Dozens of Chicagoans, I’m sure, were aghast, appalled and not a little bewildered by the news that a cabal of some sort seems bent on moving the prestigious Terra Museum of American Art from Chicago to, gads, Washington.
For those of you who may be asking, “What in blazes is that idiot talking about?” I should hasten to explain.
The late Dan Terra was a chemist who in the 1930s invented the revolutionary process by which magazines could print photographs within 24 hours — instead of the previous norm of 30 days — thus making Life magazine, among unfortunate multitudes of others, possible.
Terra went on to found a huge multinational printing chemical corporation and amass a rare collection of hundreds of millions of American dollars. He used some of those dollars to amass a rare collection of several hundred works of what he used to describe to me as “historic American art” — by which he meant stuff with trees and houses and boats and such and none of that Abstract Expressionist junk nobody understands.
To house this altogether agreeable collection, Terra established a Chicago art museum some five stories high that proudly bears his name, but which for some reason seems designed to resemble a vacant store.
Though it sits on North Michigan Avenue, with teeming hordes passing it all day, it has had few visitors, I’m sure because art museumgoers expect granite lions and fluted columns and not empty shop windows.
In fact, my reference in the beginning here to “dozens” is probably an exaggeration. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered even one dozen visitors in the place — and at least half of those were foreign tourists looking for the shoe store or whatever next door.
At all events, Terra died four years ago, and his widow and second wife, Judith, a major player now on the museum board of directors, apparently is trying to transplant it to Washington, D.C. One presumes she is, because a Chicago judge last week issued a restraining order forbidding her to do so.
The order was sought in a lawsuit filed by two other museum board members — mascara mogul Ron Gidwitz and waste mogul Dean Buntrock.
They allege that the widow Terra’s motive in seeking to move the museum to the capital is to “obtain a prominent place” for herself in Washington society.
As someone who has spent hours and hours listening to Dan Terra expound on his plans and hopes (often repeating himself endlessly), I find myself siding with Gidwitz and Buntrock.
First of all, Chicago only has three major art museums, and if you take one away, the city would be reduced to, say, the same cultural level of Cleveland.
Second, with a population only one-fifth that of Chicago’s, Washington already has no fewer than 10 major art museums: the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn, the National Museum of African Art, the Sackler Gallery, the Freer Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery, the Phillips Collection, the Renwick Collection, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art.
The Terra would draw bigger crowds on Pitcairn Island.
Third, I don’t know who misinformed the widow Terra, but Washington is unique as the only city in America that has no society.
Unlike Chicago, where 40 or 50 families (nowadays, CEOs) have always run everything, Washington is a sort of wild west town populated mostly by drifters. Instead of society, it has a sort of royal court where the kings gets thrown out every four or eight years — along with all their scheming, bootlicking courtiers.
The cultural and charitable institutions here are largely run by politicians, mortgage lenders, real estate developers and car dealers. Mrs. Terra would gain more social entre here opening a Buick showroom.
Lastly, what would Dan think? He left his museums and governing foundation a staggeringly huge endowment of more than $400 million — enough to give each and every one of his historic American art paintings its own Astor Street townhouse to hang in.
What he told me he wanted this endowment spent for was to maintain his collection in an appropriate downtown Chicago facility and to use the Giverny place (the only art museum there, though it was the hometown of Claude Monet) to exhibit American works that would show the French that we, too, produced Impressionist art, so there.
Since his death, the hands on the Terra museum helm have included a Chicago Union League Club lawyer, the former head of the Sorbonne, a retired ambassador to France, the wife of the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the wife of Mayor Daley.
The man Dan picked to run the Giverny outlet was unceremoniously let go. (He sued in a French court and got revenge.)
The Chicago museum has had an endless stream of directors, the last one of whom has installed such non-historic American art as a faux freezer containing plastic fish heads that plays Japanese songs when opened, and a machine that makes its own artworks by randomly dripping paint on things.
In life, Terra had at best a rather loose hold on his formidable temper. I would suggest to these people that they tread more warily, lest they provoke some King Tut-like Terra curse from the grave.
Or is that what’s happening now?
