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SOUTHWEST ARTIST AND EDUCATOR Annita Delano
Interviewed by James V. Mink VOLUME II
Completed under the auspices
of the
Oral History Program
University of California
los Angeles
Copyright (^ 1976 The Regents of the University of California
This manuscript is hereby made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publication, are reserved to the University Library of the University of California at Los Angeles. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the University Librarian of the University of California at Los Angeles.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME II
TAPE NUMBER: VII, Side One (March 11, 1971) 318
UCLA art department — Nellie Huntington Gere — InfJ.uence of Dow — Early curriculum--Teacher training — LouiEe Sooy — George Cox — Sentiment against painting — rinan- cial problems — Art and environment- -James Breasted, Jr. — Departmental conflicts- — Historical opposed to integrated approach — Belle Whitice mistreated — Conflicts with George Cox.
TAPE NUMBEPv: VII, Side Two (March 18, 1971) 343
James Breasted, Jr. — Proposed split of department-- Pure vs. applied in university studies — Art history in the UCLA curriculum — George Cox and the art of the city--Memorial service for Olive Newcomb — Problems of George Cox — Robert Hilpert becomes chairman — S. Mac- donald-V/right--Helmut Hungerland — George Cox retired.
TAPE NUMBER: VIII, Side One (April 1, ]971) 370
End of the Cox administration--Hiring of Robert Hilpert--- Hilpert 's achievements--Com.munists in the departm.ent — Departmental policy meetings — Karl With~-Dean David Jackey — Committee and administrative problem.s — Depart- mental divisions---A communist student.
TAPE NUMBER: VIII, Side Two (April 9, 1971) 397
Teaching of education at UCLA--College of Apolied Arts--Conmittees — S . Macdonald-V7right — William Bowne and E. Clinton Adams — Administrating and creative v;ork-~Gallery exhibits of teachers' works — Gibson Danes and reorganisation — Clinton Adams asked to resign — Karl VJith--New building-- Planning classrooia space-~Teacher recruitment--Gibson Danes.
TAPE NUMBER: IX, Side One (April 9, 1971) 423
Selection of Gibson Danes — Enlarging the department — Bringing in Frederick Wight — Recruitment--Wight equips the gallery — UCLA Art Council — The Willits Hole collec- tion--Controversy over its authenticity--The Arensberg collection, rejected by Regent Edward Dickson--Dickson ' s dislike for modern art — Delano exhibit in the gallery.
Ill
TAPE NUMBER: IX, Side Two (April 22, 1971) 450
One-man shov; at UCLA--Outlets for artists' v/ork — Showings around the country — Paintings of old houses — Subject matter — Handled by East-West Gallery, San Francisco — Los Angeles galleries--Frank Perls — La Cienega galleries — Ceeje Gallery and UCLA artists — Delano exhibit in the UCLA gallery — Controversy over faculty shows — Other Delano shows.
TPiPE NUMBER: X, Side One (April 22, 1971) 476
Thoughts on training artists — Karl With--Absolutism of theory — With clashes with Gibson Danes — Frederick Wight--Developing the gallery — The Art Council-- Danes leaves for Yale — Lester Longman — New art building- Functional errors — Perspective on the leadership of the art department--Industrial arts--Retirement party — Ex-stud.ents--Research and painting.
TAPE NUMBER: X, Side Two (April 29, 1971) 501
Barbara Morgan — Mutual influences — Dancing — Shibley Boyes--Willard D. Morgan — The Morgans and photography — The dance — Summer' s Children — Influence of Dov/ theory — Orientalisra--Summer trips to Nev; Mexico--In search of landscapes — The Howards, 1927 — Reconnaissance trip — Meeting the Zuni--Caniping companions.
TAPE NUMBER: XI, Side One* (April 29, 197j ) 527
Camping experiences — Trading posts — The V7etherills — Tale of a medicine man--Canyon de Chelly--Canyon del Muerto--Cornmunicating with the Navajos--Clif f dwellings- The White House--Painting--The Grand Canyon--Monument Valley--Navajo sand painting ceremony — Sand paint- ings for the public.
