs. Whitney operating through Mrs. Force, because I'm sure, and I don't know the figures, the magazine lost money every year, and I think in some years it may have lost quite a lot of money.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In 1930, many people were losing a lot of money.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That made it difficult.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true, too, but the main thing was the conflict that had started between Mrs. Whitney's interest in the museum and in the Arts. And then there were temperamental problems between Mrs. Force and Forbes. I think Forbes felt that he had taught Mrs. Force a great deal that she knew, and I think he even had the tactlessness to tell her so once at a party. She was very hot tempered and took things in a very personal way and there was a break. As a matter of fact, there was something of a break between me and Forbes, I regret to say, because when I went abroad to be European editor of the magazine in 1927, I don't know whether I went into this before, did I?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You did indicate that there had been a break.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, I went over with the understanding that we would have an office in Paris. None of this took place. Forbes Watson was a very busy man, and also I think a little careless about details. There was no office, no nothing, and I operated entirely on my own for about eleven months over there, and when I got back I found that I was sharing the position of second in command with somebody else. There were about two years when —well, I was still second in command, and I was doing the best magazine writing that I had done up to that point because I had had a background of Europe for a year, had a chance to see things, a chance to get away from the routine of getting out a magazine, really look and think and travel, and I feel that that's the time that I did my best magazine writing. I was also working for the New York Times—you see. As soon as there had to be a pulling in of horns financially, I was placed on a different financial basis, as contributing editor. Those were hard years. I also wrote an article about Benton which Forbes and I disagreed about, and this was a rift. I used to see him later on, and we made it up all right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There were a number of people who had been added to the magazine.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Dorothy Lefferts Moore.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  David Glassgold.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was particularly concerned with the decorative arts and movies, those other arts. It's interesting, I think, how many of these people became associated with the Whitney Museum. Glassgold became one of the curators of the museum. I became one of the curators, and several members of the secretarial staff were taken over when the magazine folded.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That was in 1930, wasn't it?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The magazine continued, as I remember, to 1930 on a different basis for a while—as a quarterly, a weekly, or something. It began to peter out.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The advertising folded, in part. I suspect that some of the large galleries were finding it tough in the 1930s.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Did I record a conversation that I had with Mrs. Force about the continuance of the Arts?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There had been this personal falling out between her and Forbes Watson, and there had been a withdrawal of some support. I don't know which came first. Mrs. Force asked to see me, and at this time the magazine was struggling along. I was no longer associated directly with it. She asked me to come and see her, and she said, "If we decide to support the Arts again, would you be editor of it?"

I couldn't do that. I couldn't cut my previous colleague's throat—that's what it amounted to. She'd lost her faith in him, and I urged her, I said, "He's a very able man, and he's done a wonderful job, and the best thing would be if you could continue to support the magazine as much as you could."

As a matter of fact, I think this talk was a little earlier than I said. I think it was still being supported, but she didn't want to continue to support it. She would do it—the way she put it to me—if I would take the editorship. On the other hand, I urged her to continue supporting it with Forbes as editor. I think that was the sequence of things, and I think that after that they did support it about a year and then gradually the support began to fall off.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There were changes in associate editor and contributing editor. The October, 1930 issue—Moore, Virgil Barker and yourself are listed for the first time all as contributing editors.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  What issue is that?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  October, 1930.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And that issue had—oh, boy, the advertising which after all is helpful, virtually disappeared, so that it was a struggle. Even if you had been able to float it as an idea, the times just weren't right. 1930 was a pretty grim period.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true. You see, Mrs. Whitney's support was something that had been assured. Forbes didn't have to work for it. He didn't have to go out and work for it, and seeking funds can be a very time consuming and energy consuming thing. The magazine was in a very fortunate position there from 1923 to about 1930, I think.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I didn't have any association with the magazine. I only come to it in retrospect, but any magazine that is floated and doesn't fight its way into the market place and stand on its own feet is somehow lost. That known subsidy somehow warps, or puzzles the will. If you have to fight your way into the market place—this may sound wholly romantic, I know. To the extent magazines are subsidized, they can afford to be less adventuresome as time goes on.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't agree with you there. I think to the contrary, the reason the Arts did make the contribution that it made in those years was because it didn't have to worry about funds, or its advertisers. On the Arts—well, I think somebody someday should do a thesis on the financial condition surrounding art magazines in America because I don't think that there have been more than one or two that have paid for themselves. They come and go. There are subsidies of all kinds of degrees. I know some of the history of some of the magazines. For example, I know the magazine that was called the Art Digest which is now called the Arts, and, believe me, this was a source of financial loss for years to the man that bought it, a friend of mine. He finally sold it, but at the time he did sell it, it was making less of a deficit than it had, but it was still making a deficit each year. The Art News may pay for itself, I don't know. I know that the Magazine of Arts and I was chairman of the editorial board for eight years from 1942 to 1950, was always a deficit operation supported by the American Federation of Arts. The College Art Journal which has become a very good magazine is supported by the College Art Association. The Art Bulletin which is the leading scholarly art journal in this country has a subsidy from a group of universities and the College Art Association, and it has also gotten money from foundations. It's a rather discouraging picture and a little hard to understand because the art book publishers in certain cases seem to be making a go of it. Harry Abrams used to. I know that Harry Abrams in the beginning put an awful lot of money which didn't come back into his operations, but I'm sure that he is now, and has been for some time, doing very well as an art book publisher. There's something about an art magazine that makes it almost fatally a deficit operation. I think it may be partly because it has to have a larger staff than most book publishers because of the nature of current activity going on all the time—the reporting, this, that, and the other thing, and the kind of clerical work that has to go on. More and more there is demand for larger formats, for color and so on. Contributors have to be paid. An author of an art book can wait for his royalties to come in but a contributor has to be paid earlier. I don't believe the situation is true abroad as much. I think the magazines probably pay for themselves, and I think they may in England—I'm not sure about this, but I know that the two magazines that I was intimately connected with the Arts and the Magazine of Art were both deficit magazines and what finally happened with the Magazine of Art to my great regret was the gradually tapering off, cutting down the size, and this is the beginning of the end. Once you start even marking time it's not very good, but once you start reducing you might as well call it a day, and the process is always painful, may I say, for those concerned.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  All the years that you were associated with the Arts did Mrs. Whitney, or Mrs. Force make any comment about it? Were you left free, or loose to develop as you saw fit?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The chief contact with them was made by Forbes Watson. At first I met them through Forbes and in a professional way. I wrote a couple of prefaces for a couple of exhibitions they put on, an exhibition of the circus in paint and an exhibition of flower painting, and Mrs. Force asked me to write these having seen my writing in the Arts. About this time I began to be close to her on a personal basis, to know her more. Until about the time I left for Europe in 1927, I didn't know Mrs. Force particularly well. I didn't—well, I don't know that I had met even Mrs. Whitney at all before that, but after I came back in 1928, then I got to know Mrs. Force increasingly well, and Mrs. Whitney less so, because Mrs. Whitney was busy with other things and wasn't as much on the scene down on 8th Street naturally as Mrs. Force was, so I don't know what the attitude was. Forbes was the person who had those contacts, and I'm sure that Forbes was the person who had to give the bad news every year about the deficits and to ask for funds.

Of course, there were a lot of other people in that position, too. John Sloan told me that every year at the end of the Independent Society's fiscal year, he went to Mrs. Whitney with the deficit, and she would always make it up. She was one of the directors of the Independent Society—you know.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The fact that you wrote about the Hudson River School, Hunt, Inness, Homer—there was no comment?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Not that I know of. Mrs. Force never concerned herself with a great deal of detail anyway. I would guess that she never took a very critical attitude toward the magazine. I think that the idea of it is what appealed to her and particularly the space given to contemporary American artists. Mrs. Force was a very personal person. She liked certain people very much indeed. She had a strong dislike—stuffed shirts and people whom she thought were pretentious were bores, and so on, and she was not a critical type as relates to things in print. She had a funny attitude toward things in print. She always used to quote some saying about "print proves it", or something like that, which of course it doesn't at all. It can be just as much a big lie in print as it can be verbally, but she had a great respect for the printed word. She herself had not had any great education. Her background had been as secretary to Mrs. Payne Whitney. For a while I think Mrs. Force had had a secretarial school, but she had no particular art background, and everything she ultimately did learn in art she picked up herself by her contacts with people, with artists, the art world in general, and she had an extraordinary, quick mind in learning.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Had she known Hamilton Easter Field?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  She probably met him casually because he was a reviewer —you see, for the Brooklyn Eagle, and he probably visited the studio. I don't think she had any particular contact—wait a minute. She might have had because there was this break up—you know, between the Independent Society and Field's group. It was basically, as I understood it, a quarrel between John Sloan who was president of the Society of Independent Artists and Hamilton Easter Field who had been very active in the Society of Independent Artists, and the quarrel had to do with publicity gags for the Independent Society which Sloan approved of because Sloan was a pretty publicity minded man. I mean he liked to have it. Whether it was good publicity or bad, he liked to have things in the papers, not about himself, but about the whole operation of the Independent Society, and I think that there was a publicity man for the Society of Independent Artists who had done some things that Field considered rather undignified, cheap, and so on. This is my memory of the story. I did not have a direct part in it—this I got second hand. There was a meeting at which the two factions fought this issue over, and it ended in a bitter personal quarrel, as I understand it, between Field and Sloan, and at that point Field and a group of younger artists who felt the same way that he did about the Independent Society—you see, the Independent Society was a mixture of amateur, professional, academic, liberal and everything else, and the younger professional artists, particularly the people I knew well—people like Katherine Schmidt, Alexander Brook, and so on, people I had known from Art School days, they all new Field quite well. A number of them lived in Field's houses over in Brooklyn. He had these three houses. Kuniyoshi and Katherine Schmidt lived there. Pascin lived there for a while. Stefan Hirsch lived there, and it was a sort of a community of artists, and these people agreed with Field in his feeling that the Independent Society was capitalizing on their eccentricities and its funny features in an undignified kind of way. They were more professional—you see, and they joined with Field in this thing called the Salons of America. I think David Morrison was one of the moving spirits in it. Alexander Brook was, I know, and it was a much more homogenous group than the old Independent Society, and it went on for some years having its own exhibitions. I've always wondered whether Mrs. Whitney might not have helped that financially. I'd have to find that out from some of the people involved. I'll ask Katherine Schmidt about that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  By the late twenties, 1927, 1928, this Brooklyn group turned into the Brooklyn Society of Modern Artists, and all the people you mentioned together with others held shows once a year.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I've forgotten that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In reading the press I ran into their seventh annual show in 1936 in some gallery downtown.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Was this a successor to the Salons of America?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I don't know how long the Salons of America continued. I haven't yet found when it disappeared , if it did.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think it did disappear in the twenties, and there's some relationship between this disappearance and the Hamilton Easter Field Foundation which was set up after Field's death and to which artists gave their work, as I remember it. They formed a collection. I think somehow that collection is now at the museum in Ogunquit where Field taught for years. The museum, of course, was much later than Field's day.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Much later, a tribute to a fellow who was not insignificant in the life of modern art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right, and he's been pretty much forgotten. Another person who was part of all this and about whom I haven't spoken is Niles Spencer who was very close to this whole group, a great friend of all of us. His wife was Betty Spencer from whom he later separated. Niles was part of the same group that went with Field out of the Independent Society into the Salons of America. He was a very close friend of all of us, a very sweet person and a very fine painter who developed in a different direction from most of those other members of the group. He was not a traditionalist to such an extent.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Terrific stuff.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think his last work was his best.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There was this—I don't know. I've been told that over the years the Independents became a source of endless wrangling as to whether pictures should be hung alphabetically, or by size—that kind of thing. When you begin to push interest to the point where size—whoever has the biggest picture should be in the center—that's the beginning of the end. If you need a place to show because no one else will let you show, that's one impulse, but after you've gotten the opportunity and you then begin to worry about such refinements as to who is going to have the right corner, the left corner, what loft you're going to hire, it degenerates into a deadly kind of pettiness.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Again, I think that in the case of the Independent Society the cutting down of Mrs. Whitney's support had a lot to do with the decease of that society. I believe that Sloan told me that, and I believe it's been published. He said it himself, that she had generously supported it, but that when her museum came along, that was her primary interest. Also I think in a way the art world was outgrowing that kind of thing There were many more dealers by that time who could take and would take on experimental artists, younger artists, off‑beat artists.

I still believe, however, that there should be something equivalent to the Independent Society in New York City. There is no great big salon in New York City. The nearest thing to it is the Whitney Museum's annual exhibitions which are selective, not very large, and entirely by invitation. Then there's the National Academy which is an all by membership thing with similarly minded artists able to get their work in past a jury, but it's a bit of a closed corporation. There are a few societies like the Audubon Society of America, or the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptures which is a small organization on a membership basis. The Audubon Society is on a membership basis, but there is no big salon on the scale that Paris had them and still has them. I'm not sure that it is absolutely needed now as much as it used to be, but it certainly was needed in the days when Sloan and his friends started the Independent Society, very much needed.

A lot of artists got their first showing through the Independent Society. I used to cover their exhibitions for the Arts, and it was a lot of fun because you'd see things that you didn't expect at all, artists you'd never heard of before. They made some mistakes. A lot of people I singled out in my reviews turned out to be absolutely nothing at all, particularly the naive artists because they don't last. They look awful good when you first see them. Usually they are amateurs, and they don't go on painting, or else they never develop any further than that. There was a great deal of that in the Independent Society shows, a great deal because—you know, you paid five dollars and there you were. But aside from that, there were a lot of very good professional painters just starting who got their first showing in the Independent shows. Then there began to be the feeling I know among my friends, the younger generation, that this was all very well, but it wasn't really serious. It wasn't really accomplishing a lot, that it was a little bit of a stunt, this kind of thing—you see, and I think that was part of this background for the split.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  As I understand it, the Independent Society started out as a revolt, the inability of this then small group of artists to be able to pass a jury for a show.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The Independent Society really has a long history. It had predecessors. The first predecessor was the 1908 show of The Eight at the Macbeth Gallery which was the first well attended show of somewhat advanced artists. That show had huge crowds, as you know, and it attracted a great deal of publicity. I tell the story of it in my little book on John Sloan, how Sloan, Henri and some of their associates year after year tried to do the same thing on a much broader basis, and they did have at least one big Independent show—I think it was called Independent, had the name Independent in it—somewhere along the line, about 1910, or 1911. Then, of course, came the Armory Show which started out with the same idea and was expanded by Davies and Kuhn into a big international show, but the Independent idea still persisted, that there should be a great big salon to which anybody could send their work on payment of a fee, and this because of the fact that the National Academy was a closed corporation, that you couldn't get into it, and so on.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Juries were stacked.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, and even Henri had his stuff thrown out—you know, Henri was the one of that whole group who was most acceptable to the academic world. They respected him. He was a very skillful painter. Henri and Bellows were the two of that group that the Academy just had to recognize. They won honors and everything else. But actually, I think, in starting the Society of Independent Artists it was partly the group of The Eight and the liberals, but also very important in it was Marcel Duchamp. He, of course, came from Paris where they had had a great history. The Paris Independents had been the way Henri Rousseau got his work before the public when he couldn't show anywhere in the salons. The independent salons in Paris has been a very vital movement, a very vital force, and the American independents, the New York independents were definitely, consciously modeled on the Paris Salon des Artistes Independents. I think they adopted the same procedures, the same method of collecting fees, the same method of hanging, and so on. Duchamp played a part in it, and I think Walter Pach had a lot to do with it, too, Walter Pach had lived abroad a good deal in Paris and had seen the independents over there. Sloan became the moving spirit very early in the game though and he was sort of perennial president of the society. Mrs. Whitney was on the Board of Directors, and, as I say, made up their deficit year after year.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  How did she develop interest in folk art that she collected? She had quite a collection.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That was Mrs. Force.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Mrs. Force's interest came to her largely through her artist friends.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I wondered whether it might not have been Hamilton Easter Field because he also had an interest in folk art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think it was more people like Kuniyoshi, Robert Laurent, and Stefan Hirsch, as I remember, and I know that Katherine Schmidt was very much interested in folk art. Katherine Schmidt and Kuniyoshi were married at that time, of course, and they were both quite interested in folk art, and Henry Schnakenberg, too. They put on a show of American folk art at the Whitney Studio Club—I think it was that, or the Whitney Studio, and I've forgotten which—and I think that Henry Schnakenberg picked it, didn't he? —you know so much more about this than I do.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The original thought was whether there had been any contact between Hamilton Easter Field and Mrs. Force because this was a common interest.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I doubt it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Field filled his homes and hits in Marine with folk art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true. When I knew him in 1917 he hadn't gone into this particularly then, so far as I can remember. I think it was the younger generation that got particularly interested in it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  They had lived in his houses.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true. There was a connection. There was no question about that, and I think, as I remember, Field may have given some space in the old Arts to folk art, too. I know that he was interested in it—always. I remember some of his reviews where he picked out the Independent Society folk painters, primitive painters, and spoke about them very highly. As a matter of fact, there are some articles in the Arts by Watson dealing with primitive artists.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's right.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Quite a number of articles. I wrote a review myself about 1926, of an exhibition at the Dudensing Galleries of American folk art. But it was quite a movement among the younger generation and Mrs. Force—you know, always had this very strong interest in decorative art, furniture and interior design. Her apartments were always really masterpieces. They were very, very beautiful. She always got very good advice, but she was very creative herself in this way and, typical of her, she'd get an absolutely knockout of an apartment. I remember that she had a white apartment once that was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw, and people from abroad used to be brought in to look at it. She used Victorian material in all kinds of interesting ways, and here again, she had advice, the advice of Robert Locker, who was one of the best interior decorators we had at that time, and Bruce Butterfield who designed the interior of the old Whitney Museum downtown and also designed the interior of this, our present museum. They were very close friends of Mrs. Force, and both of them, I think, helped her with her apartments. But in any case, she very early in the game got interested in collecting folk art. She had a house down in Pennsylvania, Bucks County, which was filled with folk art. It was an old house, very good looking with a big barn, and it was filled with folk painting and sculpture. Then later on, she had a house up near Cross River, New York State, which she also filled with old furniture and paintings. She particularly was interested in Shaker furniture and Shaker design; in fact, she helped subsidize a book, I believe, one of the earliest books on Shaker furniture by a couple called the Andrews, as I remember, and I'm not positive that she helped to finance the book but I think she probably did. This book was published by Yale University Press about—I would say in the early 1930s. She herself formed this very fine Shaker collection which was sold later at auction at Parke-Bernet and fetched very good prices. She had remarkable taste in those fields, instinctive good taste, instinctive feeling for quality. Of course, another person who was very close to her, and he was a very important person to her, was Charles Sheeler. He was a very close friend of Mrs. Force; in fact, my memory is that Sheeler lived next door to the Whitney buildings downtown on 8th Street for a while. I know I first met Sheeler through Mrs. Force, and of course Sheeler has always had this feeling about American folk art and great knowledge of it. He has bought things himself and has used them in his own work. Mrs. Force was a pioneer herself in the collection of folk art because she was one of the first to do it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The Nadelman Museum was opened some time in the twenties. Did she know him?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No, I don't think so. I think these were two separate projects. Nadelman got very much interested very early in the game, but I never remember her saying anything about Nadelman as a personal friend; in fact, I have a feeling that there would have been a rivalry there more than anything else. Nadelman came to folk art, I think, just out of pure instinct and a feeling for that quality of art.

The discovery of American folk art was very much linked up with the beginnings of the modern movement in this country. There was a feeling that there was a similar primitive viewpoint—discarding the representational side of painting, discarding the illusionistic side of painting, getting back to the thing in itself the object—which was parallel in both the folk artist who doesn't think about the appearance so much as the essence of the thing and what a lot of modern painters were trying to do. Stylistically too—I mean, there's a decorative element in folk art that appealed very much to the modern painter, a feeling for the flat pattern. Then I think quite deep was the search for national character. Here was art that was entirely out of the soil and out of the people and had very little to do with what was going on in Europe, and this search was a very conscious thing at that time among the younger artists. They were looking for a national identity, a national character, too. I think they were looking for it more in that day than they have since—I mean, there was—well, it wasn't exactly chauvinism. It was too sincere, too much of a real search. Later on, I think, it did turn into chauvinism in the work of Thomas Benton, Grant Wood, and to some extent John Steuart Curry, although Curry was much milder than the others and not so much a propagandist.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There is also an emerging conservation attitude—like William Morris of England who very early stressed the desirability of preserving England in terms of its past, and created a climate for his successors. I'm not sure who the spur is in this country unless it be Field.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think there were several. I know a person who was very influential—Holger Cahill and also Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. who was very early in the game began forming that wonderful collection which is now down in Williamsburg. Just who was first I really don't know, but I think Mrs. Force was one of the first. I would say that the four most prominent individuals as collectors were Mrs. Force, Nadelman, Mrs. Rockefeller—well, three. Later on came people like—well, the Garbisches whose collection has just been shown. They became quite recent converts to the field. Fairly early in the game was Jean Lipman, the editor of Art in America who has written several books on American folk art and has a very fine collection, too.

Collecting folk art was kind of a spontaneous thing. Of course, there was the nature of it. Things weren't in the hands of dealers. You'd go out in the country, and you'd find that stuff—I mean, I remember my parents—I don't know whether I told about this, but I remember when I was a kid down in Sakonnet they used to go out in the afternoon in a horse and wagon, and they'd come back in the evening loaded with antiques, antique furniture which they'd simply bought in the old farm houses around there. People were glad to get rid of it. My father and mother had a lot of fun doing this. They used to go around practically every Saturday afternoon—you know, go out for an excursion. They'd just barge in. You'd go up to an old house and say, "Have you got any old furniture you don't want to keep?"

They'd come back loaded. People wanted to get rid of that old stuff and buy new Grand Rapids furniture—you see. This was about—well, about when I was ten years old, I guess; in fact, this occurred to such an extent that my aunt, my father's sister, built a house opposite us down at Sakonnet, and she became one of the best collectors of antiques in that area and eventually almost a professional. She had really remarkable stuff, and she had started out just going around the country with us on an afternoon and picking the stuff up. You can't do it anymore. I remember we once discovered a fabulous old lady. She must have been in her 90s. She was an old spinster living up a side road, and she was one of these New England hoarders. When she died, they found that she had a hundred sets of sheets and stuff like this. She just bought and bought and bought, and her house was just full of very fine furniture. We gradually depleted it by buying it, but along with it we acquired a set of fleas. I remember about a week in our house when everything was covered with insecticide. We used to call fleas after that Mary Allen. But this was getting back to the folk art thing. I'm sure that the way Field, Laurent, and those people bought their first folk art was just up around Ogunquit, around the farm houses in Maine. You couldn't get it in a dealer's place. There were no collectors, anything at all. Collecting folk art was a very sort of a spontaneous thing going on all over the place. Sheeler probably collected most of his down in Pennsylvania. Mrs. Force did. The reason she got so much of her Shaker things was through Pennsylvania. Were there Shaker communities in Pennsylvania? She had a show at the Whitney Museum of Shaker furniture.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's wonderful stuff!

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's marvelous stuff, and it's extraordinary—it isn't just that it is functional, but superb design in itself. Sometimes it isn't very functional, but the sense of form is amazing.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Well, we're just about at the end of this tape—there are one or two things.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I didn't realize the time had passed.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There was a fellow at the Newark Museum who was open to convention apparently on all kinds of things, and he may have had something to do with folk art, too—Dana.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's quite possible because they were the first museum to put on a show of folk art—one that Holger Cahill got together, and I know that Holger Cahill was a close friend of Dana's; in fact, wasn't Cahill on the staff of the Newark Museum for a while? Dorothy Miller may have been also.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I don't know about her, but he was.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  She comes from New Jersey. She may have been on the staff of the Montclair Museum—I'm not sure.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Dana in his own way made the museum functional with reference to the contemporary times, even though he wasn't necessarily convinced of its value.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He saw the museum as an educational institution with reference to his constituency; namely, the people of New Jersey generally, and the people of Newark particularly. He had a sense of service to the community quite early—imaginative service.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was a pioneer. He was one of the first to believe that a museum should be right in the middle of the city, too—right in the business section and not somewhere out in a park. I think, as I said before, he was a great friend of my father's?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, John Cotton Dana. They had—he was Newark, of course, and we were Nutley, and they were close friends. I never knew Dana that I can remember, but he and my father were close friends. They had a club called the Monks Club consisting of professional people in Newark and the suburbs out there, and they used to meet once a month in each other's houses and read a paper—you know, and have discussions and drinks and so on. It was one of those things that doesn't happen very much anymore. Dana was a moving spirit in this club. It sounds childish, but each one of them took the name of a monk, a historic monk. My father was Savonarola. I've forgotten who Dana was. This sounds a little childish, but they had a lot of fun out of it, and it was serious, too. Dana was sort of the moving spirit in the whole organization.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Whatever his monkish name was, his influence certainly in the development of the museum, the nature, or the richness and variety into which it could go was great. He's really a pioneer.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He wrote a series of little books about the function of a museum which are still about the best things there are on the subject, I think, and this was pretty revolutionary in those days.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You went out there once—maybe you didn't, but I thought you went out there once to review one of their shows.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I could have. Aren't you thinking of a little piece I wrote about George Luks, the show they had out there. I just wrote this out of the catalogue before the show came on. They asked a statement about him from several people, and I wrote just about him. But I've always had a close feeling for the Newark Museum. I knew Dana's successor, Beatrice Winsor very well. She was an old family friend of ours. Her brother lived in Nutley, and she was a close friend of my father and mother. She was quite a character, too. She ran the Museum for about 25 years, I guess, after Dana's death and carried on his policies in a very forceful way—gee. And then so many of the things they did in Newark were well in advance of their time in relation to American art—paying attention to the modernist. They gave Max Weber one of his first shows, and Dana didn't like Max Weber's work particularly, but just as you say, he thought that this was important and should be shown. Weber spoke to me very highly about Dana. He remembered this years later and appreciated it a great deal because Dana was one of the first to give him a start.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He was fruitful and imaginative even with reference to the use of gadgets for the home.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, design.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  A show purchases, let's say, at the five and dime to illustrate design. What I think is most important is the relationship between people generally and a museum which apparently was the core of his belief—namely, that the warm and familiar is something that you often overlook, an ash tray, or a glass, and these things nonetheless reflect the climate and atmosphere in which you live. You come to his museum and see them in a different context, get some sense of their development. I thought about him and folk art, but he certainly had a contemporary flavor, if he would go to the five and dime and purchase gadgets to put them in a show illustrating design, utility, and function. He must have been something.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes—that democratic, common thing. I think it's quite likely that Cahill's interest in folk art came very early in the game. I don't remember when he first put on that show at the Newark Museum, but it could have been—well, I don't remember whether Dana was alive or not, but in any case, he couldn't have been dead very long, and Cahill had helped Mrs. Rockefeller form her collection, the one that is now at Williamsburg.

Whitney Museum, July 2, 1962.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The period of the twenties generally in almost all fields was a period in which the old order was cracking. New things were being born, new impulses in novels, poetry, and the like. There had been for some time past a kind of strangle hold on both the art market and the acceptable methods and designs on the part of old established institutions. As I understand the Arts Magazine and the Whitney Studio Club and the successive Whitney institutions, this was an effort to give voice, to give opportunity to those who did not find in the established order means to either grow or sell, or market their product, so that this whole period is an effort to crack through the existing order and to allow the growth of something new. This is what I understand it to be.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You became a critic, first in book review, then writing criticism in 1924. In 1924, interest in things American begins in the Metropolitan Museum with their decorative art rooms of American furniture.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The American wing opened up that year, or the year before.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  So that there are seeds being planted for a less narrow appreciation of things American.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Some of the early articles you wrote are also in this vein—the one on the Hudson River School, a school that had been sort of sloughed off, but there it is—part of a developing American tradition as distinct from something else. You wrote others, too.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Williams Morris Hunt was my first long article—really, the first long article was the one on Winslow Homer. This was in 1924, I remember.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There was this growing awareness of things American and some tools, some cards that could be played—one of them the Arts Magazine. Another was the Whitney Studio club.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think of this, as far as my part in it goes, as two‑pronged kind of thing—one into the present of American art; that is, the increasing importance of contemporary creation which had an American quality and which didn't seem to be just following along after European models, and I think I explained my early interest in Edward Hopper and Reginald Marsh. That last was a personal thing, but it was much more than personal. I admired his work very much as a man who was saying something about the world in which the American lived and the same way with people like Benton in whom I was interested from an early period. That was the contemporary scene, and of course that was all linked up with the Whitney Studio Club and the Whitney Studio Galleries—emphasis upon the younger American talent. There was a very definite feeling in those days of the American artist still being the underdog and feeling that he was very much underprivileged in relation to world markets. Prices were not nearly what they are nowadays. There was no international reputation for American artists, and there was always a feeling that we were poor relations, or step‑children. You had to pay attention to us—patriotism, but it really didn't amount to much. That was the general attitude on the part of the powers that be in the art world.

The great thing in those days was the School of Paris. That's what the big collectors were buying. There were relatively few collectors who were really buying American art in those days. It's a strange period because there had been collectors back in the 1890s, and even in the 1880s and the 1870s and going on to the 1890s who had actively bought contemporary American art, painting collectors like Thomas B. Clarke who bought about 15 Winslow Homers and many Innesses from the artist himself when he was living, or George Hearn who formed a great American collection which he gave to the Metropolitan Museum in 1910 and established the two Hearn funds at the Metropolitan Museum for the purchase of American painting, or Evans who gave his collection to what was then the National Gallery of Art in Washington—it is now the National Collection of Fine Arts. These were very active collectors of contemporary creation, but that was a generation which had passed, and there had not yet been built up any kind of collection of the younger generation. I think the nearest thing to it probably was John Quinn, but he, of course, bought more French art and also Irish art because he was an Irishman himself, than he did American art. There wasn't yet the solid kind of collection that there had been of the older academic groups—I don't mean entirely academic, but the older school of the turn of the century. You didn't yet have collectors of the rank of Roy Neuberger in our day, or Milton Lowenthal, or Joseph Hirshhorn, or people like that who had really built big and important contemporary American collections. Mrs. Whitney was the one person who was doing it at that time through her activities in the Whitney Studio Club, an integral part of it being the buying of the works of the artists.

I'm saying that that, the American present, was one aspect of my interest in the American scene. The other was the past, and there, I believe, in my writing about Homer who had sort of dropped out of fashion in a way, especially his early work which I think I went into before, and the Hudson River School which had gone completely out of fashion, a painter like William Morris Hunt and a few others—there I think I was trying to discover an American note, a language that was American in our past. The Hudson River School at that time was considered just funny. I mean it was something that you laughed at. We didn't at that time have anything like the understanding of the positive achievements of that whole generation. There were more than one generation—there were several generations which we lumped under the name, Hudson River School. The art world didn't then realize, I think, that there was a very serious and very worthwhile art content in a great deal of their work. I didn't go into it then nearly as far as writers and scholars have done since then. I really in a way just hit the high spots, or maybe skimmed the top off. What I wrote about it seems quite obvious nowadays, but it was, if I may say so, in advance of criticism of that day.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You suggested in dealing with your own art training experience that many of the things—these aren't your words, but a good bit of what you were writing in this period was in a sense written for those peers in your class, the kind of thing you talked about as students. This may well be another string to your bow. You had had this training with Miller. The members of your class were the new generation, the coming creators, and since you had firsthand experience with them, either conversation, or whatnot, this was an added inducement for you to throw your weight on the scales in the twenties when things were tight and rigid for the younger, toward a greater flexibility and opportunity.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Are you talking about my work in the past?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I'm talking about your work in the twenties, when you wrote in the twenties about the past. It may have been with a view to formulating in print thoughts which may have occurred to this group with whom you trained.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's not quite true. I think that my taking up Winslow Homer, for example, and writing at such length as I did about him was looked at very askance by some of my old friends. They thought this was kind of corny—you know. Katherine Schmidt, my very good friend still, said that she didn't see why I paid so much attention to Winslow Homer because she didn't think he was that important. What they said was to some extent some of the things I felt myself. I think I was possibly a little more searching consciously for the American quality in the past than most of my friends were. The Hudson River School, for example, we never talked about it at all. It was just something that appealed to me from looking at pictures, from reading the books on American art, like Isham's big History of American Painting which at that time was the standard history of American painting. I think there's a link in there to my interest in poetry and American history—that there was not just the art content of the Hudson River paintings, but their poetic sense of the American landscape. They were the first painters who really had a feeling for the face of America—in that case, a very wild and romantic case. They were the first people who visually expressed that in paint, and this was the one thing that had appealed to me.

If I had been a painter, I would have been a landscape painter.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Perhaps I misspoke myself. What I carried away with me from the discussions of your art student days was that those art students ultimately became painters, that there was relatively little market for their work, that there was hardly anything identifiable as American—that is, knowledgeably so—you know, so that someone could say, "That's the American impulse." The nature of galleries in town were restricted. Some carried modern Americans, but in the main emphasis was on the old masters, or the newer old masters of the French School, so all these acquaintances of yours, since they were going to be painters, no matter what talent they had, were going to face a strange future in which things American were hardly identified.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This, I thought, was an impulse you had— you said, to find the impulse, or impulses that were American as distinct from something else—an identity.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think this applied more—speaking now of the relationship of my former fellow students to the work I was doing in writing and criticism—I think this applied more to the contemporary scene. Our tastes there were quite similar. My closest friends had been students of Kenneth Hayes Miller, and we had the viewpoint he had—very much about tradition in art, the great tradition, and the relation of the great tradition to contemporary creation. That applied very strongly to Reginald Marsh, for example, who was a painter who combined a very contemporary viewpoint in subject matter with a very definite interest in form based on renaissance form. He and Miller were very close friends. The closest friend for years Miller had was Marsh, I think. Similarly painters like Isabel Bishop, Edward Laning, Katherine Schmidt, Henry Schnakenberg, and a number of these people whom I had known in the Art Students League had very definitely a viewpoint based on Miller's viewpoint as regards form and interest in the contemporary American scene, and these things I shared very closely.

Then there were other people who had been with me in the League who went off in other directions—Kuniyoshi, for example, was a genius who was so absolutely self‑propelled that I don't think that Miller's teaching about the Renaissance really affected him very deeply, except that he himself said that Miller was the greatest influence he ever had in his life, but his own art developed in such a very original and individual way without hardly any traditional element in a sense—it was a combing in of the eastern oriental tradition and the European tradition and more strongly influenced by the current School of Paris than most of the other people I've been talking about.

The same thing is true of Alexander Brook who was a classmate of mine at the League and who was a natural painter, a man with a great gusto and gift for painting, great enjoyment of it, and his art didn't stem particularly from Miller's except in the most general way. He wasn't attempting to create forms which were allied to the renaissance. His vision was much more modern, a modern painter who saw things visually, enjoyed the visual world and particularly the use of light, the sensuous appeal of light, so that in that sense Brook, although coming out of Miller, went in a different direction. There were several of his friends—Louis Bouche, for example, Walt Kuhn; well, all of these people were much influenced by Jules Pascin—you know, who came to this country about 1914, lived here about six years and was a remarkable artist. He influenced American painting in a way that he has never been credited for. I didn't know Pascin, but a number of the people I knew did—Kuniyoshi and others I have mentioned, and this was a different direction, a direction much more allied to current developments in Paris. I don't know whether I went into this before, about the art I saw in Paris and how it affected me, the contemporary work.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You mean during the period you were the European editor of the Arts?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, in 1927‑1928. I had never been abroad before. I had seen a certain amount of modern French contemporary art, but not as much as you see in Paris. I became very much interested in artists like Leger, for example. I got a critic, Vladimir George, to write an article on Leger. I met Leger, went to his studio with my wife. We had a very pleasant visit. I had a great admiration of Leger. He struck me as a continuer of certain things in the French tradition, certain very basic things. I could see relationships to classical French painting—like Poussin. It sounds a little outlandish, but I could see that in a certain sense. One of the things that interested me aside from the tremendous vitality in his life was the sense of order in his art, the sense of order that links up with great qualities in French art of the past. Some of my friends couldn't understand my admiration for Leger. I was going right around in an opposite direction from what they believed in—Reg Marsh, for example, said "What do you see in Leger? What's it all about?"

Similarly I got interested in the French past in a 19th Century French romantic who had not been written about in English to any extent before, and I wrote the longest article I think that had been written in English. I went to see the Baron Arthur who was his nephew who had a great collection of his work. This was partly, I think, because I had heard [inaudible] talked about by Bryson Burroughs who admired him a great deal—being a sort of younger Delacroix who died young and who never fulfilled himself, a very interesting artist, and somewhat off‑beat. That's one thing that appealed to me and also the fact that he was a new figure for American readers. The same way I had written about Constantin Guys, one of my first articles in the Arts when I was still in this country. To me the European experience was a very fundamental thing. I don't know whether I had covered this before?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You had talked about the European experience partly as a commentary on the Arts Magazine where you were gratified to discover yourself sightseeing more and doing less in terms of the magazine as a consequence of some of the difficulties that had emerged.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Did I talk about what I saw and liked and what affect it had on me?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Well, if that's germane, it's a little hard to understand nowadays the relatively little opportunity we had in this country to see much that we take for granted nowadays in the past of European art. I mean the Metropolitan Museum is a great museum, but its collections were not nearly as rich as they are nowadays, and there were many major figures in European art that were either not represented at all in the Metropolitan collections, or poorly represented. For example, Peter Bruegel—I'm not sure that their great Bruegel which they now own, was in this country at the time, or not. It may have been, and if so, it was one of the few Bruegels in America. One of the discoveries the Arts made was a discovery of Bruegel by Virgil Barker who had gone to Europe before me. This was a case of a major artist who had not been given his due position in the standard history of art at the time, or in the collections, but an artist whose work had a particular affinity for the contemporary American, his own interests in his own contemporary world, his humor, the great raciness, the feeling of something that's beyond the traditional in art, attacking a new kind of subject matter. I think this is one reason young Americans were very much interested in Bruegel and one reason why we published the article. Also there was the visual thing. There was something in Bruegel's work—a panoramic sense, the precision, the extraordinary realism, the feeling of things coming direct out of reality which corresponded very much to the animus of young American painters at that time.

When I went abroad I had really not seen in this country anywhere near what I was to see in Europe. We spent about three months in Paris first, from the middle of November to the middle of February, as I remember. Of course, the Louvre was a great discovery, but I think as much as that were the art galleries and what was going on in the School of Paris. Leger, for example, about whom I've spoken. There was a great excitement about this. It was different from New York. There wasn't anything like this going on in New York—gallery after gallery handling Picasso, Matisse, and so on. You couldn't walk into a gallery and not see some of the leaders of that school. Back in the United States there were a few galleries where you could see these people, but not as many as you saw in Paris. Then as to the past, of course, the Louvre is like reading the history or art, and doing it through the eyes.

Possibly the first great experience we had was going to Italy which we did about the early spring of 1928. Somehow when you see Italian art in Italy, it's so different from when you see it on the walls of a museum somewhere else. This is physically true because you get so much great mural painting which is not exported, and then you get it in conjunction with Italian architecture in the 14th, 15th, and 16th Century churches and buildings, and this gives you a completely different sense of what Italian art was all about than you can get just from easel pictures in museums. This was the greatest kick I ever had up to that time in looking at the art of the past. It was like discovering a new kind of food, a new kind of wine—it was intoxicating.

