0.21 Edward mayo, 1918-2005

A registrar remembers

James Chillman, Jr., as he was known, was the first director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston—founding director. He was also a professor of art at Rice (then the Rice Institute), and he was one of the teachers who knew me when I studied architecture at Rice. I graduated just in time to be drafted into World War II, which relieved me of the necessity of trying to be an architect for at least three years. I came out of the Army air force and went to work for an architect learning what I knew to begin with, but I really did not have architectural talent and had too much respect for architecture to become another bad one. They had plenty of bad ones already; they didn’t need any more!

I floundered around and did a number of other things and finally Mr. Chillman (who had noticed this floundering—this is now in the latter part of 1960) asked me if I would like to come and work at the Museum as the registrar. I think I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “Well, I have a book here. If you will come to work you can read the book and learn how to be a registrar.” And he offered me a little more money than I was making where I was. I went to work there on January 15, 1961.

About the time he hired me, he was the interim director. He had been Director Emeritus when Lee Malone became director of the Museum; the first full-time museum director was Lee Malone. Mr. Chillman never considered himself full-time director because he had what he felt was a full-time job at Rice. But he devoted as much time as almost any other director—surely the next couple—at the Museum. He and Miss (Ruth) Uhler and one janitor—three people—kept the Museum going by themselves in World War II. When he left he took the title of Director Emeritus and he was gone about four or five years when Lee Malone was there. [Then] Lee Malone was retired, was resigned, and Chillman came back and was there for a couple of years while the board searched for and found a new director, James Johnson Sweeney. So we were both hired about the same time.

Sweeney’s tenure

Mr. Sweeney did not hire me, but I’ll tell you—it was an experience that I shall absolutely never forget. I think I remember more about it than I do any of the subsequent directors, though every one of them had memorable characteristics and were very, very different in many ways from each other. Peter Marzio said once, “We shouldn’t think about how they were different; we should think about how they might be the same.” I found out that they did have one very, very salient characteristic in common: they were all dedicated to art. Each in his own very individual way…but it made working there a lot more interesting than just working for one person.

I probably never knew an individual like Sweeney. I don’t think there was an individual like Sweeney. It was a very stimulating experience. We were told that when he was hired he was given the opportunity to do whatever he wanted with the staff; he had the notorious reputation of having fired if not all 99, then 44% of the staff at the Guggenheim when he went there. There weren’t too many people to keep when he came, except for Miss Ruth Uhler. Sweeney didn’t fire anybody when he came. He augmented the staff a little bit, not a great deal—because what money he was given I think he had been told that it was for acquisitions. That was the money that he had to add to the collection, and he added to it by some very fortuitous gifts, mostly from Mr. and Mrs. de Menil, and then he bought some. He may have bought some tribal or primitive art, but he didn’t have much money for exhibitions or for staff—he wanted to really do it himself. He felt quite able to. He didn’t hire any curators. He didn’t want any curators. He didn’t hire a business manager. He got rid of one by constant battering on him so the man finally resigned; he was an extremely strong personality and a very, very interesting one.