TAPE NUMBER: XII, Side One (May 6, 1971) 552
Sites for landscape painting — Red Rock Canyon — The Channel Islands — Santa Cruz Island — Bagging a boar — The old adobe--Los Angeles sites — Themes and influences- At home: figure studies — The Grand Canyon and geo- logical formations--Space , light, abstraction — Colors — Perspective--At home: still life — The garden — Garden Theme- -Critical reception.
*Side Two \;as not utilized for recording,
XV
TAPE NUMBER: XII, Side Two (May 7, 1971) 578
Influence of Indian dances — Zuni ceremonies — Memorizing details--Sacred dances--Colors of costumes and land- scapes--Navajo night dances--Trees — Murals--Sgraf f ito-- Mural for the Delano home — Color contrasts-~Use of cartoons — Sense of growth.
INDEX 603
ERRATA: p. 5 77 does not exist,
TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE MARCH 11, 1971
MINK: This afternoon, you have been going through files from the chancellor's office v/hich pertain to the art department, and the reports, correspondence, and so on. And now you have said that you would like to coirunent some on the history of the department with relation to these documents, and from time to time I v^ill have questions I would like to ask you, too. You said, I think, first you wanted to talk about some of the earlier heads a little bit more in detail than you have already.
DELANO: Yes. I would like to say something about Nellie Huntington Gere, who really made the art department in its earliest years, starting with what v/e call the old Normal School down where the public library is today and then going to Vermont Avenue. There, there was quite an enlargement starting with the new buildings. The art department progressed in every way, with the faculty more or less chosen from people who had attended Arthur Wesley Dow's courses in Columbia University, New York. There seemed to be a great stimulus from his kind of teaching. [tape turned off J
As the students kept coming in and as Dr. Moore got this vision of doing more for training of teachers, we had
318
this as the background for our developnent; that is, looking forward to an enlargement of all curricula, and an extension froin a three-year school to four years and finally to degrees. This struggle from smaller outlook to a larger v/as something that extended for many years in the development of the art department. Nov; Miss Gere's part v.'as quite notable. The students adored her. She was from New England originally; there was a sort of Spartan quality about her. And she was very logical and very appreciative of the arts--a real organizer. She brought her cousin, Helen Chandler, into the department in those early years — this is after 1915 or about that time.
MINK: Apparently at that time there was no rule against a relative working in the saune department? DELANO: No, I don't think it ever applied to cousins particularly. But Miss Chandler was quite a painter, and she attended Columbia University also. Mrs. Sooy was another one that came in about that time, and she came from Columbia. Mrs. Sooy was an entirely different type, and this shows Miss Gere's attitude towards bringing in a y balanced faculty of people of different temperaments and ideas even though all of these people I've mentioned had the Dow training in Columbia. And in that, they really stuck together throughout their whole time in the university.
319
Miss Gere's main subject was art history, but one must bear in mind that all of the courses were developed in reference to teaching, especially in the grades and in high school. In that respect, the collections that were amassed as the student guides — the illustrative matter, the slides and so on — were put together with this in mind, and especially for appreciative training rather than detailed historical analysis.
MINK: There was not at that time, then, the great growth that is to come in the later years of the art history? DELANO: No, there wasn't. But the great masterpieces were shown in slides of all periods. Miss Gere gave courses in Oriental art history — China, Japan. She had traveled to those countries and seen things firsthand. She had been to India, and so on. So there v;as a worldwide attitude in reference to it. There were slides on the arts of ancient Mexico and Peru, of the islands--the cultures of the various island groups of people — all of the Western tradition from early to late.
MINK: So she was really the major art historian? DELANO: She was really the first art historian. And it included the history of architecture, the history of painting, as well as the minor crafts and arts. There was special stress on this part because it v.'ould have an effect on the everyday life of the average student.
320
whether he was in the lower grades or in high school.