This is the experience of every artist, or art critic that goes to Italy for the first time, of course. I remember Max Weber talking about his landing in Florence in an early morning, going out of the station, and seeing the Campanile, Giotto's tower and the Duomo, and what a tremendous emotional experience it was! In Italy I was particularly interested in the primitives. I don't mean the very early primitives, but those who were beginning to develop the Renaissance sense of form—Giotto, [inaudible], [inaudible] whom we saw at Orvieto. I was less interested in what is now much more fashionable art, what has become more fashionable since that day, the mannerists and the artists past what I consider the height of the Renaissance in Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo. That school, the Mannerist School, the 18th Century, late 17th Century and 18th Century, didn't interest me at that time. It seemed to me rather decadent. I was interested in all the art that led up to the heights, or what seemed to me the heights. I also had a rather blind spot toward Rubens when I was in Italy, and I remember having a big argument, arguments with my friends who were tremendous admirers of Rubens—people like Reg, Betty Burroughs, Katherine Schmidt, and so on who through Miller had become very much interested in the art of Rubens and considered him in a sense the greatest designer that had ever lived in painting. I couldn't quite see it. I was still indoctrinated with the Italian viewpoint, the severity of Italian art, the sense of form, the clarity, the austerity of it, even in masters like Michelangelo who had developed the sculptural sense of form in painting to the highest degree of anybody at that time, and it wasn't until I went to Belgium and spent about a week there and also later in Germany, in Munich where of course you see Rubens magnificently, that I really had to capitulate. I realized that I had been rather narrow in my judgments before, but I think of that European experience as being an accumulating awareness, knowledge and perceptiveness through the eye, not through books—I didn't have time to read books. We just looked and looked and looked, went to every museum we could lay our hands on, and we also did a lot of looking at architecture. We took a bicycle trip down the Loire Valley for five days which is one way to see the country and see the cathedrals.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Really it's the only way.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes—we went to Chartres, to Tours, Amicu [ph], and so on, and it was a great experience. I'm sorry that I gave so much time to the Arts Magazine, but at least I did see a lot in those eleven months when we were abroad. When we finally got to Germany, which was the last country we were in, we had all the accumulated awareness and knowledge to see the great German museums in Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, and Cologne. I hated to come back. I think I spoke about that before that coming back to this country, just physical look of American cities, of New York, was like having left an ordered and happy milieu to find yourself in a kind of a jungle.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You came back infinitely better armed with reference to the progression and growth of art than you were when you started.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. I think it did a great deal for me as a critic. I felt after that experience, which I had not felt previously, frankly, more competent to write about the history of art and about the international aspects of art than I ever had before. I think it was then that I began to write my best criticism of that period—I mean month after month in the Arts I covered the galleries. In a strange way coming back to this country I had reacted against some of my enthusiasm in Paris. I don't think I went against the people I thought were the real creators, people like Leger, Picasso, Matisse and so on. I did write a rather negative article on [inaudible]. I had met in Paris, by the way—went to a movie with him and a group of friends, one of those forbidden movies, forbidden for political reasons, Maxim Gorky's The Mother. It couldn't be shown in Paris, except to a club—you know. You were supposed to join a club in order to see it. This was entirely political. [inaudible] had interested me very much in his early work. His current work in Paris I took a "scunner" against, I guess. It seemed to me insincere, commercial. On the occasion of an exhibition in New York I think at the Valentine Gallery about 1929, I wrote a pretty mean piece about [inaudible] current work.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Indeed, you did.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think the things I wrote about his early work were positive and I think somewhat perceptive. I enjoyed writing them, because I enjoyed that work very much. It had a poetic quality. It had the kind of creation of form out of reality, out of a deep space world, out of a world in perspective, the kind of a thing I was interested in, the relationships between the visible world and the world of art form, and it seemed to me that [inaudible] in his early work was one of the people who had accomplished that. He had built an imaginary world in terms that were completely consistent with the real world, a world in depth, a world with an extraordinary haunting reality. I think that maybe that was one of the things that interested me in Ryder, too, from the very early stages—this same kind of inner world that carries a conviction of something actual in the mind of the artist, a world which has been seen by the mind's eye, a thing that you find in early [inaudible], El Greco, Ryder, Blake, but when it came to [inaudible] work in the 1920s and 1930s, it seemed to me quite insincere, very skillful, but made to sell. I had a pretty definite viewpoint about the salesmanship of the Ecole de Paris at that time and the salesmanship of the dealers who were handling the School of Paris. It was somewhat of a visual viewpoint I recognize now. It was a reaction against a fashion, at least as regards several of the lesser leaders of the school. I don't think I applied it very much to—yes I did, too. I wrote a very mean piece about Picasso.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes you did.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't like to think back on it necessarily. Well, we live and learn and grow—I hope.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  When you view the results of a creative process, that's one thing, but when you create something in the context in which it has to live, it becomes a marketing problem, and that makes for a wholly different view, and it may be—I'm speculating—that in the twenties in America, the real problem that confronted creativity here was how do we get it out, where do we hang it, where do we get it seen, and the safety valves, so far as I can see, were three fold and for different reasons in each case. There was Hamilton Easter Field in Brooklyn Heights, in a very small way with exhibitions. There was Stieglitz for his own personal reasons, almost a kind of ubermensch view, a self‑ubermensch view—your criticism of the Marin catalogue—and the Whitney Studio. They were just about the outlets for the younger talents that were coming along.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  And a few dealers—people like Montross.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He had Ryder.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Montross handled quite a few advanced artists. I think I spoke about him before.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We did mention Montross as one of the galleries then in existence, but that the buying which was being done was not in modern American art, but the newer French masters and basically French art, and the old masters. They were the dominant things. They were the lures then for collectors, so that collectors called the tune, galleries operated within that context, and modern American artists were pretty much outside the pale. I don't think that inaptly describes the situation. In France, as you saw it, the very nature of marketing had its effect on the creative.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. They had a system. It was a remarkable system, and it certainly worked at that time. As I understood it at the time, a man wasn't necessarily explicitly handled by a single dealer. You'd go down the Rue Bonaparte, and you'd find dealer after dealer in whose galleries you could see Vlaminck, and so on, and it was like a string of department stores. You could just drop in any place. Also the prices were very low compared to what they are nowadays, and there was always in French art a feeling that you were protected by the auction house. If anybody wanted to unload his collection at one of the big auction houses, they were pretty sure that the same values would be realized that they had paid themselves. This was something that was not true of American art in the United States and still isn't true, I regret to say. There is a funny disparity in this country between the prices you pay at a dealer's galleries for an American work of art and what you can hope to realize if it has to go on the auction block, and it isn't a healthy thing. I think in a way the French system was healthier. It was a system of a nation that had been buying for centuries, and they knew the ropes. Then, of course, it was extremely corrupt. The critics were all bought. There was no question about it. You'd read a glowing account of some young artist, or older artist who is not well known, in a dealer's catalogue, and you'd know that it had been paid for in pictures, or in good solid francs—not that they were so solid then, but in any event, this is something that didn't occur in the United States. The least hint of your having accepted a gift from an artist, or payment for criticism would absolutely put you out of the running.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It might work -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It went on, but not to the same extent.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  As in all cases the French had a word for it, and I guess they did. This system, however, did work to their advantage, but in this period there wasn't anything remotely resembling it in this country. I had two gambits—which I thought as fruitful; for a critic to view the nature of criticism which we've talked about in general terms, but through the critics who were then writing. I don't know how much a critic learns from other critics, or whether there's any association . I gather from your comments about your trip to Europe, that it was an unfolding, and it adds in terms of understanding, the instinctive thing you pick up, the unspoken sense of appreciation.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, because I never had any formal art education at all in the history of art.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Except the talk you gave quite early on the history of art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That was all amateur.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The atmosphere in which you moved was conducive to thinking about art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  But not having gone to any college or university—I had never taken any courses in the history of art, or art appreciation.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I wondered about that. When you came to criticism—maybe this is something you work out for yourself.

LLOYD GOODRICH:   I don't think that in my own case I was particularly influenced by other critics. I think the only exception would be Forbes Watson with whom I was very closely associated and with whom I shared ideas. We talked and so on. I think Forbes did influence my writing and my thinking a great deal in those days. We had very much the same viewpoint about the relation between the European art of the time and American art. He was very much promoting the native production and very skeptical and sometimes scathing about some of the fashions of some of the French painters of the time. I think this influenced me a great deal. Maybe another person who had a good deal of influence was Virgil Barker, but there was more of an equality in age. He was older than I, but not as much older as Forbes was, nor did he have the reputation—Forbes being a critic at that time of the New York World as well as editor of the Arts. I admired Virgil very much for his writing, thought he was one of the few critics of the time who could really write, could put into words the artist's perception of a work of art and the meaning of it. This was a thing that I was trying to do myself. The other person whom I particularly liked, I think, was Henry McBride, but I don't think he ever influenced me particularly. I always enjoyed reading him. I disagreed with him a great deal. He was more modern than I was. Then I had friends, Helen Appleton Reed of the Brooklyn Eagle, people who wrote for the magazine, but I think otherwise, what I wrote was a product of my own thinking and language. I don't think they are more apt to be influenced by each other by and large. I think they are more apt to be influenced by literary critics. I know I was. I enjoyed reading library criticism much more than art criticism. I very rarely read art criticism. Maybe it's a professional jealousy kind of thing—I don't mean that, but being fed up with anything, except what you think yourself, your own words.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In 1924, 1925, when you started on this, I wondered to what extent critics generally were receptive to the burgeoning modern impulse in America—take Elizabeth Luther Cary of the New York Times.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  She was very much a middle of the roader, a person I liked very much, but frankly there has always been a tradition on the New York Times of being—well, middle of the road, open‑minded, safe, not committing yourself too deeply, not going crusading, and writing in a very pleasant, readable way. This, I think, was true of Miss Cary. It's the kind of criticism which is not for the ages. Her successor, Edward Alden Jewell, who was my superior when I was writing on the Times briefly, was very much in the same school of criticism—I mean pleasant, everything else, you couldn't quarrel with what he said. This is rather mean—what I'm saying, but I don't think it's the kind of criticism that lasts. In a way, I think you've got to be a little more partisan to make interesting and some lasting criticism. Well, then there was McBride on the Sun and also on the Dial which was a very influential magazine of the time. I don't remember whether I spoke about the Dial before, but it was a unique magazine. I don't think it's ever been duplicated since. I think I did speak about it. McBride wrote for it, and I think he wrote some of the best criticism. I didn't read it particularly myself. I wasn't reading my fellow critic's criticisms, but looking back, you can say that that is among the best criticism of the period, and that will last. His papers are now being brought together and published. McBride was, of course, quite advanced for his time. Later on he became more conservative, particularly when the government art projects came along. He became very much anti‑WPA and so on and anti‑American School, a very international minded critic. He was a good friend of Bryson Burroughs, and I knew him fairly well, but I don't think we saw eye to eye so far as art criticism went.

Then there was Margaret Breuning on the New York Post who is still writing, and she was a very good conscientious, journalistic critic. Helen Appleton Reed on the Brooklyn Eagle was more sympathetic to me. Forbes Watson and Virgil Barker aside, Helen Appleton Reed and I shared very much the same viewpoint about American art. She was interested in the younger people. She was very open‑minded. She had herself been a painter, and we had this in common, and she was my personal friend, and she still is. We published quite a lot of her pieces in the Arts Magazine. She was particularly interested in German art, and this appealed to us because we were fighting the great domination of the School of Paris—you see, we were looking in the Arts for other schools. That's one reason we got, for example, an Italian critic, and I've forgotten who he was, to write an article on the Italian 19th Century School called [inaudible], as I remember, [inaudible], [inaudible]— people like this. It was off‑beat. It was not this French tradition. It was discovery, still a discovery.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Every once in a while there pops up in the Arts Magazine an article that was a jolt, like one by William M. Ivins, Jr. "A Note on Aesthetic Theory" in the December, 1925 issue.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't remember it. Ivins is a brilliant man—brilliant and a tremendous fighter. He loved to fight, and he was a very close friend of Bryson Burroughs, and for that reason I knew him quite well. He was somewhat cantankerous, and he could be extremely scathing, and he wrote wonderfully.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He was trained, as I understand it, as an attorney.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. He was a lawyer, and he gave it up. His real interest was in print making, and he was the greatest scholar in print making at that time, I think. I always loved his exhibitions at the Metropolitan. The extended captions he used to write on the prints were just works of art themselves. They opened up so many associations with the prints—so many things that the print meant in relation to history, life, and so on. He was a remarkable man and a fighter. The first time I ever met him I had heard about him through Bryson Burroughs, his associate at the Metropolitan Museum, and through Betty Burroughs, and Reg Marsh who knew him very well, better than I did. We had just republished an article from the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin in [inaudible], the early French engraver, and it was the first article so far as we knew, in English on [inaudible], a kind of discovery article, and it was very insufficiently illustrated in the Metropolitan Bulletin. It was a small format in those days with little bits of illustrations. Ivins was abroad at the time, but we asked the editor of the Metropolitan Bulletin if we could republish the article with adequate illustrations with their permission which we did. A few weeks later I was up at the Metropolitan print room looking at something, and this gentleman was watching me. He said, "No! Don't turn the print that way! Turn it this way!"

I said, "This is William Ivins."

He said, "How do you know?"

I said, "I'm a friend of Bryson Burroughs and also associate editor of the Arts Magazine."

He said, "The next time you republish an article of mine without paying me, you'll feel as though a mule had kicked you."

That was our introduction. But we got on very well after that. I liked him very much.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was a very interesting article in 1925.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We met him in Paris when we were over there, and we had a very good time with him.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There's another critic—William McCormick of the New York American, I believe.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was the supreme journalistic critic—the real professional journalistic critic. I liked him very much. For a while he wanted me to join his staff. I think it was after I had written some things in the Arts. He was a nice old fellow, and he had his eye on me evidently as an assistant, or his successor, but it never panned out. He asked me to see what I could do in writing an article on Christmas in art, as I remember it, based on some English prints, and this stuck in my throat. I said that I would, but I never got around to it. I think at the time he was actually editor of a magazine. Wasn't he editor of Creative Art?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Creative Art? Wasn't that McBride?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think this was before McBride became editor. I'm not sure of this, but I think that McCormick had something to do with the magazine as well as with the Journal, or the American. The two newspapers hadn't merged yet.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What of Peyton Boswell?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I never knew him. Of course, he was associated with the Art News, I think.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Wasn't that Deoch Fulton?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I knew Fulton slightly. Didn't—well, there were so many more newspaper critics in those days.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Do you remember Murdock Pemberton?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  On the New Yorker—yes, and then he was succeeded by—you know, George Mumford who wrote some of the best criticism they ever had, I think, though I attacked him for an article he wrote on Bryson Burroughs after Bryson's death. The article was incorrect. He assumed that the Metropolitan's backward policy was due to Burroughs of the Metropolitan bought the first Cézanne that was every bought by any American museum, and this was during the Armory Show. George Mumford didn't know that. He didn't know of Bryson's interest in the contemporary French field, or his interest in the younger American artists, but Burroughs was very much frustrated by the official policy of the board of the Metropolitan and the president. This was the story I knew from my friendship with Burroughs, and most people didn't know it. I remember that I wrote a letter in reply to Mumford's attack on Burroughs. It was a review of a memorial show that the Metropolitan had. It was a mean review, and I wrote a reply. I wrote another reply which Mrs. Force signed too. We were both good friends of Burroughs, and we didn't want to let this go by.

Looking back on that period of criticism, it seems to me that the critics whose work is going to stand up will be primarily Henry McBride and Forbes Watson on certain articles he wrote—and beyond that, I don't think there's much except some of the writers for the magazines, Virgil Barker for example. I don't think that there's an awful lot that has any life beyond the journalistic life. As a matter of fact, journalism brings out something which you don't get when you write for a magazine—the feeling of a big audience, a liberating kind of thing. I had just about enough of it when I did it a year or so.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What is it they say about yesterday's newspaper—most useful in wrapping fish. There's no continuity to the newspaper really. I've seen collections of bound volumes of the Arts in any number of places. That's something you preserve as distinct from the pages of the New York Times. I read some of Henry McBride's stuff because I had hoped to see and talk with him, and the pieces I read were way ahead of their time.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He always wrote in a literary sense that was joyful. He was a sophisticated writer, and he had a beautiful light touch, a thing you can't learn.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was the man.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That comes through.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I imagine he was Irish. I don't know whether he was or not, but I picked up that quality in his writing.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  As you see criticism in general, but for a few who were, in a way, trying to make cracks in the holdover armor, there was relatively little receptivity to something new—McBride, Reed, Du Bois in the early days.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Oh yes, there's another one I didn't mention. I don't think he was writing for any newspaper when I was on the Arts, or in those years at all, but Du Bois was one of the best critics of the time. His criticism is going to stand up, I think. He was very prejudiced in many ways. He was terrifically anti‑American Scene School. He lived abroad a great deal, and he was very much in the French tradition, of course, the Daumier, Toulouse‑Lautrec tradition. I remember we had a considerable argument about Benton's murals down in the Whitney Museum when it first opened. He thought they were simply terrible, and I thought they were very good. We didn't agree—that's all. He was a very personal critic, but a very good one.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I think he had this element of personal bias which makes more in the reading than someone who is merely cataloguing, or representing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Or just writing a travelogue. A lot of the criticism that went on in those days in the newspaper was travelogue criticism. You just go from gallery to gallery.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Gumshoe stuff. I had that impression too, but in a sense then, it's only an occasional person, a critic, who makes a difference in art criticism.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  One critic I forgot was Cortissoz. He was dean of American critics. He'd had a long experience on the Tribune, and he knew artists of the older generation. He was a great friend of many of the older painters, and he was president of the Century Club. He was a figure in the art world, a very dignified person with great humor and great urbanity. I liked him very much, and we got on very well. We absolutely disagreed about everything practically. He was very much wed to the older academic school. He thought modern art was terrible. He used to give talks in which he attacked modern art a great deal. He wrote a piece once called Ellis Island Art which I thought was quite disgusting because he practically said that the pure Anglo‑Saxon art world was being ruined by a lot of foreigners—you see, not that he was anything like a McCarthy-ite. He couldn't have been that. He was too urbane, too sophisticated for that, but he represented the viewpoint of the older generation of American artists, and he represented it very well. He could write. Anything he wrote you could read. He always had a sound basis. It was a limited basis. He talked a great deal about technique, the older technique of the Sargent School, that kind of thing, and about the impressionist technique, but he believed what he said. He had a viewpoint, and he wrote in a readable way. I respected him a great deal. I got him to write for the Arts on a Flemish exhibition that he had seen abroad. I thought he could do it, and he wrote a very good piece. He was a very workman like critic. He knew how to go about it, and he wrote very quickly. I don't believe that he ever had to go over his pieces at all. I remember this article I got him to write on this Flemish show—it was a major show, as I remember, in Brussels, I think—historical of Flemish art. I went to see him in his office, and as I remember it was the day before a holiday. He agreed to do the piece, and I said, "When do you think we could get it?"

I thought he'd say in about three weeks. He said, "Let's see. Tomorrow's a holiday. You can have it the day after that."

This was a long article. I got it, and this I admire a great deal because I am myself a rather slow laborious writer.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You mentioned earlier the process through which you go. This experience must have been a shock.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was stimulating too.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  How did some of the older painters, the leaders in their own day who represented a kind of change of pace—like Henri, Sloan—react toward this younger modern art?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Sloan was always tremendously interested in younger painters. He was a great teacher himself—you know, had literally hundreds of students, and a number of people, friends of mine, who studied with Sloan—well, Ann Rector who was a fellow student of mine at the Art Students League thought that Sloan was the best teacher she ever had. She had been a Miller student, and she was reacting against Miller actually. Edmund Duffy was a great admirer of Sloan, and Sloan was very good with young people. He was very open‑minded. He always kept a youthful mind himself, an open mind. Henri I never knew, but he had the same kind of attitude, though I think in his later years Henri became a little bitter—not embittered because he was a very outgoing kind of a person, but a little—well, he'd been the great leader. He'd been the leader of The Eight, the leader of the force, and I think he began to think a little that he had been discarded toward the end of his life. I know that Sloan told me about Henri—they'd been the closest of friends—that they didn't see as much of each other in their later years, and he had the feeling that Henri was feeling a little bitter about the state of the art world as modernism came in, as the new trends came in like American Scene. Though he had helped to start it, he wasn't necessarily sympathetic with the turn it took.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was he himself a successful artist?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Oh yes, and a teacher. There's no question about it. He was the most prominent figure in the middle of the road advanced school—if you know what I mean, say the 1908 to 1920 school, but then came things like the school of regionalists and I don't know whether he ever expressed himself about it, but I'm sure that he would have disliked it very much because his background in a way, was European so far as his start went. It harks back to Franz Hals, Velasquez, and so on, and I think the kind of painting represented by Benton and Wood would have been very anti‑pathetic to him. And it was to DuBois, for example, who had very much the same viewpoint and had been a Henri pupil. These people felt that these American Scene painters, these regional painters, were kind of hicks, that they were corny provincial, that they didn't know how to paint, that they didn't know the great tradition and so on which is somewhat true, but what I don't think they gave them credit for was that Benton had made a deep study in his own terms of the Renaissance tradition and that he was consciously trying to create form based on the Renaissance combined with a very native kind of subject matter. The very same thing is true of Wood, although his viewpoint, his background, his interests in the past were much more the Flemish and German primitives and not the high Renaissance. Curry was a Miller pupil, I believe. I'm not sure of that. He was a friend of all of us, and he used to come to those teas that Miller used to give on Wednesday. We all liked him very much and felt that he was kind of one of us. Whether he actually was a Miller pupil, I don't remember, but he did have much the same idea of the combination of native subject matter and traditional form based on the Renaissance that Marsh had, that Miller and Benton had in a way too.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  When you look in the twenties for an aid to the growth and development of what is now modern art, you don't find much in the critics with the exception of McBride, Du Boise and the Arts Magazine generally where there was a genuine receptivity to the new. You don't find much among the galleries—really, nor is there much in collecting as a development in modern art. I suspect to the extent there was added support, it was in the Whitney Club, the Whitney Gallery, and the development of this Museum together with the development of the Museum next door. You did go to the New York Times for a brief bit in 1929.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. My memory is that I was assistant art critic of the Times for two seasons, not necessarily the whole season. Jewell was the top critic then on the Times. He had read my pieces in the Arts, and he asked me if I would work with him as his assistant. At that time, as I remember it, I don't think I was actually putting the Arts together—I'm not sure. I guess I was. Well, in any event, I gave about two days a week to the Times, one day going around to the galleries, and I used to cover about ten to 15 galleries a week. I would have half the page. Sometimes I shared it with a third critic, Ruth Green Harris, but Jewell and I pretty much took care of the page every Sunday. I spent one day going to the galleries and the next day writing. At that time they didn't have a daily coverage the way they do now; in fact, no newspapers did at all. It was only the weekly page and my memory is—I don't know. I've got my files, but it was through two seasons, spread over two seasons. Later Jewell asked to see me, after I'd stopped working for the Times, and he said that the Times was starting the daily coverage and that he would need another assistant and would I do it. At this time, as I remember, I didn't feel that I could. I was starting my book on Eakins. He was very nice. He said, "I'd like to have you, but I can't advise you to do it because it's going to be a full time journalistic job, and it will be reporting as much as it is criticism."

I appreciated him asking me.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was there any objection on the Arts Magazine to your—you know, riding another horse?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No, it was necessary because as I think I said, when I came back I found that my salary had been cut, and I had to supplement my income. There was another editor in there, Dorothy Lefferts Moore who, in a way, had taken some of the load off of me, and I was being, on the whole, shoved away a little bit. I can't quite get the chronology of this. My memory is that for a couple of years after I got back from Europe I was still producing the magazine actually and doing a lot of writing for it, but increasingly it got to be less necessary for me to do this, and I could find more time to write outside. I began to become somewhat more marginal. At that time I became contributing editor. This was largely financial. This is what I was told. It was the fact that Mrs. Whitney was no longer supporting the magazine in the same way she had. Forbes Watson, I know, was going out to other persons trying to get their backing. He went to Chester Dale and got nowhere, I understand. Allan Tucker, a painter, was a very good friend of Forbes Watson and a very good friend of mine too, and very much interested in the Arts. Allan had some money of his own, or maybe his wife did. I think he contributed personally, finally, and I know that he tried to get other people to do it too. I never knew the whole financial picture, but I know that Forbes did succeed in raising some money, but the backbone of the whole thing was still Mrs. Whitney, and it was about in 1930 that she began to withdraw her support at the time she was thinking of starting the museum, and as I think I've said earlier, there was a personal quarrel between Mrs. Force and Forbes Watson which was disastrous for the magazine.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In any event, there was an increase in the number of people employed over what there had been when you left. There were a number of other people on the magazine.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was Adolph Glassgold who wrote about the decorative arts and about the movies, Dorothy Lefferts Moore, and Virgil Baker, but none of these people got salaries. Dorothy Lefferts Moore did. She was on the staff, but the others were paid just by the piece. Toward the end I was being paid on that basis, as I remember. Therefore there was no feeling on Forbes Watson's part about my writing for the Times; in fact, I think he rather welcomed it. He thought that it was fair.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You didn't cotton to daily journalism?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I did, but I think I had just about enough of it. It was a feeling of writing for a big audience. You could be a little more obvious and not at the same time write down. You didn't need to be quite so concentrated in your writing. You didn't need to be—when I wrote for the Arts, I always had the feeling of writing for my friends, or by extension, the same kind of minds because the magazine didn't have a big circulation. It was taken by all the artists who amounted to anything, I think, the vital younger artists who all took the Arts and read it from cover to cover. It really had a great influence in those days, the same kind of influence, I think, the Art News now has with avant garde, so that when I was writing for the Arts I always had the feeling that I was writing for people who knew an awful lot, and you had to watch your step and not say anything that wouldn't pass muster, but when you were writing for a newspaper audience, you don't have that feeling. You're less self‑conscious in a way, and I enjoyed it, and it came quite easily.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's a lot of visits to make to galleries.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And to summarize in a day.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It went not too hard, but as I say, I wouldn't want to have continued. I had just about enough.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you stay with the Arts until the end, 1931?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Nobody really stayed. Forbes Watson stayed, of course, and William Raub, the business manager stayed. I was really marginal by that time, and I don't think I worked much for them after 1931, maybe, and as I remember it was on the basis of being paid by the piece by that time, not getting any salary.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And you were writing articles for other -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  A few, but chiefly I was engaged in writing that book on Kenneth Hayes Miller which was subsidized—the book, not Kenneth Hayes Miller, the first book I ever had published, and this was subsidized by Isabel Bishop who was a pupil and a very good friend of Kenneth's. She felt that he was a figure who deserved having a book on him, and she subsidized it. I was paid for that. It was produced physically by what was then the Arts Publishing Corporation, and I had a lot to do with the layout of the book and so on. That was a very hard essay to write, I must say.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Would it be fair to describe this period during which there is a lessening of your participation in the publication of the Arts and your tour on the New York Times and your interest in book writing as a freelance period?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was free all right. I don't know about the lance part of it. I didn't make much income.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was 1930‑1931.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  1930, I would say, because my book on Kenneth Hayes Miller was published in 1930, as I remember. I think I was writing it in the spring of 1930 and having a hard time because Miller I admired very much as a mind, as an intelligence, and I never have altered that admiration because I think he was one of the most perceptive people about art that I ever knew, or that ever existed in this country in our times, but his work was difficult to write about. There was sometimes a feeling of the intellect getting beyond the natural genius. It was a complicated personality, a man I admired enormously, and whose work and ideas I wanted to record. The six weeks, or so I spent in writing that piece which was only about five thousand words, was hard writing probably, I think, because it was pretty serious. It was an attempt for the first time to put down in an orderly, reasoned form my own aesthetic as I had gotten it from Miller, and, as a matter of fact, I think it was probably the first time it had been put down by anybody because Kenneth himself didn't write. He talked, extraordinarily stimulated-ly. He did not like to put down things in words particularly, and I was acting as kind of his amanuensis. It was a complicated piece of writing, and I was having financial troubles at the time too. I didn't have any salary, as I remember, and this commission to do this meant a bit to me. As I remember, I was beginning to do my work on Eakins. It was a hard period financially, and I think I've told you how Mrs. Force stepped in and quite without solicitation on my part gave me a salary to finish my book on Eakins, having been previously lent $500 dollars by Reg Marsh to start the book.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  So far as Miller is concerned, did you have access to his papers?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He didn't have papers. I talked to him, went to his studio many times, talked to him, looked at his work, and he didn't have anything down in writing. I don't remember thinking about the letters, or anything like that. I was aware of it, and I don't think I had them. The book was based in the first place on my having been a student and my having kept up that relationship for years afterward, personal talks, study of his work, and so on.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It must have been difficult, partly because you had friends who were also students of Miller.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right, and I wanted to say something that would not sound foolish to them. I recognized that. I was writing for a highly critical audience. Isabel Bishop had a remarkable mind, and I think I've always had maybe in my criticism a feeling that my painter friends had the inside track and I'd better watch out. I might say something stupid—you know, and believe me, it was somewhat true because Reg Marsh was a very severe critic of what I wrote, or about what appeared in the magazine some times. He would not hesitate to say, "This is a waste of space—this article on", or "What do you mean by saying this?"

It was good. It was very stimulating.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's what a friend is for.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It may be a little sobering some times, but that is what a friend is for.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was a high standard—well, I'm not saying that was the only particular viewpoint that was valid, but in that particular viewpoint I couldn't have had a better audience to write for.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You have mentioned Mrs. Force, and we have talked about her, but I didn't know anything about the Eakins book. How did this come about? I know that you published such a book.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Are you sure I didn't say this before?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  How did the—well, you had the impulse to write, and Eakins is a good subject.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I admired Eakins, though Reg told me once that when I was a kid and I was not much more than twelve, or thirteen, or something like that, I went to the Metropolitan Museum with him, and I pointed to Eakins' The Thinker and said, "That's bad painting" which is the kind of thing that you try to forget later on—you know. What I was thinking of at that time was the lack of technical charm, the lack of sensuous appeal in Eakins' work, the lack of poetry, and I was in my teens, as I say. I got over that, I hope, and Eakins interested me more and more. There had been an Eakins exhibition at the Whitney Studio, or the Whitney Studio Galleries—not the Whitney Studio Club, but the Whitney Studio proper which had been arranged by Mrs. Force, as I remember. I hadn't seen it. I don't think I even saw the Eakins Memorial Show at the Metropolitan. That was, I think, in 1917, and I was -don't know why I didn't see it, but I don't remember seeing it, but Bryson Burroughs had always admired Eakins and had got the Metropolitan to put on this exhibition a year after Eakins died, and I had gotten the Metropolitan to buy a picture by Eakins—now, wait a minute. Yes, they did buy a picture, a small picture, and I think it was Bryson who said to me that Eakins was disappointed when they bought the small picture, "Why didn't they buy The Thinker?" which was one of his full length portraits, and one of the finest, and they did. Later on, they did buy The Thinker—this was after his death and typical of the Metropolitan Museum, may I say. But Bryson had always been interested in Eakins work, so, I think, had Hamilton Field. I seem to remember that he spoke to me about Eakins. Reginald Marsh was very much interested in Eakins work, felt a great affinity for it, and there had been a series of exhibitions of Eakin's work after the memorial show. There was the one at the Whitney Studio which I didn't see. Then there was one at the Brummer Gallery. The Brummer Gallery sort of took over the representation of the Eakins estate, as I remember, and they had several exhibitions there.

Allen Burroughs—the son of Bryson Burroughs and Hamilton Field's assistant editor for the short time that Field ran the Arts—was a friend of mine and has remained a friend of mine, and he was very much interested in Eakins through his father, through Reg, and through his own role as a critic. He wrote quite a bit for the old Arts, and he got the idea of doing an article on Eakins for the Arts—this was before I became associated with the Arts—and doing a check list of Eakins' work. He went to Philadelphia with Kuniyoshi, who was then a photographer of works of art, making his living this way, and together they photographed a lot of Eakins' pictures in his studio. Of course, Eakins had not been very successful as a painter, and most of his life's work was still in his studio. This is about 1923, and I remember Allen telling me how they spend a day photographing. It began to get dark, and they had to take pictures up on the roof and photograph them there, and some of them almost blew off the roof—some of the big pictures.

Well, out of this came the first article ever written on Eakins, I believe, by Allen Burroughs and later on a check list, or vice versa, I don't remember. This was in 1923. Then came the series of exhibitions at Brummer's and I reviewed some of them for the Arts, beginning, I think, about 1925, and I began to get very much interested in Eakins and my enthusiasm was shared by Reginald Marsh. By this time Allen Burroughs had left New York and gone to work in Minneapolis and later on the Fogg Museum at Harvard. Reg and I shared this enthusiasm. Reg and I went to Philadelphia and visited Mrs. Eakins, the widow, and he bought two Eakins pictures with his own money, the big portrait of [inaudible], one of Eakins' great portraits of Ecclesiastes, which is now in the National Gallery of Art. He sold it later on—Reg did. He bought that, and he bought that and he bought a small painting which his widow Felicia Meyer Marsh still owns. Well, between us we concocted the idea of my doing a book on Eakins. I didn't have any money, and Reg said, "I'll lend you $500 dollars."

Well, $500 was worth more in those days, and it was enough for me to take the chance of embarking on this which I did. It's a little chilly, and I think I'll put on my vest. I'm just trying to remember. I think in 1929, when the Museum of Modern Art was first starting, Alfred Barr planned an exhibition of Homer, Eakins and Ryder. This was kind of pioneer stuff. Homer, of course, was famous, but these three artists were not as regarded as they are nowadays, and Alfred has always been interested in the history of American art and doesn't get much credit for it. As a result of this exhibition, he invited me to lunch with two of his trustees. This was in the very early days of the Museum of Modern Art—about 1929, and he invited me specifically to help him, to back him up on the idea of having this show. I remember we had a very pleasant lunch and the trustees agreed to it. Then he asked me if I would write a piece on Eakins, help select the Eakins pictures for the exhibition, and write the introduction to the catalogue on Eakins.

I went down to Philadelphia with Reg Marsh. I had told Alfred that Reg was very much interested in Eakins too and could be of some help, so Alfred, Reg and Alfred's associate director of the museum whose name I can't remember—he's no long with the Museum—the four of us went down and visited the big Eakins exhibition which was then taking place in Philadelphia. Mrs. Eakins had given the Philadelphia Museum which was then called the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, a large part of Eakin's finest work to the museum. She felt that Eakins had been very much neglected by Philadelphia, and it was perfectly true. There wasn't yet any great market for his work. She was a very public spirited woman. She wanted to establish him in Philadelphia, and she made this remarkably generous donation of pictures to the Pennsylvania Museum. They put on a big Eakins exhibition, the first since the Memorial Show at the Metropolitan Museum, and I went down there, as I say, with the two from the Museum of Modern Art and Reg Marsh, and I in collaboration with Alfred Barr picked the Eakins side of that three pronged exhibition which took place in 1929.

I don't think I've got my chronology mixed up. I'm not sure. By this time I had conceived the idea of a book on Eakins and had had this financial boost from Reg. By the way, I paid it back later on. I spent a long time in Philadelphia studying the big Eakins show. I went to Mrs. Eakins and spent a lot of time, not continually, with her, about a week, and then I would come back and get my notes together. She was a painter herself, and had been his favorite pupil. He always said that she was the best woman painter in the country. They had been married and then she had given up painting, but she always had the painter's eye and the painter's interest. I spent a great deal of time in the old studio. His pictures were still there—those which hadn't been given to the Pennsylvania Museum. I examined them and catalogued them. I intended to do a full scale book on Eakins which had not been done on any American artist of that generation up to that point. It was a book in which I planned to do a complete biography, illustrate all his best works and do a catalogue raisonné. This was rather something that hadn't been done. It had been done for some colonial painters—Gilbert Stuart had been catalogued in this way. I don't think Copley had been at that time. No. He hadn't been. I think probably Stuart in that big book of Lawrence Parks was the only American artist, I think, at that time who had a catalogue raisonné published on his work. Well, I spent a long, long time in the studio.

Then Mrs. Eakins had kept a record of his work which was chiefly portraits, of course, and she had, and I therefore had this record. I followed the leads of this record. She gave me the addresses of the sitters. I looked them up in Who's Who, the Social Register, and I went around to see the sitters. Many of them had been friends of Eakins. I talked to them. I remember I used to stay in the old Rittenhouse Hotel, and I remember that I used to come back in the evening after interviewing two or three people who had Eakinses and I would sit up until midnight just writing everything out while it was fresh in my mind—you see. I wish I had taken a camera along. I wasn't using a camera in those days. I made drawings of every picture, little pencil sketches, and I still have that record. I examined about 600 paintings by him in this way, in his studio, the Pennsylvania Museum and in the hands of private owners. Also I got all of Mrs. Eakins' correspondence—that is, the correspondence which she had preserved. As a matter of fact, I learned that she had withheld some of it from me. I discovered later that she had withheld some of his letters which he wrote from abroad when he was a student. I never understood why she held it back, except that she was very sensitive about his reputation—you see, he had created something of a scandal in Philadelphia by insisting on the nude in teaching, and he naturally had been forced to resign from the Pennsylvania Academy School on account of this. She was still very sensitive about this—twelve years after his death, and she didn't want to go too much into that side of it. She was very shy of it still, and I think she held back some of these letters because he had a kind of rabelaisian humor—I don't mean to say it was humor exactly, but he spoke very freely about things, and I think that she wasn't quite sure about this. I got to be very fond of her. She was a remarkable woman—just devoted to his memory. She helped me, and nobody could have written this book without her help.

In the meantime, I received a letter out of the blue from Stephen Clarke, a collector, who had bought several Eakinses, saying, "I understand you're doing a book on Eakins, and if I can be of any financial help, I hope you'll let me know."

I didn't take advantage of it because this other thing had come along in the meantime. Are you sure I didn't tell this? I'd become very friendly with Mrs. Force. I had written two catalogues for exhibitions for the Whitney Studio Galleries, one of the Circus in Paint and the other on flower paintings. In a way, we had become very close friends, and in a way I had become a sort of unofficial adviser to her. This was in 1930. The museum was in process of planning. It didn't open until November of 1931, but lots of things were going forward. The collection was being expanded. I went around with her, for example, to Reg Marsh's studio. They had no good Marsh in the collection at that time, and they looked at his most recent work and picked the picture called, Why not use the L which is one of his famous pictures.

I remember that there was not a word said about price. This was very characteristic of Mrs. Force. She simply said, "That's the one I want, and please send it around to the Museum."

Reg called me up later and said, "What should I charge her?"

He said, "Do you think $1,500 would be too much?"

I said, "Go ahead."

This is the highest price he'd gotten to that point.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's a great picture.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It is. I went around with Mrs. Force to see also the murals by Thomas Benton at the New

School for Social Research, and out of that grew the murals which he painted for the Whitney Museum. As I say, we had become very friendly, and I was giving Mrs. Force unofficial advice about various things. One of the things they planned at the new museum was a series of monographs on living American artists—mostly living. There were a couple who were no longer living, and Mrs. Force called me over in the early stages of this and said, "I'd like you to join the staff of the museum as a writer. I'd like you to write these monograms, and we'll pay your salary."

By this time I got embarked on my work on Eakins, and I was deeply committed to it. I thought it over and told her, "I'm sorry. I just don't feel I can do it, and I wouldn't be sure that I would be sympathetic to some of the artists."

She understood, but then about—just shortly thereafter, as I remember, she asked to see me again, and she said, "You spoke about your book on Eakins."

I had also started a book on Thomas Nast. I have forgotten to mention that, but I had started the Thomas Nast book before the Eakins book; in fact, I did a lot of work on Nast. I don't know whether I mentioned this before, or not. I don't know whether I spoke about my work on Thomas Nast, but I don't want to interrupt the talk on Eakins, but remind me to go back to it, if you're interested, but I had started a book on Thomas Nast which I have never finished, before the Eakins book and then I got taken up with the Eakins book, and when Mrs. Force offered me the position of writer for the new museum, I said that I was committed to those two books. Then as I say, a few weeks later she asked to see me again, and she said, "I'd like to pay you a salary to write those books."

Believe me that was welcome! It was necessary, but there was some precedent in it. I don't think many museums have done anything like this. She paid me five thousand dollars a year to begin with, and this was great money for me in those years. I had completely free reign just to write, and it was in those three years between then and the time that I published my Eakins book that I had the most uninterrupted writing time. I finished the book on Eakins, and I got pretty far on Nast which someday I will finish.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was her design still the publication of monographs?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, and she did go ahead on that, and I wrote one of them. I wrote the one on Henry Schnackenberg, but otherwise they were written by a number of different authors.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The design was a collection of volumes, monographic studies of living American artists. That wasn't lessened. His was a shift in appeal.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, she knew I was doing the Eakins book. She was wonderful about this. She decided to subsidize this—that's what it amounted to and the book was published by the museum, paid for by the museum and done in style by—you know, the Rudge people, and it was the most ambitious study up to that time on an American artist of that generation. I remember that Frank Mather reviewed it very nicely in the Saturday Review of Literature, but he said, "It is of an appalling weight!"—on account of the coated paper that we used for illustrations. It was my first magnum opus, and it would have been impossible for me to have done it except through the support of Mrs. Force and Mrs. Whitney.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What was so intriguing to you in the early days when you came to Eakins and began to appreciate him more?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  A combination of a tremendous sense of reality and a tremendous sense of form—briefly that's what it was.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He really comes through.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  With limitations which I think I pointed out in my book and which I have spoken of since then. Of course, when you write a book on a major figure like that it isn't the end of it. Since then I have written a good many articles on Eakins. I wrote the introduction to the catalogue of the Eakins exhibition at the National Gallery. I think that was in 1961, and I helped to select the exhibition for the National Gallery. Any picture by Eakins which comes to the market, if they can't find it in the catalogue of my book, they call me up, and I look at it. I am brought continuously forgeries though less in a way then with the other two artists I've worked on—Homer and Ryder—because I think the catalogue raisonné in my Eakins book has helped to discourage forgery by having created a record early in the game. A number of pictures have turned up since I did that catalogue, and a few of them were pictures I knew the existence of and described in my catalogue, but I don't know where they were. They have turned up—I should say at the outside, 25 or 30, some of them quite unimportant, but things that Mrs. Eakins never recorded, or were never exhibited, or never reproduced. This kind of thing does pop up; otherwise, it was a pretty complete catalogue, and I hope to republish it one of these days with the catalogue brought up to date.

Incidentally, in the course of all of this, while I was doing this work on Nast and Eakins, Alfred Barr came to see me. I was then up in the country, in Rhode Island, and he telephoned me and said that he would like to have me come down. He didn't give me any reason, but it sounded pretty urgent. I happened to be coming in to New York, and I went to see him. He said that he was going to take a year off and that he would like to have me take his place that year. He was museum director of the Museum of Modern Art, and again, after thinking it over very carefully, I refused because I was committed to the Eakins book and also at that time I was receiving a salary from the Whitney Museum. Instead of my taking that post, Holger Cahill was made sitting director for a year. I think it was a wise decision on my part because it would have side tracked me in my work on Eakins, and it would not have been a permanent thing—I don't think. Besides, I was committed to the Whitney Museum which, after all, was a rival institution in a sense.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Not only that -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  But I was very pleased that Alfred thought of me.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But the opportunities for growth for a substitute are limited indeed to the period of substitution.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The other was—well, a monographic series of modern artists satisfied a basic impulse—you liked to write.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It would have been interesting to do, but there would have been so many artists I didn't care for and so on—it was better to have a variety of viewpoints in this series anyway. They were finally published—you know, and frankly they're not awfully good, I don't think—the scholarly standards, the standards of presentations—and if we were doing that series again, we would do it much better, and we have done it better in some of our more recent monographs.

