New Man Out

Young and energetic, John Hightower came down on the Museum of Modern Art like a wolf on the fold --only to find that the fold was full of veteran wolves. He told the trustees to their faces: "I am not interested in the museum as an elegant warehouse for gems, but in its value as an educational force. I'm interested in changing the direction of the museum."

At 36, Hightower came to the Modern's directorship from a successful tenure as executive director of the New York State Council on the Arts, where he had made a reputation as an able administrator. But, as he readily admits, he had no art training.

In his new job, he confronted a bundle of trouble. Though attendance was steadily rising, so was the deficit, and endowment income was falling with the stock market. During his tenure, he pared services, cut the staff from 536 to some 420, managed to reduce last year's anticipated $1.8 million deficit to about $800,000. Hightower survived a strike by museum employees with honor, ultimately signing a contract that left both sides content.

Last week, Chairman of the Board David Rockefeller and William Paley, the museum president, fired him; some trustees were not even consulted.

Why? Perhaps because the museum has fixed in its memory the image of the late Rene d'Harnoncourt, who was director from 1949 to 1968. An amiable giant of a man, he had impeccable scholarship, gentle charm, and the kind of offhand authority that makes administration easy and donors eager. His successor, Bates Lowry, proved to be a disastrous administrator and lasted only ten months. Hightower remained 20. His failure has something to do with that impalpable thing called presence. He looked even more boyish than his years. Often compelled by his job as director to address fund-raising dinners or opening-show gatherings, he faced one of the world's most knowledgeable audiences with the admission that "I do not pretend to know much about art history."

This grated on the senior staff. There was a difference of purpose. He wanted to "put the museum into the streets." The trustees wanted the museum to remain "reflective and interpretive," in Hightower's phrase. And he had learned about trustees. "I had the responsibility all right," he said. "The problem was to get the authority." A good man in the wrong job.

As acting director, the trustees named Richard Oldenburg, 38, brother of Sculptor Claes Oldenburg and the museum's director of publications since 1969. The search for a new d'Harnoncourt continues.

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