Really, there was such a development of schools and of
population in the late tv^enties and thirties all over
Southern California that many new colleges and schools
were built, and our graduates were asked to come in and
form art departments, and they stayed until they retired.
An excunple of one would be John Herbert in Fresno — built
up a wonderful art department . Miss Gere was really a
model type of person to inspire one in building a departroent,
MIHK: Well, let me ask you, during this same period would
you say that the influence of, say, the USC art department
upon the growth of art education in Southern California
was negligible compared to UCLA's?
DELANO: Yes, I would say so. There was just a beginning
year of course in ceramics by [Glen] Lukins. There was quite
a developed school of architecture — I suppose they called
it a school. However, they were against modern. This I
found out — I think I mentioned it once — in this series of
talks.
MINK: But they really v/eren't teaching....
DELANO: They were not teaching teachers, but they did
later, I think--! may be v7rong--when they started this
sort of thing .
MINK: So at this time UCLA was really the major teacher
training for art in Southern California.
321
DELANO: And v/hen we accjuired Dr. J-Ioore as the head of the whole school, he ch^^nged the attitude towards the extension and lengthening of all courses — that is, I raoan, adding years so the teachers would be trained in a better way. I reraerober that he told Mrs. Morgan and me one time that he carried a letter of resignation to the regents in his pocket, that he would resign unless they developed teacher training. So nov; that we have full teacher training with the degrees, it just seeras almost impossible to think back to earlier periods when a normal school, all over the country, was supposed to be the end and all for the ordinary teacher in the schools. Now, degrees are asked for. There is a specialization about it, but it seems to me it's very necessary. There are many things about the history of education and about methods and developnent of teacher training that is greatly needed for teachers. MINK: You were talking about Miss Gere and her part in all of this.
DELANO: Yes, as a building of art departments. I mentioned Mr. Herbert at Fresno, and we had people in Pasadena. They built the college there and all of the people they hired for their art teachers were from our department. Long Beach — I'm speaking more of the earlier years.... And some of our people taught at San Jose and San Diego. See, then the junior colleges — that was something that
322
started, and they needed art teachers. So almost every graduate found a place right away in a college. One is never finished with an education. They can learn on the job, they can travel, and they can certainly get together in conferences over development of students' work; and I think this happened to a great extent in California during those years. We had not only art teachers' as- sociations in localities like Pasadena, Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego and so on; but we also had what was called the Pacific Arts Association. This met every year either in a large city li]ce San Francisco or Los Angeles, sometiraes San Diego or Fresno, and delegations would go from all the other places, and everybody made an effort to get there and bring students' work for exhibition. Then there would be profitable discussions as well as major talks. People came from all over the country to give these talks. There was a great stir in the air about recognizing the arts in the schools. In other words, if we don't have art we have a backward culture, it seems to me .
I might say that other people from Columbia were \ accompanying Miss Gere in all of this effort to make an enlarged art department. Vte had Miss Hazen; we had, oh, a number of others--! can't just recall now — from Columbia. Then when the department moved along with the rest of the
323
university to V7estv;ood--that v;as in 1929 — we had to meet on the top floor of the library. The Education Building wasn't finished, so v;e had to be up there. The people in charge were flexible enough to steer the stii.dents through an entirely different experience. Instead of painting in studios, we had to ask them to paint at home, and this meant that the students came for one-hour classes for criticism. They'd bring their work there. There was perhaps one or tvra large rooms where they could do a little drawing and painting, but not under their ov:n separate teachers for each class. This went on for a year, and then finally we moved into the Education Building. We occupied almost the v.'hole first floor and some of the rooms on the upper floor. This included a gallery, no elevator except a sort of dumbwaiter in one place — but we were expected to have exhibits up there-- and then a large studio for ceramics and sculpture. Otherwise, the place on the top floor "was occupied by home economics and by the music department. So things were crowded.