Maybe you'd like to talk about this Nast thing a bit?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We have time enough left.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Thomas Nast to my mind was the most powerful graphic artist in America in the 19th Century, and he interested me primarily as an artist and also naturally on account of his great political influence. He was also a great admirer of Reg Marsh. Reg and I saw eye to eye on a great many things in these days, and he stimulated me to do things and so on. I started to work on Nast—I really, I suppose, gave something equivalent to about a year of solid work to it. It's a big subject because he was a tremendously prolific cartoonist. Starting in the 1860s and going right up through the 1890s, every week in Harper's Weekly until he left that periodical there was a cartoon by him and powerful stuff. This enthusiasm for Nast, by the way, is shared by other artists. Thomas Benton admires him a great deal, and Katherine Schmidt has hanging on her walls of her house down in the country framed Nast cartoons alongside of woodcuts by old masters, modern lithographs and so on. I think—this was in 1929 and 1930—I have written about half that book. It's still reposing in my files, and every time I think of it, I say, "My Lord. Will I ever have a chance to finish it!"

The things that bother me are that so much has been written about the politics and the history of America since I started that book in 1929, that I would have to read a whole library again, maybe, except if I just trust my own intuitions and say, "Well, this is what I said then."

I will do it someday, I think. It was not the kind of book where I had to deal particularly with an individual as I did with Mrs. Eakins. I did meet Cyril Nast who is Nast's son, went out to his house and saw some of his pictures there, but primarily it was a job of going through all the old Harper's Weeklies in the public library, making notes on the pictures, reading the history of the period, and seeing Nast's particular slant on the history. Of course, he was a rock‑ribbed Republican—you know, and absolutely antithetic to my politics, but that doesn't necessarily make a bad book—I don't think.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Not at all.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I can be very critical of his politics. Eventually—you know, he switched over in the Blaine campaign, became a mugwump and helped to switch Harper's over to Cleveland instead of Blaine. It's a book that I will do some day, and what I would like to do is to make it a picture book with his cartoons reproduced practically facsimile. This can be done by lithographic process, and after all, these things don't exist—you see, except in a form of the old Harper's because in the wood engraving process, the artist draws on a wooden block, it's carved by a professional engraver, it's printed, and that's the end of it. The block is shaved down and used over again for another picture so that the only form in which these things exist is the wood block cuts in Harper's Weekly. There are a few drawings by Nast from his later years when he began to have his work reproduced photomechanically, but they are not as good. The great things he did were the Tweed Ring cartoons when he helped to break up the Tweed Ring. Then too, in the campaign of 1872, when it was Greeley and Grant, he was all for Grant. He just practically killed Greeley. He was a very savage cartoonist—powerful.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you run into much in the way of correspondence? Was he as savage as a writer?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No. I never went into that particularly. People seem to say that he was a very sweet person. He was a part of a large family of children, a domestic kind of guy. He was German—you know, and he had all that love of home. At Christmas each year he used to do Christmas drawings. There was a very strong sentimental side to him too. His work can be considered rather provincial and corny, but I like this kind of thing—that is, when you've got a really original mind producing something. I don't mind his limitations as long as the central urge is as solid as it is in Nast, Eakins, Homer—people I particularly admire in American art.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You didn't run into much in the way of correspondence?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I wasn't looking for it, and his whole story was told so publicly—the viewpoints and the part he played in the campaigns of the time. There was a book on him already by Albert B. Paine, a very sentimental book, but giving a lot of information, a lot of small reproductions. There was nothing that showed Nast as primarily an artist, not primarily, but a dual thing—the artist and the political figure. Paine wrote about him as a political figure, as a power in American politics, and as a human being, but the artistic side of it he didn't grasp at all. It didn't interest him at all. Someday I'll do that book , if somebody doesn't get ahead of me. Every time I read the Saturday announcements of forthcoming books, I expect so see somebody doing a book on Thomas Nast. It will probably be done and get ahead of me. By the way, it's partly through this interest of mine that the Whitney Museum—early in the 1930s had an exhibition of Nast cartoons. I wrote a very short piece for that, but the only thing I've ever published on Nast has been an article on him in a magazine, the German and American Review. Other than that, my manuscript is languishing in my files. I must get it out and re‑read it some time. It ought to be a disheartening experience.

I'm afraid I've started a number of things like that that I have never finished. My book on Ryder I started in 1935, and so far, except for the short book I did for the Braziller series in 1959. I haven't published the major work I had hoped to do on Ryder. Someday I might do a book on Winslow Homer's wood engravings—just devoted to that alone. I am doing a catalogue raisonné of Homer too. These are all projects that one doesn't get time to do when one is helping to run a museum. I think—I don't know how the time runs, but you might start next time with the fact that these happy three years of writing uninterruptedly were interrupted by the Public Works of Arts Project, the first time I really got involved in the museum directly and, I don't know whether we've gone over that or not.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We've been talking about the twenties in an attempt to find out the possibilities, as you saw them, for the growth of modern American art, and they were pretty scarce.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  They were, except that the thing that happened wasn't due to patronage. It wasn't do really to opportunities. It was due to the fact that our country was waking up artistically, literarily, all kinds of ways, and shaking off a dependence on Europe. This is what was going on at that time, and if there hadn't been a Mrs. Whitney, if there hadn't been a Stieglitz, it still would have happened but in a different way, probably. It would have been thwarted and frustrated, but I never did believe it did anybody any good to be neglected, or that an artist is improved by poverty, or by being an outcast. This to me is a romantic theory which is cockeyed.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's the old notion that we achieve the flowers of civilization with a little stinking human manure. I don't believe it either.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Nor I. It doesn't seem to me that Rembrandt was really helped at all by being an unpopular portrait painter in his old age, and certainly I know Eakins was really frustrated by lack of commissions. He would have been a great mural painter if anybody had ever thought of it, but nobody ever did think of it. To me, Eakins, of course, was a prime example of a great artist in our country who was frustrated and his work suffered for it. You can't say the same thing about Homer because although he was never popular in the sense that Sargent was until his old age, nevertheless he was always sure of himself, except in his extreme youth, and he was successful in his old age and very much honored. Ryder—well, it didn't matter to Ryder. He was just not that kind of person. He was an example of one of those artists where, I'm sure, it didn't matter at all how the world treated him. With Eakins it didn't matter, I believe, and I think with most artists it does. There is a relationship to their society and their environment that is very fundamental even for the most introspective artist.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The quality of receptivity is looked upon as a cushion in a way, and it can either be harsh, soft, yielding or unyielding, and it's part of his context. You can knock your head against the wall just so long and with disappointment, it takes an unusually great character to push steadily ahead in development.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Eakins did that. Nothing would have stopped him from painting, but I've always felt about some of his work of the 1900s that it was the work of a man who had fallen a little bit into the rut of doing portrait after portrait of his friends without much encouragement to do anything more ambitious, richer not only in its subject matter, but also the associative values, the sitter's environment, and also the greater design interest and richness which comes into his best portraits. That kind of thing he didn't very often get into his run of the mill portraits in his later years. He got it when he took it upon himself to paint a man whom he admired a great deal and do it on a large scale. Then he did achieve this. But there are many, many Eakins portraits that are magnificent as far as painting goes, but not of any further interest in design, or associative values. I know Miller shared this viewpoint when I talk to him about Eakins. He said, "A great artist thwarted. He never grew as far as he should have."

By the way, Miller shared our—Reg and my—interest in Eakins and Nast. He was more critical of Eakins. I think he had a greater admiration for Nast than he did for Eakins. He felt that Nast was one of the creative American artists which was interesting for a man who was dedicated to the Renaissance, but I think he saw the relationship between Nast and artist like Daumier, the old German tradition of woodcut artists, the engraver and the graphic artist. It's a tradition quite aside from the kind of thing you get in American cartooning which really stems more from Daumier and the French tradition, or else the English tradition of Cruickshank and so on, but in Nast you get the real Deutsche quality that goes back to, I think, the 15th Century—not consciously at all. I'm not sure Nast never looked at older art, but it was something that came to him from his ancestry. He came to this country when he was six years old.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And brought his intellectual luggage with him.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think so. He'd already had a strong character formed by his childhood. Then he lived in a German community in a German family. I didn't cover the government at all before.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Not at all. We've been working around in the twenties.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I see. That was the first real break in my happy writing life.

Whitney Museum, December 6, 1962.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We've caught each other up as to where we were. The economy had hit a snag, and pretty generally throughout the nation, or the nation as a whole had finally caught up with the farmers who had hit their snag in the early twenties, and artists as well as others suffered thereby.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Very much so.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Perhaps there is something to the fact that the personality of the person, or rather the family, that entered the White House in 1933 was conducive to support in general. I'm glad we did not have engineers, and various and sundry others who thought in other terms, but in any event, in the latter part of 1933—I don't know how much background there was to this, how much movement there was for it, or what the atmosphere was out of which this grew, but on December 12, 1933, the New York Times announces the fact that Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the sponsor of a federal plan to hire artists over the country for the purpose of adorning the nation's buildings.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. I thought it was November. It was December, was it?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This is the indication in the Times. There was a meeting in Washington at the home of Edward Bruce on the 8th of December 1933.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I never knew the complete inside story of the beginning of that. Mrs. Force did. I believe that she went to that meeting you mentioned and participated in it. I know that Bruce became a great friend of Forbes Watson. By this time Forbes Watson was no longer editing the Arts. There had been an estrangement between him and Mrs. Force. Whether Forbes was in on the beginning of this, I don't know. I think he probably was, but later on he became very influential in the whole upper echelon government projects, but my own connection with it must have been in December, 1933. Mrs. Force called me up at home in a state of great excitement. She said that the government was going to do something about the artists, and we all know how hard a time the artists were having. It happened to be a very cold winter—that winter was, a strange thing, and the whole picture was very bleak for the arts and artists, and she said that the government was going to do something about this, that they had formed the Public Works of Art Project, that there was to be a New York regional committee, and she said, "I'm chairman of it, and I want you to be on it. It's not going to involve any work."

Famous last words!—because I never worked quite so hard in my life, as I did for the next five months or so. The set‑up was that the headquarters of the New York Regional Committee was in the Whitney Museum of American Art on 8th Street. We had—the whole country was divided into districts, regions, and each one had its quota. We had by far the largest quota. My memory is that we accounted for about a quarter of the country's artists and I think the top figure was something like 750 artists. They were supposed to be employed in various ways. The easel painters—it was a very liberal progress—were permitted to go on painting easel paintings, the idea being that they would be used in public buildings, not only federal buildings but also other governmental buildings—state, municipal, and county. The mural painters were employed to make mural designs or to continue designs already made, to carry them out. Sculptors could either do architectural, or monumental sculpture, or else just sculpture which was equivalent to easel paintings—in other words, for use in the home, or in a museum.

In the beginning my memory is that Washington told us that artists were to be classified as grades A and B with differing salaries. "A" were to be the good artists, and "B" was the lesser good artists. Mrs. Force and I, together with several others connected with the New York Regional Committee objected strenuously to this. We said that we would not consent to be part of any program which graded artists by their abilities, and we won our battle. We get Washington to establish just one class for creative artists. The other class was for assistants in mural projects and to some extent monumental sculpture. Here we felt that there was a definite difference. The easel painter and mural designer should be on the same level, the younger assistant to the mural painter very properly might be given lower salaries. I don't remember the salaries. It sticks in my mind that the full scale artist got something like $45 a week, and the assistant got something like $35.

The set‑up of the New York offices—there was a committee, a New York Regional Committee which included—oh, by the way, the area covered was all of New York State, most of New Jersey and the western half of Connecticut. We had a committee which drew in the representatives of all the New York City art museums and also directors of museums in upper New York State, some in New Jersey—for example, Newark—and in Connecticut. The staff were people whom Mrs. Force knew and trusted and to whom she gave were people whom Mrs. Force knew and trusted and to whom she gave the job of running the organizations. Some of these people needed the money at that time. I was on the committee, and I was also a staff member, had been on the salary list of the Whitney Museum since 1930, I think it was, or 1931—and I've forgotten which, so that in a sense I was sort of Mrs. Force's representative. I was a member of the committee and also full time working in the organization. Aside from myself, there were Robert Locker, the interior decorator and a very fine artist in his own right. He had done some of the interior design for the Whitney Museum on 8th Street. In any event, he was a close personal friend of Mrs. Force and a very fine artist, a very sensitive and fine person, terribly shy. She tried to get him to give reports at meetings of the committee, and he really said, "If Mrs. Force goes on trying to make me a public speaker, I don't know what I'm going to do."

Then there was Paul [inaudible], a much older man, an architect who had been very successful down in Florida. I've forgotten the big house he designed there, but it was a very rich, big house. He was an architect and an interior designer too, a man of very great taste, knowledge, and great experience. There was Vernon Porter, who is now the director of the National Academy of Design. There was Lloyd Rollins who was later director of the museum in Texas—I think it was possibly Fort Worth, but I've forgotten, and who later became associated with Raymond and Raymond, the print distributors. These people were all of the salary list of Mrs. Whitney, I presume. I don't believe that money for the salaries came through the museum. I believe it came on some kind of separate account which Mrs. Force managed and for which Mrs. Whitney paid. They were not paid by the government, nor was I paid by the government, and of course Mrs. Force received nothing from the government. But aside from that, there was a staff that, there was a staff a staff paid by the Public Works of Art Project itself. The chief man there was Harry Knight who was a brother of a painter, had been involved in the art world and who later on was taken over by the WPA and was very active in the WPA in a supervisory role. Harry's job particularly was to deal with all the many problems of artists bringing their work in and asking advice, and he was the one who met the artist particularly and took care of that end of it, the reception of artists and getting them to fill out forms and advising them about their assignments and so on.

Each artist was supposed to sign a statement to the effect that he was in need of the job. It wasn't a pauper's oath. It was some kind of statement, I think drawn up by us, but we felt that it covered the fact that the artist really needed. I have forgotten the exact proportions of easel painters, sculptors, and mural painters. I think the easel painters predominated very strongly, and there weren't many mural commissions actually undertaken—I'll go into that later. There were a good many sculptors, but as I say, the easel painters were in a large majority, and the rolls were filled up very quickly because after all, the Whitney Museum had been in touch with artists from the very beginning, way before its beginning. We knew artists very well, and they knew Mrs. Force, and they applied in droves. I don't know the exact figures, but it seems to me that within 24 hours of the opening announcement of this, all the artists were on the payroll. The payroll was governmental, the federal payroll. The exact authority under which the Public Works of Arts Projects operated, I just don't know.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I believe it was under the Civil Works Administration.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It probably was.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And more particularly under a man named Roberts who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. I remember now. There used to be periodical meetings of the New York Regional Committee. I think they came about every month, twice a month maybe, and members from all over the state would come and meet in Mrs. Force's office and the staff members like Mr. Locker, Mr. [inaudible], and myself used to give reports of our different areas, and there was discussion of the whole program.

My own part in it—I gradually seemed to get more and more responsibility. I think Mrs. Force had been associated with me in a professional way longer than anybody else, but I had never done any administrative work for her before. It had always been advisory, writing, and so on, but evidently she felt that I did have the administrative capacity because pretty soon I began to find myself more or less running the office without a title. She told me that she didn't want to make me assistant director, or vice chairman of the thing because of the sensibilities of some of the older members of the staff like Paul [inaudible]. I don't know whether that was so or not. Maybe it was just her strange desire not to share the throne. That's a mean thing to say, but it's true. It's part of the elements, part of the situation, I'm sure. Anyway, in the end, I was running the show. I was second in command to her and without a title.

The assignments we gave the artists were very, very liberal. We simply told them to go ahead and paint. There was, as I remember, a general theme, the American scene, but this was very liberally interpreted. We did say to the artists, "We'd like to have you produce pictures which can be used in some public way, public buildings, or pictures which have to do with the United States of America, its present" and so on, but if the artist was a very subjective artist and couldn't do that kind of thing, we felt we'd give him a free reign. That's the way it worked out.

We had many individual problems. I mean each artist was a problem. Also we had on our list many future leaders of American art. It was in the Public Works of Art Project that I first saw the work of Philip Evergood, or Paul Cadmus, Ben Shahn. The last submitted a series of suggested murals based on the history of prohibition, very amusing and very good indeed. He hadn't any reputation or very much at this time. This was about the first really mature work of his that I had ever seen. I remember that this was a series, for instance, showing Mayor Walker leading the anti‑prohibition parade in New York City, things like this, and all done with the most beautiful craftsmanship, with that kind of exactitude and precision that he always had.

Noguchi was on the Project. At that time he was not accepted. He submitted some wildly impractical designs. One of them was a monument to the American plow to be erected on the plains of the mid‑west on top of a pyramid about 200 feet high. The plow would have been stainless steel about 100 feet high—something like that. This was a wonderful idea, and I'm afraid we didn't rise to the occasion, but it was a little bit impractical. He also submitted a plan for a children's playground which I must say struck me as extremely lethal for the kiddies. He had a shoot the shoot going down in a circular spiral form that would have shot them out at the bottom with concussion, and so on. Maybe I'm being unfair. Noguchi was very inventive in his ideas, but none of them got to first base, I'm afraid.

As a matter of fact, very little did get actually executed. The one thing that did get executed we were not very proud of. There was an Italian mural painter, very conventional, called Attilio Pusterla, and he had already made designs for the New York County Courthouse down on Foley Square for a big mural in the rotunda of the courthouse, and it was in the florid, regular Italian decorative style. Paul [inaudible] said of it, "This is like certain kinds of coloratura singing. It doesn't mean very much, but it's marvelously skillful. Of its kind, it's good."

This would have meant the employment of about 15 men as assistants, and it had been approved already by the Art Commission of New York City, and it seemed to us that the natural thing for us to do was to let them go ahead and do it, so we made it possible for him and his assistants to do it, and as I say, I'm not terribly proud of it, and moreover, it didn't confine itself in the end to just the rotunda. It began to spread all over the courthouse. It became quite a thing, though not under our auspices in the end. It was taken over, I imagine, by the WPA. Every time I serve as a juryman in the New York County Courthouse I have the very great privilege and pleasure of seeing these murals I had a hand in. Some of them are very good. In the jury waiting room, for example, there is a series done by an artist, I think, called Ryland, a series on old New York, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Bridge, and these are based on some of the old Currier and Ives prints, and very well done. My memory is that Ryland was one of the artists that we employed, and we started him in on that, though I'm not sure of that.

We also had some humorous incidents. One sculptor got the idea that he could just have carte blanch, that he could do anything at all. We got a call from the Metropolitan Museum asking, "Who is this sculptor who came up here to survey the niches we have in the facade of the Metropolitan Museum because he says that he has been commissioned to do statues for them?"

We had given him no authority; in fact, he was simply- well, he was just window shopping, just fishing. We called him back and told him, "Look, report to us before you do anything like that, please!"

As I recall, we finished certain sculpture for the New York Public Library. In certain cases we made it possible for an already approved design to be carried out. I think that Edward Laning's murals in New York Public Library were an outgrowth of the Public Works of Art Project. I'm not positive. I think they were actually finished under the last authority, but many designs had their origin in the Public Works of Art Project. The project itself didn't last long enough to see the fulfillment of these designs, but they were originated under our auspices. I remember several very interesting and fairly advanced mural designs which were started by us which didn't see the light of day except in the design stage. Periodically we would ask the artists to bring in their work for us to look at—just to check up on them. As I remember, about three times over the five months existence of the Project we asked artists to bring in a finished work, or if they were planning a mural, or a piece of monumental sculpture, to bring in the design for us. The artists who had actually completed their work, the easel painters and the non‑monumental sculptors were asked to bring their things in, and they were then sent down to Washington for whatever use Washington wanted to make of them.

I remember on one occasion Philip Evergood staggering in with the biggest picture he'd ever painted, called Report on the East River, or Report on the North River. It was a dockside scene of stevedores sitting around, a very impressive picture. This was the first time I had ever seen Philip Evergood's work on a major scale, and he brought it in. It was huge. He stacked it up against the wall and a few minutes later Joseph Pollet came in. He'd been abroad recently, and he had seen Rubens. He had very ambitious conceptions, and he brought his picture in, and it was just about two inches smaller all the way around than Philip Evergood's, and he looked crestfallen. Evergood's was a very impressive picture.

I haven't spoken about the way artists were screened. This was done by the curatorial staff of the Whitney Museum consisting of Herman Moore who was then curator of the museum, Edmund Archer who was associate director, and Carl Free who was curator of prints. I suppose Mrs. Force participated, but I think they did most of the work. Artists were allowed to submit their work and this small committee of three or four people looked at it and either okayed them or not. I had no part in this because I was in the administrative and running the Project. That in itself was a full time job to say the least. I remember that we used to open up the shop at nine o'clock in the morning, and it would be midnight nearly every night before we got through.

In the meantime, we had a great deal of difficulty with the leftist element in the art community. At this time, of course, there was not the feeling about communism that there is now unfortunately and has been for the past 20 years. It was well known that artists, the underprivileged citizens of the cultural world, were very much drawn toward Marxism either in the form of socialism, or Communism. The Communist Party which I suppose at that time had reached its highest level, I imagine, in membership. I don't know who the particular people were. We never investigated. We never went into their political backgrounds in any way whatsoever, nor did we try to screen them in anyway with regard to the subject matter they wanted to paint. I recognize the fact that many of them were definitely leftist in their thinking and that they were painting pictures which expressed a definite Marxist philosophy. I saw no objection to it, nor did Mrs. Force, nor did anybody else connected with the Project. I mean to us this was a democracy, allowing free speech even to people on the governmental payroll and this, I'm glad to say, continued pretty much throughout the government projects, this policy of non‑interference with the artist's freedom of expression. But what did cause great trouble was the organized protest, and the core of it, I'm sure, was communist. From the very beginning the leftist artist groups, and they were very powerful in those days, took up the attitude that this whole program of the Public Works of Art Project was a sop to the artist, and mind you at this time there was no other project in existence for the artist. The only alternative to it, as I remember, was the Civil Works Administration where the artist could be employed in non‑artistic work which included teaching. We didn't have any teachers in our Project; they were all creative workers. The leftist elements in the art world as they always did, and these were the boys who knew how to organize and how to really have protest meetings, picketing, and so on, get publicity, they very early in the game started to protest the Public Works of Art project just as a matter of principle because it didn't go far enough. In their view, it was just a sop, as I say, a capitalist half way measure and so on. Theoretically their position was that every artist who was an artist should be on the government payroll throughout the country and should be there forever after. Well, this wasn't that kind of a Project. This was a selective project, limited to a certain number of artists throughout the country and, in our case, in the New York Regional Office, about 750 artists. So very early in the game we began to get written protests, picketing, very organized picketing with signs reading like "Whitney Museum unfair to American art", or "Mrs. Force unfair to American artists"—this kind of thing.

The very first occasion I remember they tried to actually come into the museum when it was open to the public, walk through, and showed slogans with these signs. We had a doorman who wasn't used to this kind of thing. He locked the door, called the police, and then there was an unfortunate minor riot. Nobody was hurt. I observed it out of the windows of the Whitney Museum, and I saw a girl spit in a policeman's face and a policeman chased her, things like that, but nobody was hurt. They then asked if they could send in a delegation to talk to us. I may be telescoping several incidents here because there were several incidents like this. They sent a delegation of five. We said that we would receive five representatives to talk over this whole matter. Meantime the rest of the crowd stayed outside with the rest of the police on guard, and this delegation of five came in, and I remember—and I don't know whether it was this occasion or not—but one of them was Bernarda Bryson who was Ben Shahn's wife. I don't think this was this occasion. I think it was another occasion when Bernarda came in. She's a very level headed woman, and she was deeply committed to the idea that this program was insufficient. I think this was not that occasion when there was a riot.

Well, Mrs. Force received five delegates. There were policemen standing behind each chair practically, about four policemen on guard. Those were the days before the police had had their orders from the mayor that they were to go easy on strikers—you know, demonstrations, or at least these were the early days of that regime, a new way of handling this kind of thing.

These five delegates told their grievances. They said that they thought we should employ more artists. We countered by saying that we were not allowed to, that we had our quota, and that we had already reached our quota, that this was all we could do. Well, they were really trying to get at Washington through us, trying to get us to put in a strong plea for more employment. Well, we were doing that all the time, but we could not get to first base. Well, we talked and talked, and they showed themselves in the usual communist mentality of not listening to you at all, but just plugging away at the same point again and again and again without any response at all, or any kind of willingness to get our viewpoint. Mrs. Force had done most of the talking from our standpoint, and she finally said, "Well, Mr. Goodrich, will you talk to them!"

So I talked to them more or less in the same way and finally it was obvious that we were getting nowhere, not making any impression on them at all, so I finally said, "I don't see any point in talking any more. I think you'd better leave."

Whereupon one of the policemen said, "Shall we throw them out?"

It was some remark like that, and I said, "No. No. For heaven's sake, these people are artists."

I went to the window. A box was immediately produced, and the leader of the delegation stood up and said, "Well, we got the same old crap!"

That's as far as our reasonable arguments had gotten. It was a case of forces bigger than individuals. They wanted something. They had a great deal on their side. We sympathized with them in many ways, but we couldn't do anything about it. I think that there were about two demonstrations like this in front of the Whitney Museum. My memory is that the Whitney actually closed down for a week or so, maybe more, on account of this. You can correct me on this.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I think the museum closed down, or ended its season much earlier that year. Before its season was terminated the Whitney Museum was subjected to similar pressures, organized demonstrations as though this aid was associated with the Whitney Museum. From a public relations point of view, it was bad, and I believe that there was an announcement by Mrs. Force to the effect that she was closing the museum in advance of the usual time.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. I remember the conclusion of one of these debates Mrs. Force didn't like—she couldn't take reasonable opposition. She couldn't take opposition which she could not accept and which at the same time was couched in logical, calm tones. At the end of one of these sessions and we had done our best to persuade a delegation, when they left, she went into hysterics, absolute hysterics, wept, threw herself on a couch, and we all had to comfort her. She wasn't used to this kind of opposition. Well, she made the decision to close down.

By the way, I think before that happened, if I do recall rightly, the New York—would it be the Tribune or the Herald Tribune at that time? I think it was the Tribune still, a Republican paper, of course. Well, it decided that it could make some anti‑Administration capital out of this cultural project. They suspected that the Artists we employed were employed on account of favoritism, that they weren't really in need of money, that this was—I don't think the word boondoggle had yet been invented, but that was the general idea. They were going to expose it. They sent a reporter down to see John Sloan among others. John Sloan was on our payroll, had been from early in the game, and I know, from knowing John Sloan, that he never made money to speak of out of his own work until his old age, that he lived by teaching and I think some illustration. Sloan was wonderful. He took the reporter into his studio, and his studio was crowded with his canvasses which he hadn't sold, and he said, "I will sell you my entire life product for $50 a week for the rest of my life."

I must say that in fairness to the Tribune, the reporter wrote this, did this with a humorous touch, and it wasn't exactly in their favor. This was one of the best known artists in America who just hadn't been able to make the grade financially, and we felt that we were within our rights to employ a man like that, and he painted some darn good pictures for the project. One of them is in the Metropolitan Museum right now. Well, when this story broke in the Tribune, Mrs. Force was very disturbed and so was Mrs. Whitney. Mrs. Whitney was herself conservative politically, but she didn't like this and I remember that I went down—it was a Sunday morning, as I remember, when the story broke, and I went—or it may have been a Saturday, maybe—down to see Mrs. Force and Mrs. Whitney, and together we drafted a rebuttal. I think I wrote it actually. It was a statement which we gave to the press, to the effect that every artist on the payroll had signed a statement that he needed financial help, that we had not employed anybody on account of his prestige, or anything like that, that it was a selective project, and that we tried to get good artists, that this was the basis of our selection—quality plus need.

I know of one case of a rich girl who was out to show up the project. She was a Woodstock artist whom I've never heard of since. She had money. She came down and signed the statement that she needed the money. She went around Woodstock saying, "Look, this is all crooked. Look how I got on it!"

She then added, "It's a matter of favoritism because somebody said that they knew me."

Well, I understand that the artists at Woodstock all jumped on her and said, "This is a terrible thing to do. You'd better come clean."

I think we finally dropped her from the payroll when we learned the facts; otherwise, we didn't because there was no means test. We did not go into the background of the artist financially. There were no social workers among us. We accepted the artist's word. Maybe we did employ a few people that didn't need it, but I don't think so. I would say that by and large on the payroll was really on his uppers, and there were many young people too. Probably if you made an analysis of the number of people who had been launched, or assisted to continue as artists, or even given their first start by the Public Works of Art Project, that have amounted to something since it would be quite a high percentage.

Well, this so‑called explosion by the Tribune didn't because they were personal. They were organized and continuously so. Finally, Mrs. Force made the decision to move the offices from the Whitney Museum down to the Municipal Building on the thirteenth floor. The City of New York turned over to us an entire floor there. It was much better in a way because we had much more space, and we had quite a good sized staff by this time, as I remember. I don't remember how many but including clerks and stenographers and so on, there were probably 15 people and even at that the people at the top like myself worked very long hours. As I say, I used to work every Sunday and every Saturday, every holiday. I couldn't even get to the wedding of my oldest friend, Reginald Marsh. I wish I had now.

I was in charge of the office down in the Municipal Building, and it was I who reported directly to Mrs. Force about everything. My second in command was Vernon Porter, and he did a lot of detail work. He prepared the payroll every week, and I had to sign the payroll every week. Where there was any dispute with an artist, either an artist who wanted to be on the payroll and was raising a "ruction" about it, or else an artist who was disappointed, or disgruntled about what they have him to do and so on, I had to handle it. Also I had pleasant contacts. I remember Marsden Hartley who was on the payroll coming in and sitting in the corner of my office for about an hour just sort of reading and listening. He was a very unworldly kind of person. It was very nice to have him there. I also remember a sculptor. I've forgotten his name. I never heard of him again, but he had a theory that we were blackballing him that there was a black list, and he was heard to say in the waiting room of the office that he was going to throw a "pineapple" in the Whitney Museum—meaning a bomb. He was, I'm sure, unbalanced, but he said the same thing again so I asked to see him. I called up the nearest police precinct, and they sent a plainclothesman around. This seemed to me to be a case where the police should know about it. The plainclothesman just sat in the corner of the office while I interviewed this man. I told him again and again. This was the beginning of the time when we actually were beginning to cut down which happened, I regret to say, fairly soon. My memory is about midway in the project, something around February, we were told we would have to taper off and believe me, this was tough! Every week we would have to drop so many people. This was the hardest part of the whole thing—more than refusing them in the first place—to drop them when we had taken them on, and there was no project set up at this time to take care of them at all, except this Civil Works Administration where they would not have any artistic employment. Well, to get back to my story about the guy who was going to throw a bomb into the Whitney Museum, I talked to him trying to reason with him for about one hour, just telling him, "Look, we're asked to cut down. You're asking to be put on when other artists are being dropped."

Well, I got nowhere. He kept saying, "I'm black listed. I'm on a black list" and so on. So finally I said, "Look, we're getting nowhere. You'd better leave" and he started to go out. The plainclothesman said, "I want to talk to that guy."

I said, "Wait a minute. Take it easy. He's an unhappy guy. He's unbalanced. I'll go with you."

We went out to the elevator. The man was still there, and the plainclothesman said, "Can I have a talk with you, buddy."

The artist said, "You're a policeman, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Hit me! Hit me!"

This was the kind of mentality he had. There were incidents like that.

There were also pleasant incidents. At the end of the project, I remember the artists who had done the mural design for the New York County Courthouse. Most of them were Italians. Pusterla himself was Italian, and his associates were mostly Italians, and they gave Mrs. Force and myself a gala dinner at an Italian Restaurant down on the lower east side near the courthouse with speeches, red wine, and everything else. Also out in Westport, I think it was, where there had been quite an active community project of some kind, they asked Mrs. Force and me to come out to dinner there, and we had speeches and so on, a kind of thank you dinner for what we had done. On that occasion, incidentally, Mrs. Force and I had to sit in a cold railway station after the affair until mid‑night because we'd missed the train, and she got pneumonia on the strength of this. She was rather delicate physically in certain ways. She had tremendous energy and dynamism. She'd go at top speed for a while and suddenly collapse—not really collapse, but her energy would be exhausted.

Well, I don't remember the exact dates, but we moved down to the Municipal Building, probably about February or March, and then we had to taper off, and, as I say, this was the most difficult period. I had to resist pressures on the part of some of my staff to drop people in an unnecessarily cruel way, I thought. Another personal incident was John Flanagan, a sculptor who was employed by the Project. He was unfortunately, as everybody knows, a drinker and we gave him an assistant. He had got hold of a great big piece of granite, and he had it in his studio. He was doing the first steps of that design of the mother and child which later on—he did two versions of it. It was designed for some kind of public housing development, and I think it's now in one of the museums, possibly the Fogg Museum. I've forgotten. Anyway, John unfortunately was not the kind of man who could be paid a salary regularly because it would just go into liquor. This is maybe a little libelous to his heirs, but I'm afraid it's true. We used to send Lloyd Rollins, a member of our staff, around visiting artists' studios to see how they were getting on. That, by the way, was part of our administrative work, to actually go to the artists' studios to see whether they had problems and checking up on them, frankly, because this was a rather unprecedented project. Lloyd Rollins could very seldom find John Flanagan there. He'd find his assistant and a block of stone partly carved and so on, but that was all. This kind of thing didn't happen very much.

Finally the project came to an end, and we wound it up—everything was shipped down to Washington. There was a big exhibition, I think, at the Corcoran Gallery in which I remember seeing pictures like Philip Evergood's Report on the East River. All of our best pictures were shown, and country‑wide too, and there was a big to‑do, a party, a dinner, something like this. I don't remember the details, but I remember we went down—Mrs. Force and I and some of the staff. On that occasion I remember it was cherry blossom time, and Lloyd Rollins coined a little couplet saying, "I hope to God I never see another goddamn cherry tree."

One of the rather amusing sidelights, I think, was Paul Cadmus. He was one of the artists, and I had never seen Paul's work before. He painted a most scabrous picture called Greenwich Village Cafeteria, a terrific picture, and he brought it in on one of these occasions when the artists were supposed to bring their work in, and we thought really that this was one person we had discovered. Evidently he was a first rate satirist. Well, he also painted a picture and I've forgotten whether it was called The Fleet's In or what; I think it was, and it was not complementary at all to the United States Navy. It showed sailors and their girls up and around Riverside Drive, I remember. It got an awful lot of publicity. I've forgotten how. I think this was one of those occasions when one of the opposition papers got a hold of the picture and they published it and there was supposed to be a scandal. Here was an artist on the federal payroll attacking the navy—you see, and Paul told me that during this ruckus, he got telephone calls because of this. Somebody would call up, and say, "I'm on the S.S. so‑and‑so. You come down in the street, and I'll knock your goddamn block off."

It was this kind of thing. This picture was sent down to Washington with all of the others, and I'm not sure that it was exhibited at all. I don't remember, but it sort of disappeared. Years later—not many, many years later—I was in a club in Washington called the Alibi Club, and the Alibi Club gets its name from the fact that it has no telephone number. It's a perfectly respectable club, but it is a place where Washington officials can go and not be bothered by telephone calls, and it's a perfectly nice club. Hanging over the Mantel place was Paul Cadmus' Fleet's In. I said, "That's United States Government property. How did it get here?"

I think that the explanation was that some admiral who had been a member of the club thought that the best place for the picture was the Alibi Club where nobody except members could see it. It may be still there. I don't know. As a matter of fact, the disposition of the works of art not only of the Public Works of Art Project but the WPA and the subsequent projects is somewhat of a mystery. I'm not sure whether there has ever been an accounting. Of course a lot of them, especially WPA pictures, were sold later on through auction houses and stuff like this. Arshile Gorky—I don't think he was on the Public Works of Arts Project, but he was later on the WPA, and he did a whole series of very ambitious murals for the Newark Airport, very handsome, and these have completely disappeared. Nobody has ever been able to find them. When we were getting out our Gorky exhibition, when I was assisting Ethel Schwabacher writing her book on Gorky, we could never get any trace of these pictures at all and they were very ambitious mural projects, among the most advanced of the time.

I don't know the subsequent history of the government art projects except that there was a hiatus, I believe, when the Civil Works Administration carried on with the artists—well, I think the artists who had been on the Public Works of Art Project were allowed to get on the Civil Works Administration, as I remember, but without professional work. Then later on came the WPA and the federal art projects on the one level, which was the employment level, more or less on the same basis of the Public Works of Art Project, but more purely employment and of course it lasted much longer, and it produced a far greater body of work. It actually completed many mural projects. It was a long term thing which the Public Works of Art Project had not been. Then, on the other hand and as a continuation of our work, came the Treasury Department Projects where the question of the artist's financial condition didn't come into it at all, where none [some] of the best mural painters and monumental sculptors were given commissions on a competitive basis, partly, I remember, as a result of competitions held by the Treasury Department. What made it possible, of course, for this to happen, as I remember, was the fact that the assistants who helped carry out these projects were paid from relief money, I believe; anyway, from federal funds which would not have been forthcoming otherwise in the pre‑depression days. In other words, the depression sparked on the one hand this employment program for artists on the same level, same basis, as all the relief projects—all the WPA—and this upper level, selective, highly selective series of projects of mural design and monumental sculpture to which the city of Washington owes a great deal and also other cities. For example, Reginald Marsh's impressive murals ever done in this country were made possible by the Treasury Department Art Project. Reg got paid very little. I don't think any of the designers got paid very much, but he could afford it. He had given to him a band of assistants all of whom were very good artists. I think he was allowed to pick them himself. Some of these artists have since gone on to make their name independently. I went down there to see Reg do this, this really enormous mural project. It's really worth seeing, one of the most impressive things done by the government in its history and this is, I think in 1932, or 1933. I can't remember, but it was a major technical undertaking. It was painted in dry fresco, I believe, and Reg himself actually executed a large part of it with his own hand. His assistants were mostly for laying it in and enlarging the designs on to the wall which he did by a projector from across the hall. It's a very high ceiling. It's a big space. The theme is the coming of the ship into New York harbor and the various stages it goes through—picking up the pilot, going through Ellis Island, debarking, the reporters coming down interviewing celebrities, and so on. It's a mural conception which combines extraordinary authenticity and realism. Of course, Reg knew his New York, and he knew his harbor the way nobody else did. Every detail is authentic. The tugs are real tugs, and so on, but beyond that, it's an extraordinary mural conception. It's one of the few cases where an American artist has carried out a large scale design with realism and at the same time with a monumental concept.

The history of the Treasury Art Project has been written—not sufficiently. I wish someday there could be a great big exhibition, picking out the very best of these projects. The PWPA, the WPA, and the Treasury projects, and I think it would be an impressive demonstration of what a democratic government had done under great stress, on an emergency basis, the intelligence at the top, the going to professionals to carry this thing out, their freedom of expression, not only politically, but also artistically. It's a unique history of governmental participation in the arts. Of course in the Treasury Department Projects they had people like Forbes Watson as one of the chief advisers. Olin Dows, the painter, was very close to the running of it, and Edward Bruce who was a rich man who was politically powerful, a friend of the President's, I believe, was instrumental in starting the entire Public Works of Art Project. George Biddle also had quite a hand in it. I've always felt very proud that I was identified with this because it was the first government project. We did, I think, work out many of the procedures and principles which were later followed, and I'm particularly proud that we did not allow the government to classify artists as grade A and grade B. Although it was a short lived project, and the actual results were not as great numerically as the later project, still we accomplished a great deal on a very, very emergency—impoverished almost—basis.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There wasn't any precedent for this.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  None whatsoever.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In running a regional office what was the relationship between it and Edward Bruce who, I think, was secretary of the general committee that sat in Washington. Was there any contact at all?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, I remember that periodically when we had our regional committee meetings, the Washington people used to come up and participate. I remember Bruce being present. I think Roberts too. I just don't remember who, but usually just two or three people from the Central office in Washington would come up, listen in and participate in these discussions and sort of give us the guidance we needed about general employment level and this kind of thing.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you have the notion sitting in the regional office that you were not only making administrative decisions as to the work, but determining policy too?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The overall policy for the whole nation?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, we did in the beginning to the extent that I spoke of. I suppose we did in other respects—possibly. We certainly, I hope, didn't have any hand in cutting the project down. What was difficult—looking back, it doesn't seem so difficult because we do know that many of these artists did go on, but at that time there was no such idea, and this seemed like the end—when the project had to begin to taper off. It really seemed like a very cruel thing of the government to take these men on and then drop them. I never did understand the real cause of that, why that was just a trial—just to see how it worked, but it seemed to me a more wiser and more thought out program would have been to have an alternative right away rather than to have had no future for these people at all, but to be transferred to non‑artistic occupations without any hope for further employment on an artistic basis.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What I meant was when you have something which is centralized, usually the judgment on policy is related to the kind of detail you can absorb on the firing line, and this was a sudden thing, so that you were left with, "What do you do?" "How do you function?" "How do you operate?"

