The Aristocrat

A good museum director must be a clever sleuth and a keen scholar, bold but tasteful, charlatan enough to fool his competitors, discreet in his dealings, a master charmer, a canny politician, greedy, and above all, always right in his purchases. Allowing for a bit of hyperbole, Sherman E. Lee of the Cleveland Museum of Art meets most elements of that prescription. Traveling 14,000 miles a year, he metaphorizes his annual buying foray into a military campaign: "One begins with strategy, continues with tactics, ends with responses to local situations." And, he might have added, measures his success--and ultimately that of his museum--by the trophies brought back from the battlefields of back rooms, auction houses and dealer-wheelings from Ipswich to Istanbul.

Elegant & Eccentric. Last week, on the occasion of Cleveland's 50th anniversary, Lee looked like a Caesar back from the pillage of some artistic Carthage. Presiding at a candlelit banquet for 275 guests and trustees, he displayed a trophy case filled with 159 new acquisitions, valued at some $5,000,000. For sheer size, scope--and elegant rapacity --the booty was unparalleled in U.S. museum history.

Among the country's half-dozen major museums, Cleveland has long enjoyed a reputation as an aristocrat, partly because its location kept it aloof from the hurly-burly of the international art markets, partly because its purchases were often choice but eccentric, mainly because it was just plain loaded with money. Blessed throughout its existence with a string of benefactors who left it both fine collections and huge bequests, including the $33 million Leonard C. Hanna Jr. legacy, Cleveland now boasts an endowment yielding $1.3 million annually--just $100,000 under that of New York's Metropolitan.

With that kind of money, the museum often second-bids the Met, as in the case of Rembrandt's $2.3 million Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer in 1961, frequently top-bids it. Equally important, hard cash often buys the right to a first look. Over the years, Cleveland has made remarkably astute use of its money, sometimes with the help of a little histrionics. The museum's second director, the renowned William M. Milliken, was given to weeping openly at meetings of his acquisition committees.

Flawless Flair. Director Lee, who joined the museum in 1952 as curator of Oriental art and took over the reins from Milliken in 1958, uses subtler but equally effective tactics. When a Velasquez portrayal of a court jester turned up for auction in London last year, gossips cast doubt on its authenticity, reserving their admiration for Rembrandt's Titus. Lee arranged to have the Velasquez secretly Xrayed, jetted to Madrid to compare it with other works by the Spanish master. When the hammer went down, Titus sold for $2.2 million; Lee walked away with a rare early Velasquez for a modest $500,000.

Because of Lee's Oriental background and Milliken's medieval interests, the museum's strength lies largely in those two fields. But with the new acquisitions, Cleveland now has at least one object that is near the top in every department. They range from a 5th century B.C. Greek lekythos to a 1962 painting by Richard Lindner, an exquisite gilt bronze Standing Buddha to a Berlinghieri Madonna and Child. An extremely rare set of early Christian marbles portraying Jonah and the Good Shepherd makes an illuminating contrast with a hypnotic 15th century panel, St. John the Baptist, by the Maitre de Flemalle.

Two of Cleveland's finest acquisitions are Goya's portrait of the Infante Don Luis de Boroon and Ribera's Death of Adonis (see color pages). Both works demonstrate Lee's flawless flair for picking a masterpiece that is also an unusual example of its kind. "The modern audience," says Lee, "has come to look to Goya for a brush that is wicked and bitter. But this portrait is of a man that Goya respected and admired. Clearly, he would never win a prize for handsomeness, but there is a sensitivity in his eyes and warmth in his face that is altogether captivating." One of the few royal portraits by Goya outside of Spain, the painting's near $75,000 price tag, says Lee, provoked "great weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth" among his board. But he more than made up for it with the Ribera--found hanging in a dark museum staircase in Geneva, Switzerland--which, by comparison, cost but a song.

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