03/01/2008
Research psychiatrist and entrepreneur Arthur M. Sackler made his fortune in medical publishing and pharmaceutical advertising. But upon his death in 1987, perhaps his most lasting legacy was in the arts, where he bestowed pieces—and major financial support—to museums from his vast personal collection of Asian and Near Eastern artwork.
His daughter, Elizabeth, closely watched her father plan and negotiate these museum gifts. Sackler takes a page from her father: He created namesake museums and galleries at the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Harvard and Princeton universities; last year, she oversaw the opening of her own major project by funding the first center devoted to feminist art. She gave The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago’s monumental feminist installation, a permanent home at the Brooklyn Museum.
Sackler, 60, is the CEO of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation and oversees her father’s collection. She also founded, in 1992, the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation, which served for 12 years as a conduit for repatriating ceremonial objects. Sackler spoke with Worth staff writer Elizabeth Harris about championing neglected causes and reclaiming the word "matron."
What did you learn from your family that contributed to your own work?
I learned from my father how to realize a vision. I watched him engage with museums, engage with the Smithsonian, so that there are wings [in his name] and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution. So for me it’s not some idea that’s harebrained and impossible. I grew up not only being taken to museums, but watching and learning the interaction between idea and museum, collector and museum, collections and museum.
What was the most important lesson?
Actively participate. You don’t just have an idea, turn it over to somebody, and write a check. That’s not what this is about. That’s not what my father did. By the time I went to [Brooklyn Museum director] Arnold Lehman and asked, "Would you like to have The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum as a gift?" I already knew what the components of that center were going to be. We then negotiated a reality for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. It is a center; it is not a gallery.
What was that dialogue like?
It was a great ride. Now I understand why my father said, "I’m not a philanthropist—I’m having a ball." It’s been an incredible time to see an idea in one’s head come into physical form.
Was there an instance when you were not pleased with a decision, or your plans changed with this project?
My original idea in the late 1990s was a freestanding museum that would have been the Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum for Feminist Art. I chewed on that for a long time. But it was going to be very large. It was going to have outbuildings for residents; it was going to be in New Mexico. I was thinking about having an amphitheater for Lysistrata and other wonderful plays, and found the land. But I couldn’t say, "Let’s go," and I realized I didn’t really want to spend the remainder of my life concerned about the administration of the museum, endowment for a museum, all of what it would take to start a whole new institution. I thought about my father. He really became partners with existing major institutions, and I thought, that’s really the way to go.
Had you been interested in finding a home for The Dinner Party for a long time?
No, it wasn’t until I determined it would be great to have The Dinner Party housed in a place as resplendent and important as the work itself. I had met Judy in 1988 and started collecting her work. For Judy and many people, having The Dinner Party permanently housed was an end goal. To me, it’s a launching pad for education about all of the 1,038 women in The Dinner Party.
You mention the distinction between a center and a gallery. What
is so important about that difference?
A gallery is really what houses
art to be seen in exhibition by the public. A center has components. We have
three galleries: the Dinner Party Gallery, the Feminist Art Gallery and the
Herstory Gallery. We also have artist talks, panel discussions based on
The Dinner Party. There are dialogues and discussions: What is feminist art?
What is women’s art? The center is about looking at art, feminism, feminist art,
women’s art—because there are no answers. The idea is to bring the dialogue out
for people to exchange ideas.
Some would argue there is no need to separate feminist
art.
There are women artists who
consider themselves feminist artists, and it has to do with content. What is
feminist art? It is art that has content that has to do with feminist ideals and
goals. Certainly feminist art didn’t start before the 1970s. So are there women
artists who predate feminist art, as a coined term, whose content of art is
feminist? The answer is yes. Do we have a right to take that art and put it into
a feminist-art context? That’s what’s being discussed. Georgia O’Keeffe did not
consider herself a feminist artist, and she was alive after the feminist-art
movement started. Everybody looks at Georgia O’Keeffe and says, "Oh my God, this
is a woman’s vocabulary, these are women’s colors, these are women’s images." So
is that feminist art? If she didn’t consider herself a feminist artist, she
certainly inspired feminist artists. That’s no small thing.
You purchased Hopi and Navajo masks at Sotheby’s in 1991 for
repatriation. What inspired you?
The Hopi and Navajo had
contacted Sotheby’s and asked it to remove the kachinas from auction. The
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act had been passed six
months earlier, and Sotheby’s correctly said that it was not bound by it because
it only binds federally funded institutions. But coming from a family background
and education where ethics, morality and integrity were really held high, I felt
that it was outrageous that Sotheby’s wouldn’t acknowledge the offense that was
being taken and recognize that distinction between art and a spiritual object
needed by a living culture. Sotheby’s stood on the premise that [the items were]
consigned, and it had to leave them up by law—which really was just a
smokescreen, as it turned out, because in the future it would take other things
off the block. I did go in to purchase them to return them. I had no idea at the
time that there would be this outpouring of gratitude by native and nonnative
people.
There is more sensitivity to this issue today; but how much more
work is there to do in this area?
Even when I started in the early
’90s and people asked, "How long will repatriation take?" I said, "Forever."
Since then, there are a number of things that have happened that have raised
the visibility of the issues surrounding spoils of war and the source nations
for looting and the sale of art. It was status quo for museums to get their
artifacts from source nations. It was the way of the world for certain works of
art—for certain areas. I think that’s now being contested. Nazi looting, for
example, became an issue, and now there are certain things required by
museums.
Provenance has become a huge issue for
museums.
Provenance, that is number one.
The time is ripe right now in terms of peoples’ sensitivities—not only about
legal issues but about moral issues. Look at the agreements that have been
negotiated between the Metropolitan, the Getty and the Italian government. On
the other hand, there were 16 million works of art stolen by the Nazis during
World War II.
As head of the foundation, how do you balance continuing the work
that was important to your father and carving out your own
areas?
The work for the Arthur M.
Sackler Foundation is my work. Of course, it was important to my father.
When my father passed away, he was involved in so many things, in so many
ways, a lot of it got divided among the children by what ignited our interest. I
run the foundation; my siblings are on the board. We’re a private operating
foundation, but we think of ourselves as being more of a family foundation.
Is there a challenge in dividing your time or
resources?
No, I work very hard. And what
it means is, some-times I don’t get up to see my grandchildren as often
as I’d like to in Vermont, or sometimes I don’t have a big family dinner on
a particular holiday. I am not only a working mother, I am a working
grandmother. And I don’t have a wife.
You challenge the idea of patronage, yet you support the arts.
What is the distinction?
When people have referred to me
as a patron, I say, "I’m not a patron, I’m a matron." You know the old
[anti-rape] expression, "Take back the night"? I’m trying to win back the
title. If you look it up in the dictionary, "patron" has to do with patronage
and "matron" says "old lady." And there we are into our patriarchal vocabulary.
So if anything, I’m a matron of the arts.