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think we taught them something—the representatives that used to come up from Washington. They listened to us, and they heard our problems, and I think we had a hand in policy making in that respect.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I think that it would have been wise for you to have done so since the country was cut into regions, it's conceivable that the experience in New York was not the same that it might have been elsewhere.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You know—to allow for variety and experimentation in a frankly experimental program.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't know what contact there was—I was going to say between Mrs. Force and Washington. I think I do know in a general way. I don't remember any Washington meetings to which she went—she may have gone. I know I didn't. In other words, I didn't go to any meetings of all the regional chairmen—the regional chairmen on the nationwide basis. I don't think there was anything. After that first meeting, we sort of played it by ear in working out the procedures, and that was it until we finally went down to Washington to see the results in the exhibition. I know I personally never went to Washington in connection with this at all.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Do you remember whether Charles Moore who was chairman of the Fine Arts Commission who was on this central committee coming to New York or Rex Tugwell, Harry Hopkins, Henry T. Hunt?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  None of them.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Frederic A. Delano.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No. Bruce I remember.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And probably Roberts from the Treasury.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Probably Roberts, and then there was an Edward Rowan who was a younger man who had to do with our project. He came, I remember, I don't think Forbes Watson was in the picture at this time.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I have only one note, and this is December 17, 1933—also out of the Times. The indication is that Forbes Watson was going to be the technical director in the New York region, or in the Metropolitan region. His name doesn't appear again incidentally in my notes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't remember his appearing at any of our meetings, or having any contact with him. The first I heard about his being connected with the government was when the Treasury Department Project started. I don't think he had any real connection. Evidently he was being thought of very early in the game, a good man. They couldn't have gotten anybody better.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  How fruitful was the New York committee in this project?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  In giving advice?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Of course, Mrs. Force was a bit of an autocrat. I remember one occasion—one of the members of the committee was Alfred Barr who was then director of the Museum of Modern Art. There was a difference of opinion about some artist, something like that, and Mrs. Force simply said that she and Mr. Goodrich didn't think that this should be done, and he wrote a rather sharp letter as he was entitled to. Bryson Burroughs of the Metropolitan was a member of the committee. My memory is that they gave recommendations—I'll tell you one person who was very helpful, and that was James Rosenberg who was a lawyer, as you know, had many connections with the city government, a very public spirited man, and a very generous man. He helped us in many ways especially when it was a question of working with the city on a mural commission and something like that, and he'd of course been a painter himself. He was quite active.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  William H. Fox?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Mr. Fox was the director of the Brooklyn Museum—yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It had a long history—not a long history but a continuing interest in modern art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right, and from the Newark Museum—oh, memory!

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Arthur F. Egner?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes—well, I don't think he actually came. The director—I should know her name because she's an old family friend of mine.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Egner is listed here as President of the Newark Museum.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Actually it was represented by—now, isn't this stupid of me! It's a woman director, and there's a history of woman directors of the Newark Museum—you know. Well, it will occur to me. She's an old friend of my parents through Newark and Nutley. It was an active working group and, of course, when it came to regions outside of New York City, they were more or less autonomous. They had to consult us about general policies and so on, but they actually ran their own programs. Occasionally we had to kind of check up on them just to see that they were following the overall pattern and also to try to gently stop projects that didn't seem to be practical, or that were out of line—this kind of thing.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was in the New York region?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The New York region—this was beyond New York City—you see, the whole state, and we had the director of the Syracuse Museum, Mrs. Armstead. I think from Rochester we had Grace Hurtle Moore on the committee, as I remember. Our committee was a pretty big committee.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The New York City office was a kind of clearing house?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  A central office, and every artist of our entire region was paid from the New York office. I had a payroll every week— we paid them weekly, and we had a payroll of, at the top, about 750 artists which I had to approve and sign every week, and checks went out.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  When this program was first announced, it was good news, and our press, as usual with its emphasis on bad news, got quotes from the presidents of the National Academy of Design and others—they were endless—which were quite critical of the fact that the government had made these public benefits and did it through the Whitney Museum and, more particularly, Mrs. Force.

Mr. Goodrich—I'd forgotten that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's summarized by John Sloan. Having listed all these crabbed comments about this, somebody went to John Sloan, and he is alleged to have said, "When corn is thrown into the chicken coop, feathers are bound to fly." The commentary is all but endless—Joseph H. Friedlander, Horace Elmer Brown, Alexander Harris, F. Ballard Williams—all of them somewhat critical, happy that this government project has been floated, but unhappy with the New York Region skipper.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, of course the government was doing something pretty bold and unprecedented in turning it over to an outfit like the Whitney Museum which was only in existence for three years—no, two years open to the public and known as being a protagonist of the liberal wing in art.

I suspect that Forbes Watson had a hand in that—in the inside down in Washington. Even though he and Mrs. Force were no longer friendly in personal terms, he always respected us and her and our policies. I'd forgotten those criticisms. Where did they come from—the newspapers?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This is the New York Times for December 17, five days after the first announcement. Some enterprising reporter simply canvassed the leaders of the National Academy of Design, the Allied Artists of America -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  All old timers.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The Fine Arts Federation, National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. They were all represented and others, including John Sloan who summarized it, I think, quite properly.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We probably haven't got those clippings, or anything like that here because Mrs. Force never kept a thing. She was the kind of a person who just believed in doing and not in recording. I'd like to glance over those sometime.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  They're incredible, but even on December 17th, there is notification as of that date that the appropriation, whatever it was, under the Civil Works Administration, I believe, was to come to an end on February 11th.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That early?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes—that's as of December 17th.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We were just barely started. It was really terminal.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Well, it wasn't discontinued finally until April 28th—cherry blossom time. I suspect that it went on beyond this date, that there were things uncompleted which were picked up by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration on a temporary basis until they could get some development tending toward the WPA which didn't come about until the fall of 1935.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Is that so. I'd forgotten that. That's right. I remember there were projects in process—I mean, for example, the Pusterla mural down at the New York County Courthouse was continued under other auspices. Many projects hadn't gone very far. For example, I remember Oscar Lewis Rubenstein, who is now on the faculty of Vassar and a very interesting artist at that time, I felt, submitted a couple of mural projects which embodied symbols of science, technology, and so on in a most imaginative way and beautifully executed, and these never got beyond the stage of small scale drawings. I don't think that they were made for any particular place.

You see, it didn't really get organized enough. If we had been on a long range basis, we would have gone around New York State and our whole region and seen what public buildings were capable of being decorated. We would have got architects more in the picture. Actually of our entire administrative staff only Paul [inaudible] was really an architect. We could have done much more if we'd had the time, but looking back on it, I don't know how we could have found any more time than we did. It was all very much on the basis of improvisation.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Quite early, and this is December 22nd, there is provision consultation with the City Art Commission. As to what city buildings, they must approve the plans. I don't know whether that was ever carried to fruition because it put a premium on negotiation, and the important thing, as I understand the initial impulse, was to create some process whereby "deserving"—and that's a miserable word—artists were at least given a financial hand.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. Now I wish I could remember our relation to the Art Commission of the City of New York. Was Ernest [inaudible] in your record of that? Was he on it at any time?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  He may have been.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was a mural painter, a very fine, friendly person, and I became very friendly with him later. I don't remember whether there was some official connection. I think there might have been at that time. Of course, anything that was actually executed, or begun to be executed, had to be approved by the commission, but we did not -

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Handle that?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, I think we did, but I don't think we ever—well, we may have carried a few projects to the point, but my impression is that the public art, mural painting and sculpture which we produced was still in the design stage when we had to disband.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's right. On April 7th, there's a summary that there were 1,977 works of art of which there were 178 completed mural designs, thirteen being executed.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  What was this—nationwide?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I don't have any indication here as to what it was.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  What date was this?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This is April 7, 1934.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think that couldn't have been nationwide because there must have been—well, the quota of artists for the whole nation was something like three thousand, so a thousand completed works of art wouldn't be much. I wonder if that wasn't the New York area.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's possible. This is what I meant—about thirteen "being executed." There appears to have been continuity of work in process for which there wasn't any funds as of April 28th, so that on May 14th, there is an indication in the Times that the artists are shifted to the FERA payroll which would permit completion of the works of art started on the CWA fund.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think I may have underestimated our connection with actual mural possibilities. I begin to remember now that we did do a considerable amount of canvassing. I think the reason I didn't bring this up was because I didn't do this myself. I was administrative head of the New York office, but I remember now that Paul [inaudible], for example, and Lloyd Rollins and Robert Locker all went around looking at buildings, finding spaces, and then getting the artists assigned. Of course, all of this was on a purely permissive basis. There was nothing mandatory about it at all. We were trying to interest the authorities in doing something about these places. I withdrew what I said before about our not doing this kind of thing. We did a lot of it now that I come to think about it, but I didn't do it myself. The three who did do it were the three I've mentioned.

On the administrative level I was next to Mrs. Force, and Vernon Poore was next to me. Then there was Harry Knight dealing with the artists, mostly with the easel painters and also the sculptors.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There was a considerable amount of work done. There's a listing in the Times and this is the New York region. It's 523 oil paintings, 72 drawings, 410 lithographs and etchings, 140 pieces of sculpture, and 28 examples of craft work.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's quite a lot.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That is quite a lot in that time.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That must have been the New York region.

One of the criticisms that was made of us—inevitable, of course—was favoritism. It was known that Mrs. Force was very friendly with the Woodstock colony of artists. Herman Moore lived in Woodstock. He had been a painter. He lived in Woodstock in the summers and was very much a part of the community as were many of Mrs. Force's good friends, people like George Bellows—he's no longer living—Eugene Speicher, Henry McFee, Charles Risenman, and others. I think she used to go up to Woodstock frequently. There was a great deal of criticism of us; that we were giving jobs to these people, that we were excluding people in New York City, this kind of thing. There may have been some truth in it. I mean one can't be completely fair‑minded.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Is it fair to say that this was a temporary thing, the funds were limited, quotas were created and not by Mrs. Force, and so no matter who did this, they would have been subject to criticism.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. Also there was criticism of me because there was a feeling that being an old pupil of Kenneth Hayes Miller I was giving preferences to ex‑Miller students. I remember a letter from an artist. It was a funny letter, and I wish I could remember who wrote it. I suspect that she was an artist who since has become quite well known. I wouldn't be sure, but she said, in effect, that of course, everybody says that the Millerites have gotten to you, but I really don't believe it—one of those double meaning letters.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Mrs. Force is quoted in the press and quite tersely.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Who is this?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Mrs. Force. Somebody asked her what her instructions were, and she replied, "My instructions are that the work is to be done by the best material available, and by available is meant unemployed." She went on to explain the operation of the committee and said that its authority was centralized in herself as chairman and that this was necessary to eliminate red tape and start work immediately which sounds reasonable.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true. That's just what happened actually. Even before she got the committee fully organized there were artists on the payroll.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I believe this was a reporter's follow up to this earlier list of complaints he had collected, that other agencies weren't consulted, that somehow or other this was forcing the government project for the people through a specific conduit; namely, the Whitney Museum. Her instructions are quite clear—available meaning unemployed. That's a pretty easy application. You say that you refused the distinction between A and B as to grade, as invidious and unwarranted where creativity is involved, although applicable where an artist was classified as an assistant on some mural. Incidentally, the Whitney Museum closed on March 26th as a consequence of a postcard announcement, and her explanation—and I don't have it all here, but I do have one word that she used to explain the closing when she said that there was too much "confusion." It was on March 17th that the artists, who either had been dropped, or who felt that more were going to be dropped, created the furor outside the museum when the delegation was allowed in to speak.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It must have been just at that time that we moved down to the municipal building. The project terminated April 28th?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  April 28th.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It's funny how your memory plays you tricks. I would have sworn that I had been in the municipal building about three months, but I guess it just seemed that way. It was kind of a tense period being physically down in the municipal building and being head of that office, and Mrs. Force being up in the museum. I had to really take the lead in a way I hadn't had to in the museum, make many decisions always in consultation with her. Every couple of days, or maybe once a week I used to go up and see her, talk things over, and so on, but I had to take the responsibility down there, and I remember that it was longer than a month. It may have been that we continued down there longer, or after April 28th.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's possible. This is only a public announcement in the press, and the press being whatever it is, may be misleading. It isn't until May 14th that where is the announcement that some provision has been made for shifting the artists to the FERA payroll.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It may have been that we moved into the municipal building before that last riot which caused the closing of the museum. There was a gradually growing feeling that this was bad medicine for the museum—you see, and I think that we may have moved to the municipal building earlier than that. I remember it being winter, that cold wind down around Foley Square.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Her postcard announcement may have been simply the fact that the Whitney Museum would close for the rest of the season -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  —in an effort to confront organized efforts with something which for the rest of that season would just be non‑existent until the scene had shifted. The scene does shift to the City of New York. The pitch was to try to set up a municipal art gallery managed by artists in which the Artist's Union was the spearhead. Time moves on, and there is a shift in emphasis. People weren't rational about the limited funds available, didn't think in rational terms. They had to turn around and blame someone. Mrs. Force was the whipping post, and the Whitney Museum caught some of the welts, but this gradually settled.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think it would have been the same no matter who had done it. If it had been the Metropolitan Museum, I'm sure the criticism would have been even worse because they were at that time far more conservative. Probably they would have administered the project very much in the interest of the National Academy and the old line schools. We had academic artists on our payroll. We did try to distinguish them that way. A lot of the mural projects which were started were distinctly conservative, traditionalist work. The easel painters were possibly more advanced, or more liberal anyway. We figured that this was not a museum we were running, that we were doing a public service, that we were employing artists who were competent and who needed the money. Even if they were not the kind of things we would want to show in the museum we took them on. I'm speaking for myself—whatever voice I had in the actual selection of the artists. I think possibly my colleagues of the museum staff who did the screening may have been a little bit catholic in their judgment of conservative art. I remember once Paul [inaudible] looking at some of the rejected material—of course, he was an older man and he was conservative himself and he said, "I think these young men are being kind of arbitrary"—this kind of thing, you see. I wish I could remember what hand I had in the actual decisions about an artist. I think I had more than I said. I think possibly the Whitney staff screened them in the beginning. I was not part of that, I think, but later on I did participate along with the other members of the staff for the project itself. I think that was the case. I may be wrong.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did you get much aid from an old friend, Bryson Burroughs?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Not actively—no. I mean he came to the meetings, but I don't remember him screening any of the work. That was pretty much done within the museum staff—I'm talking now of the New York City situation. Up‑state, that was something else again. They were pretty much autonomous, or in Connecticut, or New Jersey.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What was the criterion used in paring down?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Tapering off, you mean?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes. You did this under a compulsive hammer.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was difficult.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think the chief one was whether an artist had completed his assignments. If he were known to be doing a mural painting which he hadn't finished, or a piece of sculpture, we'd wait until he had finished it, as much as we could. That was the main orientation. I don't think that it was on the basis of quality—primarily. That may have entered into it, and of course, it should to some extent, everything else being equal, but I think it was a question of the termination of the actual project.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  How did the artists look upon the visits, the checks on their work?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I never had any actual part in that. I didn't do it, but I think that they were mostly pretty friendly. Of course, Mrs. Force had assembled a group of unusual people. Locker was a creative artist in his own right, a very gentle person, very sophisticated. Lloyd Rollins was the same way, a very nice sense of humor and a very congenial fellow. [inaudible] was a man with great experience, and they were the ones who went around chiefly to the artist's studios. I never heard of too much friction that I can remember.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This is a novel wrinkle in the field—you see, from an administrator's point of view where you're charged with responsibility you can't exercise your responsibility without seeing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  You can't do it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Well, I considered them my outside agents, or Mrs. Force's outside agents. Both of us knew that we could trust their judgment, that they were usually well qualified people to judge works of art, and these people were all on Mrs. Whitney's payroll. They were not being paid by the government. This is very typical of Mrs. Force; to assemble the people she wanted and take the full responsibility herself. Fortunately she had the means to do it. Some of them, like Harry Knight, were on the federal payroll. At one point we were having an argument with Washington on something or other. We were in a meeting, including the people who were on Mrs. Whitney's payroll. These were the administrators, and one of them said, "Well, look, we'll quit. We'll start an independent thing."

Mrs. Force looked around and said, "I don't think I can afford it."

She was beginning to think, I guess, of the payroll because it must have cost Mrs. Whitney quite a bit to have supported this project as far as the administration went.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  So far as you know, was there a final report on the New York office?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No. It's part of—well, I just don't know, but it was all embodied in the nation‑wide published pamphlet—you know. I don't remember giving anything but a routine report. We gave these every week or so, as I remember. We had copies of our payrolls that went down to Washington, this kind of thing, but I don't remember any formal written report.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Her reply to charges of favoritism when she announced her instructions—well, there was no indication in the press, as I recall, as to who represented what school—whether modern, advanced, academic, or otherwise.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The employee?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes. There was no list as to who was what. There was in an occasional summary an indication of some person who was doing something, but there appears to have been no attempt to silence something, but there appears to have been no attempt to silence criticism from academic critics who might have been charging favoritism, no indication as to what work was and who was doing it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That was our rebuttal of the attack. We didn't want to get into an argument involving artistic personalities. Then you do get into deep water, and you're obliged to defend somebody and so on. This is the kind of thing Mrs. Force always disliked very much—public judgment except in the form of exhibition, or in the case of employment, but this is a policy that we have continued right along the line. Very frequently we are asked for a written opinion of artists who have worked at the Whitney Museum or exhibited, a verbal opinion, criticism, and we just can't do it. This is not our function. That is the function of a teacher, or a school, not a museum person. A museum person acts. When he publishes a book, then he picks his own subject.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  When museum personnel are in effect running an administrative agency—well, what is good here is that the experience of museum personnel carries over the point where they don't use their position as a governmental agency to silence critics. This is policy on the firing line as distinct from coming out of Washington.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I was interested in a final report. There is a summary of the work -

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I'm not saying there wasn't a final report. So many things have gone on since that day. I might have drafted it. If it was written, I think I probably drafted it because I did most of the statements, things like that, whatever was given out. It could be that we submitted a final report. I have an awful feeling that our records—well, they were probably transferred to Washington. I don't remember at the present time any records in our files. Conceivably Mrs. Force may have thrown away a lot of the material which had to do with our end of the thing—the Whitney Museum's end. This would be quite a character.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's terrible.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I know. It's astonishing how little is left of the records of our past—back, I think, of 1935 when we began to get systematized. I'm thinking of the Whitney Studio Club. We don't even have the catalogues of all the shows of the Whitney Studio Club; in fact, every now and then an artist says, "I've got some old clippings. Would you like to have them?"

We're always glad to have them because we are so incomplete. Mrs. Force was not a systematic record keeper, nor were her assistants. Herman More was an artist. He didn't particularly care for routine work, and he didn't have the kind of mind that likes to keep records. Ned Archer was more so, but he was not an authority as much as Herman and Mrs. Force were. Carl Free was quite unworldly, and I think really the more systematic kind of thing in relation to the Whitney Museum, if I may say so, seemed to come in when I joined the staff on a full time basis. Have I gone into that by the way?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Not yet. In terms of this public experience, I wondered whether later in the development of the WPA from an administrative point of view, were you subject to query as to the experience under the Public Works of Art Project?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  This was a personal thing as far as New York City went. The director of the WPA in New York, if I remember, was Mrs. Audrey McMahon whose husband, Philip McMahon, was a professor at New York University. Anyway, Mrs. McMahon was just as high powered a lady as Mrs. Force, and they were diametrically opposed to each other in every particular. I remember—you know, listening in on a conversation between the two of them from Mrs. Force's and such as I never heard two women engage in before. Mrs. Force really told her off about something. I've forgotten what it was, and I can imagine at the other end, Mrs. McMahon was just being equally forthright. There was no love lost at all.

Actually the running of the Public Works of Art Project was not entirely in keeping with Mrs. Force's beliefs. She was a Republican in so far as she had any political beliefs. She did not believe necessarily in public and governmental support of the arts. Her whole background was private patronage, and she had administered it in relation to American art in a way nobody else had in this country, and she felt kind of a vested right in this—you see. And after the Public Works of Art Project was finished, and she did that because she thought it was a great opportunity, because some of her friends were involved in it and because the Whitney Museum had been chosen to do it—all of that led her to do it, but after that phase was over, she was very violently opposed to the WPA, and she was rather scornful of the standards which she felt they were maintaining. She was more friendly to the Treasury Department Projects where there was more a question of upper level product, and of course many of the artists who were commissioned by the Treasury Department were friends of hers. I don't mean just personal friends, but professional friends, people like John Steuart Curry, Henry Varnum Poore, Reginald Marsh, and so on. These were people she respected as artists. She was very favorably inclined toward that side of it, but she was very critical of the WPA.

I remember at one point we had an exhibition in the Whitney Museum of designs produced for the Treasury Department Project. I think we had actually two exhibitions at the Whitney which were connected up somehow with the Treasury art projects. One was mural designs, as I remember, and one was possibly water colors produced—well, I've forgotten. In spite of the fact that the personal relationship between Mrs. Force and Forbes Watson was still very distant, nevertheless she respected him, and he respected her. He did have an influence, and he got, I think, one exhibition and I think two placed in the Whitney. When it came to later events—I'm getting ahead of the story a little bit, but in 1948, there was all that furor about the State Department buying a collection of American art to be used in exhibitions abroad. This project, I believe, started in 1947. There were two collections formed, as I remember—one was of oils, and the other was of water colors. Leroy Davidson had quite a hand in both, I think, and my memory is that Herman Moore did in the second one, but anyway, there was tremendous criticism of this based on the supposed and alleged political backgrounds of some of the artists, a purely non‑artistic criticism on the part of various members of Congress—I don't remember who it was at that time. It may have been Representative Dondero of Michigan. No. He came later.

I wasn't in on that at the time. I wasn't paying an awful lot of attention to it. Now, wait a minute. I think I did get involved in this because—no, not as early as that, I don't think, but it's a matter of history. These attacks were launched on this whole State Department project. It was in a way an ill‑advised way to go about it. I think the most explosive thing for a government to do in relation to the visual arts is to actually buy works of art because you throw yourself wide open to every hick congressman saying, "Now, look what the tax payer's money is going for!"

This also brought info focus not only the artistic values, but, even more important, the political backgrounds, or slants of the artists. That was the basis of the attack on the State Department collections, and we heard that they were going to be disposed of as surplus war goods, something like this, on a bid basis where public institutions which received, I think, federal money, also state and local money, were given the preference. These institutions were allowed to bid on the pictures in this collection. They were all supposed to be public institutions—universities, museums, and so on. I think that actually the amount realized was about ten cents on a dollar of what had been paid. Well, we heard about this, and this struck us as absolutely outrageous and shameful, that a project like this, ill‑advised as it was, would be handled in this fashion, and we did not necessarily think that the pictures were the best choices that could have been made, but we felt that something should be done about the disposal to uphold the dignity of this thing and not have it put on the auction block, or disposed of by the back door, so we put on an exhibition of these two collections. It was 1948, I believe, and part of our motivation was to try to show these two collections in a worthy kind of way, so that people really interested, institutions really interested, would have a chance to see them and to make adequate bids on them. There were very good things in the collections—Kuniyoshi, a very fine Kuniyoshi, Marsh's work, and so on down the line. We had this exhibition. We were very much criticized for it, but I think it had a great influence in seeing that these works did find good homes on a dignified kind of basis instead of the kind of thing that might have happened as in the case of the disposal of the old WPA pictures.

This, I may say, was the beginning of my interest, my wide interest in the government and the arts because this was a bit of a scandal, and linked with it was—well, I don't remember when Representative Dondero entered the picture, but he became—you know, the greatest exponent of a hundred percent Americanism in the field of art. He made a specialty of so‑called expose of the political backgrounds of artists who participated in any way in the government whatsoever. This was before McCarthy. He was a McCarthyite before McCarthy. I think he was also probably linked up with that radio priest, Father Coughlin. Dondero came from that district, lower Michigan, I believe, and thank God, he's no longer in Congress. He caused a lot of trouble. He and the House un‑American Activities Committee.

I don't remember the timing here. I do remember that at the time of the height of the Dondero crisis when he was most vociferous, hitting about right and left, there was a meeting of interested persons, people connected with liberal artist organizations. Emily Genauer, the critic, was there. She had been attacked very bitterly by Dondero in Congress. I don't know why. I've forgotten the grounds. The A.C.A. Gallery had been attacked by Dondero. Of course, they did start out, as I understand it, as the Artist's Committee on Action. That was their title. The interpretation of A.C.A. is no longer what it was then. It was definitely a leftist artist gallery. It showed the work of Gropper, Evergood, and I've forgotten who else, but the A.C.A. Gallery was one of Dondero's targets. Well, we had this meeting, and I think they asked me to preside. Yes, they did. Emily Genauer gave a very forthright and impassioned statement about Dondero, and what he'd said about her. I think at that time she'd gone down to interview him, when she'd really put him on the spot. I think the interview with him, when she'd really put him on the spot. I think the interview was published maybe later in the same magazine, Atlantic Monthly, or Harper's. A kind of anti‑censorship committee was in process of being started at that point, and I know that quite a number of people connected with it wanted me to head it up and take it over as chairman. I just couldn't. I had so much to do. It never did get formed, and I think it's just as well. This kind of thing is sometimes better taken care of by unorganized wide‑spread ridicule among other things.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's very effective.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  There was one exception to what I said about Mrs. Force's interest in governmental action in the arts, and that was the New York State Art bill. This originated about 1945, among a group of artists—particularly, as I remember, Katherine Schmidt and her husband, Irvin Schubert who is a lawyer and interested in public questions. Holger Cahill was involved in it. Dorothy Miller I think also. I don't remember just who else, but they had conceived this idea to go to the legislature of New York State with a bill authorizing the Governor to purchase works by New York State artists to be used in public buildings in New York State, and by public buildings I mean not only state buildings, but federal and municipal and county buildings, libraries, schools, and so on. It was an excellent plan, I thought. It would have been a pioneer state project. It wouldn't have involved an awful lot of money. There was a committee formed = Mrs. Force was chairman of it, as I remember. As always in anything she chaired, I was second in command and had to do a lot of the detail work. This was a major project. It was my first experience in trying to get some legislation through. It got to be quite well organized—not so much by Mrs. Force herself, as by the interested artists. Hudson Walker who was really the initiator of Artist Equity Association was its father, was very active in it, and there were other individuals. James Sobey was much interested in it, and played quite an active part in it. The Schuberts—well, I don't remember all the personalities. Through Irvin Schubert we got the ear of Stanley Fuld who is now one of the justices on the Court of Appeals in New York State. I don't think he was at that time, but he was an upper level state court judge, interested in art and a great friend of Irvin. My memory is that he got to the Governor possibly through Charles Brietel who was the Governor's—well, I don't know what it is, assistant legislative representative, but who is now also a state public [questions]. Holger Cahill was involved in it. Dorothy Miller I think also. I don't remember just who else, but they had conceived this idea to go to the legislature of New York State with a bill authorizing the Governor to purchase works by New York State artists to be used in public buildings in New York State, and by public buildings I mean not only state buildings, but federal and municipal and county buildings, libraries, schools, and so on. It was an excellent plan, I thought. It would have been a pioneer state project. It wouldn't have involved an awful lot of money. There was a committee formed—Mrs. Force was chairman of it, as I remember. As always in anything she chaired, I was second in command and had to do a lot of the detail work. This was a major project. It was my first experience in trying to get some legislation through. I got to be quite well organized—not so much by Mrs. Force herself, as by the interested artists. Hudson Walker who was really the initiator of Artist Equity Association was its father, was very active in it, and there were other individuals. James Sobey was much interested in it, and played quite an active part in it. The Schuberts—well, I don't remember all the personalities. Through Irvin Schubert we got the ear of Stanley Fuld who is now one of the justices on the Court of Appeals in New York State. I don't think he was at that time, but he was an upper level state court judge, interested in art and a great friend of Irvin. My memory is that he got to the Governor possibly through Charles Breitel who was the Governor's—well, I don't know what it is, assistant legislative representative, but who is now also a state judge.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  A very bright guy.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We got this contact. We got Breitel to sort of give his blessing. Governor Dewey was then Governor. As I remember it, the bill was introduced by Senator McNeal Mitchell in the upper house, and I've forgotten who the sponsor was in the lower house. We met with McNeal Mitchell several times to talk it over. A lot of effort went into this, and a lot of organization. We had meetings—I didn't take part in this myself, but Mrs. Force did and so did Hudson Walker and others, meetings around the state, meetings to try to get grass roots backing, not very many meetings but a few, and they were very enthusiastic. There was a great deal of good feeling about it. I must say that I think we got the runaround from the Governor, from Charles Breitel. Twice at least I know that we went up to Albany, a deputation of us, including Mrs. Force, Jim Sobey, Irvin Schubert and myself to see Breitel, and we got a very pleasant—yes, yes, yes greeting, and nothing happened. The Governor never got behind the bill at all, the way Governor Rockefeller would have and the way Governor Rockefeller did, has done in the case of the New York Council on the Arts. We worked pretty hard on this. I worked so hard on it that I got my first allergic attack which I've suffered ever since. It came during this legislative business because at the same time I was organizing the show called Pioneers of Modern Art in America which was a show that took an awful lot of time. This New York State bill was a big responsibility and a big headache, and as I say, always with Mrs. Force when she undertook anything, I was the person who had to take care of what she called the "melancholy details"; in fact, it reached such a point that I finally had to say to her, "I just can't continue."

At this point she got Hudson Walker to assume the full responsibility. The matter was alive as an issue for about two seasons, two legislative sessions, and we got nowhere. It just died the way so many worthy things have in our country. I remember that in the beginning, this particular initiating group of artists, Katherine Schmidt and her husband, Eddie Cahill, and others interested used to come and meet with Mrs. Force in her apartment to work the details out, to talk this whole thing over. It really grew up. They initiated the idea but it became our baby too through Mrs. Force's participating in it. Here again, it was a case of personal contacts. Mrs. Force was a very personal person, and anything her friends believed in and she could believe in she would get into the fight. She worked hard on it in a public way, making speeches, going around to these meetings, and going to Albany. It was the administrative end of it that I had to take care of.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I gather that her "success" in this venture must have underscored her feelings about the government in art.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  You mean the lack of success. I think so. I think the reason she was interested in it was because it was so practical, so down to earth. It was using the artist's work in a very direct way—not with big committees, no big hurrahs at all, but a very simple, direct and what seems to me a very worthy plan still. I wish that New York State had taken a lead in this. The operation of the present New York State Council on the Arts of which I'm on the advisory board are quite different. They have done no acquisition of work. They've never reached that point. I hope someday they will, but of course they fully realize that this is the most vulnerable aspect of any governmental program in the arts, the actual acquisition of works in art. Instead of that, the present New York State Council on the Arts in my field, in the visual field, has been largely concerned with getting up exhibitions to tour the State in places where there are not many exhibitions and also to a certain extent giving advice about restoration and about the proper exhibition of objects where they are not equipped for this kind of thing, but that's another story, a very recent thing, and I had some hand in that too, may I say.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You said that there was one exception to Mrs. Force's attitude toward government, and that this was it.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Actually, if you want to, pick up next time the Committee on Government in Art. My beginning part in that began just about the time that the New York Art bill failed. It didn't fail, but it didn't succeed. This was in 1948, and this was the last few months of Mrs. Force's life. It had her blessing, but she was very ill then, and she didn't have a hand in it. This is another story.

Whitney Museum, January 18, 1963.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Last time we talked about the Public Works of Art Project, and this brought into play Mrs. Force's attitude in regard to government vis‑a‑vis art which, as I remember it, was that they should be separate. She was, however, open to conviction in one instance in the New York State law. We really haven't got you located in the Whitney Museum yet, but we were pursuing a thought; namely, the relations between government and art. You had your own experience in the Public Works of Art Project, followed by this New York State attempt to get passed the legislature a law which had her support, and in the light of her thinking was quite a departure for her. Then there were other things that came along like the New York Council on the Arts, something on which you're currently engaged.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  A lot of things happened before that. I think I did mention the fact that Mrs. Force was favorably enough inclined toward certain aspects of government in art to give at least two shows—three shows I think—in the Whitney Museum, two shows of works produced under governmental auspices, as I remember, and one for the Treasury Department Art Projects. I don't remember the details, but they are a matter of record. Anyway there were two shows, and the reason she was willing to do this was, I think, her continuing admiration really for Forbes Watson who was very active in that branch of government work. What she was opposed to was, I think, the WPA—that program which she felt didn't have high enough standards, and she was emotionally against it because it was run by another woman, Audrey McMahon. I think I spoke about that. Mrs. McMahon was head of the New York branch, or whatever it was, of the WPA art project, and she and Mrs. Force just didn't see eye to eye on any particular. They were not particular friends. They just struck fire whenever they saw, or talked to each other. I remember listening to one end of a telephone conversation—that is, Mrs. Force's end of a conversation with her of which I have rarely heard the like—really acrimonious. The two ladies were telling each other off—evidently.

I think Mrs. Force felt a kind of rivalry with the government because here for the first time the Roosevelt Administration was doing something for the arts on a far bigger scale than all of Mrs. Force's and Mrs. Whitney's enterprises had ever done. I don't say as intelligently, or anything like that, but it was a tremendous, large scale governmental support of the arts such as no democracy had ever seen in the world before—no modern democracy—and she just didn't like it. If she had been running it, I think she would have felt differently about it, just the way she did about the Public Works of Art Project. She was on the side of democracy in that, keeping the wage scale uniform and not classifying artists A and B and so on. With Mrs. Force this kind of thing was very much an emotional matter. She was very adaptable in many ways, picking up ideas just like that—very open to ideas and always willing to accept responsibility and loving it, wanting to run things, very strong power desire.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Does the word "force" really describe her?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's correct. Of course, that was her husband's name. He was a Dr. Force, a dentist. I only met him once or twice. He died before I knew her well, but she did keep in touch with certain branches of the government activity in the arts—in other words, the aristocracy of it, the Treasury Department Project where the artists were carefully chosen, where there were big projects like Marsh's murals down in the Custom's House and so on. Many of the artists she knew were working in those projects, people like Henry Varnum Poore, Louis Bouche, and Olin Dows who was very active in it, and she knew him somewhat.

I don't know whether I spoke about the Treasury, or the State Department collection of paintings.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In passing, not in sufficient detail for me because this is important for itself and as background for other things that happened.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, it was. The main outline of it was that the State Department in 1946, or 1947, decided to buy a collection of American paintings, contemporary American paintings, to be circulated as exhibitions particularly in Europe, and in fact, they had already lined up showings in Czechoslovakia—this I get second hand, of course, but it's all a matter of record—and it was a good collection. It was formed—well, I don't remember who did form it—by a single individual who was a professor at Yale, and I'm sorry not to remember his name. It was, I think, an excellent collection. It was a little one‑sided, a little too much emphasis on expressionism and on social commentary. There were some gaps in it, but on the whole it was a remarkably fine collection which had been formed by a government agency, and the prices at which it was purchased were quite low. I happen to know that artists made concessions and their dealers made concessions in order to—well, it was a matter of patriotism almost.

This was attacked in Congress, I think, and for the first time the past alleged associations of artists came into the picture—in other words, their alleged affiliations with communists or communist front organizations back in the 1930s. Here we were ten years later and already this was becoming an issue which has plagued us ever since in the government's relation to the arts, and particularly somehow to the visual arts. Congressman Dondero's Michigan district included Father Coughlin's area, the radio priest, who was such an isolationist.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  A miserable fellow!'

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Dondero made a crusade out of this. I don't know whether he came into the picture immediately when the State Department collection came up or whether he came into it a little bit later. He was soon the chief spokesman in the House of Representatives on this issue of the past affiliations, and of how the government should not have bought the works of artists who had been affiliated supposedly with front organizations ten or 15 years before. Well, the result of this was that the State Department took fright, as it always did, and canceled the showing in Czechoslovakia. I heard a speech by the cultural attaché of the State Department stationed in Czechoslovakia about a year after this happened—this speech was at a convention of the American Federation of Arts, I think, in 1948, or 1949—and he said that this exhibition had been shown, I think, in Prague, that it had enormous attendance, that the then President of the Republic had come to it which was very unusual and had spent a whole hour there, had signed in the visitor's book, that the Russians felt that they must do something and they brought an exhibition over to follow. The American exhibition had been scheduled to be shown in two other Czech cities—the three chief cities of Czechoslovakia, and suddenly he got cables from the State Department saying, "Cancel this exhibition immediately!"

He said that it was very embarrassing, but that the cancellation was entirely due to the attack in the House of Representatives. There was a congressional investigation of it. Of course, Harry Truman entered the picture and called the Kuniyoshi—there was a very fine Kuniyoshi in the collection—Ham and Eggs art. Harry was a good piano player, but not a very good art critic, I'm afraid. Well, this was the first occasion where this kind of thing really became a burning issue, and I felt very strong about it. We all did at the Whitney Museum.

Then there was a second collection formed of water colors, and in this, as I remember it, Herman Moore who was curator of the Museum at this time, had a hand. I think he was one of a three man committee which picked a second collection. The government, as I say, took fright and, as I say, decided to dispose of both collections. They disposed of them as surplus war assets, and the system was that any institution which received public funds of any kind whether federal, state or local, could bid on them. It was a regular—just a standard disposal of assets by our government. We felt that this wasn't dignified, that it was harmful to the artists and to American art as a whole, so we requested permission to show the two collections together at the Whitney Museum before they were disposed of, to allow people to come in and see them in a dignified way, shown just like any other collection, and make their bids. We ourselves could not bid on the collection because we had no public funds of any kind. The show was held. It was a good show. It was a very lively show. Bids were put in, the collection was dispersed, and the pictures have found good homes; places like the University of Arizona, for example. They got quite a good collection of things from the State Department collections.

This brought to the fore the whole issue of the government's relation to the arts. Dondero was making an issue of this. He didn't have much else to make an issue of, I guess, and he started a one man crusade. He began attacking the whole art world in general. He wrote long speeches. Evidently someone was furnishing him a lot of dirt—you see, and he wrote and delivered long speeches in which he mentioned artists and their affiliations in the past. I gather that he was relying somewhat on F.B.I records, but also he was being fed material by conservative artists, and it reached such a point that it was quite an issue in the art world in the late 1940's.

I remember that it reached such a point that a group of us called a meeting at which various interested persons were present. There were a good many artists, some of those who had been attacked and others who simply were public spirited. This was about the time that Artist Equity was founded—well, wait a minute. Equity had been founded before this, in the early 1940's , as I remember, or the middle 1940's, and Equity was very vulnerable because many of the people who had founded Equity had been liberals in the past and had affiliations which in those days were perfectly innocent and harmless things. Dondero made a great issue of Equity. He attacked Equity as though it were an underground movement. I think it was Equity that took the lead in calling this meeting. I remember Emily Genauer had been particularly attacked by Dondero, and she got up and told about her experience, what it had meant to her on the paper, that it had caused her embarrassment and trouble. She went down and interviewed Dondero and published the results of it in Harper's Magazine, and it was really very revealing because the man was absolutely ignorant of art. He was simply making a career out of this anti‑communism thing, a McCarthy before McCarthy; as a matter of fact, more intelligent, more systematic than McCarthy was.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But no less primitive.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right—absolutely primitive. All this brought to the fore the government's relation to arts. This was the beginning of the Committee on Government in arts. In the spring of 1948, there was a meeting of the American Association of Museums in Washington, I believe, and there was a panel of four speakers on the relation of various bodies to art—in other words, private support of art, governmental support of art, this kind of thing. I was asked by Philip Adams, who was the chairman of the panel, to speak about the government's relation to art. I decided that I wouldn't just give a theoretical talk. The time was ripe to do something about this, and it struck me that the art world had not yet got together about this issue in anyway, and that the issue might grow increasingly important as time went by. I gave a talk in which I rehearsed the past history of governmental participation in the arts going back to the WPA, and then spoke about the recent attacks. I said that I felt that the time had come for the art world to present a united front and I proposed the formation of a committee of representatives of the leading art organizations of the country, the national organizations, organizations like the American Federation of Arts, the Association of American Museums at which I was speaking, the Museum Director's Association, the American Institute of Architects, the National Academy of Design, and the like. I wanted to bring in artist organizations too—you see, conservative and liberal, Artist Equity balanced the National Academy of Design. This was part of my presentation from the platform. I proposed a resolution that the Association of American Museums should take a stand, that they should pass a resolution, that they should set about forming a committee. Well, as always happens they immediately said, "All right. You do it", and I was elected from there on to carry this effort forward.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Did the idea receive a sympathetic hearing?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Very much so. The one person opposed to it was David Finley who was then director of the National Gallery of Art. He was, of course, the leading representative of a government institution, and he is conservative by taste. I remember that he got up in the audience and said that he didn't think that this would accomplish much, that all we might get were some murals we might not like, and so on. Another person who took a very negative stand was Fiske Kimball who was director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a very brilliant man. Fiske was on the platform with me. He was one of the speakers. They were speaking on government in art, and Fiske made some rather derogatory remarks about the idea, but in the end the audience, the members who were present, voted a resolution to set up such a committee, or to participate in such a committee.

Then I got the American Federation of Arts of which I was a trustee, had been a trustee since 1942, to take the same action. Then I began to form this committee. I formed it really under the auspices of the American Federation of Arts, as I remember. I think I used their stationary because I didn't think it should be identified with the Whitney Museum. I didn't want to be identified with any one institution. I wanted the committee to be made up of representatives of the leading national art organizations in the field of the visual arts, and there were twelve of them altogether. Thirteen of them were approached. I gradually built up agreement on the part of these organizations, and they moved rather slowly because this had to come before their boards of directors and trustees and sometimes before their annual meetings, so that it was through 1948 and 1949 that this committee was being built up. I felt that the only safe way to do this, the fairest way, was not to hand pick this committee, so I asked each organization to itself appoint three members to the committee with alternates in case the representatives each of twelve national organizations with alternates, a committee of 36 plus alternates.

One of the organizations I particularly wanted to get in the picture was the National Sculpture Society which was one of the richest societies in the country. It also is the most reactionary. It has a limited membership. It is made up of highly conservative, academic sculptors, who have a stake in keeping things in the government exactly the way they are because they are the ones who get any commissions that are handed out, and they have always taken a very anti‑liberal standpoint. I went to see Carl Jennewein who was then president of the National Sculpture Society. I had written him a letter and had told him that I hoped the National Sculpture Society would join this committee. As I say, I did this through the auspices of the American Federation of Arts, and I followed this letter up by going to see him and he said that he thought it was a wonderful idea and all that, but he said that the constitution of the National Sculpture Society didn't permit them to take part in anything trying to get legislation passed, or anything to do with the government's relation to art. That was talking out of the two sides of his mouth because actually the National Sculpture Society has done more lobbying on the other side of the fence than any other organization, but for that reason, he said that they could not take part in it.

