Wall Street Treasure

One day two years ago, a jury of art connoisseurs gathered in a midtown branch of a Manhattan bank. At that meeting, and four others, dozens of paintings and sculptures were paraded by, and the critics noted their opinions of the works by rating them from 0 to 3. There was occasional disagreement, but works getting more than 14 points were almost sure of winding up in a new home--the 60-story glass, steel and aluminum Chase Manhattan Bank building that opened last month near Wall Street (TIME, May 26). By last week, though the jury still had not used up its budget of $500,000, it had clearly made the Chase Manhattan Bank the most impressive modern office-museum ever built (see color).

The traditional stodginess of banks would have made all this impossible 20 years ago, but U.S. corporations are now established patrons of modern art. Chase Manhattan's art-collecting president, David Rockefeller, found an eager ally in the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It was obvious from the start that the bank would need large paintings for its wall space, which meant for the most part picking abstractions. The art committee was well suited to that task. Its members, aside from SOM Chief Designer Gordon Bunshaft, an avid collector himself, were Alfred Barr Jr. and Dorothy Miller of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art; Robert Hale, curator of American painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; James Johnson Sweeney, then director of the Guggenheim Museum; and Perry Rathbone, director of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

Trumbull to Rothko. As the committee worked on the collection, SOM was providing a setting that even the Medicis might have envied. The golden carpeting for the 17th floor executive offices came from Hong Kong. SOM designed tables to conform to the disciplined lines of the building; the chairs ranged from Mies van der Rohe's elegant Barcelona model to the stubby leather swivel chairs designed by Ward Bennett--who also advised on color and office appointments. Many of the textiles used are handwoven, come from as far away as Thailand.

For all the emphasis on abstraction, the art committee achieved a remarkable variety. A secretary may take dictation under the eyes of John Trumbull's Portrait of Alexander Hamilton, while another types letters near some floating rectangles by Mark Rothko. A client, his mind a mass of figures, hustles past a superb African sculpture and suddenly finds himself confronting an 18th century ship's figurehead standing next to an abstraction by Joan Mitchell. Here and there a Charles Burchfield or an Andrew Wyeth appears; there is a convulsed semi-abstraction by Larry Rivers, a grisly head by Leon Golub, a surrealist landscape by Kay Sage, a calligraphic work by Mathieu and splashy one by Adolph Gottlieb. An executive vice president who insisted that all he wanted was a print of the port of New York has--and highly prizes--a fiery black and red abstraction by Jack Youngerman.

Daumier to Remington. SOM and Ward Bennett interviewed executives to find out what kind of art, furniture and ashtrays would fit in with their personalities and interests. At first the executives seemed to run heavily to golfing, sailing and fishing; but as the interviews went on, all sorts of possibilities opened up. Bennett designed many of the ashtrays and cigarette boxes; but he was also allowed to scour U.S. and European antique shops for old guns, Florentine silver statuettes, ancient maps and prints to use as paperweights or decoration. A vice president whose province is the American Southwest has a Remington bronze; an executive in the legal department got some caricatures of judges by Daumier.

Though the bank's offices are not open to the public, the collection, which will extend through almost all its floors, will be run like a museum. Paintings and sculpture will be lent out; some will be given away as time goes by, and new ones will be bought, always with an eye to encouraging younger artists. The committee still has its biggest decision ahead of it. Buildings around the bank are being demolished for a plaza engineered to support a statue of 100 tons. For the sculpture commission, the committee is prepared to pay as much as $75,000.

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