Anyway, there v/as a pex-iod here when Miss Gere was nearing the end of her period of time. She had reached the age of sixty-five, and there was a unanimous effort on the part of the staff to have her remain until she was seventy if she cared to. And she did, because she
324
had spent her own money to travel around the world to gain firsthand experience for these courses in art history. She just devoted her life to the department. First of all, Mrs. Sooy had been chairman of the department V7hile Miss Gere traveled. Then she remained in that post for a number of years till there was a time when there was an undercurrent against Mrs. Sooy for not liking certain people or doing the best for their development, and so one way or another she v/as asked to resign as chairman and to choose somebody for chairman. She chose Professor Cox from Columbia University.
I might just say a word for my ovm personal opinion right here. Mrs. Sooy had studied to be a painter as v:ell as a teacher in Columbia University, but I think she gave up the idea of becoming a painter and went into costume and interior design as the main subjects she was to teach in the department. At the same time, I think I've explained about her personality that grated on some people — the idesi of ridiculing or downgrading people if they didn't follow the Dow ideas. Perhaps if we had known how to confront someone else on an equal basis, this might not have occurred, but as it was, I think she didn't want me to be there and didn't like Barbara Morgan who was also, as I explained once, quite a thinker in her work. And we had differing ideas. So when Dr. Moore asked Mrs.
325
Sooy to find another chairman, she chose Mr. Cox from Columbia. Now, he had written against painting, also. In various ways he do\i7ngraded painting. There v;ere times that he would look up to it and call it one of the arts and shov; slides in his courses in art history and what he called Art and Civilisation and so on. Yet anyone who was vitally interested would, I think, sooner or later, run into this bias which he had. In fact, I heard him talk in 1928 at the International Conference of Art and Industry in Prague, and in that speech he downgraded the fine arts and said, "Let's get to the little things." Well, that's fine, but why downgrade something? You know, this type of argument which you have to kill something to make something else — it's so negligible. It's, to ray mind, not thinking straight about the whole thing.
That was the first inkling that I had of perhaps having trouble, when he was brought into the art depart- ment. When he came he said that he would follow Mrs. Sooy in everything that she said about the art department, and then this led to many encounters where we were somewhat unhappy about his attitude towards the painting.
There were other things. See, the war came along, and this made a sort of a running background of the ideas that you must save money. That's fine. But in the management of the affairs of the art department, we had
326
much to criticize with respect to Mr. Cox, because he seemed to get all mixed up in the finances of the depart- ment. Somebody would be hired and then maybe they would be given more classes. For example, Mrs. I Ida] Abramovich, I remember, was asked to teach, I think it was, half time; but sooner or later she had a v;hole-time prograra and there was hardly any increase. MINK: And a half-time salary? DELANO: At a half-time salary. MINK: How ridiculous,
DELANO: Yes, this is soiaething that went on. The excuse for it was, "Well, it's the wartime, and we have to conserve," and all of that. But when Dr. Sproul or Hedrick or v/hoever v;as the chancellor — I don't believe they called them chan- cellors then; it was a provost or whatever — would hear about it, then there was some mistake. And these mistakes kept going on and on in reference to the art department, and we were losing our money, our budget, as it were, for the art department, getting all mixed up. Then it was very disheartening about Miss Gere, of course, for we have a gz-eat many letters from the whole department about her. Finally, this was straightened out, and Miss Gere was asked to come stay on, and she v/as given a promotion. MINK: Well, what happened? I mean did Mr. Cox just tell her that she would have to retire?
327
DELANO: Yes, he was very blunt. I think in his mind, he felt that he had inherited an art department that had a lot of women in it. This v;as another thing. He would sit with the faculty men in the dining room and just regale them v;ith jokes about his department. We'd hear about it through friends of ours that, well, were amused by it, but it v;as rather cutting. MINK: What kind of jokes?
DELANO: Well, belittling about women. He seemed to have this characteristic of making jokes and ridiculing people. MINK: Women?
DELANO: Well, women in general, yes. MINK: Was he married?