I said, "You're not going to oppose it, are you?"

He said, "Oh, no. We're not going to oppose it at all."

From that time on, the National Sculpture Society was our chief enemy, and I'm sure that representatives of the National Sculpture Society fed alleged information and misinformation about other artists who had been associated in the past with organizations allegedly left wing. I'm sure the National Sculpture Society people fed that information to members of Congress who for the next ten years were attacking the ex‑left wing art world. The only person who took the lead in all this in the National Sculptor Society was Wheeler Williams, a sculptor, an academic sculptor, very able, a McCarthyite, a pronounced McCarthyite, anti‑Semitic, a real reactionary, and a crusader. He was then president of the National Sculpture Society, and he did everything he could to defeat any proposed legislation, or anything else. He had an in with certain people in Washington. He had the ear of McCarthy, I'm sure, at various times—this, of course, is now in the field of conjecture, but the signs point this way. Dondero, I'm sure, got a great deal of his information, or misinformation from the National Sculpture Society and its representatives. There was a rather small group inside the society which took this stand. It wasn't the whole membership—in fairness to them, but it was the group that was in power.

This story continues because later on they played quite a part in the attempt to defeat any move toward better legislation in the arts. But in the meantime, getting back to the formation of the Committee on Government in Arts, as I remember it was completed about 1949, and we held our first meeting then. I have the compete record here. As in anything like this, it has to be one person who does it. I combined more or less the functions of chairman, secretary, and everything else because you can't just spread things around if you're going to do a job. This was a case which seemed to me where the time element was fairly crucial, that we had to get the government aware of the fact that the art world was united on certain principles. Our first meeting, as I remember it, was held at the Whitney Museum with just a few representatives of the different organizations, and these organizations represented museums, architects, decorators, artists—about half of the organizations were organizations of practicing artists. Well, the committee from then on met about once a month for about, I would say, two years, save the summers.

Our first move was to draw up a statement of principles, a very general statement which I drafted, about the importance of the government's relation to the arts, what it meant in terms of not only a feeling of prestige to the art world, but also what it meant in terms of international relations, that every major nation in the world had some kind of program of governmental support of the arts, or participation in the arts, even though it wasn't always well managed, that we were the only major nation that showed absolute disregard of the arts. This committee by the way, was just the visual arts, not the other arts. Well, we circulated this statement, and with it we coupled a request—this was supposed to be a resolution addressed to the President—and we circulated this to several hundred art organizations throughout the country, artist societies, museums, college art departments, just local art centers and chiefly chapter members of the American Federation of Arts, and we got an overwhelming response. It was really quite amazing, a majority of these organizations, as I remember, voted yes, that they would allow their names to be signed to this resolution as it went to the President. The resolution made the request that the President should set up a professional committee consisting of volunteer professionals, but drawn from the different national art organizations to study the whole question of federal government's relation to art and to come up with recommendations for their improvement. This was a specific suggestion and this, as I say, was agreed to by a majority of these organizations we approached. There was a minority which was afraid, which said that it was none of the business of the government to do this, that it would mean censorship, that it would mean governmental control and all this kind of business.

There was a great deal of correspondence involved in answering these arguments. I think I devoted probably half my time for about two years to this Committee on Government in Art because it involved, as I say, a great deal of correspondence, meetings continually. I kept full minutes of every meeting. I circulated the minutes beforehand as I remember. I made sure that every single organization was represented at every single meeting by sending out formal notices with a return postcard so that if somebody said that he couldn't come, I would then go on to the alternate—you see, and have them attend. I don't think very many committees in this field have ever been so democratically run as this one was. I mean on such a representative basis. The committee itself was on the whole a liberal one and very much in favor of the government doing something about art.

What we did was to—now my memory fails me a little bit at this point; this was over twelve years ago, but my memory is that we transmitted this resolution with all the names, all the institutions signing it to the President. Two members of our committee were George Biddle, the painter, who had been active in the previous governmental art project. He's a brother, of course, of Francis Biddle, and he had been very close to the government, quite instrumental in a number of projects of the government in the arts, and David Finley was another member of the committee representing one of the museum associations. Well, David Finley was chairman of the Commission on Fine Arts in Washington which at that time was the only real art commission in the federal government which is concerned primarily with the design of the City of Washington, with carrying on the L'Enfant plan and with the design of public buildings. It's an organization which goes back to Theodore Roosevelt's day. It has done a great deal to keep the City of Washington consistent in its architecture. It was a conservative body, but I think it has done more in relation to the City of Washington than any other commission in relation to any other part of America.

This resolution—now this is just memory on my part, but as I remember, we put it in the hands of Mr. Finley and Mr. Biddle to present to Mr. Truman, and what happened was that Truman thereupon appointed the Commission on Fine Arts to make this study. The Commission on Fine Arts consisted of something like seven members; David Finley was chairman. The painter member was George Biddle. There was a sculptor member, and there were architects. There were seven members altogether. These members were appointed by the President without any consultation with any of the national organizations. Here was no system by which any outside organizations could nominate these members. There was no representative character whatsoever in this Commission, and it always has been traditionally a conservative Commission. What the President was doing was appointing a commission to investigate itself really. Well, when we got this news, we were very, very angry. People who were on my side of the fence who had worked on this Committee on Government in Art, and they included Charles Nagel who was then Director of the Brooklyn Museum, René d'Harnoncourt, director of the Museum of Modern Art who had long experience in government in the arts, and a number of others, asked Mr. Biddle and Mr. Finley to come up and have lunch with a group of representatives of the different organizations who were represented on the Committee on Government in Arts. About twelve of us got together with them in the Museum of Modern Art for lunch, and it because extremely acrimonious may I say. Charles Nagel who is a very outspoken person told George Biddle that he had misinterpreted the job he had been given by the Committee to present this resolution to the President, that he and Mr. Finley had simply disregarded us completely. There was no provision in the President's order to the Commission to allow an outside body to enter the picture at all in presenting any such report.

Well, we kind of beat them down. The result of it was that Mr. Finley consented to form an advisory body in connection with this report. He had been given authorization to prepare a report on a very broad basis about the relation of the federal government to art, so he did consent to form an advisory committee consisting of representatives of all the twelve bodies represented on the Committee on Government in Art. We met once in Washington. It was a joint meeting of the Commission on Fine Arts and this advisory body. It was very pleasant, and we made some points. We had a draft, as I remember it, of the Commission's report, I believe. I'm not sure about that. This is all a matter of record. I have it all in six or eight books in my office. Actually, all that we accomplished in the final report was that we were allowed to submit not a minority report because we were the majority, but a report at the end of which we laid out the same principles in which we believed and in which we, the Committee on Government in Art had always believed.

The committee's report which I think was titled Government and Art, as I remember, was published by the Commission on Fine Arts—I think in 1953. When we saw how small a part the Committee on Government in Art had had in its preparation, or how small a part we were given in the final report, we decided to draft our own report. We felt that the Commission's report was very timid, that it just was whittling away at things. It made no bold proposals about the use of talents of American artists in the decoration of public buildings. It didn't propose any advisory commissions which would really represent the professions in relation to the government's activities. It wasn't a fundamental document in any way. That was our feeling, so at a series of meetings in the years 1953 and 1954, we, I believed, hammered out a report. I believe I'm not presumptuous in saying that I drafted most of the report, but every single provision in it was agreed to by the members of the Committee on Government in Art at meetings. Subsequently, it was ratified by the different organizations officially themselves—all except one organization of which I'll speak later, the National Academy of Design.

The report, which exists now only in mimeograph form covered the relation of government to art in a very broad way, divided it into five general classes of activities and suggested that in each class of activity there should be an advisory committee which would be made up of professionals primarily who would be appointed by the President, but with nominations from the leading organizations within these fields. For example, if it was a question of the decoration of public buildings by sculptors and painters, the chief national organizations in the field of painting and sculpture would be given a voice in proposing members of such advisory commission, and this would include from right to left. We proposed, for example, the National Sculpture Society, that it should be one of the nominating organizations. The report when it was finally approved by the committee itself was then sent by me as chairman to each one of the twelve organizations, and they in turn—their trustees and directors met, and in some cases their annual meetings met—approved the report. The only organization which did not approve the report was the National Academy of Design, and they did it on the grounds—well, I don't remember just what grounds they did put it on. As I remember, there was a little ambivalence in what they said about the report; as a matter of fact, the then president of the National Academy of Design, Elliot Clarke, was a very liberal man. I liked him very much, and I always found that he was extremely fair in all his dealings with us, but he had a little nucleus of people in the National Academy of Design who were just as reactionary as the National Sculpture Society, and they didn't want anything like this to happen.

In 1954, we transmitted this report to the White House. It was then President Eisenhower, and René d'Harnoncourt and I went down to the White House and—no, wait a minute. I'm mixing things up. It was transmitted in writing to the President, and we received a polite letter from one of his aides, and since then we haven't heard a word from the report, not a word.

However, it's been very widely circulated in mimeograph form. I believe that it has had a good deal to do with the thinking since then on this whole problem because every proposal which has been made since then by other bodies and particularly by the National Council on the Arts and Government has had these basic features of advice by the professionals in the different area and the representation by the national bodies in those areas on advisory bodies through a system of nominations, and this to our mind, is basic. The idea being to prevent the kind of thing that has gone on for years with the Commission on Fine Arts. Where you get a self‑perpetuating body, not so self‑perpetuating in the sense that they elect themselves, but they do see to it that the "right" people are chosen by the President each year. As I remember, there is no fixed term of office. I may be wrong about that, but there is no provision for broadening in any way whatsoever the base or getting different viewpoints, or getting any terminal viewpoints.

Another feature the Committee on Government in Art stipulated was a set term for membership on an advisory body, so that it couldn't be self‑perpetuating. You would serve for three years, and then you couldn't serve again for two years, or something like that. I would like to see this report re‑published, as a matter of fact, because its provisions have never really been carried out so far, though in certain areas they have been. For example, the State Department has set up an advisory body particularly in dealing with international cultural exchanges. This body represents not just—wait a minute. I think it is just the visual arts, a nine man commission. The United States Information Agency has set up a big advisory commission which includes representatives of all the different fields including publishers, musicians, and so on. I take a certain amount of credit for all this. The formation of these bodies is, I think, partly due to the pressure of publicity which the Committee on Government in Art engendered. Also out of the Committee on Government in Art grew the National Council on Art and Government which has been the most active body working for better activities of the government in all the arts.

The National Council was formed—I don't remember the exact year, but I think it was about 1956. Again Artist Equity took the lead here. Artist Equity has a way of stimulating things. They are politically minded, and they called a meeting sometime after our report—the Committee on Government in Art report—had been submitted to the President and no action had taken place. They called a meeting at their headquarters to which they invited representatives of other arts. I went to it. It seems to me that I acted as chairman to it part of the time, but I can't quite remember. Well, a great deal of talking went on, discussion about the fact that we were getting nowhere in our relation to the arts and Clarence [inaudible], the actor, who is very active, of course, in Actor's Equity and in the American National Theater and Academy got up and made a most eloquent speech about the lack of government relation to the arts whereupon I nominated him to be the chairman of a new committee to be made up of representatives of all the arts. This was just reversing what happened to me back in 1948, and Clarence, while reluctantly, undertook the responsibility. This council was organized differently than my Committee on Government in Art. It was organized entirely on an individual basis. We did not ask organizations to officially appoint representatives. We felt that in the field of visual arts this had been done, and that was it, and it was a very cumbersome organization, probably safe, but not the way to do it the next time. The National Council started an organization of individuals in all the arts and many of them very big names, people who were known for their public spirit and their interest in this kind of thing, their experience.

Very soon my friend Harold Weston, the painter, came into the picture. Harold had a great deal of experience in Washington. He had been one of the—I think he was actually the author of UNNRA. He was a great friend of Senator Lehman, and he knew Washington very well indeed. He'd always been interested in governmental affairs. He's a tremendous worker. I've never known such a devoted person in my life. Well, very soon he became associated with the National Council of the Arts and Government. At first he was a vice‑chairman under Clarence who was very helpful indeed, but he couldn't give the time to it that some of their set of us could, and particularly Harold could, and when Clarence thought he couldn't handle it any more, Howard Lindsay succeeded him. Again Howard was very busy with other things and consented to serve only on the condition that somebody else would do most of the work. He himself did a great deal I must say, but the burden of the whole thing has fallen on Harold Weston's shoulders ever since—almost since the founding of the National Council, and he's done a tremendous job. He's built it up now to about 60 members. It has some very important names on it. It has published a series of annual reports and semi‑annual reports which are the only things that exist in the field today of a summary of the status of legislation and action in the field of government in the arts. Harold has had a very active part on drafting legislation.

Now, I'm going back a little bit in my story because before the National Council of Arts in Government was started partly as a result of the Committee on Government in Art report, Nelson Rockefeller who was then with the administration—I think he was Undersecretary of the Department of Health Education and Welfare, as I remember. René d'Harnoncourt of the Museum of Modern Art had close connections with him because Nelson Rockefeller had been an official of the Museum of Modern Art for many years, one of the moving spirits in the Museum of Modern Art, and Rene had always had a very active interest in bettering government relations in the arts. He's always said that one of his reasons for being interested in the American Federation of Arts of which he was long a trustee, was because there was nothing in this country to correspond to the cultural bodies in European countries, and he wanted to be associated with the Federation for that reason. I think it was René who got Nelson Rockefeller interested in the idea of trying to get some action. This was before the formation of the National Council on the Arts and Government and after the submission of our report to the president.

Nelson Rockefeller took a hand in drafting a bill to set up a federal advisory commission on the arts composed of representatives of all the art fields. This was more or less the carrying out of at least one of the purposes which we, the Committee on Government in Art, had proposed. We had proposed separate bodies in each of five different fields of activity. Nelson Rockefeller felt that it was wiser to first set up an overall body composed of representatives of all the arts which would then proceed to make recommendations in other fields and other activities. The bill was drafted. It was sent to Rene and myself for our opinions. I seem to remember that we went down to Washington to see Nelson's successor in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Roswell Perkins, who happened to be an old family friend of mine, the son of very close friends. We discussed the bill. We had some voice in modifying it.

My memory fails me at this point. I remember going down with René d'Harnoncourt again on another occasion, or it could have been the same occasion, and going to the White House and seeing Nelson Rockefeller who had then been transferred to the President's staff—I think as special adviser in connection with Latin American affairs, or some cultural activity—I just don't remember, but we did see Nelson. We saw Roswell Perkins again, as I remember. I'm afraid my memory is slipping a cog right here.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I thought Nelson Rockefeller was special assistant to the President on disarmament matters, though that may have been Stassen. In any event, Rockefeller had moved into the President's staff as a special assistant on some question with international impact.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right, and he moved directly from undersecretary of Health, Education and Welfare to this position in the White House, and as such he took a great interest in this bill. I remember that he said to me, "Well, this is a result of your needling me"—something like that. He's a very public spirited man and has more interest in the arts than anybody else. Certainly nobody else at that time showed the same interest.

A lot of these things went on simultaneously. President Eisenhower put a request for such a commission into his State of the Union Message in 1955, and I think that this was arranged by Nelson Rockefeller with René d'Harnoncourt—well, I don't know what happened to the exact wording of it, but it was part of the President's message. Legislation was introduced in both houses, sponsored, as I remember, by Representative Hollow of New Jersey of the Princeton district, a very intelligent man who ran for Senator a few years later and was defeated, a great loss to the Congress, I think. However, he was succeeded in his own district by Frank Thompson who is now, I think, one of the outstanding liberal Representatives in Congress and has taken a greater lead in legislation affecting the arts than anybody else in the lower house. The bill was sponsored in the upper house by a group of Senators. As you know, the Senate can co‑sponsor bills, whereas in the house they have to be introduced separately by individual legislators. In each case they were sponsored in both houses by very good people. Senator Lehman took a very strong lead in this whole affair.

A number of hearings were held. I testified at a good many of them, so many of them that I really forget how many I did testify at. I used to go down to Washington about once a year. It seemed to me that it always happened around the 4th of July when I was busiest trying to get away for the summer. We had two senatorial hearings in New York. These came later, and this was after the formation of the National Council on the Arts in Government, and in these two cases for a senatorial hearing we got together witnesses. The opposition got together witnesses. One hearing was presided over by Senator Murray from Colorado, a grand old man who was very much interested in music and loved to tell about how he'd gone to opera when he lived in New York as a young man. We had quite an array of operatic talent to testify at the hearing—actors, actresses, very good names. I testified briefly. Then we had another hearing at which Senator Lehman presided. These were subcommittees holding hearings on these bills. This was a succession of bills because they had to be re‑introduced at every Congress—all to the same purpose; the setting up of a federal advisory committee, later changed, I think, to council, a Federal Advisory Council on the Arts.

In the later hearing in New York when Senator Lehman presided over the sub‑committee, the opposition appeared in the form of three representatives of the National Sculpture Society. They insisted on being heard which they had a right to of course. I think it was almost stupid of them not to know that the hearing was going to be held because it had been in all the papers. They felt aggrieved that they had not been notified. Well, three representatives appeared, and the most articulate was Margaret French Cresson who is the daughter of Daniel Chester French, the leading American sculptor of the late 19th and early 20th century. Mrs. Cresson has made a kind of career of anti‑communism. She is like Wheeler Williams, only she has a little bit more time, I guess. I think she must spend quite a little time in Washington just turning over documents and so on to various sympathetic senators. Anyway, she and I had crossed swords because, as I remember it, at the time the Committee on Government in Art report was published, it seems to me, it was violently attacked in the magazine of the National Sculpture Society, a magazine, I think, called American Sculpture. Mrs. Cresson wrote a diatribe in which she so misrepresented things that it was simply ludicrous. It was obvious that she hadn't read the report. She didn't know anything about the Committee on Government in Art. She was just operating purely on prejudice, and her whole burden was that this report, if implemented, would turn the whole art world over to government control by leftists. She hadn't realized, for example, that every commission that was proposed to be set up would be appointed by the President from nominations from organizations like the National Sculpture Society. Well, she got up in front of the sub‑committee, and I was sitting in the front row of the audience. I had testified already. She turned her back on Senator Lehman and the other members of the sub‑committee, and she turned to me, shook her finger at me and said that she had crossed swords with me and she this and that and the other thing—it was really quite an exhibition.

Senator Lehman looked over at me, raised his eyebrows and sort of shrugged his shoulders. I did the same to him. We kind of smiled to each other. She got nowhere really. I remember that Senator Lehman kept saying, "Well, Mrs. Cresson, what has this got to do with -"

She kept going back to the past, to the 1930s, and all the alleged background of artists which is the technique.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I think instinctively you used the proper word—"exhibition."

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Right. It was an exhibition. Well, it got nowhere. The funny thing is that some years later, and this is purely personal, but some years later a cousin of mine by marriage who lives up in Lee, Massachusetts which is where Mrs. Cresson lives, knew that Mrs. Cresson and I didn't get on too well together, but she just decided that it would be kind of nice just to have us to dinner together. I was up there judging an exhibition in Pittsfield, and my cousin by marriage had a dinner party. She invited Mrs. Cresson, and we got along fine. We talked about her father. She's all right. She's just a fanatic—that's all. She's a very pleasant person socially.

Well, so many things went on. This was really a running battle for years. For example, there was the attack on the Metropolitan Museum's sculpture exhibition by the National Sculpture Society in 1951, I think. After we broke our engagement to the Metropolitan, they decided to reactivate their American program, and they started a series of annual exhibitions. There were three annuals and then the whole thing was dropped. The first one was painting, the second one was sculpture, and the third one was drawings and prints, as I remember, or water colors and drawings, something like that. Since then, those exhibitions have no longer been held. It was the sculpture annual which raised all the row. As a matter of fact, it was a very good middle of the road show. It had all the big names. This was an American show of course, and it had all the big names. The jury was pretty well balanced. It had representatives of the National Sculpture Society on it. It also had liberal sculptors on it too, not members of the National Sculpture Society. Well, the National Sculpture Society doesn't like this kind of thing. They don't like to share the honors in any way. They think that if there's a jury on sculpture, it should be composed of their own members.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  What else?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  What they did again was to draw up a long diatribe. This was composed by another woman and I'll be darned if I can remember her name, but she's a sculptor and she is also violent on the subject of communism in the arts. She and a small committee composed a document which is really ludicrous—all about how the Soviets are really trying to overthrow the democracies by supporting abstract art. The theory is that abstract art and all advanced art—what the National Sculpture Society called modern art—is degenerate—you know, it shows the breakup of our culture; it's really Marxist, but they conceal the fact; everybody connected with it is a concealed Marxist, and it's a great plot on the part of the Soviet Union to undermine the democracies by promoting abstract art. This last despite the fact that the Soviets have absolutely stepped all over any advanced art over since 1920, or earlier still.

DR. PHILLIPS; They have a "National Academy of Design" of their own.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The only thing you can do is socialist realism. This is now beginning to change—I see by the papers—but at that time it was absolutely airtight.

The committee which drew this document was a one‑woman three man committee, as I remember, and one of the sculptors who was on the committee was Joe Brown of Princeton. He is a sculptor who is also an athletic instructor and quite a character. He didn't go along with this document in any way whatsoever. Evidently he wasn't consulted, and this attack on the Metropolitan show was published with his name signed to it. He told me over the telephone that he got them to withdraw it, that they would have to draw the whole thing over and leave his name off it. He put up quite a fight. The National Sculpture Society circulated this attack on the Metropolitan Museum on the grounds that it was encouraging modern art and thereby undermining the Republic. It took in the Whitney Museum and it took in the Museum of Modern Art. We were pretty bad people because we had shown some of this horrible leftist art—you see. What they did was to send this document to the most conservative list they could find, including all the members of the Century Club, so that when it was finally published in the newspapers, it had signed to it names of bishops and old retired businessmen, people, I'm sure, who never saw an art exhibition in their entire lives, but it was like being against sin—you know. These people read it—well, some of my friends signed it and I wrote letters to those whom I knew didn't know anything about art and asked, "Did you know what was behind this?"

They apologized. Some very nice people said that they signed it because they were members of the Century Club, and they were against sin. Well, I heard about this before it appeared in the papers. Aline Louchheim as she was then, now Aline Saarinen, was then one of the art critics of the New York Times. She called me up and said, "Do you know what's cooking?"

Evidently she had seen a release—you see, from the National Sculpture Society. She stirred us all up, and on behalf of the Whitney Museum I wrote a refutation. I've forgotten who wrote on behalf of the Museum of Modern art, but there was a statement—both museums published statements. The Metropolitan Museum did not publish any statement. They didn't publish any refutation whatsoever. By this time we had broken off our engagement with the Metropolitan, and we didn't want to have this thing happen in the art world. We brought out these statements which, I'm glad to say, both hit the press exactly at the same time. This is the good thing about having a friend on the newspaper. The result was that it really made the people who attacked the sculpture show look really ridiculous.

I think Alfred Barr wrote the statement for the Museum of Modern Art. He pointed out the historical inaccuracies about the Soviet support of abstract art, this kind of business, and nobody knows better than he about the Soviet Union in relation to art; in fact, he has a lecture which lasts two and a half hours about this, a fascinating lecture about art in the Soviet Union. As I say, this whole thing was a running battle, and it continued right up to the regime of Senator McCarthy. Did I go into the question of the United States Information Agency and their exhibitions?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  In Czechoslovakia?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That was State Department. I think the United States Information Agency had not been started. I'm not sure. Anyway, there were a series of incidents of this kind, but there was one that really brought things to a head. I don't remember the date—it is all in my records—but it was in the middle-'50s. The USIA which had never done much in the field of exhibitions of art abroad did decide to put on a big contemporary American exhibition to be circulated in Europe. They commissioned the American Federation of Arts to organize it on a fee basis, all expenses paid and so on. The AFA went ahead. Now I don't remember—and it's ridiculous for me not to remember—how this exhibition was chosen. Anyway, it was chosen by a committee, and it was a good show. It was a very fair show. It was a good balanced exhibition. It did include a certain number of these "terrible artists" who in the early 1930s might have belonged to organizations later declared communist by the Attorney General. Senator McCarthy got wind of this and began to make an issue out of it the way he did anything like this, began calling up the United States Information Agency and saying, "What about all these pink artists you're going to send to Europe?"

We began to hear a rumor—the American Federation of Arts began to hear rumors that maybe this show wasn't going to happen after all. In the meantime the Federation was proceeding. It got the consent of all the owners to lend the pictures. It had actually brought all the pictures to New York for shipment. A large percentage of the shipment was in New York when we began to hear these intimations, more and more credible, that maybe the show wasn't going to go over after all—to such an extent that we thought we must have a showdown. There was a meeting held in the offices of Ralph Colin, the lawyer, one of whose partners is Samuel Rosenman. Ralph is a very liberal man, a liberal Republican. We held the meeting in his office with Theodore who was then director of the United States Information Agency, two of his aides, and a group of officers and trustees of the AFA. Ralph Colin was himself a trustee of the AFA. The meeting was held in his office. He was a lawyer, and we felt that this was a good auspices. I think the president of the federation at that time was James Schramm of Iowa who was a Republican, also a liberal Republican and had been chairman of a fund raising committee for the political campaign in 1954, I believe. Anyway, he was high up in the Republican ranks and a very liberal man. We went over the whole situation with Mr. [inaudible]. He was quite frank. The gist of what he said was that there was a small minority—that's the way he put it—in Congress which was attacking this show. "If I go through with this show, it means that I'm jeopardizing my budget for the next year."

The USIA has to depend on annual approval by Congress. It's not on a permanent basis which is a very great weakness of our whole situation in regard to our cultural exchange and in regard to all information agencies. He was quite frank about it, and he also pretty much said that he wasn't going to send the show over. Well, we argued with him. We said, "Do you realize what the cancellation of this show will look like abroad and also in relation to the lenders. We're not just going to sit down and take this. We're going to have to tell them why."

He was more concerned about the Congress than he was about either the cultural institutions abroad, or the cultural institutions in this country. The only thing he did consent to do was to refer the whole issue up to the White House. He referred it up—who was the President's right hand man at that time, the ex‑Governor of New Hampshire who later was a little bit in trouble?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Sherman Adams.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was referred to him, and we heard verbally that the answer was no, so Mr. McCarthy had won. We then wrote letters to every lender who had agreed to lend. I've forgotten just what we said, but we made it fairly plain, I think, that it was not us who had canceled this show. It was the USIA, and we gave a pretty good indication of the reason, I remember. It was a long time before we could get out of the USIA in writing that they were canceling the show, or that they would allow us to say so.

In the meantime, the pictures were there. This led us in the Federation to the point that we had to take a stand publicly. The newspapers got wind of this, and a New York Times man, a Pulitzer Prize winner who since then has specialized in the Supreme Court.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Tony Lewis?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes. Anthony Lewis. He called me up. This was still "hush hush" stuff—you see. This was before we really got our answer and before we were able to announce the fact that the show had been canceled. I told him the whole story. I said, "You can't say anything about this."

He said, "I'll use it when I can."

When the show was finally canceled, he published a darn good story. He got wind of it somehow. I don't know how. He was in Washington, and he probably had his ear to the ground. He had specialized, as I remember, in things like this, censorship cases and so on. Well, the Federation decided that the Federation should take a stand, so we appointed this small committee to draft a statement of principles in relation to government censorship of art. The committee consisted of Colin, Alfred Barr, and myself. I think that was the three of us, and Alfred and I really drafted it between us, I think, but we met several times to discuss it. It was a brief statement, but it was a rather basic statement, I think, and it has been used. When it was finally agreed upon by the trustees of the Federation, we transmitted it to all the cultural institutions, the national institutions in the country. We had it published in various magazines and it's been used in various ways since then.

I feel myself that it's partly because of the fight we put up in the American Federation of Arts and the Committee on Government in Art too, to some extent, and certainly the National Council of the Government in Arts, which has always taken an anti‑censorship stand—I think it was the fight that all of us in the field of the arts put up that has changed the government's attitude because the situation now is quite different. This could never happen again. There were several steps in between, however. There was an attempt to cancel an exhibition gotten up by the College Art Association. Let's see—the idea was that American colleges collect, and an exhibition of this would be sent through the USIA, I believe, to universities abroad to show them what American colleges and universities are doing in actually forming collections in modern art. The exhibition included a Picasso, and they actually wanted them to cancel the show because a Picasso was in the show. He's a communist, as you know. I've forgotten what happened. I think the College Art Association took a stand, and I think they withdrew.

Another show was organized by an artist's group, the International Association of Plastic Arts, I believe, or was it the Federal of Modern Painters and Sculptors? There was an old organization in which Harold Weston was a leader. They tried to get this show canceled too, but it had gone abroad already as I remember it. Then came the Moscow show of 1959—I guess. You have dates better than I do.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This is the American Exposition in Moscow?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was, of course, the only time—the first time and the only time that we have ever had a chance to show American civilization to the Russian people. Everybody knows that it was a huge exposition, and a vital part of it from our standpoint was that they were going to have an art exhibition, an exhibition of American art. By this time the atmosphere had changed in the USIA and the State Department. They put the selection of the exhibition in the hands of a four man committee consisting of Franklin Watkins, the painter, as chairman, Theodore Roszak, the sculptor, Henry Hope, who is head of the art department at Indiana University, and Lloyd Goodrich. There was a relationship between the USIA and the State Department which I don't quite remember. The USIA was instrumental in publishing the catalogue, and I think the State Department was the chief agent for organizing the show. I should remember, but I don't. Anyway, we were appointed with presidential approval. The release was sent out from the White House stating that we had been appointed. We met a good many times. We met in the Whitney Museum—in the trustee's room; a lot of things have happened in our trustee's room. I think we should have a bronze tablet there some time of all the things that have happened there. The committee met. The first hurdle we had to overcome was the terribly inadequate space they were going to allot to us in the American pavilion. It was really ghastly. They had a very good modern designer, but he had no conception whatsoever—it was a big firm and I've forgotten who they were. They were going to show the pictures on sort of a jungle gym arrangement; in other words, piping, space divided up by piping with a kind of circular circulation system. You'd just go one way. It was really a maze. There were really no walls. The pictures were hung on these pipes, so that you could see people's heads and feet above and below. You couldn't get more than six feet away from any picture, and the congestion as we learned later on—well, works of art would be ruined.

They could not have been shown that way. They would have been damaged. There was no adequate provision for showing sculpture. Well, right away we were faced with this. We saw the designer, and we told him that his design was all wrong. He almost had hysterics, "You're ruining my design!"

We said, "Well, we won't serve on this committee if these accommodations are given to the show."

We telegraphed, as I remember, to the head of the USIA and said that unless better accommodations were given we would resign.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Was the designer George Nelson?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think so—not him in person, but one of his office, and a very good designer. But they just hadn't given us the right space to do it. Well, through our protest we did get much better space. It was still inadequate, though far better than what we did have, and we had some hand in at least approving the layout of the floors, the floor space and the partitions.

Then came the question of what kind of a show we would send ever. We knew that the Russian people didn't know anything about our art, and that to send over a show as of the present would just bewilder them and probably wouldn't do American culture any good in Russia. It would be self‑defeating, so we agreed to pick a show which went back about a quarter of a century. Anyway, it went back to representational art in the 1930s. It included the American Scene School as represented by people like Benton, Grant Wood, and so on, and it went right up to the present, didn't pull any punches in showing some advanced art, but it was a balanced survey of American art of the past quarter century probably. We didn't make a request for loans. Those were made by the United States Information Agency, but they got an amazing response. Owners were beyond words generous. They loaned top pictures and top sculpture all along the line. Very few things were turned down. It was really an extraordinary record, much better than what we have in a domestic show. There was a great pulling power in this show, of course.

An amusing sidelight was when we were discussing the representation of Lachaise, we all agreed that the great standing figure of a woman which stands in the Museum of Modern Art garden would be the one to send to Russia, although it would probably shock the Russians beyond words because they're great prudes. We decided that we wouldn't try to get it, so thought of something else, but Theodore Roszak didn't take no for an answer. He went right over to Alfred Barr and put it up to him, and Alfred said right away, "Of course, we'll lend it."

This was one of the sensations of the show in Russia. It roused great disgust among many Russian people. They thought it was just outrageous, and I remember having an argument—we had a show here to which we invited the delegations of the United Nations, a show generously arranged by Otto Spaeth, Mr. and Mrs. Otto Spaeth. There was an evening reception, and the delegation came from the Soviet Union, their delegation at the United Nations, and not one of them spoke any English. At least they said they didn't. They had an interpreter along, and I had a big argument with one of the women on that delegation—she was a cultural attaché of some kind—about the Lachaise. She thought it was disgusting. She wasn't talking about the Lachaise that is in the Museum of Modern Art garden, but the much more conservative one which we own, the earlier Lachaise which, to my mind, is a very refined and extraordinary thing. She thought it was just disgusting, and she looked so much like it that I could barely keep from saying that to her. She was a big buxom lady. I said that I thought it was a very healthy and a great piece of sculpture. She thought it was degenerate.

Going back to the Moscow show, we, as I say, selected this show. We had this extraordinary response, and it was all lined up. Rather wisely the government didn't announce the makeup of this show until just before it was ready to ship. When they did, there was a furor in Congress—as there always was. I've forgotten who the congressman was who got up this time. It was either Dondero, or the same kind of man anyway, but he went into a—oh, I know. Of course it was. It was Francis Walters, chairman of the un‑American Activities Committee. He attacked the show on the same grounds that they had always attacked shows. It was like playing the record back again and again and again, records of all the artists that were in the show and the most fantastic misrepresentations. For example, listing Reginald Marsh and the fact that he contributed a drawing for a sale for the New Masses. At one point he called Reg a prominent red organizer. Reg, my old friend, was an absolute a‑political person. If anything, he was democratically minded and anti‑communist, but Reg didn't care about politics in any way whatsoever. This kind of thing occurred all the way through.

The House un‑American Activities Committee then subpoenaed two of the artists who were in the show on the grounds purely of their records—Philip Evergood and Ben Shahn. They would have liked to have subpoenaed Max Weber, but he was pretty old. I think they had a little heart there, since Max Weber was not very well. Jack Levine was the other man of the four that they wanted to get and Jack Levine luckily was in Greece. Levine had been attacked particularly because we had included in the show his picture Welcome Home which is owned by the Brooklyn Museum. It shows a general and certain other dignitaries having dinner together and gorging themselves. It's a satire and a very powerful satire, one of the great American pictures, I think. Well, this had been singled out particularly by = whether it was a newsman, or Congressman Walters—anyway the President was asked—President Eisenhower—at his press conference what he thought of this picture, and he said that it was, of course, a caricature of the military, that it was absolutely untrue. But for the first time in our governmental history the President said, in effect, "I'm not going to censor this show. It has been selected. It's going to go abroad the way it is."

He was badgered quite a lot at this news conference, and he took a very strong stand, but he did say this, "I don't know anything about how this exhibition was chosen, or how the committee was appointed."

This struck me as strange. I went back and found a copy of the news release headed the White House and started out: "With the approval of President Eisenhower, the following committee has been appointed -" This again was July 4th. Everything of this nature seems to happen on July 4th. My secretary was away. It was a weekend, and I thought we must reply to the furor—we meaning the committee. We couldn't take this lying down, and I thought it was a very good chance to publicize the issue of freedom in the arts too. I drafted a telegram in the first place to the President, called up my colleagues on the committee and got them to okay it—all except Henry Hope whom I couldn't reach. Then I drafted a long letter to the President in which I reminded him of the fact that he had appointed us. It was positive letter. It upheld his stand against censorship, said how fine it was, and said that we felt that this was the best exhibition that could have been assembled, that it was the finest show that been sent abroad under governmental auspices—which is perfectly true.

Well, maybe this should be off the record, but the question came of getting the letter signed. It was supposed to be signed by all four of us. My signature was all right. I called up Franklin Watkins in Philadelphia and read the letter to him, and he said, "Fine."

I said, "We want this to hit the press as soon as we can while the issue is still in the air. I've got your signature here, Wattie. My secretary is a good forger."

He said, "Go ahead."

I read Ted Roszak the letter, and he agreed. He said, "All right. Sign my name to it."

Then the question came of getting Henry Hope's approval and signature. Henry is an old friend of mine. I know how he feels. He is very liberal and very—well, just at the drop of a hat he'll fight for liberalism and art. I called him up first at Bloomington, Indiana, and they said that he was out on Cape Cod. I called his house on Cape Cod, and his wife told me that he was out on Massachusetts Bay cruising. She gave me the name of the boat. Then I called up the Boston Marine Operator and said that I'd like to speak to Mr. Henry Hope, such and such a boat, and she said at a certain hour of the day, and I think it was one o'clock—I've forgotten what the system is—they send out radio calls and you can talk on the phone. She said, "I suppose that you know that anybody can listen to this conversation, don't you?"

I said, "Cancel the call, please."

I thought I knew how Henry felt about it, but I didn't want to publicize this issue. The letter had not gone to the President yet, so I called up Henry's wife, and I said, "Don't you think it would be all right if I took it upon myself to sign Henry's name to this?"

She said, "Oh, sure. Go ahead."

This letter which went to the President has one genuine signature on it. The others were all done by my secretary, Miss Francis Manola, who is a bit of an artist herself and a very good forger.

We hit the papers with it and this, as I say, was on the 4th of July week‑end. I had to do that whole darn thing myself, getting an outside secretary to write the thing, sending it out to the press, having it mimeographed and everything else—it was quite a weekend. The whole thing hit the press just about simultaneously—in other words, Walter's speech followed by our reply to the President and our statement. The newspaper opinion was so different from what it would have been even two or three years before. We got the clippings here. They came in because they mention my name, and even little papers out in small towns would say, "What's this all about! This is ridiculous! What has this got to do with art. We're not sending the men over. We're sending their work over"—this kind of thing—how old‑fashioned the whole thing was. McCarthy was dead by that time, wasn't he?

Yes, he was. He had given us our inoculation against Fascism—that's what I always felt about McCarthy. He gave us a mild dose of Fascism and made us immune to it for a long time to come—I hope. The comment was so liberal compared to what it had been, so open‑minded and so much on our side of the case.

Well, in the meantime, however, the House Un‑American Activities Committee had subpoenaed Shahn and Evergood. I knew Shahn's lawyer. Evergood's lawyer called me up and asked advice about it, and I told him that Shahn was represented by this man—I can't remember his name, I'm sorry; anyway, he's a lawyer who has been retained in a great many cases like this, censorship, civil rights, stuff like this, and I told Evergood's lawyer about it. They were both represented by the same lawyer, and on his advice they just stood on their constitutional grounds, not on the 5th Amendment, but on the 1st Amendment, as I remember, and simply refused to answer, to such a point—they had a regular statement doped out and in legal terminology; I refuse to answer on the grounds of such and such and such and such, citing, I think it was the 1st Amendment—the committee got so sick of hearing this that the chairman finally said, "Will you please say next time, 'I refuse to answer on the same grounds as before'" which is what they did, and they never did answer. It was a farce. It wasn't pleasant, and I think they probably have been boycotted in certain fields. I know that there was some question at one time, and I can't remember the exact context, of an artist being excluded from an exhibition going abroad who had taken the 5th Amendment. Some artist, and I think maybe not Shahn, or Evergood, before a Committee of the Congress had taken the 5th Amendment. Whether that still holds true I don't know, but I can't believe it does.

When the Moscow show came back to this country, and by the way, the story of that Moscow Show I'm sure Mrs. Halpert has told—it's a wonderful story—the response of the Russian public and the Russian intelligentsia. When the show came back, I felt that it was in international cultural exchanges such a historic show that it should be seen in this country. USIA cannot publicize its own activities. It's not supposed to use any of its money for propaganda, or publicity inside the United States. It's all for foreign consumption, so we asked for permission to extend the loans and to show it here at the Whitney Museum. They agreed to it, provided we would arrange the whole thing. We wrote every owner, and we didn't get a single turndown. Everyone was willing to extend the loans so that we could show it here. I wrote a small catalogue in which I told the whole story about the attack on the exhibition. I think the show had an effect, more as an event, and the strange thing was that the critics took the stand, "Well, what's all the fuss about! Here's a pretty good road show." What's it all about which was healthy too. It was not a show that was really designed for American consumption. It was meant for a foreign audience.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  As a selected show there was a fairness about the representation of the schools and technique and so on, rounded enough for a culture which was unaware of what we were doing, or what we were up to.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I was glad that we had been able to show it here just as I was glad that we had been able to show the State Department collection before it was dispersed. To my mind, the great lack right now in our international exchanges is the lack of material in the arts going abroad.

As a sequel to this whole Moscow controversy, as I remember it, four organizations representing museums, the American Federation of Arts, and the Museum Directors Association formed a kind of informal committee because again of all this hurrah that had been stirred up about this issue that we thought was pretty much dead. They formed a small committee, and we agreed. We did a lot of telephoning back and forth. I was representing the AFA on it, and I believe we sent some kind of a statement to the USIA. In any case, on behalf of the committee, I requested the then director of the USIA—who was he? It was no longer [inaudible]. It wasn't yet Edward Murrow.  He was a much more liberal man than [inaudible], but his name escapes me, but it's a matter of record anyway. I requested permission on behalf of this committee representing these four museum organizations to appear before the advisory committee to the USIA which was due to meet that fall, 1959. Oh, I know what it was. Now let me get this straight. In the meantime another exhibition had been canceled by the USIA—I wish I could remember the details, but this exhibition had been canceled on the grounds of lack of funds, and again at the last minute. William Zorach was included in this show, and we all jumped at the conclusion that this was because Zorach had been most heavily attacked by the extreme rightists on grounds of alleged previous associations. I think it was on account of this cancellation that this committee was formed, more than just the publicity for the attacks on the Moscow show. Anyway, I asked permission to appear before the advisory committee to the USIA. They gave me great courtesy. I had a prepared statement. The director of the USIA came there to attend. I rehearsed the previous unhappy record of cancellations and so on, and then spoke about the cancellation of this show and intimated that the art world felt that it had probably been because of the inclusion of certain artists that had been under attack. I wish I could remember the name of the director. He was a very liberal man, and he was very much hurt and offended. He said, "I'm horrified and outraged that anybody should have jumped to this conclusion. It really was a lack of funds."

