New Guide for the Gettingest

The acquisitive philosophy of Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art is forthright: it will get the best, regardless of the envy of lesser museums, by spending vast effort and $1,000,000 a year to spot and buy good art. To this end it uses a learned and competitive director, plus 100 knowledgeable curators who constantly travel the world. Guiding the effort, by electing the director and curators, and balancing it, by curbing or encouraging them, is the job of the Met's 38-man board of trustees-and most particularly the president of the board.

Last week the Met got a new president who uniquely blends industry and esthetics: Arthur Amory Houghton Jr., 57, president of Steuben Glass.

Whispers & Wiretaps. Houghton succeeds Wall Street Lawyer Roland Redmond, 72, whose 17-year reign has been marked by unprecedented growth. Met attendance nearly quadrupled, to 7,000,000 last year. Half of the museum's 20 acres of floor space has been renovated, and a glamorous series of openings will take place this season.

But the Met's soaring stature is also a measure of its cloak-and-dagger, sharp-elbowed driving to get the best.

Day-to-day sleuthing is carried out by the energetic director, James J. Rorimer, and his globe-trotting staff, who scrutinize possibilities with "everything from smell to X rays." Rorimer refuses to tell how his hawkshaws receive their tips. Says he: "Reporters don't reveal their sources and neither do we." The director concedes that masterpieces may be heard of through "a letter, a phone call, a whisper," that U.S. embassies are sometimes sources of information, and that "it is a business fraught with difficulties--wiretapping, fraud, forgeries."

Frantic Frenchmen. The Met's greatest stroke was its 1961 auction purchase of Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer; armed with backing from Redmond's board, Rorimer outbid the well-heeled Cleveland Museum with the highest known price ever paid for an art object, $2,300,000. But that deal involved only money, of which the Met has access to loads ($104 million-plus in assets, exclusive of its art riches); other triumphs are more intriguing. Four years ago, the Met stirred outrage in the Gaullist Parliament by quietly acquiring, for possibly $750,000, The Fortune Teller by the belatedly discovered 17th century French master, Georges de La Tour. Redmond himself spotted this buy, but how the export license was arranged has never been revealed. When the Met wants something, it can pounce like a cat. Recently a trusted art dealer discovered a 16th century German chessboard in a country house in England, placed a transatlantic call to Rorimer; the Met snapped up the object on the basis of a photograph.

Making Taste. The Metropolitan's new president can be counted on to maintain its efficient voracity. A rare-books collector in his own right, and scion of the Corning Glass Works founding family, Houghton in 1933 was given control of an ailing subsidiary, Steuben. He took a lead pipe and, with two aides, smashed up Steuben's $1,000,000 stock of "blinding-colored glass monstrosities." Then, with an architect, a sculptor and a stable of artist-advisers that included Thomas Hart Benton and Salvador Dali, set out to create radical new forms in colorless crystal. Says Houghton: "We made taste"--which is not a bad way of describing his challenge at the Met.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.