DELANO: Oh, yes, and Mrs. Cox was devoted to him. She worked to have these v7onderful parties that he gave for the men, especially, then she'd have to step aside. She'd just work tv/o days making all sorts of fancy cakes and things for the party that he was to give — stag parties they called them. Well, I guess — this is just my personal opinion — I suppose some European men have that attitude. He certainly v/asn't very nice to his wife in later years. He said that she was losing her mind, and I know he came to me to find a place where she could be put away. Mrs. Hely, a friend of mine that lived next door, and I had been down to a desert place which had lovely rooms and
328
meals and all, and he'd heard a tout it, so he came over to us to see if he couldn't take his v;ife dovm there. Well, there v.'as nothing wrong with Mrs. Cox. MINK: Except Mr. Cox, perhaps.
>
DELANO: Mr. Cox, yes. And the people that took care of Mrs. Cox while she was down there said there was nothing v/rong with her. So everybody else in the department took Mrs. Cox's side, and I don't know v.'hether I should be telling this, but he just went into some kind of attitude that just didn't seera to have reality about it. You know, he died very suddenly with a massive heart attack. He didn't believe in going to doctors. He might have been doing something about it, but this just happened so suddenly. He v/ent down to his garden to pick roses, and just fell there and never recovered. I don't know whether this has something to do with it, but in the last years all these little troubles about getting mixed up might be explained as part of his heart troubles. There were letters to the president or to whoever was provost at the time about the errors in art department reports, and it just could be something, you know, with his memory not ^ being V'/hat it should be in reference to detail. Mrs. Cox took charge of the funeral for him. She arranged all business transactions, sold the house, and went back to England, where they both came from. She built a beautiful
329
house on the Isle of Wight. Many of our ex-students who knew Mr. Cox and Mrs. Co:>: — and liked her, too, very much — went to visit and found that she had a charming place. MINK: How v/as he v/ith the students? Was he pretty good with the students? Did the students like him? DELANO: They seemed to like him. Again, like the faculty men, there were these running jokes that went along in his lectures and they seemed to like that. Nov;, certain things in light of many years passing up to now, you v;ould see that he hated to see the billboards along the streets, and he would rave against VJhittier Boulevard as one prize excunple. Or some of the hideous things in the city like the Bro\vn Derby Restaurant — the making of a hat to represent a brov/n derby on Wilshire Boulevard, And so he had a number of photographs of these things.
MINK: Vlas he against the Van de Kam.p's windmills, too? DELANO: Yes, he didn't like those or any of the signs and so on. Well, neither did most of us, but there was a running argument that would show up in almost all of his lectures. This was the great thing, the axe to grind. But instead of getting at primary causes, I don't know even . tod£iy what good does it do just to talk. I mean, it seems to me something behind the scenes has to be done. It's a part of the whole system. What can you do about advertising and not have it carried to these extremes?
330
MINK: Of course, I suppose in these times Foster and Kleiser were the great culprits.
DELANO: They were the great culprits at that time. Yes, they were.
MINK: And they were a private organization, a private business?
DELANO: Yes, that's right. We had wonderful long roads with plenty of open country. It wasn't like the amazing growth which we've seen up through the years, with, now, a sense of being closed in and of our open spaces dis- appearing. I reraeraber when Westwood Village was built, especially by the Janss people, it was laid out in the form of cowpaths, converging paths leading to the Janss building. He screamed about this time and again, and I think he was right: the fact that they didn't leave any parks in Westwood. Again, why didn't he talk directly to the Janss people? This would have been ray idea, to get in there at the beginning and see that they put in parks. Sometimes those of us in the universities, I think, are so remote from the actual happenings, that that's one reason the art that we love doesn't permeate all of these expressions in the surroundings, in the design of a city, and in our homes. This is important, but I don't think it needs to kill the so-called fine arts. You give a lecture on all of this part of the city beautiful; at
331
the same time, say we don't need to study painting any more. Or to have somebody on the other side dovvngrade the design area. Men came from Europe to teach who didn't appreciate painting and would want to stress design expressions. Some thought an art departiaent should consist of courses in history of art. MINK: Who was that?