I think maybe this was probably correct. What makes me believe that he probably was speaking the truth was that I met him afterwards out in the corridor. There was a good deal of discussion. They thanked me for appearing before them and had excused me. Out in the corridor I met the director, and I said, "I regret that I was under the misapprehension about the cause of the cancellation of the show, but you know, in the art world we're sort of sensitive to this. We knew that William Zorach had been attacked."

He said, "Who's he?"

This makes me think that the ground for the cancellation was the ground he gave. But the great lack is still more representation of the visual arts in cultural exchanges. The theater has had a lot done for it—I don't mean done for it. They've used the theater, music, ballet, but the visual arts have not been used the way they should be. Now there are a lot of reasons aside, I think, from this issue of communism because after all, many performers in the other arts are equally vulnerable. One thing is the opposition, the people on the extreme right of the art world represented by the National Sculpture Society. By the way, the American Artist's Professional League is now the leading organization of that particular group because Wheeler Williams has become president there and is suing his office to conduct an anti‑communist crusade. At least he was. I don't know whether he's still president or not. May I say that some of his ex‑colleagues in the National Sculpture Society are very glad that he is no longer doing this in the National Sculpture Society. There was a decent element in the Society which did not approve at all of these tactics, like Paul Manship and Walter Hancock. I've talked to these men, and they don't like this kind of thing at all.

Well, where was I? The lack of—well, among the reasons, aside from the virulence of the attacks, has been and is still the fact that it is rather expensive to transport works of art. They are unique things. They are subject to damage and so on, though I don't think that an exhibition is any more expensive than a ballet troop, or a theatrical troop; in fact, much less so—I would think. Then, of course, there is always the feeling I think more in the visual arts than there is in other fields partly because our concept of what a painting is, or a sculpture, change so radically compared even to the changed concepts in the field of poetry, the drama, or the novel. Music is still an art of sound; whereas a painting is no longer a representation of something. It is a physical object in itself with a life of its own. This is something which the public by and large hasn't yet accepted. This controversial character of a great deal of modern art, I think, is one thing that makes the powers‑that‑be afraid to send it abroad to represent us, although there is more going on now. For example, we just heard recently that the Biennale in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which is one of the two great international biennial exhibitions—the other one being in Venice—is going to be financed this year by the USIA. For the first time a government agency has taken over this big show. Whether they will continue to do it, we don't know. Next year comes the Venice Biennale, and we hope that they will do the same thing. These two used to be arranged and financed by the Museum of Modern Art's International Council, but they found that they were so expensive that they just couldn't sink the money into them anymore. They also felt that it was really something that should be done by our government—not by a private agency. The government has evidently come around to this, so things are looking a little bit better. I think the issue of the alleged affiliations of artists is a pretty dead issue. I haven't heard from it in a long time. I hope we don't hear from it again.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There are a number of things you've said that I'd like to go back to, but I think I'll let you escape because we only have a few minutes left on this reel.

Whitney Museum, February 5, 1963

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We spent the better part of the last two sessions on the Thirties and the projection of government into the art field, the developments through various committees within the art field over the years so that the visual arts could have an organized voice vis‑a‑vis government and some of the difficulties along the way, particularly those from the more primitive members of Congress who in their breast beating for purity—whatever that is—somewhat stirred the scene and made for organization at least by way of a corrective, if not—well, you just weren't getting due process of law. That's what it amounted to.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  We took off in the Thirties on the Public Works of Art Project and we've stayed pretty much in the field of government. I thought today it might be fruitful to go back to the museum for its own history and to the period of uninterrupted book writing that had brought you into the museum at least—I guess you weren't then a member of the staff, but part of the museum expressly for monographic studies of artists.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right which I didn't undertake, except one. I was working on a salary in the first place to write my book on Thomas Eakins which appeared in 1933. Then I started a book on Thomas Nast which I have never completed and which I trust I will complete after I retire. In the meantime, and I don't know whether I'm repeating myself at this point, but in 1935, I got very much interested in the problem of Albert Ryder—did I cover that at all?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No, and he interests me endlessly.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I had always liked Ryder's work. I felt that he was one of the genuine poets in modern painting with an extraordinary quality of authenticity, the reality of the dream, not a sentimental dream, but an authentic inner vision which he had—like Blake, El Greco, and on a very minor scale when compared to them, but genuine. What started me on my work on Ryder which has continued ever since was an exhibition held at the Ferargil Galleries in the fall of 1935. This was an exhibition of the collection of the Ryders owned by Frederick Newlin Price who ran the Ferargil Galleries. There were about 30 paintings, as I remember, and it struck me that there were many pictures in the exhibition which were highly dubious from the standpoint of authenticity. I got interested in this, and I began to put together all the information I could find about Ryder. I started out with the two books that had been published on him—one by Frederick Fairchild Sherman back in 1920. Ryder died in 1918—was it then, or 1917? I should know. Sherman published his book about two, or three years after Ryder's death, and up to that point it still was the best book on Ryder. It, I have discovered since, did make mistakes attributing pictures and so on, but by 1930, Frederick Newlin Price who was a dealer and who had bought and sold many Ryders, published a book which to my mind has been one of the most misleading books on an American artist ever published. The story, is as I understand it, is that Price who had no discrimination about whether a picture was genuine or not and possibly not very much conscious about it, gathered all his material together. In the first place, he wrote a series of prose poems, more or less, about Ryder's work in a purely subjective way. That's the body of the text—no facts in it, just very subjective way. That's the body of the text—no facts in it, just very subjective, rhapsodizing about Ryder's work, and the rest of the book consisted of reproductions of pictures and of a check list. The story of the check list which I was told by Maynard Walker who was then Price's assistant at the Ferargil Galleries, was that Price turned over to Walker a whole bunch of photographs and records and said, "Make a check list and include it in the book."

Maynard Walker was young. He had no particular experience in doing such a thing, and he had no great skepticism about it. He told me this himself, that he simply put together all this material—I think it was about 200 items. I have been through the book many times, and I would say that approximately about a third to a half of the pictures in my opinion are very definitely dubious. It does reproduce the great Ryders. There's no question about that, but the record is highly questionable, and it has caused a good deal of confusion. I began to have these suspicions of the Ryder collection at the Ferargil Galleries. Fred Price and I had known each other for a long time, and without necessarily voicing my suspicions too much, I told him that I was thinking of doing a book on Ryder; in fact, I cleared this with Mrs. Force. I said, "I think this is one of the problems with American art of the past which most needs to be cleared up, the question of Ryder, what he painted and what he didn't paint."

At this time the Whitney Museum thought of itself as a museum of American Art from the beginning to the present. It's collection went back to the primitives. We had one painting which was supposed to be a Ryder which turned out to be a forgery which we had bought after the museum was established as a museum—I think about 1931. We had wanted, you see, to fill in the gaps, to fill in the pictures of American Art. We bought this picture from what seemed like a good source, a man who styled himself as an old friend of Ryder's—well, it turned out that everything was wrong about the picture, the story was wrong and everything else. We did add two Eakins' to our collection through me—well, one of them through me, the portrait of Fitzgerald, a very important Eakins, which we sold later on, and another Eakins which I didn't pass on. I would rather have had the museum buy the picture called Max Schmitt in a single scull which is now up to the Metropolitan Museum. It was offered to us, and I think it's one of Eakins' finest early works, but the members of the staff disagreed with me. I wasn't really consulted about this purchase at all, although I was writing a book on Eakins at the time which shows a little bit some of the lack of organization within the Whitney Museum at the time. I was an outside member of the staff doing research. We did also buy an early Winslow Homer in those days. I think it was then. I can't quite remember when we got it. Later on we had a very fine early one. Well, we then thought of ourselves—you see, as an institution which covered the whole history of American Art with an emphasis on the present. My own work up to that time for the museum had been chiefly in the field of the past, writing and publication of the past, although in seeing Mrs. Force as I did once a week or so, I think I was to some extent one of her advisers in the whole field, including the contemporary field.

Well, I talked to her about this Ryder problem. She was always tremendously quick to pick up an idea, and she agreed that it was an important thing to do. Temporarily I laid aside my work on Thomas Nast, and also in the meantime I had begun to think about Winslow Homer. I don't think I started my work on Homer at that time. I think I got involved in this order—Nast first back in 1929, or so; then Eakins just about the same time; then various research projects, and then this Ryder problem. Well, I talked to Fred Price, and he consented to lend his pictures, about 30 or 35 of them, for x‑ray and examination scientifically. I had become friendly with Sheldon Keck of the Brooklyn Museum who was the technical expert there and also with John Baur who was the curator of painting of the Brooklyn Museum, both of whom have since become my very good friends, and Jack Baur is now my associate director of the Whitney Museum. We were all interested in this problem. The pictures were taken over to Brooklyn, and we gave them a thorough examination. They were all x‑rayed, and they were examined scientifically chiefly through microscopic examination which shows the different layers of pigment and of varnish in a painting. In other words, you get the inner structure of the picture as shown in a small sample examined under the microscope. You see the various layers of pigment. In the beginning we were completely at sea. The confusion in the whole Ryder situation was such that you couldn't tell which were the genuine ones on which to base your judgment, and, in fact, certain pictures which were examined at that time, which in my opinion now are completely spurious, I accepted with some reservations at the time because there wasn't enough data about the technical characteristics of Ryder's work. I worked there for several weeks with Sheldon Keck and Jack Baur coming in every now and then to sort of look things over and to sort of confirm and advise with us. I came to the conclusion that a large portion of the Price collection of Ryders were false.

The pictures were then returned to Mr. Price, and he suspected, I think, that I suspected, and he began to pressure me to tell what my opinions were. I did not feel that I was prepared to do so yet. My work on Ryder was still in the beginning, and the whole situation was so confused that I simply stalled him off. He began to get more and more insistent. Finally he wrote me a letter in which he said that he had consulted his lawyer, that he had certain legal rights, that I was holding up the sale of these pictures by not giving an opinion, and he intimated some kind of legal action. I wrote him a letter in which I told him that I had never promised to tell him what my conclusions were, that I could not be held responsible for failure to give an opinion and that this was the end of it. I didn't hear anything more from it except verbally, and I know that he has ever since been extremely hostile and has always said that I don't know what I'm talking about, that I'm taking upon myself the role of a Tsar, and so on and so on.

From that point on I began to work as systemically on Ryder as I could because it was just about the time I joined the staff of the Whitney Museum as a working member, working in the museum, so that I had less time to give to the Ryder problem and to examining Ryders than I did before. I don't remember just when I did join the staff. I was being paid right along. I was being paid five thousand dollars a year from back in 1930, as I remember. Anyway I joined the staff. I think what happened was that my association with Mrs. Force during the Public Works of Arts Project, 1933‑1934, threw us together in an administrative way. She first proposed to me after the Public Works of Art Project had folded up that I become sort of assistant director. I think there may have been some element of wanting to have an administrator with whom she had worked in those other rather critical areas. Then she thought that over, and she decided that it would be too difficult in relation to other members of the staff, that it would be putting me in a position which would be getting between her and the other members how were Herman Moore as curator of the museum, who was older than myself and had been directly on the staff of the museum since the beginnings; in fact, since the first incorporation, and Edmund Archer who was associate curator, and Carl Free who was a curator of prints. She thought it over, and she thought better of this idea, so she said, "I'd like to have you join the staff in a regular way, but what can we do? What do you want to do?"

I said I wanted to do research. I wanted to write. I'd be glad to help get up exhibitions, especially exhibitions in the historical field.

We cooked up the title of research curator which was ridiculous because you can't curate research. I don't think anybody else ever used this title again, and I'm glad they didn't. Anyway, I was research curator for about from 1935 to I think about—well, I can't remember exactly—until I became associate curator, or straight curator, or associate to Herman Moore; in other words about, I guess, six or seven years. Well, in that capacity as research curator, I primarily got up certain exhibitions in the historical field, but I also became more and more on an equality with everybody else on the staff. We had a system of having staff meetings once a week with Mrs. Force presiding, and in those staff meetings we discussed all our mutual problems. Very soon I was on the same basis as everybody else in relation to decisions about contemporary art which of course never stopped being my interest.

Well, to go back to my work on Ryder. I continued it, and I have continued it ever since. It's been a long, long process largely because of time—the element of time with administrative work interfering, but through the years whenever pictures presented themselves for opinions I would take them, have them examined, working always with Sheldon Keck at the Brooklyn Museum. Sheldon was generously and kindly and without any financing consideration whatsoever, except payment for the cost of the x‑ray film, would x‑ray them, and we would examine them together. We did this in a sort of spotty way through a good many years. In other words, we gradually built up a knowledge of Ryder's technical methods through x‑ray and scientific examination. We found that a chemical examination didn't prove anything particularly; in fact, we didn't need to find out because Sheldon knew that already. I didn't realize it, but I thought it might be helpful, but he pointed out that most of the pigments used by artists of the past hundred years or so have not changed very much, and the chemical examination is chiefly to distinguish between pigment used way, way back, or rather pigments not used way back which are now being used, such as Prussian blue which was not in existence as I understand it before a certain time in the 19th Century. The presence of Prussian blue in a painting, therefore, was kind of a beginning hint as to when a picture might have been done, but chemical examination didn't help with Ryder. The chief things that helped were in the first place x‑ray and in the second place, examination under ultra‑violet light which discloses repainting. The ultra‑violet light penetrates, to some extent, beneath varnish and shows the surface condition of a picture. There was some infra‑red photography done which goes deeper into the surface of a picture through the varnish. Ultra‑violet is stopped by varnish, and you get a general overall fluorescence. If it's uniform, it shows that a picture is heavily coated with varnish and has not been touched since. Re‑touching on top of that will show very dark, and you can see immediately what has been done recently and what has not. Then there was microscopic examination which, I think was just about as valuable as the x‑ray examination. However, I do think the x‑ray was quite fundamental. Ryder was a painter who had a very strange technical methods, very bad technical methods. In the first place he worked over his pictures for years. He kept them in his studio even after they had been sold, and many people had paid for pictures and weren't able to collect them until years afterwards, and in some cases not until years after his death. He kept them by him and worked over them continually. On the whole, he enriched them in this process. It was his way of painting. Sometimes he ruined them—not entirely ruined them, but hurt them, but this was his method and of course it shows up in the x‑rays. In a typical Ryder x‑ray you get a tremendous accumulation of pigment, a building up of forms of the picture. It's seldom as clear cut an image in x‑ray as you get in the case of direct, more facile painters, people like Sargent, or some of the old masters like Rubens, Van Dyck, and others who painted efficiently, very directly, and there it is. The underpainting shows up very clearly. You see the actual brush work, the individual brush strokes and so on. With Ryder you never get that. You get a kind of woolly soft edged composite of all these layers of pigment which have been put on. What you get, of course, is the image of the metal components of pigment. In other words, the x‑rays do not penetrate the metal in pigment. Therefore, you get what is chiefly either white lead, or zinc white as it exists in pigments, or mixed with pigments. This corresponded pretty much to the light and dark structure of the picture because white lead or zinc white is usually used as a component of colors which are in the light areas of the picture. Well, in Ryder's case it is often a very confused image, but usually it exists even though the x‑ray shows many changes and laborious overworkings and even complete confusion. Some x‑rays you just can't figure out anything except that the picture has been worked on a long time.

On the other hand, the x‑rays of most of the forgeries that we came across proved to be quite different. Forgeries are produced by a method which was supposed to make the picture look like Ryder. The forger would paint quite directly. In the first place, I think that most of them prepared a very heavy ground usually of [inaudible], or maybe of white lead, to simulate the thickness, the heavy accumulation of paint that you find on a genuine Ryder. Most Ryders do have a tremendous accumulation of paint on them, and the forgers would begin by building up something that looked like that but very simply, just a uniform covering. Then they would paint the actual picture on it usually fairly directly, not more than two or three sittings usually, whereas Ryder's pictures were usually worked on in certain cases hundreds of times. Then they would cover the whole thing with dirty varnish, and the varnish was supposed to make the picture look very old. It was supposed to make it look like Ryder's dark tonality. Sometimes I think they must have done things like putting a picture in an oven and baking it to produce crackling. Sometimes the mere fact that they varnished a picture or painted—well, let's go back. They may have painted one layer on top of another with the paint still wet and before the paint had dried it sealed the top surface, so that when the top surface dried, the bottom surface was still liquid, or fluid, and cracks resulted with contraction of the top surface and the pulling apart of the lower surface. The same result was achieved by putting on varnish fresh over wet pigment, so these various methods produced cracks. I think in certain cases they also took certain pictures on canvas and probably rolled them to produce crackling. This crackling when you examine it really carefully, is quite different from the crackling you see in a genuine Ryder which has taken place over the years through changes in the international structure of the picture, contraction of the top surface and drying out of the top surface. The look of really old crackling is really quite different from this synthetic crackling which has now been produced by a forger.

The x‑rays of the forgeries usually show pretty black surface—the underpainting, uniform painting underneath. In general, they don't show any real buildup of form such as you see in the x‑rays of the most heavily painted Ryders. Now this rule is not cut and dried. It isn't like an x‑ray of a broken leg. You can tell a leg is broken, but in the case of an x‑ray of a forgery and a genuine picture, you can't always tell, especially if an artist is as unpredictable as Ryder was, but by and large the x‑ray has been the best weapon to use in this whole thing.

Well, through the years I began to build up this kind of knowledge. Since the beginning of my work on artists of the past I have worked out a system of keeping notes. From the very beginning I realized—and this went back to my work on Thomas Eakins in 1930 and on—I would make a sheet, an individual sheet, size 8 1/2 x 11, to fit into a ring book, each one devoted to an individual picture. I would put down every bit of relevant information I could find about that picture such as exhibitions in which it had been shown, reproductions in books, magazines, and catalogues, mentions in publications of all kinds. Anything anybody told me who had owned the picture of its history, as they knew it, changes of ownership, dealer's records related to the sale of such a picture. In the case of Eakins, this was a very simple process because his pictures had not been sold very much. Mrs. Eakins still owned a large proportion of them, and she had given to what was then the Pennsylvania Museum of Art which is now the Philadelphia Museum a large collection of his very finest works, a very generous gesture. That was in 1929, late 1929, or 1930. These pictures had not been reproduced very much, or exhibited very much. My chief job with Eakins in building up a catalogue raisonné of his work was simply to examine the pictures, to record them, to put down what Mrs. Eakins told me about them and what the owners had to say. In most cases the owners were sitters for portraits who had been friends of the Eakins, and I would record whatever they said about the picture on these other sheets. Sometimes my catalogue pages on a single picture were under ten pages written closely on both sides. It sounds ridiculous and laborious, but it's the only way to really say that you know the history of a picture.

In the case of Ryder, I continued and expanded this method because there had been a great many more exhibitions in proportion to the number of pictures than there had been with Eakins. Ryder's work had been better known in his lifetime and after his death. More sales of his work had passed through more dealer's hands in proportion to its members. I think that Ryder probably painted only about 165 pictures in his whole life. That's the count I have now. Many of these are very small, very unimportant little things, sketches and unfinished pictures and so on. Then in 1947 came the 100th anniversary of Ryder's birth, and we decided to put on a centenary exhibition. In preparation for that, I already had accumulated a good deal of information, and I managed this show. I took care of all the correspondence for it, inviting the pictures and so on. I wrote the catalogue. I did my best to be absolutely sure that every picture in the show was beyond question. It shows how confused the whole state of opinion was. I included in that show at least two pictures that were forgeries. One of them was a strange case. There had been a 19th and 20th Century painter called Charles M. Dewey who was a friend of Ryder, and I never could figure—I must look into the legal records and see whether he really was Ryder's executor, or whether he just appointed himself as such, but he did take a number of Ryders from Ryder's studio after Ryder's death, and they later went on the market.

Well, in studying the pictures that passed through Dewey's hands, I discovered that a number of them had been repainted by another hand. The color, the touch looked like Dewey's work. There's a painting in the Carnegie Institute which they bought recently, within ten years, which passed through Dewey's hands, and I have x‑rays of the picture. The structure underneath is typical of Ryder. The painting on the surface is absolutely untypical. In my opinion this is a half‑finished Ryder which Dewey worked on after Ryder's death, and the surface which you can absolutely not be called Ryder anymore. One of the pictures which I asked for the exhibition of 1947, was a picture called Autumn Meadows" owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It had been brought by my good friend Bryson Burroughs who was curator of paintings in the Metropolitan Museum in the 1920s, and for a fairly good figure. It had been bought from a collector who had bought it from Dewey. It was signed Ryder. Well, to my mind—maybe this indicates that I was not enough from Missouri at the time—but this struck me as a pretty unimpeachable history, so I took the picture in the show, but as soon as it was hung I began to have suspicions about it. As I say, it was singed Ryder.

I thought of this exhibition partly not only to honor a great artist, but also as a means for me to continue my work on Ryder. Here was a gathering together of about 50 or more Ryders—the largest show which had been held since the Metropolitan Museum show in 1908 after Ryder's death, so I got permission from the owners to x‑ray the pictures. I secured the generous cooperation of the Metropolitan Museum. At that time the Metropolitan and the Whitney were more or less engaged to be married. Francis Taylor who was then director generously allowed me to use the x‑ray man who came down and x‑rayed, or maybe I had the pictures delivered—I can't remember, but they were x‑rayed by the conservation department of the Metropolitan Museum for no expense which is a very nice thing. In this way, we accumulated a great deal of x‑ray material on pictures which had not previously been done. Among the pictures we did was this "Autumn Meadows from the Metropolitan Museum itself and to my amazement the x‑ray turned out to be practically blank. The picture to the naked eye looks as though it had quite a lot of pigment on it. It's a subject very much like Ryder's famous Forest of Ardennes which is a picture beyond question. There's no question about that picture because it has a history going way back.

Well, what does this make out of Mr. Dewey? Here's a picture signed by Ryder which has none of the characteristics in its structure of Ryder. At first I had thought that maybe this was one of the cases of one of the pictures that Dewey had taken away from Ryder's studio and had finished, but it looks to me as if this picture had been done right from the ground up by Dewey, especially since it's signed. That began to give me more suspicions. There was one other picture which came from Chicago. I don't remember just exactly what the title was, but on an examination such as we could give it in relation to other pictures, this pictured turned out to be in my opinion a forgery also. Then I also borrowed a number of pictures which I suspected for various reasons.

Let me say at this point that one of the features of this exhibition was a whole gallery devoted to the problem of authenticity. I showed on the walls photographs of certain paintings which were either genuine or not genuine. I showed alongside of them their x‑rays, not the film itself, but a print of it. I had a certain amount of written material on the walls explaining what x‑ray meant and what it proved, or what it did not prove about authenticity. By this time I had been given certain dubious pictures by owners who brought them in and when I told them what I thought about them and showed them the x‑rays they would say, "Well, what am I going to do with it?"

I'd say, "Well, if you want to get it off the market, give it to the Whitney Museum, and we'll build up a collection of forgeries."

In certain cases this happened, so I had some material there. I was actually able to exhibit a couple of actual forgeries owned by the museum so that there was no question of libel, or anything like this, with their x‑rays. It was kind of an education show. I enjoyed doing it, but it helped to clarify things in my mind too. Well, I also tried to show the processes by which anybody who studies the work of an artist of the past who isn't living anymore and to whom you can't go and say, "Did you paint this picture, or didn't you?"

I tried to show the process by which you reconstruct his life work—that is, primarily by the contemporary records in the form of publications, reproductions, dealer's records, dealers who may have been his dealers and got the pictures directly from him whose records would show when the picture was received and this kind of thing. All this material brought together in the physical form of this book—that is, each picture with an individual sheet, or a series of sheets, and the whole thing put together to reconstruct the history of the picture as far as it can be reconstructed. I tried to show this graphically on the walls of the exhibition gallery that we devoted to the question of authenticity. I took one particular picture, I remember, and I think it was The Temple of the Mind and I showed the various documentation contemporary with Ryder's life which proved that this picture was beyond question. Reproductions back in the 1890s and this kind of thing—you see.

Well, during the exhibition I borrowed, I suppose, 20, or 25 paintings of which I had doubts which I had not included in the exhibition. I thought that this was an opportunity that would not recur to examine these pictures in relation to a large body of genuine works. There were two paintings—well, there were three paintings in the [inaudible] Gallery of American Art. One of them was a version of the famous Ryder called Constance which is a picture with a long history, no question about its history, its authenticity. It was owned by the Boston Museum. It was in the show. Another version of it had shown up after Ryder's death in the hands of a Mrs. Charles Fitzpatrick. Mrs. Fitzpatrick was an amateur painter. Her husband was a carpenter. They lived below Ryder in his studio in New York. They became his close friends, and they took care of him. They were very fond of him. When he was sick, Mrs. Fitzpatrick nursed him, and when he was old and sick, they took him into their house out in Elmhurst, Long Island, and he lived there the last two or three years of his life and died in the house. Mrs. Fitzpatrick was evidently a very kindly woman. She was also a painter, and she painted pictures rather like Ryders. Well, I'm afraid—I'm sorry to say—that I think she painted deliberately a good many forgeries too. The particular picture I was about to talk about which is a version of Constance appeared in her possession after Ryder's death. It's a large picture. It's just about the size of the authentic version. It was bought by the [inaudible]Gallery of American Art, or rather by Thomas Crocker who was a partner of J.P. Morgan, or the Morgan firm, who was then forming the collection which later became the [inaudible] Gallery collection. I think he bought the pictures for the [inaudible] Gallery. He had bought this among other pictures, and had paid a very big sum for it. I suspected it from the first time I had ever seen it. It was very thinly painted, and the color was mostly right for Ryder. I asked the [inaudible] Gallery for the picture. They sent it down, and we had a chance to put the two pictures together. I asked Bartlett Hayes then director of the Andover Gallery and Charles Sawyer who had been director to come and look at the picture with me, and there was no question in their minds that this second version was a forgery, a very clumsy forgery, very thinly painted. The color was all wrong. The figures were badly drawn. There was hardly any pigment on it compared to the other picture, and they agreed immediately. I believe that the picture has now been withdrawn from the exhibition.

There was another painting which was quite serious—a little picture called Toilers of the Sea. This painting—it could be called the best known Ryder in certain ways. It's been reproduced again and again. It's history goes back further, I believe, than the Fitzpatrick picture. It was picked time and again as "the" Ryder. For example, the Harper Encyclopedia of American Art, as I remember it, reproduced this picture for a Ryder. It's been included in exhibitions. The worst thing that happened was about 1930. The color print firm of Jaffe of Vienna did at that time just about the finest big lithographic color prints. They've done Bruegel. The great prints have been done by Jaffe. Jaffe had a branch over here, and I don't know who thought the idea up of an American portfolio—big, superb, framing prints of some of the top works of American painters of the past and the present. Well, the committee that picked these pictures as I remember it—well, I know Mrs. Force was on it and I believe Harry Wehle of the Metropolitan Museum, curator of paintings, and Alfred Barr, and they picked on the whole a good selection of works. Unfortunately, they picked this fake Ryder, so that now this print which is a beautiful print is one of the two or three good fine prints of Ryder, and it isn't Ryder. I see this picture all over the place, and every time I see it, I feel like saying to the owner, "Take that off the wall."

Well, the painting is obviously an old forgery. It's nearer Ryder's technique than most of the forgeries. My theory about the forgeries is that: in the first place we know that they started during Ryder's life time. I don't know whether I'm repeating myself here or not—because in the year 1915, Ryder wrote a letter to a collector called Morton, a friend of his, who owned about fourteen Ryders. Morton was not only a collector but also a personal friend. In this letter which still exists Ryder says, "I have been informed that there are certain forgeries of my work, and I want you to know that every picture that you own is genuine", and he lists the pictures, gives their sizes and a brief description, an invaluable document. I wish we had more of that. I wish he had done that for every picture he painted, but the Morton pictures are beyond question. Where was I?

We have proof that Ryder was being forged in his own lifetime, and I have examined a good many pictures which have histories going back to very nearly after his death. I don't think I have found any picture of which the history goes back into his lifetime yet that I consider a forgery. That doesn't mean that they don't exist. It just means that they were not sold during his life time, or maybe the people didn't dare sell them while he was still alive, or maybe they were sold in small firms which didn't keep any records, were never reproduced and things of that sort. The early forgeries are pretty good. The painters looked at Ryder's work, and they tried to be conscientious about it. They built the pictures up to some extent, not as laboriously as he did, nor over the period of years. They are much more direct paintings, but they did have some elements of his style. Then as the years passed my theory is that they got further and further away from Ryder. The whole situation got so confused that they didn't know which was Ryder themselves. I'm sure this is the case. The typical Ryder forgery is a moonlight marine, a ship sailing all alone underneath a moon, and it's usually in a very bad shade of sort of apple green, very crudely painted, very badly designed, very badly drawn, and these exist, I suppose, by the hundreds. I have records myself now of having examined something like—oh, I must have examined 3- or 400 pictures which I don't think are by Ryder, maybe more—I haven't counted them. Well, in my opinion this picture in the [inaudible] Galleries Toilers of the Sea was one of the old forgeries; in fact, its history does go back to about 1920, as I remember. It was included among the group that I examined in connection with the 1947 show. I came to the conclusion that it was not right. I had felt that beforehand. So had certain other people, as a matter of fact. Sherman questioned it, for example, and when my two colleagues from the [inaudible] Gallery looked at it, they felt more or less the same way, but I regret to say they still exhibit it at the Gallery. I wish it wasn't exhibited.

I haven't yet published my catalogue. When I do, I will try to say a few words about that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Were you able to get a chance to x‑ray the collection that Morton has?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  His pictures were disbursed before I began my work, but I have examined them individually.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Ryder himself indicated that these were real.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. The largest body of pictures which I examined at that time and the most contentious was a group owned by Mrs. Frederick Fairchild Sherman. Sherman was editor of Art in America and had written many books on American artists, including a book I referred to, published in 1920, on Ryder which included a check list of Ryder's work as he conceived it. He also had been something of a dealer. He had bought Ryders and sold them. He bought some American paintings. I'm afraid he did not suspect the problem of authenticity as much he should have. Later on he did. He did publish in Art in America in the 1930s, a list of suspect Ryders. I think he called the pictures erroneously attributed to Albert Ryder, and by this time he had become more aware of the problem, but when he bought his Ryders it was in the early 1920s, and he wasn't suspicious enough. I have never questioned Mr. Sherman's integrity, or his good motives. I think he simply didn't realize the extent of the forgeries. The result was that Mrs. Sherman—he had died earlier—his widow still owned about six pictures all of which I suspected and therefore I didn't include them in the show, but I asked Mrs. Sherman if I might borrow them during the show and examine them in relation to the other pictures and x‑ray them. She consented. The result of my examination and x‑ray was that I felt that every one of them was a forgery, a very painful thing to have to tell Mrs. Sherman. She was in her late-60s, or early-70s, and she came to see me. I told her what I thought. I showed her the x‑rays, and she was a good sport. She said, "Now I'll have to go out and get a job."

Mrs. Sherman is still living. She's in her 90s, and I respect her a great deal. She was very generous to me. She turned over all of Mr. Sherman's material on Ryder, and this has been invaluable. For example, there's a portfolio of photographs going back to the 1920s of Ryders and near Ryders, pictures that Sherman thought were forgeries and also pictures which he didn't suspect were forgeries, but he had the photographs. In the case of Ryder the photographs are very important because his work has been not only worked on by restorers—it's deteriorated in many cases—but also he himself worked on it. Now, for example, the famous painting called MacBeth and the Witches—this was photographed by Peter A. Juley, the earliest and most important photographer of works of art—oh, it must have been about 1910. Well, the negative still exists, and I have prints from it. It shows a picture quite different from what it is now Some of the changes I'm pretty sure were made by Ryder himself, and others are clearly made by restorers since Ryder's death. He even changed the shapes of the clouds in the sky—stuff like that. By this time the surface of the restorer's painting is such an integral part of the picture that it could never be taken off. The picture is not the same picture. It's a great picture—no question. It's still one of the great Ryders, but it's not the picture that Ryder painted entirely. The same is true of many others. I've made a point of trying to get together all the photographs available of Ryder's work at every stage I could find. I think I probably have, barring pictures where the photographer has gone out of business and the negatives have been destroyed, practically all the photographs taken of every Ryder, and it's extremely interesting to compare them during the exhibition. I made very voluminous notes of the pictures. I got a secretary and standing in front of the pictures dictated my notes. I also had all the photographs in front of me, and I compared the picture as it existed at the time with the earlier photographs and came to certain conclusions about what must have been done in the way of restoration and so on—all of this material is in my files. Every time I look at it I get qualms. It's so voluminous I can hardly face it myself, but in the case of Ryder I thought that it was necessary.

Well, to continue about the story of Mrs. Sherman's Ryder—I don't want to go into too much detail, but she did question this later on, and I examined the pictures again at her request with Sheldon Keck and John Baur, and we all came to the same conclusion—although Baur and Keck did not feel that they could speak about them in the same way I could because as they both frankly said, "We have not studied Ryder's work the way you have."

They had their doubts, and they reported this to Mrs. Sherman. It's been a very painful episode all along the line, and I'm sorry that it happened. It just shows what happens when forgers take advantage of people.

In the meantime, I also had done the same kind of work, or started the same kind of work on Ralph Blakelock. Blakelock is the most‑forged American artist, except Ryder. They were born in the same year—1847, and in the spring of 1947, we had a Blakelock centenary exhibition, and the same problems were involved only I hadn't had the long work I had had on Ryder, but it was very interesting, the same problems exactly, except they are worse because in Blakelock's case, his pictures had been forged earlier when he was still living and when he was in an insane asylum because he couldn't get enough money out of his work to keep his family, and yet when he was put away in an insane asylum they began to forge his pictures which is a rather ironic and horrible story in American art. In fact, his daughter's work—his daughter, Marilyn Blakelock, was a painter in her own right. She painted very much like him, and dealers would buy her pictures and forge Blakelock's signature on them. She ultimately went insane too. She helped to support the family by selling pictures, and when she found out what was happening, this was the thing that unhinged her. In the case of the Blakelock exhibition—again I tried to be as careful as I could, and again we made some mistakes. We included several pictures which seemed to have wonderful histories, but turned out to be not so. I carried the Blakelock work as far as I could. I worked with Rosalind Irvin at this time who was secretary to the American Art Research Council. She did the great body of research work on Blakelock, working along the same methods that I had started with my work on Eakins and Ryder, getting all of the information possible and putting it all under each picture. We accumulated that kind of record under every Blakelock we could find, and we couldn't continue it because it really was getting so voluminous. It required the same kind of study that Ryder did, and I felt that Ryder was a more important artist than Blakelock. Blakelock is a very fine artist, and I hope that someday somebody does this work, taking off from what we started, but it was just too much. So after about a year or so, I turned over the Blakelock record of the genuine pictures to the Frick Art Reference Library where they still have them in four or five rings books. We kept here the record of what we considered forgeries, since this was kind of open to question legally speaking. I was expressing opinions there in writing which I didn't want to have scholars, or outsiders look at—opinions expressed without the consent of the owners—you see, without having anyone ask me for an opinion. I'm in hopes that someday someone will take up the Blakelock problem and really do a job on it because he was really a very fine artist. All the time people bring me Blakelock's and ask me to look at them, and I always have to tell them, "I just can't do it."

I don't want to get involved in it. It's just insoluble without much more work than I'm able to give it. I don't know whether I spoke before of the American Research Council.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No you haven't. You said that the search with respect to authenticity in Ryder was a search initially for what might constitute a norm.

[Phone call interruption.]  

The question was did you ever decide on a norm? You said that the field was so confused when you began.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  This came gradually through an accumulation of evidence. I must say that in the beginning I was pretty much at sea myself. Several pictures I put down a yes on, that they were all right, and since then I've come to the conclusion—no. One thing—

[Phone call interruption.]

It had to be built up. As a matter of fact, the examination I made of Mrs. Sherman's Ryders in 1947, and then again in 1950, at her request, the examination in the Brooklyn laboratory in 1950, particularly working with Sheldon Keck, with Jack Baur in on it too, was to me very educational because I took all the x‑rays that I had, fakes and genuine ones, and I took them over there. We looked at them for two solid days in relation to photographs of the pictures. I suppose we're always inclined to try to simplify things. I'd always thought that maybe the x‑ray situation in relation to Ryder was cleaner, that there was more consistency in the x‑rays, that they proved more clearly yes or no. But we discovered in this examination that this is not the case. His methods were so unpredictable. There was always exceptions. Some of his pictures were so confused that you couldn't tell what the structure was. We did decide that there was enough body of material with differences one way or another that you could say that x‑ray, in general, presents a pretty solid body for establishing authenticity for determining in most cases. I think when I finally published my catalogue that I will have to list certain pictures as who knows? That's all. You can't tell at this point.

What is built up through this kind of work is a knowledge of a man's style and methods and technique in all kinds of different ways through different methods, through the method of first historical information, establishing the authenticity of the picture which occurs in a large proportion of Ryder's work. You actually have records going back to his lifetime—exhibitions, mentions, in many cases reproductions which are pretty good proof because in some cases these go back to the 1870s and the 1890s. For example, there was a long article published on his work in 1890 by a close friend of his which mentions many pictures by their titles and by descriptions of them—thank God critics in those days believed in describing pictures. It's very helpful indeed to the modern scholar. This article reproduces a good many Ryders, and you know that this is part of the corpus of works beyond which there is no question. On the basis of the examination of those, you begin to get a body of information about the genuine pictures for comparison with the others, but it's a long laborious process.

[Phone call interruption.]

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  One more thing, and then I think we'll close up shop.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, I'd like to keep on if you have more tape and time. We have been interrupted quite a lot.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There's one thing about Ryder. The method he used presents a disadvantage when one tries to clarify this problem of authenticity. But he certainly sustained a creative urge over years—apparently.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It had to be.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  A strange thing for a fellow to complete something which on x‑ray shows that it has been altered so much that the net result is one of confusion.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  He was a very strange character. I don't think any artist in America has ever worked the way he did to alter his conceptions as much as he did—never fundamentally, but always in details. Of course the technical methods were awful. There is a painting at the Metropolitan Museum which has just completely disappeared practically. It's a beautiful little picture. In my book I plan to go back to the old photographs because the pictures just aren't the same. In the catalogue which I did write for the 1947 show, all the illustrations are from the earliest known photographs. I tried to put together the story of Ryder's life which would not be full of the stupid statements of some previous writers and to base it entirely on firsthand evidence as I have accumulated it, and if I may say so, I think still the most authentic biography of Ryder. In 1959, the publisher George Braziller asked me—and he was starting a series of twelve volumes on painters of the past and the present to be called the Great American Artists Series. Most of them are on the artists of the present like Jackson Pollack, Stuart Davis, and so on, but he did want to do three artists of the past—Homer, Eakins, and Ryder, and of course these are my three boys. He wanted to know if I would do them. He wanted to have a flight of six volumes and then another flight of six volumes later. He wanted to have the three older men in the first flight. Well I just couldn't do it on account of the time element. I did say that I would be glad to do the Homer volume which by that time—this was all at my fingertips, the Homer thing, so that it wasn't so much of a job as something else might have been. I said that as between Eakins and Ryder, I felt that if he wanted to do a Ryder volume I frankly was the only person who could do it, and if he got anybody else to do it, it would just be shameless, and I said "Frankly, I'm not going to turn over my records to anybody else."

Well, he misunderstood me, I guess. I called someone there and he said, "You're doing the Homer, and you'd like to do the Eakins. I got so‑and‑so to do the Ryder—Harold Rosenberg, as a matter of fact. I said, "Mr. Braziller, at this point I'm not going to write a single one of the volumes. If you add another volume on Ryder to the literature which is, it will be just terrible. I'm the person who can do Ryder."

Anyway, it was amicably settled in the end. I did the two volumes. My text on Ryder is an expansion and revision of the catalogue of 1947, but the visual materials are more complete than any other gotten together between two covers so far on Ryder. There I went back in every case to the earliest photography, and I plan to do that in my book when I do it, the bigger book. The bigger book, God willing, give me strength, will be a complete biography. It will reproduce probably every known Ryder. I'll get as much color as I can into it. There will be a complete catalogue raisonné. This is going to be a major operation because I want to give every scrap of evidence which proves the authenticity of the picture. I'm going to republish Ryder's poems because he wrote some quite interesting poetry—doggerel, but some of it has real poetic quality. I want to publish a selection of his letters which are charming, and then the debatable question is do I publish a list of the forgeries. I don't see how I can. I think the only way I can do it is to publish a list of those in public collections where it's unlikely that legal action will be taken. On the other hand, that leaves a kind of limbo of pictures which have very frequently been reproduced which are still in private hands and about which I don't express an opinion, except negatively, by saying that the catalogue raisonné includes everything I consider by Ryder. I don't know. I haven't solved this one yet.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You said something about the Art Research Council. I gather that this is an offshoot.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  This was really a result of the work I had been carrying on since 1935 on Ryder. In 1929, the Museum of Modern Art put on an exhibition of Homer, Ryder, and Eakins. I helped to select the Eakinses, and I wrote the introduction, or the introductory essay on Eakins for the catalogue. Bryson Burroughs helped to select the Ryders, and he wrote the text for that. Matthew wrote the Homer, I think. Well, it just shows the confused state of knowledge at the time, that the Museum of Modern Art show included a great many forgeries, and this has helped to confuse the whole situation too—you see. Well, I don't think I was entirely aware of this as early as that, though some of the pictures looked sort of funny to me, but it wasn't until 1935, with this exhibition at [inaudible], that I began to think that this was a problem that should be worked on. Through the years I examined these pictures. In the meantime, I started to work on Homer too, in 1935, in preparation for the Homer centenary in 1936. Homer was born in 1836, so I had also discovered that there were many forgeries already of Homer, and the whole forgery problem in the American field was getting pretty acute in my mind. My feeling was that enough attention hadn't been paid to it in the American field. People were just inclined to say, "Who forges an American painting?" or "Is it worthwhile?" or "The artists are still around," or "families are—who would dare do it!"

