By MARSHA
MERCER
James
Phillips was 34 when he perished in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, just 13 months
after his father suddenly died. James’s
younger brother, Duncan, 32, was devastated.
“There came
a time when sorrow all but overwhelmed me,” Duncan Phillips later wrote. “Then
I turned to my love of painting for the will to live.”
In his
grief, Phillips resolved to create a memorial worthy of his brother and father,
who enjoyed collecting art. He would create a small museum that featured the
“art of our best men…open at all times to the people of Washington and the
strangers within our gates,” he wrote a friend.
Using his
inheritance – his maternal grandfather was a co-founder of the Jones and
Laughlin Steel Co. -- Phillips opened his gallery dedicated to modern art in his
family’s mansion near Dupont Circle in 1921.
He devoted his
life to the project. When he died of a heart attack at 79 in 1966, Phillips had
a collection of nearly 2,000 paintings, 1,400 by American artists. The most famous painting is “Luncheon of the Boating Party”
by Renoir, an early acquisition for $100,000. Phillips left us one of the nation’s finest private museums.
His life,
like that of many other 20th century philanthropists, has largely
faded from most Americans’ memory. Now, however, The Phillips Collection’s
“Made in the USA” exhibit freshens the story of his extraordinary role as a patron
of the arts -- and not a moment too soon.
There’s much
concern in the art world about whether the next generation will support art
museums the way their predecessors did. As boomers leave the stage, museums
worry how to appeal to digital-centric young benefactors. The young also seem
more drawn to solve social problems than to support the arts. Phillips was
willing to wait for history to judge whether his paintings were great art. Millennials
like to see immediate results of their contributions.
And then
there’s the moral question. Say you have $100,000 to give. Which is the better use
of your $100,000 donation: your local art museum for a new wing to better
display its collection or a group working to reduce trachoma, an eye disease
that affects children in developing countries and leads to blindness?
That is the
provocative question posed by Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton,
in an op-ed last year in The New York Times. It’s hard to argue with Singer’s
conclusion that the health expenditure leads to a bigger improvement in the
lives of those affected.
And yet, people
give with their hearts, not just their heads. Phillips had a personal
connection with art; he and his brother had begun to collect paintings and to advise
their parents on purchases. He knew that visiting an art museum nourishes and
expands our human spirit and inspires us to think beyond ourselves.
“Art offers two great gifts of emotion—the emotion of recognition and the
emotion of escape. Both emotions take us out of the boundaries of self,”
Phillips wrote.
Phillips took a leap of faith, opening his gallery before
American art and modern art were appreciated. The Phillips opened before both
the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Phillips bought
and exhibited paintings by little-known artists, often giving a young painter
his first museum show. (Yes, they were mostly men.) He also supported
struggling artists with annual stipends, including Arthur G. Dove, who wrote
Phillips: “You have no idea what sending on those checks means to me at this
time…It has been marvelous.”
“Made in the USA” includes more than 200 works
by 120 American artists, including Thomas Eakins, Marsden Hartley, Edward
Hopper, John Marin and Georgia O’Keeffe.
It reflects Phillips’ determination to be a “beneficent force in the
community where I live” because “art is part of the social purpose of the
world.”
If you can’t
stop by the exhibit before it ends Aug. 31, visit the Phillips website,
www.phillipscollection.org. I’d love to hear what you think.
© 2014
Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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