DELANO: Well, we had Dr. iJamesJ Breasted [Jr.] for one. Well, he's an American but he had studied in Germany, had most of his training there.
MINK: Incidentally, you mentioned there v;as an important letter concerning Breasted that you found in the file. DELANO: Yes, where he ran down the courses of applied design, v.'hich would get to the heart of the matter. Great numbers of objects being designed that vrauld be ugly, and perhaps people would find them in the stores; there would be no possible way in which they could be organized or integrated into the homes and used in a fine way — which goes back to appreciation running through everything. He would downgrade these courses and call theju courses that belonged in a trade school. Now, he was working in Princeton or had studied there. (Let's see, did I get him mixed up? I'll have to check whether he was really in Germany or not. One of the men we had was from Germany. ) But Breasted came from Princeton where most of the courses were at that time
332
in art history, and so he was very naive about the design of an object and its place in an ensemble. He could go through many books and cull from them what he thought was a work of art because somebody else said it was, but to have the genuine beginning appreciation which would select on its own experience. . . . That is, for example, he would be backward in appreciating modern, what would be the modern at the time, the most recent expressions of architects or designers or painters and sculptors, because they weren't in the fold yet. Somebody hadn't written about them. I mean, this is just my way of explaining what I think was in back of his training. Not only that, but to a historian of his type, the idea of dating of things v.'as most important; it v^asn't how fine an art it was. And so the students had a certain kind of so-called scholarly attitude, but a neglect in v/hat I'd call the vital, appreciative side of it, from a man like Breasted.
I find, in going over these records, Dr. Breasted was one who put doubts in the minds of the administrative leaders. I didn't find that Dr. Sproul fell for this at all. I think he laad a fine idea of a rounded art department. And our plan had been something like the thing that Miss Gere first laid out — to have the different arts and crafts and painting and sculpt\ire and teaching of art and art history integrated as a department. But if you find somebody
333
coining in from another school that has had no experience with this rounded concept, and worst of all, if you have somebody at the head without this idea. I think it takes a genius to overcome that.
We had an example outside the university that I can recall. Do\\'n at the Los Angeles I County] Museum [of History, Science, and Art] they had trouble, too, finding a man who would head the museum at ths.t time, where they had history, art, and science. You would have a man trained, let's say, in one of these branches. Now what would have to happen to his attitude in order to organize and expand something that goes in three directions mainly? Well, they had man after man there and had trouble. In fact, when Breasted left the art department — v;e had so much trouble with him, and I haven't finished on that — he went to the Los Angeles museum , and there he antagonized almost everybody that worked in the museum. He couldn't allow them to go in their own way; he didn't appreciate what they had done, and so they just got rid of him in a couple of years, I think.
MINK: How was it that he was out at UCLA? DELANO: At UCLA, he officially stayed a little longer than he did at the museum, simply because the war came along and he had to go to Washington and was in some capacity there that had to do with the field details — I
334
don't know, planning new uniforms or something of the kind. So he wasn't around all that latter part of the war, and then he came back. But before that, before he'd gone to Washington, he wanted the university to house a collection of books, a library which his father had amassed. You see, he was the son of James Breasted I, the archaeologist, the historian who had specialized in Egyptian history. So this James II had been v/ith his father on those trips. In fact, he told me one time, "Annita, all my troubles have been due to the fact that I'm the son of a great father." He knev; that he had troubles getting along v/ith people. He antagonized people in our department, and he antagonized them down there at the Los Angeles museum. MINK: Just by belittling, by criticizing? DELANO: By criticizing. Now firsthand, he'd give a wonderful impression. He was good looking and enthusiastic and [had aj well-ordered way of thinking about things, but v/as very unaware of the missing gaps; that is, the real- life vitality of the arts and perhaps the understanding of people.