The extent of forgery has not been recognized at all in the American field.

I was asked by the College Art Association of America which was meeting in New Haven in 1942, to take part in a symposium—I can't remember just what the subject of this symposium as a whole was, but I was selected to do a paper on the problem of authenticity in American art, and in that paper I described the extent of the problem, the methods by which I thought it should be coped with—that is, the encouragement of the kind of research that I had been carrying on into the actual history and examination of the works of art and collecting everything available but of evidence and so on. It was quite a long speech, about a half an hour or more, and in the process I proposed, and I talked this over with Mrs. Force beforehand, that there should be an organization started to take account of forgery in American art, and I felt that it should be a cooperative thing. It should bring into the picture the leading museums of the country, the leading college art departments. I made this definite proposal. I talked this over with Mrs. Force afterwards, and we both felt that we should do something about it, that we should take steps. This was the spring of 1942, so I wrote—either I or she; I composed the letters, I know—to about 30 leading museums and college art departments asking them if they would be willing to become sponsors of an organization which we called the American Art Research Council. We tried to make the thing as affirmative as possible. We stressed the need for information, for gathering information,—encouraging research, or encouraging publication in the American field, and we also stressed the fact that now was the time to get information from artists still living particularly about their work, getting them to make lists of their work. The talk at the College Art Association had been early in 1942.

In the late spring, about May, I think, or June, 1942, there was a meeting of the American Association of Museums down at Williamsburg, Virginia, and we requested that a session might be given to this whole question of authenticity in American art, and a session was given to it. I got speakers—one of them, I remember was W. G. Constable of the Boston Museum. I spoke. By this time we had already made our form and organization. We had gotten consent of most of the big museums of the country and of the members of the faculty of places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and some of the big mid‑western universities which had been active in art to act as a sponsoring committee and an advisory committee for this organization to be called the American Research Council, so this presentation down in Williamsburg was sort of the debut of the Council. We had employed Rosalind Irvin who had been formerly with the Boston Museum as secretary of the Council. Each council member was asked to pay, I think, something like $100 a year, and on the basis of that we proceeded. The Whitney Museum paid Mrs. Irvin's salary, I believe, and the money which we got from the participating members used mostly for photography and expenses like that. The Whitney Museum paid a major part of the expenses of the Council. Well, it became quite an active organization after a while. We asked each member to draw up a list of 100 living American artists, painters and sculptors, who they thought should be asked to give a list of their work and to help and to cooperate with us in building up a record. We put this list together on a straight vote basis. We had a meeting down at the Whitney Museum of the whole advisory board about six months later at which we presented the results that we had accomplished that far. We had in the meantime gone back into the past. Miss Irvin had begun to do what I had been doing on a few artists for a lot of artists—she had full time to do this. She picked maybe ten artists of the 19th Century, Inness and a number of others, and she began to put together information on the same kind of form that I had on Homer, Eakins, and Ryder, all this information gathered together on one catalogue page. We had this meeting of the advisory board, and I reported on what we had done. There was a bit of feeling that we were devoting our attention too much to the past. Alfred Barr, I remember, particularly voiced his opinion, and said that he thought it was much more important for us to concentrate on living artists, to approach them while they were still living and get their cooperation on building up records, so I felt a little bit daunted—I mean I felt that I had been criticized.

I was rightly criticized at the end of it. Mrs. Force felt that we had made a very poor impression in our presentation with this group of distinguished people, that we had stressed for too much the past. I remember that she called me over the next day and gave me hell. She could do it. I felt very much hurt, but I realized then that she was probably right in her facts, if not in her approach necessarily. Anyway from that time on we did concentrate much more on the present. The list—I haven't looked at it in years—but it would look kind of funny now, I guess. This was drawn up 20 years ago, and I imagine a good half of the artists would no longer seem very important, such is the fate of contemporary judgment. You just can't predict the future. On the other hand, I think the list probably includes most of the artists of the past 20 years that we do consider important. In other words, I think the signs are those who have been included rather than those who have been excluded. I think of a few artists who are probably not on it. For example, Edwin Dickinson who is a very slow producer and who has not been much in the public eye was not included on that list. He, to my mind, is one of the great men of today. He should have been on it. However, we did have enough names to start work on them, and we got in touch with people like Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler, Max Weber and so on. I think we picked about ten artists and asked them—well, in the first place, we wrote to every one of the 100 and asked them if they would make checklists of pictures that they remembered and if they had records, would they think about making records thereafter and depositing them with us, that kind of thing.

Well, the response was very spotty. Artists aren't very systematic people. They are very prolific. They don't like to keep records. We did get a certain number of records, checklists which we have now in our files here, but by no means anything like a complete catalogue. However, we did pick about ten artists, older men mostly to concentrate on, and there Miss Irvin and I went to see them, and she got their cooperation. She worked with them in gathering complete catalogues including photographs. We used the money we got from the participating museums to photograph pictures which had not been photographed, or to make new photographs, and here we went into the question of the durability of photography, the fact that commercial photography is often apt to fade after a while because the photographer doesn't take the trouble to wash his prints enough, so we consulted various people who were experts in various photography and worked out—well, I've forgotten but I think it's called the silver print which is supposed to be pretty indestructible so far as fading does. We also went with photographers into the question of the kind of paper they used, the kind of paper that would not be hurt too much by being bent at the corners, which would take handling. You see, we were looking toward these records as being future records.

In the case—just to pick one case—of Edward Hopper, it turned out that Edward Hopper had been quite systematic; maybe Mrs. Hopper more than Edward Hopper. She had kept an actual record of every picture that he had ever painted including a little sketch by her of it and this was all in a book. We borrowed the book, and Mrs. Irvin transferred these records to individual sheets, each picture. We worked with Hopper's dealers, Frank Rehn Gallery, especially Mr. Clancy of that organization. We began to get our photographs. We now have the nearest thing to a complete record that there is anywhere—complete photographically. I think we probably have written records, typed records of almost everything through the cooperation of Mr. and Mrs. Hopper and the gallery. However, we don't have anything like a complete photographic record. I'm going to do a book on Hopper in a couple of years, and I plan to try to build this record up in the process of doing the book. That was typical of the way we would proceed.

Miss Irvin worked very closely with Stieglitz. She used to spend a great deal of time up in his gallery working on John Marin, and we have, I think, the nearest thing to a complete record on Marin's work as exists. Again it isn't complete photographically. Miss Irvin worked directly with Miss O'Keeffe, became a very good personal friend of hers, and we formed a very complete record of her work, and I think this includes more photography than most. We actually went out to New Mexico because many of her pictures hadn't been photographed. The Research Council proceeded along these lines.

Then more and more I got involved in the museum's own work. The Council had been launched in 1942. This was during the war. Everything was sort of difficult. It was about this time, or maybe a little bit before, that we had had to cut down our staff at the museum. I'm just trying to recollect the timing here. In the first place as I remember our actual participation in the war from 1941 on, I think we closed down for a while. You're nodding your head. You know more about it than I do. There was a feeling that everything was rather critical—you know, a small institution vulnerable to air attack and this kind of thing entered into the picture. Also the feeling always is that art is not the most essential activity. We were not as fully, as fundamentally based an institution yet as some of the older institutions. We were in a specific field, and our resources were limited. Anyway, the decision was made to close down. I don't think it lasted too long. Either then, or earlier Mrs. Force had decided that we must also economize on our staff. I guess it was earlier. I guess it was in the late 1930s because already there had been indications that we had to pull our horns in a little bit.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There was a great to‑do about the re‑opening for the World's Fair which was in 1939.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. Of course. At that point we had enlarged our galleries on 8th Street. We had felt the inadequacy of the galleries down there, and we had added several new galleries built on to the back of one of the three buildings to the West. I think maybe we doubled our space. It was a shambles. It took an awful long time. I remember one very rainy season. At one point the whole area which was to become the sculpture gallery was flooded. It was just covered with tarpaulins, and it was just a mess. That's what happens when you build, or when you rebuild. We were closed during that time, I remember, and we reopened with a show designed for the World's Fair, putting our best foot forward. I think it was from our own collection, or loans—I don't quite remember. I think it may have been at that time that Edmund Archer and Karl Free were allowed to resign which was awfully hard for Mrs. Force, I'm sure, and for them certainly. A certain amount of bitterness came out of this, I'm afraid. At that time I wasn't very much in on the financial picture of the museum. I don't know what the considerations were. I think possibly the trustees had felt that we were a little extravagant. Mrs. Force was an extravagant person. She loved to spend money. She loved to do things well. Our publications were always done in considerable style. We got William Edward Rudge who was not the cheapest printer in the world and all down the line. This was chiefly true of the early years of the museum, from 1930, or 1931 to about to the late 1930s. Then we began to pull in our horns. We were actually incorporated by the legislature of New York in 1936, and I think maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe the trustees tightened the reigns a little bit. I just don't know. I never knew the inside story. In any case, we discontinued our print activities which was too bad, but we did feel that that was one thing which other museums were doing. Other museums and also the New York Public Library was forming and having print exhibitions. That involved Karl Free, and he retired from the museum. I think that was the late 1930s.

After a while the only staff members left were Mrs. Force, Herman Mora and myself, and I think that it was the year 1941 that Herman was given a year's leave of absence. This was something that I never quite understood. I have a feeling that Mrs. Force, who was somewhat capricious, felt that maybe she could get on with the museum without him. In any case, I was the only staff member aside from herself for a full season and, believe me, that was some season! I put on several shows. I put on a Jerome Myers retrospective, or memorial show rather. I put on a show called This is our City which was an exhibition all about New York City and in collaboration with some organizations, some charitable fund. I've forgotten what it was. It was an awful season. I had to do all the curatorial work of the museum. I did, I think, select, and I may be getting my dates mixed up here, one show, one annual show and sculpture show. This may have been a year later. In any case, there was a season when I was the only curator. I didn't get a lick of work done on my books. I felt particularly badly about my book on Winslow Homer which I had started in 1936, and which I had carried pretty far, mostly working in the summers. I just had to put it aside for a whole season, and this was the season when Hermon More was up in Woodstock at his home up there painting mostly and not participating in the museum, except to come down and hang a couple of shows. At the end of the season, I said to Mrs. Force, "You know, I haven't touched any piece of writing for nine months."

She said, "This is impossible! I must get Hermon back. We must get back on an even keel."

The next season that took place. He came back, and from then on we worked together. I don't remember what year that was. I think it might have been 1942, 1943—I could reconstruct it from my records, but I just don't remember.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It was during the war years.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, it was during the war years—I remember that.

Well, going back to the American Art Research Council, it had come along in 1942, and from 1942 the museum staff consisted of—so far as picking exhibitions and acquisitions goes—just Mrs. Force, Hermon More and myself. Miss Irvin became drawn more and more into the actual work on exhibitions, especially historical shows. For example, we put on a show in 1946 called Pioneers of Modern Art. This was a show designed to show the beginnings of modern art from 1905 to 1925 in this country, and I did the major part of the research with her assistance. I wrote the catalogue for the show which, incidentally, I've just re‑written in the form of a small book called Pioneers of Modern Art in America, very much re‑written and added to in the way of illustrations. More and more the activities of the Council became parallel to those of the museum. I had been appointed director of the American Research Council, with Hermon More as associate director. These were rather empty titles. We got no salary—beyond what we had from the museum. These were war years, and we found it harder and harder to get the complete cooperation of all these museums and in addition to that, we were under a great pressure ourselves for the museum activities, so although the work of the Council continued, we didn't have as many big meetings as we had had. We kept in touch mostly through correspondence, giving reports and things like this.

After a while it became quite evident that this was very much too ambitious a project to be carried on by one small institution with one small staff. We thought of alternatives. This was during years when we were under informal agreement with the Metropolitan Museum to join with them ultimately, and for a while there was some talk of the American Art Research Council being taken over by the Metropolitan Museum. At that time it looked as if we were going to join the Metropolitan, and I was naturally for this; in fact, I was rather concerned that the Council might not be continued after we went to the Metropolitan. I thought they might think of it as a non‑essential activity, but Francis Taylor, who is a scholar, agreed that it should be continued up there. However, pending that, it became more and more evident that we couldn't carry it on the way it should be carried on. Such a thing should have really adequate financing. It should have a complete staff. It should have large enough quarters so that it could keep records the way they should be kept. Particularly, it should have a photographer to do an awful lot of photography for record purposes. It's the kind of set‑up which doesn't exist anywhere in this country—even now in relation to research in American art. It was far beyond our capacity to carry out. However, I do think the Council accomplished a great deal. It focused attention on the need for adequate scholarship in American art, and it wasn't just a question of this problem of authenticity. It went much beyond that. For example, we wrote museums and colleges throughout the country and asked them to report to us any research being carried on in the field of American art. We kept records of this. We asked particularly the college art departments. We said that we stood ready to advise their graduate or undergraduate students, if they were doing theses, and a number of people came up to us in this way, a number of people who later on did major work in the American field came to consult us about methods of carrying on research, making records and so on. This we kept up for a good man year, even after the Council wasn't very active. I'm sorry to say that we have not kept it up since then, partly because the American Studies Association is now doing it—you know, in the American Quarterly. I think every year they publish a list of graduate theses which include those in art. We had also cooperated with the College Art Association on this, as I remember; the College Art Association circularized its members and told them about this service which we were prepared to fulfill in relation to scholarship in the American field. It wasn't only university research, but also independent research, or freelance research, that as being carried on. We kept in touch with the people. It's rather amusing that I, who am not only not a PhD or an MA, but not a BA was dragged into this activity; in fact, I took part in the oral examinations of two candidates for the degree of doctor of philosophy—Gibson Baines who is now one of the division heads at Yale, doing a book on William Morris Hunt, a thesis which was to be turned into a book, and the other one was Milton Brown now head of the Art Department of Brooklyn College who was staring his thesis which turned into his book called American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression. In both these cases we did a certain amount of advisory work, and I took part in the oral examination of these two gents. I felt that I was very much under false pretenses but I seemed to get away with it.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You became something of an expert in the field of authenticity. Didn't you write an article on Harnett?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, yes—that's right. That was quite a problem.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Indeed.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  What happened was that Harnett and Peto became very confused in people's minds.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That's the title of the article, I believe—"Harnett and Peto."

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Frankenstein had started to do his researches, and he's an amazing research worker—extraordinary. More energy and more—well, he'll cross the continent to see a single picture, that kind of thing—Alfred Frankenstein of San Francisco. There was an unpleasantness between him and Mrs. Halpert of the Downtown Gallery. I think that he had been injudicious in deliberately putting on the market, or allowing to be put on the market—I may be wrong about this—a forgery, a Peto, and it turned up somewhere, and it was unpleasant. There was a meeting called at the offices of the Guggenheim Foundation because they had given him a grant to do this research on Harnett and on the whole school of trompe‑l'oeil painters, and it had reached the point where it was pretty acrimonious. There was a big meeting involving a great many people, including a lawyer for Mrs. Halpert, museum people, and Henry Allen Moe of the Guggenheim Foundation. It was almost like a trial. It ended up with Mrs. Moe asking me if I would be willing to advise, to some extent, with Alfred Frankenstein. The particular problem, as I remember it, was the production of a long article which would expose this problem of turning of paintings by Peto into Harnetts. As I remember it, Frankenstein had actually written, or drafted this article for the Art Bulletin which is the publication for the College Art Association and a leading scholarly journal in American art. I think he had written it already, and this brought things to a head. It was about this article, as I remember, that the meeting was called. I know that Dr. Moe asked me if I would be willing to read the manuscript and work with Frankenstein and try to keep things from being too difficult, which I was glad to do for the College Art Bulletin. I found it fascinating. I made a few suggestions—whether they were material, or not, I don't know—and by this time I got so interested in this problem that I asked the editors whether they would mind publishing a small note by me on the stylistic differences between Harnett and Peto. I felt that Frankenstein hadn't covered this completely. He'd gotten involved in the whole question of the documentary background and the detective story, which was fascinating, about the writer's discovery of material about the methods of determining authenticity, but I felt that one thing I could contribute and get a little credit for it because I had done a lot of work on it, was to analyze the respective styles of the two artists, and I published the article, a small article on this subject.

I was getting pretty deeply involved in the learned aspects of American art and at the same time more and more responsibility in the activities of the Whitney Museum which were primarily the American field—the contemporary field because that's what Mrs. Whitney meant when she started the whole thing, what Mrs. Force meant, and I always had questioned whether our attempt to build up an historical American collection was really very valid. Have I gone into this?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We had bought two Eakinses. We had given to us one very fine Homer and bought another one, and we owned other pictures, and Mrs. Force herself way back before the museum had started had collected some very fine primitive paintings, American primitive paintings which became part of the museum's collection. And although this had occurred, I felt in the first place that it wasn't entirely our field, that the contemporary field was important enough, and that it alone should take up our energies and our resources. I also felt that the other museums were so far ahead of us in collecting historic American art that we were outclassed, that we could never hope to equal their collections. Brooklyn Museum is much more important than we ever could be, so in 1949—this was after Mrs. Force's death—I proposed to our trustees that our collections prior to 1900, should be sold and that we should use the proceeds— to add to our own purchase funds. We had started out with a purchase fund of $20,000 a year and had bought chiefly from our annual exhibitions. Then our purchase fund got reduced to ten thousand dollars a year, and it remained at that level for some years. Well, it was not adequate. It was becoming increasingly inadequate. The museum did not accept gifts until after 1948. I don't know whether I went into this before.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  When we started, we were a pioneer operation, and it grew out of a private enterprise—well, you know how it grew. I guess Mrs. Force and Mrs. Whitney both felt very vulnerable to pressures from artists when they knew and from wealthy friends who might want to give us works of art which we might not want to accept, and in Mrs. Whitney's case, I think, this is particularly true. I think she wanted to protect the museum from being open to this kind of rather social and wealthy pressures to have certain artists included in their collection, and very wisely, I think, at that time. So the policy that was established had very early in the game that the museum did not accept gifts. But, of course, in the long run such a thing cannot continue—I mean, museums grow by gifts. It's the only way they can grow—contributions in works of art, and ultimately one has to be prepared to stick one's neck out and say, "No." Well, as the years passed and as our reputation increased, as our activities increased, we felt more and more that we should accept gifts. I don't know whether I ever really talked this over with Mrs. Force nor do I think we decided anything during her life time. She died in the summer of 1948, and it wasn't until after that, I think, that we accepted our first gifts. Some of them were made in her memory. We may have accepted occasional gifts before that in memory of Mrs. Whitney. I think that may have been the case. I know that Abraham Walkowitz gave us a painting in memory of Mrs. Whitney, and I think that may have been before Mrs. Force's death. Another change which was not quite the same thing, that took place about that time—we had had a policy against one man shows of living artists. We had held a good many memorial shows, or shows which were not memorial, but after the artist's death. We had shown Davies tapestries, textiles. We had a Prendergast show a good many years after his death. We had a Jerome Myers memorial, Glackens after his death, and so on.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Tucker.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Tucker—that's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Demuth.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Demuth—that's right, and that show was a good many years after his death. It was not really a memorial show. It was more of a summary show. I had felt for some time that this was a restriction on not showing living artists. I felt that that was our field, that we should stick our necks out and say, "We think this man is important."

In this case, we did get Mrs. Force's agreement to it. I remember that it took not too much argument. The first victim of this series of shows was Yasuo Kuniyoshi who was so close a friend of all of us—we'd all known him so long. He'd been a classmate of mine at the Art Students League, and he'd been associated with the Whitney Studio Club—he and his former wife, Katherine Schmidt, so we did, I believe, in the spring of 1948, put on a retrospective exhibition of Kuniyoshi's work, the first retrospective catalogue we had done of a living artist. I wrote the catalogue, and I got the show up. Another innovation was that we published this catalogue as a book, a small book, a system which we have used ever since. These were all innovations as compared with what had gone on before in the way of policy, that series of one man shows has continued and grown and now it's one of our major features. We have put on, I suppose, 25 or 30 retrospective exhibitions of living artists. Most of them have been gotten up by ourselves, sometimes in collaboration with other museums, and sometimes other museums originate the shows, and we take them. This is a fairly major change in policy like acceptance of gifts.

All of this came about the same time we were getting away from a traditional policy established at the beginning of the museum. I think the feeling was that the one man show was the same as accepting gifts, that we might have pressures put on us to show so‑and‑so, or so‑and‑so, and I think as the years passed we began to feel that we just had to resist such pressures, just the way we had to resist the pressures of gifts from people who wanted to get inferior works into the museum.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Isn't it also true that formerly traditionally they had had biannual shows and the policy was changed to annual shows? Some of the commentary written about the annual shows was less intriguing about the annual shows than it was about some of the retrospective shows—like Glackens, or Tucker, or even the show put on in honor of Mrs. Force—you know, the letter, for example, had enormous play whereas the annual shows, the collection of current things, may have indicated a growing competition in the museum field—I don't know. Times were different from the twenties by and large, so that there had to be some policy changes away from that which had sustained the museum in the late twenties to enable them to live in the thirties, to break through to more modern times. You said there was no outlets for young artists. Suddenly there are 400 or so galleries, a wholly different art world. This is related to your research activities too. It's important to have records now in the light of what you discovered about earlier artists. All these things tie together—working out an art approach toward government, something that had not been heard of before.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Integration of things that were related, but had been put in separate compartments before and also an expansion in these different compartments.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The sale of the 19th Century paintings in 1949 is also related, I think, to a different development. We don't have much time to go into it now, but the switch from 8th Street to the Metropolitan, whatever that entailed, followed by the desire to come out again, the relationship to the Museum of Modern Art and the building of this building.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right. These are all related.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The sale—one of the story titles was: "Whitney to sell old to buy new". This is policy—you know, "We are contemporary."

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think that was partly motivated by the fact that we had broken off with the Metropolitan Museum. Up to that point we had thought of our future as being, running a Whitney Museum up there which would be a historic museum from the beginning. Then when the engagement was broken off, we realized that here we were down on 8th Street, a little organization trying to rival a great big organization, and it didn't make any sense. Our resources were limited. Prices were going up. I handled the sale. I got the consent of the trustees to do it. I got a group of dealers down, about five dealers, to look at our collection, to appraise it. They came up with total valuations for everything, The works prior to 1900, which ranged between $75,000 and $150,000. The top appraiser was Knoedlers, and I thought myself that this was ridiculous.

First we thought of selling the collection piecemeal, by using the appraisals submitted to us very kindly by these dealers, but then Knoedler proposed to us that they become the sole agent for disposing the collection. They guaranteed us $120,000, even if they didn't get a cent out of it as commission. If they got over $120,000, they would then take 20 percent on the whole thing. In other words, if they got $150,000, we would still net a $120,000. Well, the way it worked out, they sold the collection for $150,000 dollars, and we netted $120,000. This we have invested in a rather arbitrary way. We use the income from it which runs to about $7 or $8,000 to add to our purchase funds of $10,000 which is still inadequate—the total is still very inadequate, but that's another story.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I received a very interesting comment the other day, and we might as well end on this, from Theodore Roszak. This was after the recorder was turned off. I made some distinction between the Whitney Museum and the Modern Museum, and he said—you know, in that quiet voice of his, "Well, the Modern Museum has preserved its image at the expense of the artist's creativity. The Whitney hasn't been so concerned about its own image, has sacrificed its own image in its support of the artist's creativity.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's very nice to hear. I'm glad to hear that he feels that way. As far as we're concerned I think that artists by and large—many of them do feel this way.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  As a matter of fact, the moment the Whitney was re‑born as a site—something we can go into next time, Artist Equity had a show and sale for a building fund—you know, almost like old home week.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Some of that's been lost—we've become a little more impersonal, I'm afraid—though I don't think substantially it has been. I hope not.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That was an interesting analysis of the nature of the two museums because all along, from the Whitney Studio Club on, the Whitney impulse has been an effort to aid and sustain unknown artists who did not have an opportunity anyway.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  And on a democratic basis—artistically democratic. In other words, not just saying there are a few top men and let's concentrate on them, but there's talent in all kinds of different forms and let's do something about it. That's what we've tried to do.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  To the extent that it's both contemporary and American.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We are under constant attack because of this, of course. I mean magazines like the Art News—they talk about this all the time. We're without standards. We have no standards. Everything critics don't like, they say that this is inferior art which we shouldn't encourage. They put it on a quality basis. It isn't at all. It's simply just a question of their own prepossessions.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  That is what the critics have done to the annual shows, by and large.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, the annuals are awfully hard—I used to write criticism of shows like this, and I found it awfully hard to say nice things.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But that's the main stream. That's what the Whitney Studio Club used to do.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No one else does it in New York.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  But for that sort of thing, you could become as impersonal as a state highway. It isn't charity. I don't get that impression, but with the critics—you're right, it becomes the standard thing to play the annual shows down.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Of course when you say, "I'm going to have one work each by a 150 artists." Inevitably the general level is not as high as it is in a one man show, or a two man show, a twelve man show, whatever you want, and this lays the institution open to the charge of lowering its standards. I see it as bringing forward people who may in the future be among the top twelve, or something like this, but who in the meantime are producing interesting work of their own kind.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The happy thought is that you're not announcing a year in advance what the subject is going to be.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  No.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I abhor that—where an idea might conceivably never occur to a man. Instead of being himself, you switch his whole creative bent and direction.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  We've never tried to work up subject matter that way, except of course when we do do deliberate things like the show that Jack Baur did here called Nature and Abstraction, but that's not the same thing. In the first place, we didn't publicize it particularly. We handled it through the artists who we thought represented this theme best and approached them, asked pictures by them, and then asked them to write statements. Jack Baur did the whole thing, of course, and a very intelligent, interesting thing which by the way was very seriously attacked by Art News on the ground that we were trying to dictate to the artists. We were practically suborning the artist to say he relied on nature, and of course, he didn't at all—this kind of stuff.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I think that it's implied in what Roszak said that you have sustained the artistic creativity at the expense of your image.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I guess we have. We're just the old people's home, or the young people's home.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I think it's much better for creativity.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I hope it always continues.

Whitney Museum, March 25, 1963.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Last time we talked of the problem of authenticity and the creation of the Art Research Council. Then we put these developments in the context of developments in the Whitney Museum, a rebuilding program in the late thirties to its re‑opening in 1939, the coming of the war, dwindling interest and funds, the question of what to do about the pre‑1900 collection. What we didn't go into was the relationship between the Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum which seemed at the time to promise a further step in the direction of an American historical museum as distinct from contemporary art and the switch in policy which this promise implied and why, after a while that thought seemed less glowing as possibility than it did initially. Then there is a desirability of once again coming out as the Whitney Museum, acquire a site, this one, a building program, relations with the Museum of Modern Art—all dealing with the growth and tradition under changed circumstances which the Whitney Museum was going to fasten on itself for the future.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Did we cover the American Art Research Council?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, we did. This grew out of the Ryder discussion; the fact that if this could happen with historical painters, what was needed at least was a list of paintings from people with whom we could still talk.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It seemed a wise thing to do. There was the College Arts Association and a broad basis of support, but insufficient for the kind of job that was necessary—photography and so on. All these things—photographic paper, the process—were mentioned. The Whitney Museum came back into our discussion when the Art Research Council was getting to be a large affair and certain cutbacks were made in the Museum personnel in a kind of hold the line or retrench policy.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, I still think that this is a very much needed thing in the American art world, and I hope that it can be done some day. The Archives of American Art is not quite the same thing. It is much broader, more comprehensive program, but as far as I know, it hasn't yet, and I may be wrong about this, done what we tried to do in the American Art Research Council which is to take a selected group of say 100 American living artists whom we think may someday be important and to record their works in collaboration with them. I know that the Archives have done a job of interviewing these people, recording their ideas and gathering material about them, but whether they've actually gone to the point of recording their work is another question. I hope it can be done. It should be done because I've had enough experience over the years now working with Homer, Eakins, Ryder, and Blakelock to see that this forgery problem is still a very acute one. I think it's better than it was 25 years ago. I think at least people are aware of the problem much more than they were, and nobody buys a Ryder nowadays without being pretty sure of it, for example, whereas 25 years ago they were quite indiscriminate. It's very much needed still, I think, to build up this solid core of information about the works of the best American painters and sculptors for the future, and it's not the same thing as just taking their documents, or recording them. It's a very specialized kind of thing that has to be done—working with published material, exhibition catalogues, articles, reproductions, working with the dealers to get the dealer's records, keeping in touch with changes in ownership and so on—a very specialized thing, and may I say that it has taken up a lot of my time, and in the case of Winslow Homer my wife's time too, since we're doing a catalogue together. It takes up an enormous amount of my time right now just having people bring pictures in for an opinion. A great deal of this could be obviated in the future by the kind of record building that I'm talking about, but it's a thing bigger than any one museum. We couldn't handle it. It needs financing. It needs a good staff. It needs a lot of filing space. It should be an inter‑museum affair. I think the Archives is the logical place to handle it, given the amount of space and staff they need.

It does require a lot of work—I mean, the initial thing, of course, is getting the artists to give you a list of his work, but artists don't keep records of their work particularly. I mean even Ryder, I'm sure, didn't know what he painted. So far as the records we did get in the American Art Research Council, we didn't get by any means get a 100 percent response from the 100 artists we did select. I don't know the figures, but I would say that less than half responded, and their ideas of what a list should be differed from ours. Their list were rather fragmentary. They were depending on their memory. You've got to go much beyond that. You've got to work with the dealer who has handled the artist—sometimes several dealers who have handled him in the past, and you've got to do a thorough research job in all the published material and only then can you be fairly sure of having made a pretty complete record, but it's worth doing, I think. There is a move right now—I don't know whether I spoke of this before—in the bar association.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The Association of the Bar of the City of New York has a sub‑committee engaged on this question of fraud in art, and the chairman of it is a lawyer called Alvin Lane, and he is interested particularly in the problem as relates to sculpture where you find that there is no real control over the number of casts made of a bronze even though the sculpture says, "There are only six casts of this"—you can't be sure. There is no real method of registration for this. The lawyer starts from this point, and he wants to have all transactions in the field of art, including international art, registered by a central bureau. So that it is an idea that has potentialities, but I think that he is much too ambitious. I've met with him a couple of times. We've talked it over, and we differ about the feasibility of trying to make it too big. I say to him, "You've got to do it on a selective basis. You've got to limit your number of artists. You've got to concentrate on the living artists where you really can form records that mean something for the future because in the case of artists who are no longer living the material exists and you can reach it someday, but with the living artist you've got to do it right now."

Something may come of this. I hope it does. I'm glad that the Bar Association is interested, and they're thinking also of legislation to tighten up the transactions involving fraud because it seems that there have been very few cases which actually came to trial under the existing laws of New York State, in fact, I think he told me of only one case. This is fraud in relation to authenticity, not fraud in relation to tax exemption like Baroness Rebay.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This sub‑committee is dealing with misrepresentation.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Yes, misrepresentation of the authorship of a work of art, and also the number of replicas made of a piece of sculpture, this kind of thing—you know, it needs to be done very much, but it just shows the extreme individualism of American museums because they haven't gotten together on this. The American Art Research Council is the first step, but as I say, we were unable to continue it because of our other commitment, and I don't think that we ever would be able to. A museum of our size, our resources—we just never could have attempted to do this kind of job that should be done.

I think we covered that. I think I've gone pretty fully also into the actual problems of authenticity involved in the 19th Century figures, the methods used and so on. This is a continuous process. I mean it's every day. Practically every day people telephone in, or come in with pictures. It's fantastic how gullible people are when they see a big name on a picture, and of course the ridiculous thing is that it makes all the difference in the price. It isn't the quality of the picture. It's just the name. It's a stupid situation, not a healthy one.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Not a very sure basis for enjoyment.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I should say not, or even for real valuation—just speaking in odd‑ball financial terms. It's ridiculous that such premiums should be put on a name, not what would you like.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  There's a switch in the art market. There was a time in the twenties when there were few places where people could show their works if they were modern artists. Suddenly you confront a market in New York with 400 or more art galleries.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Something like that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Many of them dealing in American art, and many of them dealing in modern American art. The road for a modern artist isn't quite as difficult as it was in the twenties. The Museum itself faced space problems down on 8th Street and this was added to, but there were financial problems along toward the end of the depression and as we came out of that, possibly, into the war, there was lessening interest in things artistic—you know, except up in the air where flyers, uniforms and so on seemed to take precedent. The whole question of closing down the museum temporarily, or retreating in terms of personnel made itself felt. I think you indicated that this was owing, in part, to probably the extravagant nature of Mrs. Force who liked to do things in a grand manner.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  She did.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  And there's no quarrel with that, but the role that the Whitney Museum might play as a museum was a question for discussion as to where it should, or should not go.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I don't remember. Had we gone into the really great change that came to the Whitney Museum when we moved uptown here, when we built our new building? Have we covered that at all?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Not at all.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Did we cover the organization of the Friends of the Whitney Museum?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No. The only items we discussed were the changes in policy from the acceptance of gifts, and several other changes—the annual shows instead of being twice a year became once a year, and the living artist retrospective shows were introduced, alterations from traditional policies.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Also the sale of our 19th Century collection of art, and our concentration on the 20th Century?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This wasn't quite clear—that is, when the subject was up for discussion the question was whether the Whitney Museum should become an historic museum, and with the Metropolitan Museum "engagement"—I think you called it—this looked like the plan.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Didn't we cover this? I think I see where we should take off from this time. As I remember, we talked about our relationship to the Metropolitan Museum, the contemplated merger, and the break, didn't we?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Only in the sense that this was going to be a place where you would have a facility within an existing facility.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Didn't I discuss the actual break that took place?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Are you sure?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, sir.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The breaking of our engagement with the Metropolitan Museum?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You indicated that there was an "engagement" and that it was broken, but not the nature of the engagement.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, I might as well record it. I'm probably repeating something, but anyway, after Mrs. Whitney's death, our trustees felt that the future of the museum was somewhat uncertain. Frankly, I think that there was a certain amount of distrust of Mrs. Force because of her record of spending a lot of money. The museum was not on an ordinary normal basis as most museums. We never had a budget. We don't even have a budget now, as a matter of fact, not in the sense of a budget that is presented annually to our trustees and accepted, and this doesn't mean that we're extravagant now by any means. It simply means that we have never felt that it was necessary, and I don't think it is, but in Mrs. Force's day, the expenditures and so on were—well, there was very little control by the trustees, and especially after Mrs. Whitney's death when the younger members of the family became trustees—you see, or they had been trustees, but they then had control, and I think that was the background of this projected merger by we were to turn over to the Metropolitan Museum all of our assets including our collections, including the historic collection, and there would have been a building built on the south side of the Metropolitan Museum in the Park where the parking lot now is which would have been called the Whitney Museum of American Art. It would retain its separate title, but it would not have a separate Board of Trustees. Its assets would have been merged with the Metropolitan Museum. The American collection of the Metropolitan Museum would then have been part of the Whitney Museum, including the historic collection going all the way back to the beginning, and next door would have been the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum which, as you know, is one of the great centers of American decorative arts. It would have been a wonderful complex of related parts of a big museum devoted entirely to American art.

Plans were actually drawn up. There were architect's drawings, and we had this arrangement with the Metropolitan Museum by which we acted as their advisor in the spending of the Hearn Funds, particularly for the purchase of contemporary American art, starting in 1942, as I remember, or in 1943. After Mrs. Whitney's death, Mrs. Force acted as advisor to the Metropolitan Museum. I didn't go into this?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No sir.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, at that time the director of the Metropolitan Museum was Francis Henry Taylor, an old friend of mine, an old friend and adversary. Francis was a very brilliant man. He was a medievalist in his experience and his knowledge, and that was the field in which he first came into prominence. He was also a really somewhat fanatical person about the contemporary scene. I don't just mean contemporary art—I mean the entire morality of our day. Francis was rather a religious person. I think he felt that the world of the day had gone far away from the truth as represented by the period in which he had specialized, the middle ages. He also was a combative type. He loved a fight, and he was a very brilliant, articulate person with a stinging sense of humor. He and Mrs. Force, strange enough, got on rather well in a funny way, although I think they really deeply distrusted each other. I know she distrusted him, and they got furious at each other, and yet he was always much amused by her, and both were very witty people, a very sharp wit, and they struck sparks from each other. I think in a way—well, it was an ambivalent relationship, and they were being increasingly thrown together because of the fact that had she lived and had we gone through with the merger, she would have been a director of a museum under him which I cannot possibly imagine. It never would have worked.

She resisted the idea of the actual merger at first very much indeed, and then she came to accept it. She worked with Francis in this advisory capacity. The chief form it took was that out of our annual exhibitions of contemporary American painting, she would recommend, with the advice of the staff, certain purchases out of the Hearn Funds which are supposed to be devoted entirely to the work of the living American artists, and usually these would go through. Sometimes they wouldn't. In certain cases there would be resistance on the part of the Metropolitan Museum's acquisitions committee, I suppose, but my memory is that most of the recommendations went through. But with no good grace. I remember once Mrs. Force told me that she had taken Francis Taylor around to the annual exhibition and showed him what we were recommending for purchase and said, "Well, what do you think your trustees will feel about these purchases?"

He very characteristically, said, "I think they will puke."

This was his kind of humor. It didn't go down so big with her—you see, and there was always this element of conflict increasingly. Also at this time, Francis Taylor was making himself kind of the spearhead of an attack on modern art. He published several articles notably one, I think in Harper's Magazine in the 1940s, in which he questioned the entire integrity, significance and social sense of abstract painting, or any kind of advanced painting at all. It was written in powerful language, very galling to us who felt differently about things, and he had certain people on his side at that time, strangely enough, the Art News, believe it or not. Alfred Frankfurter, the editor and publisher of the Art News was at that time very anti‑modern, something which we tend to forget nowadays. Thomas Hess who is now his second in command felt quite differently, but he wasn't yet in a position to alter the policies of the Art News, and the Art News used to come out with editorials attacking modern art and backing up Francis Taylor. Of course, there was always the feeling that this was the director of the biggest museum in the country, and he carries a good deal of weight—you see, and especially, in Art News which is a magazine very aware of prestige and financial backers, where the money is. I'm not saying that they got any money out of the Metropolitan Museum, but the weight of money in the Metropolitan Museum, certainly was a factor in the whole thing.

Then another factor in this was the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Did I go into this question of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  And the joint statement worked out by us?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Are you sure?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, I am.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It may have been mentioned some time ago.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No, sir. We dealt with congressional attacks on modern art, the attitude and role of the National Sculpture Society, but not non‑governmental, non‑congressional attacks.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Well, this had a very little to do with the government. Briefly it was this. An exhibition was organized of contemporary American painting—I guess it was not contemporary, but general 20th Century American painting by the—now what was the title? They started out as a Museum of Modern Art in Boston as an actual affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Then I think they changed the title to the Museum of Contemporary Art, or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe they changed it to Institute of Modern Art and—well, it just shows you the difference in the climate then. The word "modern" had become sort of dirty at that time, so that they were scared of the word. The director at that time was James Plaut whom I had known when he worked for the Boston Museum. We worked together to some extent on my books on Winslow Homer. He was very helpful. Plaut was the director of this Boston Institution which is devoted entirely to contemporary art. Well, because of the pressure of all this fighting going on and the connotation of the word "modern", they actually changed the name to the Institute of Contemporary Art which I thought was pretty ridiculous. Also maybe it was probably to divorce themselves more from the Museum of Modern Art.

We found ourselves—the Whitney Museum found itself more and more in sympathy with the Modern Museum. I think the basis of it was that although I do consider that our historic attitude toward contemporary art is about as catholic as you can make it, I do think that our good friends at the Museum of Modern Art specialize more and more in advanced American art than we do. The Whitney's philosophy is much more of a going in all directions, diversification, and so on, a more democratic principle, if you want to call it that. It may be wrong, but in any case there it is. It's a fundamental difference between us, but basically we are on the same side of this fight which was very bitter in those days. I think we've forgotten about it now It was a really bitter fight, and I think that artists—I'm talking now of the middle 1940s —who were coming to the fore in those days, the abstract expressionists particularly and the advanced painters and sculptors, were really under attack and felt themselves endangered by these attacks. They were much more vulnerable then. They hadn't yet reached the reputation they have now. It was a real fight.

In a funny way, it was sort of a repetition of the attacks of modern art back in 1913, at the time of the Armory Show and the 1920s. There was that same kind of violence. It was much more equal this time because the modernists of the 1940s were in a far stronger position. In the first place, they had behind them the whole European trend of modernism which occurs since the early 1900s. I mean, there was no longer the same attack on European modern art that there had been 30 years before, so in that sense the American modernists felt themselves on much more safe ground, more secure, but they were still vulnerable in this country, and they had not yet made their reputations so that the attack on modern art by people like Francis Taylor, Alfred Frankfurter, and James Plaut was a very violent and tough thing for the modernists.