He wanted this collection brought into the art de- partment, and this cost a great deal of trouble. For months and months, they haggled over bringing that collection in there. In the first place, the art department had to find a room. We had weaving as one of the courses taught
335
by Hiss Whitice. She was asked to give up the rooio . It Itad a special arrangement for closets and sinks and so on where the students had to dye materials and so forth. Well, the place was already being crov/ded out. There was no other large room she could go to, so they put her in the attic, with inadequate light and heat and no air conditioning in those days in the Education Building. It v/as just dreadful. Of course, Mr. Cox had a bias against Miss Whitice to begin with, and so I don't know whether he v/anted to discourage her, but the letters she ViTote about this v;ere just terrible. I mean, it made me feel very sad to think that she had to do this. MINK: Did she every try to speak up, fight back, to go to I E.G. J Moore?
DELANO: Yes, finally she fought back. She wrote to Sproul, And copies of the. letter v;ere sent to Hedrick (or whoever) and to Moore, I guess, and to the head of the art department at the time — about this mistreatment and the summary way in which Mr. Cox wanted to fire her. I'm getting mixed up here. I haven't finished Cox, and I haven't finished Breasted.
MINK: That's all right. It comes about the same time. DELANO: It comes at the same time. I was speaking about moving Miss Whitice out and what troubles that caused. And then Mr. Breasted wanted steel shelves put all around
336
the room v/here he could put tliis collection up of his books, and he wanted them bolted to the floor and to the walls. So there was quite an expense. Not only that, but he wanted the university to pay for the shipping of the books from Chicago, v^'hez'e his father had built up the collection, and pay the insurance on the v;hole thing. It was not to belong to the university. The thing he said was that the university could use thera, but they couldn't take them out of the room. So, you see, it was all at the expense of the art department or the university in general. They had to rake up funds to do all of these things.
Tnis sort of maneuvering v;ent on and on and on, and I know that Dr. Sproul and Hedrick v;ere quite provoked at times. Then there v;as a coin collection v/hich had been loaned to him from a man that had made collections of very ancient coins, and Breasted wanted to study these. Well, then, about that tirae he was sent to Washington for the v;ar , and so he wanted the university to pay an in- surance on the coin collection. He had the department, as well as Dr. Sproul, feel that we hadn't any benefit out of the coins because the insurance was not forthcoming. Anyhow, it seemed very difficult to understand his maneuver- ing in this thing. MINK: He was somewhat of an opportunist, it would appear.
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DELANO: V?ell, something. Personally, I never was in his way, so to speak, I didn't have to have ray classes removed because of his wanting to take the room or anything as difficult as that. But he moved his family into the house that v/as adjacent to the lot at the place where I lived. I lived on Ohio, and there's a street behind this — Selby, I believe it was — and the Breasteds took this house. He v/as married to a lovely vjoman, and they had, I think, a couple of children. His wife was a sister to Mrs. Hocking. Dr. iRichard] Hocking v/as the young philosopher. He, too, v;as the son of a great philosopher, and so he came to UCLA about the same time the Breasteds did. So I got acquainted with Mrs. Hocking by chance. I can't remember nov; how I first met her, but she was just a charming person, and she wanted to go on a camping trip with me, painting, wanted to e to go out to Zuni, especially. Well, Dr. Hocking v/as going, and Bob {Robert TylerJ Lee, who was in the physical education department at that time. He was an art graduate, and he was doing stage sets and plays and dramas. I don't knov/ exactly which department, but he cooperated with two or three departments to put on those large dramas. Bob Lee knew I went on my trips, and they tried to get me to go. VJell, I figured that I would just be doing all of the cooking; I v/ouldn't get any painting done. It wasn't the kind of painting trip
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I wanted to take, v;ith these people, although I think I would have enjoyed talking to them and getting better acquainted. But in those various encounters, Mrs. Hocking told me that she didn't see how Breasted was going to get along in the art department because he had never had a creative art course in his life, that it v/as all through books and he hadn't even taught art history. He would just bone up on it, I suppose. Sure enough, it just didn't work out, not only the personal thing — he would go over the head of anybody in the department (I guess anybody has a right to do that; i knov; I've done it) — but to run dov/n the thing vjithout discussing it, I think, was something that was deplorable. So he did go to the Los Angeles museum, and eventually he v/ound up in a type of boys' school in Nev; England, MINK: Boarding school?