Plaut took Francis Taylor's side of the thing. He organized this exhibition of American painting going back to the time of Bellows and so on, and he covered about 30 years of American painting. We lent to that show. We lent about six of the 40 or 50 pictures that were included, and Life Magazine—that was another factor, Life at that time had a very strong anti‑modern bias, very strong, continually publishing material attacking the new school, and Life got hold of this exhibition and turned it into a sort of, I think, a chauvinistic piece, saying, for example, that George Bellows never went abroad, never went to Europe, and never ruined his fine native talent, or something like that—you see. It was anti‑modern. It was anti‑internationalist. Well, this Life story really brought things to a head because we had lent our pictures with no idea that they would be used this way, and by the way, the Institute of Contemporary Art took the Life article and displayed it very prominently in the lobby.

This kind of thing riled us, and I composed a letter of protest to be addressed to the editor of Life, and I sent copies of this letter out to all the lenders to the exhibition. The gist of this letter of protest was that we did not like pictures that we had lent to be used as anti‑modern propaganda, and we protested this. The intent of the exhibition had not been to be an anti‑modern demonstration as Life had interpreted it. Well, it was quite an operation, I may say, getting this letter signed. I got the majority of the lenders which included both museums and private collectors to sign it, and we sent it off to Life. By the way, I did this all the time in collaboration with my colleagues at the Museum of Modern Art who were then Alfred Barr and James Sobey. We sent it to Life, and there was an explosion, as I understand it, in the Life offices. I was told that Henry Luce called up the then president of the Modern Museum. Henry Luce had been identified with the Modern Museum, as you know, as a trustee and he was extremely angry. I don't know who the president was. It could have been Nelson Rockefeller. It could have been John Hay Whitney. Luce was practically saying, "What are you doing—ganging up on us?" or words to that effect. Well, I was in communication with one of the Life editors because they called me up and said, "We will publish this letter, but"—we had about 40 signatures on it—"we can't possibly publish all these signatures."

I said, "The point of this is that this is practically a unanimous protest on the part of the lenders to this exhibition to an article which misinterpreted the show."

Well, we finally comprised by their publishing the names of the institutions—the museums, and saying "and so many private collectors", but they did publish the letter. Well, in the course of my conversation with this editor—I've forgotten his name—I said, "Why are you indulging in this anti‑modern campaign? These young people are having a hard enough time anyway. They're experimenting. We feel that it is a very American kind of an operation that is going on here, and why are you making it so difficult for them? They have a tough enough time as it is."

This was true at that time. They were not in either an artistic, or a financial position where they could take this kind of attack. He listened, and I don't think I'm boasting when I say that I think from this episode there was a change of policy on the part of Life Magazine. We noticed very shortly thereafter that the attacks began to lessen, that they began to become more open‑minded. Out of this grew—my memory may be playing me tricks here, but I think that this is the case—another thing which was—and let me think of the order of events here. Oh yes. Out of this correspondence back and forth because we had told the Institute people in Boston, particularly Plaut, what we were doing, and, as I remember, we asked him to sign the letter as the sponsor of the show and he refused to do it which I think is right because I think we had twisted his arm a little bit too much. But there was a lot of correspondence back and forth, and Plaut said that the situation was getting bad with all this back‑biting.

I felt like saying, "Who started the back‑biting! It's Back Bay back‑biting as far as I'm concerned. We didn't start it.

Out of this grew his suggestion that the three of us, the Museum of Modern Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Whitney Museum get together and talk about the whole thing, to see if we couldn't agree on certain fundamentals of our roles as museums in relation to contemporary art because we felt that deep down we probably agreed. Plaut began to realize that this was getting out of hand, that there was an element of bad public relations in it and so on, so we had a series of meetings with two representatives each of the Whitney, Hermon More and myself, two representatives of the Institute of Contemporary Art, James Plaut and Fred White, I believe—yes- and the two representatives of the Modern Museum, I think, were—well, I know that Alfred Barr was there all the time and James Sobey, I think. Later on I think possibly René d'Harnoncourt took Sobey's place—I can't remember—as a signer of this statement. We drafted a statement of principles about our beliefs in relation to modern art. It's a historic document. It's been published. It reaffirmed our belief that modern art was not immoral, or subversive, or anti‑social, and so on and so on. It went into specifics a great deal. It took up the attacks on the grounds of their politics, for example, that whole thing. It brought out the fallacy of equating modern art with communism and pointed out that this was directly contrary to the Soviet Union's attitude toward modern art. The drafting of this was done really by Alfred Barr and myself, and my memory is that we kind of jointly drew up a statement and then submitted it to meetings of the committee where it was discussed and altered and so on, and finally we agreed upon a statement, and it was signed by the representatives of each of three museums. We gave it to the press, and it made news. It was republished in a volume edited by Robert Motherwell the next year, a volume which was to be one of a series, a kind of report, annual reports on events and developments in the American art world, and we published it in full. I think it also had a certain amount of weight in the re‑examination of this battle that was going on and in introducing a little bit more reason into the whole thing.

We did not get the Metropolitan Museum into this thing because we knew exactly what their attitude would be, and that this statement was actually a declaration against the avowed policies of the director of the Metropolitan Museum at that time. Well, all of this brought the Museum of Modern Art and ourselves closer and closer together. I personally had been a friend of Alfred Barr since 1926, or 1927, and I admired him tremendously, and I think he is one of the most extraordinary people in the art world today, a man of complete integrity, a great scholar, a man who has done more for the understanding of modern art in America than any single individual. Well another factor that brought us together was our mutual membership on the editorial board of the Magazine of Art. We had been sitting together every month on the editorial board of the Magazine of Art. I had been made chairman of the editorial board in 1942, and I continued until about 1950. Alfred Barr was a member, René d'Harnoncourt, James Sobey, and so on, several representatives of the Museum of Modern Art, and we were personally on very friendly terms. It was a very live editorial board. This was another factor in the rapprochement of our two institutions. Well, our relations with the Metropolitan Museum had been deteriorating from time to time on account of the attacks made by Francis Henry Taylor on all modern art and also the fact that our role as adviser to them was not working out very well. About this time, I think this was about—well, it was when Mrs. Force was alive—1948, late 1947, or 1948, the three museums drew up an agreement by which they divided the territory of art between them. The Metropolitan Museum was to cover what was called classic art. Didn't I do this?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  No sir.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The Modern Museum was to cover international and modern art in the sense of 20th Century primarily. The Whitney Museum was to be American art, and at that time we still had our older collection, so it was to be all of American art—you see. The idea was not to waste our energies and not to step on each other's toes too much. This was actually a signed agreement, and on the part of the two other museums—that is the Metropolitan and the Museum of Modern Art—it involved the Modern Museum acting as sort of a modern museum to the Metropolitan. In other words, as works in their collections became "classic", they would be turned over to the Metropolitan Museum. The Metropolitan Museum would pay the Modern Museum for them at the current value, and this money would be used by the Modern Museum to acquire additional works nearer their own time. It would have been a good arrangement if it had worked. It certainly would have helped the Modern Museum a great deal in its acquisition of funds. It didn't work, and it's been called off. I don't know the inside story of this at all, but it didn't work, and it's no longer in existence. It's lasted for a few years.

We had no such arrangement with the Metropolitan Museum. On the other hand, we still contemplated a merger by which our collection would become part of theirs anyway, and we would have had the administration and control of the entire American collection in painting and sculpture and graphic art going back to the beginning. It would have been a very important thing, and it would have been something that doesn't occur in the City of New York even yet—a single center where one can see the entire history of American art from A to Z. It hasn't happened yet because of the breakdown in our relations with Metropolitan and also a fundamental lack of interest on the part of the Metropolitan Museum in American art. I have experienced this lack of interest in things American on their part for many years, going back to the time when Bryson Burroughs, my very good friend, was curator of paintings there at the Metropolitan Museum and I could see how little interest he could stir up in American art. I acted as an advisor—I think I have already recorded this—for using the Hearn Funds. There has always been this indifference on their part. It's understandable partly because the Metropolitan Museum is the greatest museum of historic art in America, and one of the greatest in the world. I think it's unfortunate. It seems not to be mending at all.

Going back to this three way agreement—this was in the spring of 1948. Mrs. Force was very ill at that time. She had cancer—that's what she died of. Roland Redmond who was president of the Metropolitan Museum invited two representatives of each of the other museums to have dinner at the Brook Club on East 54th Street to talk about this three way agreement. In other words, present were Mr. Redmond as host, Francis Taylor and Horace Jayne of the Metropolitan Museum, Alfred Barr and James Sobey of the Modern Museum, and Hermon More and myself of the Whitney. Everything was very cordial and nice through desert, a very pleasant dinner, pleasant talk. About ten o'clock when we were still sitting at the table began an attack on the part of Francis Taylor, participated also in by Mr. Redmond, on modern art in general and specifically on the Whitney Museum's policies. They didn't attack so much the Modern Museum's policies, but I think the motivation of this was that they felt that someday we would be in their fold, and they would like to make it plain to us just where we were wrong. The implication was that we really didn't know what went on in America. We didn't get around American enough. There were a lot of grassroots developments that we were unfamiliar with, that we sort of concentrated on Greenwich Village and on advanced art. A remark was made that a lot of strange people came to visit our shows—a lot of people of dungarees and so on. It was a very basic attack. Mr. Redmond and Mr. Taylor had been making a trip around the country a little before this dinner, and they kept talking about how they had found all these artists, talked to artists all over the country who felt very resentful that they were not represented in the Whitney Museum in exhibitions and so on, that these were very fine artists. We kept saying, "We'd like to know about them. Who are they?"

No names were produced at all. In other words, I think they started out with a preconceived idea. Well, it got to be quite a basic discussion. The two Modern Museum men backed us up, and it was a pretty hammer and tongs discussion. Mr. Jayne didn't say much. I think his sympathies were not quite the same as Mr. Redmond's and Mr. Taylor's. The discussion lasted until two o'clock in the morning, and it got down to the bases of modern art and it got occasionally pretty outspoken. We felt at the end of it that the Modern Museum and the Whitney Museum had won the battle verbally; in fact, we all parted on very good terms at two o'clock in the morning.

The next day we woke up and began to think, "Well, what are we doing? We're agreeing to join an institution that is simply hostile to modern art and that's not the traditional Whitney policy. We stand for something else."

It just happened that Alfred Barr and James Sobey came down to see an exhibition at the Whitney Museum that day—we were still on 8th Street—and Hermon More and I met them, and we began to talk in the galleries. We said, "Gee, wasn't that some battle last night."

We began to feel as we talked it over that this was not just funny. This was something rather basic. We talked to Mrs. Force about it—Hermon More and I. She was a woman of very cryptic perceptions, and she became absolutely enraged about it. She agreed with us that we were selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. Actually there was no written agreement between ourselves and the Metropolitan. There was purely a verbal agreement, a gentlemen's agreement. Mrs. Force, in turn, talked to Mrs. Miller who was our president and some of the other trustees. They talked about it thoroughly, and they decided that they would break off the agreement. I think it would have happened in the end anyway, but the incident in the Brook Club was a precipitating thing. This was just sort of the last straw. Well, Mrs. Miller and the secretary treasurer of the Whitney Museum, Walter Dunnington, went down to see Mr. Redmond and told him that they didn't want to continue with the arrangement. I think that Mr. Redmond was rather surprised, taken aback. In any case, the agreement was broken off.

One result as far as the Metropolitan Museum goes and this is clearly a result of our breaking our engagement with them, was that they went into the American field for the next three or four years far more activity than they had in the past. I understand that it was said to Mrs. Miller that now they would be our rivals—you see, in the American field. It was all right by us. My feeling has always been the more the merrier in our field. There are many different viewpoints. There are lots of artists. There's not much space to show them. There's not enough money to buy them, and I don't find competition bad. I think it's the life of trade in the contemporary field.

What the Metropolitan Museum did after this was to take on Robert Beverly Hale as curator of American art and embarked on a very American program. They had a series of annual shows. The first one was contemporary American painting, then sculpture, and then American water colors and drawing, graphic work, as I remember. These were definitely a rival to our annual exhibitions. They also began to buy very actively and quite in an advanced way. They bought such advanced artists as Noguchi and Lippold as sculptors. They bought Motherwell and so on and so on. They bought some very good things. They had a great deal of money to spend—more than we did. They built up that collection the nucleus of which is now their more advanced American collection in those few years after we divorced them. They also opened up—I think it was in 1954—their galleries of contemporary American art, painting and sculpture which are right next to the American wing. Hanging there as everybody knows is a big Jackson Pollack they bought for a very big figure and the Lippold—all these very advanced things. Next door is their historic American collection, the 19th Century collections which I resent. Speaking as a person who loves American art from way back and thinks that with all its provincialism it had great merits, I don't like the way this 19th Century collection is shown at the Metropolitan Museum and has been shown for the last ten years now. It's kind of a habitat group. The pictures are hung not on a line but sometimes three deep, some very good pictures hung way up on the ceiling against a glaring red background which is sort of an attempt to show the way the plaster colored walls looked in the 19th Century. Well, to me this is ridiculous and undignified. They've got pictures by Eakins there—marvelous pictures—hung in a way that you wouldn't want to hang pictures in your own home, or you wouldn't want them hung in a gallery. Someday I hope the Metropolitan will show their American collection in a dignified way—the 19th Century collections. I must say that next door they do have one of their best American pictures, again Eakins and Homer and Ryder and so on shown in a perfectly normal and dignified way and not as a kind of a stunt. Well, that showing of a very minute part of their collection is still pretty much the way it always was—it's hardly been changed in the last eight or ten years. I don't think that's being very much up and coming about American art.

I know that they have plans for the future. They have plans to try to raise a good deal of money to build an adequate gallery for the showing of American art next door to the American wing. I wish them well. I hope they get it done because we could stand in the City of New York a really good showing of historic American art. There is no such thing now. The nearest thing to it is the Brooklyn Museum which does it in a dignified and a very good way largely because of the presence there in the past of colleagues, John Baur and Ed Blum. I suppose that someday the Metropolitan will be our heaviest competitor in the American field, and I won't mind it a bit.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  I was wondering what the consequence of this 1954 showing was as of that time.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It made a lot of publicity. It helped—I may be mixed up on my dates, but I think that when this occurred Francis Taylor was still director of the Metropolitan Museum. He resigned later on and went back to Worcester where he had been before. I think that he was director. I'm quite sure he was. He gave Robert Beverly Hale a very free hand. I'll hand it to Francis Taylor that he did this. I'm sure he didn't like himself what was done, but I think he came around to the viewpoint that this is what happens nowadays and that they should show it, a very sensible attitude, and I think that one thing that caused this change in attitude, and it was an official attitude on the part of the Metropolitan Museum, was this sequence of events which I have related.

Another result flowed from this sequence of events. I date the events more or less as the battle between the anti‑moderns and the pro‑moderns in the 1940s. Incidents in this running battle were the show in the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the subsequent Life article, and our rebuttal of the Life article; the drafting and publication of the statement about modern art by the three museums, and finally our breaking off with the Metropolitan Museum. These were a series of events which made us more and more champions of a viewpoint, a liberal viewpoint in American art and brought us closer to our colleagues at the Museum of Modern Art.

With the breaking off of our agreement with the Metropolitan Museum we were then left out on a limb so far as our future quarters went. By this time we had outgrown our quarters on 8th Street; in fact, we'd outgrown it several years before in spite of several enlargements to fit, and we began to look around for a new site. For a while our trustees thought of the general neighborhood down there. There was land available at the south side of Washington Square which, I believe, is now occupied by a big apartment house. It was the southeast corner of Washington Square. They had their eye on this property. I'm glad to say that it didn't go through because my feeling always was that if we were going to move, the place to move was uptown. We were a missionary museum in a sense, still. We were a museum which was trying to interest the American public in contemporary American art and our job was to be in the center of things and not to be down in the Village. Although we had very fond associations with 8th Street and Greenwich Village, we didn't feel that we were doing our job down there. But then out of the blue came an offer on the part of the trustees of the Modern Museum to give us part of their garden on 54th Street, and this was really out of the blue. There was no solicitation, no approach to them at all on the part of our trustees, certainly not on the part of the staff. It came to me as a piece of marvelous news. I remember Mrs. Miller calling me up and saying, "I've got the most wonderful news!"

I had no inkling that this might happen, and I'm sure that Hermon More didn't either. I don't think Mrs. Miller did either. As far as the Modern Museum goes, I don't really know the inside story, but there was a very favorable climate for this. The President, I think, of the Modern Museum at that time was John Hay Whitney who was first cousin to Mrs. Miller and to our other trustees of the family. Nelson Rockefeller was very friendly to us, and Steven Clarke who was a very powerful figure in the Museum of Modern Art at that time was also friendly to us; in fact, Steven Clarke in a way was more friendly to us than he was to the Modern Museum. He became more and more conservative as time went on, and he'd gotten to participate less and less in the activities of the Modern Museum and more and more in the Metropolitan Museum and, in the end, his will left half of his collection to Yale and half of his collection to the Metropolitan—that is, what he didn't leave to his wife. He left nothing at all to the Museum of Modern Art.

The three moving spirits in this very generous offer of land were Jock Whitney, Nelson Rockefeller and Steven Clarke. The offer first was a plot 50 feet wide at the west end of their garden and eventually, as things worked out, they began to realize that this was not adequate. Generous as it was, this made for a rather narrow building which would have to go up about six stories and of which a large part was taken up with facilities such as elevators, hallways, stairs, necessary things, so that only about maybe three‑fifths of the rest of the building was available to us for exhibition and storage, so, as I understand the story, our architect, August Nozell was talking one day to Nelson Rockefeller and mentioned this, and Mr. Rockefeller very generously said, "Well, I think we can give you more land."

From that came 23 feet more toward the east so that we had a plot about every 73 feet wide by 100 feet deep. All of this occurred in, I believe, 1949—the gift. I'm quite sure that all of this happened after Mrs. Force's death. I don't believe she knew about it. I wish she had, because it would have pleased her a great deal. She did know and participated in the breaking off of the agreement with the Metropolitan Museum, and I think this was a relief to her too, to know that the Whitney Museum was going to continue as an independent body. She died in August of 1948, and I wish that she had lived to see the future of this museum because I think it would have been a great satisfaction to her.

Well, the land was given to us with the understanding that we would build on it, that we would make available to the Museum of Modern Art a third of the ground floor and a third of the basement below for a restaurant to be operated by them facing on the garden and eventually, as things worked out, they began to realize that this was not adequate. Generous as it was, this made for a rather narrow building which would have to go up about six stories and of which a large part was taken up with facilities such as elevators, hallways, stairs, necessary things, so that only about maybe three ‑fifths of the rest of the building was available to us for exhibition and storage, so, as I understand the story, our architect, August Nozell [ph] was talking one day to Nelson Rockefeller and mentioned this, and Mr. Rockefeller very generously said, "Well, I think we can give you more land."

From that came 23 feet more toward the east so that we had a plot about 73 feet wide by 100 feet deep. All of this occurred in, I believe, 1949—the gift. I'm quite sure that all of this happened after Mrs. Force's death. I don't believe she knew about it. I wish she had, because it would have pleased her a great deal. She did know and participated in the breaking off of the agreement with the Metropolitan Museum, and I think this was a relief to her too, to know that the Whitney Museum, and I think this was a relief to her too, to know that the Whitney Museum was going to continue as an independent body. She died in August of 1948, and I wish that she had lived to see the future of this museum because I think it would have been a great satisfaction to her.

Well, the land was given to us with the understanding that we would build on it, that we would make available to the Museum of Modern Art a third of the ground floor and a third of the basement below for a restaurant to be operated by them facing on the garden. The land was deeded to us with the understanding that if we ever abandoned the property, they would have the first option to buy it, but not pay for the land since they had given it to us. They would simply buy the building, that if we could not agree on a price if they did not want to buy it and we sold to a third party, then we would give them the value of the land, the Museum of Modern Art the value of the land which we had received from the purchaser, a very fair arrangement.

We then went to work on our plans for the building, and believe me, this is a long complicated process. We formed an architectural committee. The architecture was designed by August Nozell. He was the architect. He had been associated with G. MacCulloch Miller as an architectural firm of Nozell and Miller. Mr. Miller was not then in the firm, or an active architect, although he took part in all the plans. We had a committee which consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Miller, Michael Irving who is an architect himself, and the Miller's son‑in‑law August Nozell, the actual architect in charge, Hermon More and myself, and we met very frequently. We met on the average of once a week for about more than a year because designing a museum building is a very complicated, a very technical thing. The arrangement with the Modern Museum was that the exterior of our building would have to be approved by them, and what happened was that Philip Johnson who was then head of their architectural department and of course a leading American architect himself actually designed the exterior of our building. We met jointly with them several times to see the model they had produced and the plans they had produced, and the exterior, therefore, was approved by us. Actually the initiative came from them, and it worked out that we had approved their plans rather than the other way around.

The interior of the museum was entirely our own responsibility, and I think that Hermon More and I had a great deal to do with the actual working out of the details. I designed the information desk, for example, and had a lot of fun doing it—the frustrated architect in me came out, I think. I did a pretty compact piece of design using standard filing material and all kinds of things, making a very diversified set‑up underneath the counter so that all kinds of stuff could be stored there. We went into the question of storage very fully. Of course, the architect and ourselves worked very closely here all along the line, but I think that Herman More and I had a good deal to say about the actual technical side of things.

The biggest mistake we made in my opinion was the light. We designed a very elaborate lighting system. We didn't design it. We got a lighting expert, Kelly—I can't remember what his first name was—but what we wanted to do was to get as near as possible to the effect of outside light as seen through an overhead skylight, so in collaboration with us Kelly designed an overall lighting system with a glass ceiling below it, a ceiling of opaque glass which diffused the light, a very complicated system of overall light in what they call cold cathode tubes and directed light which was directed by reflectors, florescent tubes hitting certain patterns of potential wall space. One thing we did do was to design a very flexible arrangement of walls. Each floor is completely open, but you have certain partitions which can be moved and the lights are supposed to hit these in various combinations. Well, it was fine in theory. It's much too complicated. We've had to modify it as time goes on. Nowadays we really don't use it very much, and it cost well over $200,000 dollars.

If I was to do it over again, I would simplify it considerably. In the first place, I don't like a lighted ceiling anymore, especially when the ceiling is rather low as this is. It's a little oppressive. It takes the eye away from the objects on the wall. I've come around completely to the idea that if you're having a building which is windowless as it has to be in order to use wall space to the greatest advantage, and if you have to depend entirely on artificial light, then let's be frank about it and not try to make it look like daylight coming through skylights. If I were doing it over again, I would have the simplest and most flexible system. I would have a dark ceiling with the lights as little visible as possible and the lights directed on the walls. I think you get much more of a sense of concentration on the object that way when you don't have a lighted ceiling.

We made some other mistakes, but on the whole the building is not on a very big piece of land, and I think it uses the space in a very efficient way. For example, as I say, we occupy a plot 73 feet by 100 of which we don't have the use of all of it on the first two floors—the basement and the first floor. The Guggenheim Museum occupies a plot which must be 200 feet on Fifth Avenue by probably 150 feet east and west, and the building goes up seven stories, and they can't hang any more than we can in the way of art. Our building is a very compact and efficient building with some mistakes, but the astonishing thing is that within eight years we had outgrown it.

It took a long time to build. This was the aftermath of the war. There were steel shortages. We broke ground, as I remember, about 1950, but it wasn't until about 1954 that we opened up the building. We were held up by steel shortages. We were held up by all kinds of things. The plans were changed right in the middle from a building 50 feet wide to a building 73 feet wide—right in the middle—all of which took time, and also an entire summer was really wasted by the fact that the professional staff, Hermon More and myself, didn't get together with the architect and work our plans so that the first plans presented were not using the space in the best way, and they had to be changed. But after that we worked together very closely. It was very exciting to see the building going up, I must say, and to think about what our future was, but I don't think that we really foresaw all the implications. I remember myself saying to Mr. Dunnington who was secretary‑treasurer, "When we get up there, the situation is going to be completely different. The whole picture of the museum will be completely different."

I think this was an understatement. The first thing that happened—we opened up in November, 1954, and the first thing that happened was that our first year's attendance was four times what it had been down on 8th Street. Down there we had averaged about 75,000 people a year, and of course we weren't open in the summers down there because the galleries were an inferno of heat. We had skylights, but no air conditioning. This building was completely air conditioned, so that we were open three and a half months here which we weren't down on 8th Street which made a difference of course. Also down on 8th Street we used to be closed on Mondays, and we kept the Museum open on Mondays up here, but even aside from that, the increase in attendance was enormous. It was the prestige of a new building much more centrally located right next to the Modern Museum with free access back and forth. They fed us in attendance, and we fed them too, because their attendance increased that same year too. The whole picture was different. I mean there was the curiosity of a new building. For example, the Guggenheim's first year's attendance was tremendous, but it has fallen off since then. The same thing happened with us, but we still average now about three times the attendance we had downtown. We run about $225 to $250,000 a year, and we are now, and have been for a number of years ever since we moved uptown, either fifth or sixth in attendance among all the art museums in New York City. The highest attendance of course is the Metropolitan Museum. Then comes the Cloisters, the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. Before the Guggenheim was open, we were fifth in attendance, and when they opened they, of course, took the fifth place, and we dropped to sixth, and we are a specialized museum only operating in the field of 20th Century American art. We don't have the historic collections and we don't have a big museum. I think it shows the fact that we play a vital role in the American art world.

I guess I didn't cover the sale of our 19th Century collection, did I?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, this was to increase the acquisition funds.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's right.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The museum didn't have shows from the divorce to the opening of the new gallery?

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I think we closed down the preceding year when we were getting ready to move. Things were just getting piled up, and we felt that we—well, my memory is that we didn't have any shows during the seasons of 1953‑1954, but I could be wrong. Of course, it's all a matter of record. I just don't remember. I know we did curtail our activities a great deal because when designing of this building took an awful lot of time, and we hadn't added to our staff. After Mrs. Force's death, we still had the same staff, except that in 1954, I think it was, we did acquire John Baur from the Brooklyn Museum which was one of our best acquisitions, believe me, a first class museum man, and he has been our mainstay ever since. This was before we moved uptown that Jack Baur joined our staff, and this made a great difference to us in the work load. But if I hadn't told about it, I suppose I should tell about the disposal of our historic collection.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was through Knoedler.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  I did tell about that.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes, you did.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  This was 1949, and at that point we then became a museum exclusively of 20th Century American Art.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  This was prior to the opening of this building.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  It was prior to the gift of land—or at least that's what my memory is, or maybe the whole thing happened about the same time. A lot of things happened in those years. One of the new developments after we moved uptown was the establishment of the Friends of the Whitney Museum. This project was something we had had in mind for a long time, even when we went down on 8th Street and, as I remember, we first began to discuss it about 1950, and I think I can claim credit for it. My feeling was that the whole set‑up of the museum was not broad enough. Our Board of Trustees were three members of the Whitney family and MacCulloch Miller, also a member of the family by marriage, Flora Irving, the Miller's daughter, and Walter Dunnington who was the legal advisor and secretary and treasurer. Well, it's a very small board compared to most museums. Mrs. Whitney on her death had increased our endowment considerably. I think it was a $2,500,000 addition to the endowment. We could live on this down on 8th Street, but I could foresee the time when in a bigger building open all year round with more activities we would need more money. We were particularly strapped in acquisition funds even after we sold out the 19th Century collection. That only added about six or seven thousand dollars a year. Well, this was not very much. It made a total of about $17,000 a year in acquisition funds. It's still one of the largest funds for the purchase of contemporary American art, not enough for us.

Well, I believe that I was the one who thought up the Friends of the Whitney Museum. The idea was to have a society of people who would pay a good membership fee, not like the ordinary museum membership where you get people to pay five, ten, 15 dollars a year and you get memberships in the thousands. It didn't seem to me that this fitting our picture at all. In the first place, we were a very specialized museum in a very vital but not very wide field. We didn't cover architecture and design, photography—all those things that the Museum of Modern Art covered. We had no film program. We didn't charge admission. All of these things meant that it wasn't the right picture for a big low price membership as the money we would take in would only be enough to run the membership, so instead of that I conceived the idea of a very select membership, people who would pay a good round sum, and they would be people who would be really vitally interested in contemporary American art and prepared in a sense to help support the museum. We already had in mind the kind of person, people who had worked with us in various capacities. Many of them were trustees of the American Federation of Arts, and by that time I had been a trustee of the American Federation of Arts since 1942, and I think a very active trustee, if I may say so. And I had become great friends with people like Roy Neuberger, Milton Lowenthal, and Hudson Walker, people like this who were active in the Federation, and we found that our interests were mutual. We were all collectors of contemporary American art. We were interested in its welfare, and so on. Well, we postponed the formation of this until we moved uptown because we had so many other things to think about, and it didn't seem to us to be the right time.

We had several different ideas in the beginning. We had always thought that the money that would be donated by the Friends of the Museum should be used primarily for purchases. For a while I toyed; in fact, I proposed the idea of actually giving the Friends membership as a whole a vote in the acquisition of works of art. One of the ideas I thought of was that we should have annually an exhibition of candidates for acquisition suggested by us primarily, but also by the Friends, that we should have an evening meeting where we all looked around; afterward we would take a vote on what we would acquire. There were the Friends voting about the use of their money. This didn't turn out to be feasible. You can't really spread the responsibility that way. The primary reason is that the primary responsibility is the museums' because we know our collection, and we know what our means are. We have to really be the initiators of most of the acquisitions. However, as things did take shape, we worked out a joint acquisition committee with five members of the Friends and five members of the Whitney Museum staff. Usually the initiation of artists to be bought comes from us, but also, in many cases, they have suggested people to be purchased, people they're interested in and people they've discovered, and so on. The decisions are jointly made. We do the work of gathering together the works to be looked at, and this occurs about three times a year. The committee jointly considers them and votes on them, and we never try to twist their arms. If there's any sizeable number of a bare five members who are opposed to an acquisition we usually pass it over. We don't try to throw our weight around too much, and it's worked out very well indeed, very harmoniously, and we've gotten some very fine things from it.

Well, the way—I'm going back a little bit in the formation of the Friends—the initial talks in 1954, shortly after we moved uptown, and we got together a group of people who had shown an interest in the museum. They included Roy Neuberger, Milton Lowenthal, David Solinger, William Lane, David Tishman, Hudson Walker, possibly some others. We met jointly with Mr. Baur, Mrs. Miller, and myself and discussed the whole plan. We met several times, and the concept began to emerge. David Solinger took a leading part, and he was invaluable in drawing up the whole arrangement, pinning it down and getting specific about things, and in the end he was the first President of the Friends of the Whitney Museum. We launched the society, as I remember, in 1955. In the first place, the dues were $250 dollars a year. I had thought of it in terms of maybe we could get a hundred members paying us $25,000, and this would be a nice increase in our purchase funds. Well, as it worked out, it reached a level and has been at this level for some years of a 185 members. I don't see that this needs to be the top either. In the future, we will probably increase it well above 200, I would say. It's been the most important expansion of our support. It was the first expansion of our support and the most important up to the enlargements of our Board of Trustees which only occurred two years ago.

It's meant not only the actual funds donated by the Friends but many other modes of participation. For example, once a year there is an exhibition sponsored by the Friends, actually organized by the Friends—we have an exhibition committee, and they agree upon a theme, or subject, and we do most of the leg work—that is, the staff does, but also the committee is brought into the picture continually in the selection of works and so on, and this is the Friend's Annual Exhibition. The first year we made it a selection from private collections of the Friends which was a fine show, one of the really best American shows I ever saw. By this time we had among our Friends some of the leading collectors of American art. Well, the themes have changed year by year. One year we actually got the whole membership to vote on who are the 18 most prominent living American painters and sculptors, and we put on a show of their work. One year we had the theme of business acquiring American art which is still a very vital source of support for art. Another year we took the theater collects American art. This year, of course, it's the Armory Show, the 50th Anniversary of the Armory Show, and it seemed like a natural for us because this was the beginning of the interest in contemporary American art. They felt that this society devoted to contemporary American art should signalize the anniversary, and beyond that the formation and participation of the Friends in our affairs had meant a lot of other contacts. Our gifts have increased enormously, gifts of works of art to use and they come now largely from members of the Friends who know about our museum. They are brought into the picture. In a way they never had anything like this before the formation of the Friends. Many other good things have flowed from this and it, to my mind, is one of the best moves ever made.

Another thing which I felt all along about the structure of the museum was that our Board of Trustees was not big enough, that it should be enlarged and should bring in people who could help us in many ways. I may say that this position of mine which, I believe, I originated; it was my idea for a long time—was not agreed to by my colleagues on the staff for a long time, nor by the other trustees, and I can understand their position. We were in a very fortunate position. Our Board of Trustees were people who had been associated with the museum for many years. They had never in any way failed to back us up. They never did what so many trustees of museums do and that is, block the staff or try to control them too much. Nothing like this ever happened. We couldn't have had a better board, and I must say that all of us even when we swung over to the idea of enlarging our Board of Trustees we had many qualms. We thought that maybe we were giving up our independence in order to enlarge our support, and I couldn't see how we could continue to grow without expanding our Board of Trustees and getting on there people who could help us in many ways.

In the formation of the Friends of the Whitney Museum we had established a Board of Trustees or Board of Directors of the Friends and the nucleus of it was the people who had gotten together with us to form the Friends. The first board was limited in number—I've forgotten the exact figure, but I think maybe it was 16, something like this, 12 maybe; anyway, twice we enlarged the number. I think it's now 25, and we haven't got it entirely filled, but it's pretty nearly 25. Well, this board is an active board. It met once a year, two or three times a year, and it became increasingly involved in our affairs which is fine, including our very good friends, not larger friends, but smaller friends.

We had a number of discussions about the Board of Trustees of the Whitney Museum. I remember there was one occasion when we met at Mrs. Miller's apartment—in the spring of 1960 or 1959 possibly, to discuss this particular problem, and there was still considerable reluctance on the part of both of our Trustees—I was not a trustee at this time—and our staff to take this step, but in the end we finally decided that it was the thing to do. The first trustees we picked were all closely identified with us, those who had been identified with the Friends and very active. They were Roy Neuberger, David Solinger, Arthur G. Altschul, Alan Temple, Bob Bridgman, and we also at the same time added to the board three staff trustees—not staff trustees; we added Michael Irving who was Miller's son‑in‑law, and we added Hermon More, and myself. Then we specified in drawing up the Constitution, or the revision of the Constitution of the museum which was done by our lawyer, that the current president of the Friends of the Museum should be an ex officio member of the Board of Trustees of the Whitney Museum, and that's the present setup. We probably will expand our board again. I hope we do. I think that our present number is not quite adequate even now, and especially facing the future, which we do, of having to build a new building and go into a fund raising campaign. But I feel that these various steps which were made over the years since 1948, have all been—let's rehearse them. In the first place, the beginning of the acceptance of gifts, the breaking down of the prohibition against shows of living artists, the new building naturally, the formation of the Friends of the Whitney Museum, the sale of our 19th Century collection and our concentration on the present, the 20th Century and finally the formation, the enlargement of our Board of Trustees—all of these changes are bringing us much more into line with what most museums are. It's the growth of a museum which started as an enterprise on the part of two remarkable women, Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force, run on a very personal basis in a wonderful warm and human way, an enlargement into an institution that is now much more the pattern of most museums, but I think still has this personal quality. Everybody connected with us has demonstrated his belief in American art, specifically the art of our time, and I feel that we have an expanded setup which is entirely consistent with the first set up, the first plan of the museum.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  The enlargement of the trustees didn't act in any way to block -

MR. GOODRICH Our activities?

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Yes.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Not in any way whatsoever.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Identity of interest, progressive outlook.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  Absolutely. Of course, it's only been about two years now. I think that probably as time goes on our trustees will become more involved. Actually right now, for example, the acquisitions, aside from the Friends' acquisitions, the museum's own acquisitions are controlled by the staff and our own particular older trustees, Mr. and Mrs. Miller. Actually the staff has more to say about acquisitions than in most museums, takes more responsibility and our older trustees like this. They are very open‑minded about it. There is a difference in our set up in that there is a body of what are called permanent trustees. This was made necessary by our Constitution which set up a board of permanent trustees, about seven of them, and they have the ultimate financial responsibility, and I believe they also are on a permanent basis. I mean they are not elected. I was made a permanent trustee myself about a year ago, and the other trustees are elected so that there are two classes. It's really a paper division. Actually in responsibility, initiative and financial matters and in many other matters it's become more and more that of the Board of Trustees as a whole without any regard to whether they are permanent or elective, and the difference is never brought out in any way, so that it really operates as a uniform board.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  It's hard to draw distinctions between "permanent" and "elected" once you sit around a table when there's some problem you're discussing.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  The way it works actually, although legally speaking the financial responsibility rests only with the permanent trustees, they simply ratify now what the board as a whole has done. For example, when it came recently to the investing of the first installment to be given for our new building, it was the three of the elected trustees and one of our permanent trustees who were made into a financial committee, so it's a matter of approval really, but it's quite a different situation now than it was three years ago.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  You've seen its growth then from a personal institution to more of an institution where the momentum is less capricious and more orderly and the ups and downs, their possibility, is lessened.

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's true. In the beginning, of course, this institution grew like topsy. It started out as well—just Mrs. Whitney's studio where she showed the work of artists whom she liked and believed in. Then it expanded into the Whitney Studio Club with Mrs. Force on all sides, the most informal kind of thing and this, in turn, became the Whitney Studio Gallery, a non‑profit gallery which lasted only a couple of years. Then it changed into a museum which was run on a very personal basis by Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force, really taking all the responsibility, and I don't know the actual financial picture, but I imagine that every year probably Mrs. Whitney made up deficits, and there was never any—well, we didn't spend money foolishly, I don't think. But we didn't also do things in any cheap way, and we always felt that we were backed up completely by Mrs. Whitney. It was a very unusual situation for a museum to be in.

I don't think there's any other museum except possibly a place like Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, what is now the Phillips Collection which is really a one man museum—that is, Duncan Phillips established it in 1918, and it really is a private collection turned into a public institution, and it's retained this very personal individual character right up to the present time, always will, I'm sure. That is the closest museum I can think of to the Whitney Museum in terms of a museum concerned with living art. Of course, you get museums like the Gardner Museum which is sort of a memorial to a woman and so on. You get these personal collections, but not very many of them are involved with the present the way the Whitney and the Phillips collections are. Then inevitably, it has to broaden its support and the responsibility it has given to others outside the family. May I say that although reluctant initially to expand the board, the attitude of our older trustees is now completely affirmative about it, and we've had very fine relations all along the line, and I think that everybody realizes now that it was the thing to do.

HARLAN PHILLIPS:  Has any further thought been given to a definition of what constitutes "contemporary art" and at what point would your collection become something other than "contemporary art?"

LLOYD GOODRICH:  That's a good question because as time goes on, I mean the earlier part of the collection is going to recede further and further into the past. However, that's quite a long way ahead. Actually our collection in a sense starts not quite at 1900. It starts a little bit later. The origin historically of it is The Eight and—I mean the character of the collection itself really starts with the painters of The Eight, and the pioneer modernists and all of that you can say could date from around 1908. The representation of the first decade, or even the first decade and a half in our collections, is not very heavy, and of course, we do not attempt, and in this I suppose we could be criticized, to show the traditionalists who lived on into the 20th Century, people like Weir, Thayer, people like that, and many of them very fine painters. We do not attempt to collect or show them—Hassam, the impressionists and so on. On this we're perhaps not entirely consistent, but on the other hand, I think it gives the collection a kind of unified character and a historical logic because there was that break that occurred about 1908 and 1910 between the older American school forces and the new forces, and it was a real break. I think in our present situation to attempt to go into the traditionalists painters of the early 20th Century would be a mistake. I would hope that when the Metropolitan Museum does succeed in opening up their new quarters that they will show this school because I think we've overrated it a great deal. I mean there was the clash of the two forces, the immovable object of the traditionalist and the irresistible force of the modern movement, and it's still persists in our thinking about American art. I have tended more and more to see that there is more virtue in the traditionalists than I used to think. Just two years ago I organized an exhibition for three museums in Canada of American painting from 1865 to 1915, I think it was, and I was very much interested to see how along with the painters we have come to have accepted into the main stream of American art—in other words, Eakins, Ryder, Homer, Blakelock, aside from them, there were so many interesting traditionalists, painters whom we kind of excluded from the main stream, people like Thomas Dewing, Chase, and Duveneck, people who have been completely forgotten in many cases, and of course the impressionists—Hassam and so on. I think we're in for a re‑evaluation. Out of that show, and I was very proud of it, and we had it at the Whitney after it was shown in Canada, it aroused a great deal of interest, and one of the amusing things was how many extremely advanced people liked some of the paintings. For example, there was a big Dewing owned by the Detroit Institute. I think Dewing is a very interesting artist, but this picture was called something like The Recitation. It was two women out of doors in a very misty twilight kind of atmosphere, and it really consisted entirely of two main tones of green, green and gray in a very mysterious way, and if you turn this picture upside down, it looks like a Rothko. It had the same kind of feeling of—I don't know, mood, a pervading kind of examination. In our museum, many of our guards are painters, young men who have to support themselves, and they take a job here and paint in their spare time. I remember one of them when that show was on, a young very abstract expressionist painter said to me, "Gee, that Dewing is a wonderful picture!"

This was so unexpected, but he saw the relationship, and I think other people did. I think we're in for a re‑evaluation in that field. It's like getting to know your grandfather better—you know.

[END OF INTERVIEW.]