DELANO: Kind of a boarding school, yes. And it seemed very sad. He had gotten, oh, I don't knov;, perhaps two or three times the salary at the Los Angeles museum that he was getting with us, and he had the chance to become a full professor later if he had been able to really cooperate with people in the department. So this went on. And then, Mr. Cox — did I finish with hira? MINK: Not yet, I don't think. DELANO: It seems to me I left off something there — the
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way he treated Miss Gei-e, and how the faculty had to get together and finally see that she had her place. She needed the money. There was one other thing in explaining Mr. Cox. This is just ray opinion; I don't know whether others felt this or not. He had a way of mentioning all the time that people were egotistical about their work, or that they were showing off. This seemed to bug him so much of the time that you often just v/ondered v/hat to do. For example, in our uork at the university, we are supposed to be working on things outside of the art department, outside of our teaching. We are supposed to do some kind of creative work, and if you're not writing a book or articles, you're doing creative painting and exhibiting-- specific things which count as the creative work in lieu of books. Each year, you are to hand in something, or to go to the office and tell about it and so on, and get it down in black and white. Then if you do, you might be criticized by Mr. Cox.
This came out with Miss Whitice. He accused her of not doing outside work. Well, she was a very quiet craftsman. She wasn't in the limelight, but she taught \ the students to make beautiful things, with quality.
When she was just sort of brutally asked to leave the next year, she sent this letter to the president and to the head of the department as well as to the provost and
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said that she v/ould do jnore in the v/ay of advertising her work. But here v/as an example of somebody who was truly modest; and yet Mr. Cox then, in the letter to her, accused her of not producing creative vrark on her ovm, you see .
In my case, one tjjne I said, "Hr. Cox, v/hat are we to do? If we tell you that we've done something, then you criticize us as being a little egotistical about it." I was a little disturbed, you knov;. I v?as getting to the point to get up my nerve to go to Sproul about why v;e weren't promoted, and I did say something about, "And I think another thing, Mr. Cox, you run women down. Now I guess if you want to cut my head off, you can." And everybody at the meeting really laughed. I don't remember exactly v>?hat I said, but V7e did have discussions along these lines. It was a habit, you see, that he had, of harping on it so continuously that the people were some- what repressed. And yet there were a lot of things that went along.
I noticed in the file that there were exhibitions from time to time assembled with hard work by the staff to fill that gallery. We had no funds for hiring. I mean, now they have thousands of dollars behind the museum in the art department, but we had nothing in those days. And you brought things in at your own risk. We wanted to
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have a going concern. Well, I had assembled that exhibition of things from the Union Station and put it up, and it cost me a lot of time and effort and running around to get that stuff together. Well, he v/rote a note to President Sproul and never jnentioned v/ho got the exhibit up at all. There were other cases like that, but he v?rote about his o\-m exhibition and put in a little file. So, I mean, maybe we were just mixed up about what he really intended, but it wasn't a very pleasant experience and there was much talk about it.
Then losing money for the department--this v/as another thing that happened with us and Mr. Cox. Bring up this example: Columbia University, in the art department, didn't have nearly the amount that we had, he used to say. Well, money values hiid changed; and besides that, our art department was quite different from Coliunbia. I went to ColuTQbia one summer and poked around to see what they had in their collections, and I found that we did have a much more going concern, much more modern, too.
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TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO MARCH 18, 1971
MINK: At the close of the last session, Annita, you were talking about Professor Breasted and how he came as a member of the art department. DELANO: Yes, to teach art history.
MINK: To teach art history. And how he was soon out be- cause of the unwarranted use of the university, taking advantage of it in so many various ways, and just generally being objectionable. You wanted to go on to talk a little more about some of the things that brought about Breasted 's departure.
DELANO: Yes. I don't knov; the exact details of just why he finally left the university, but after his period in Washington with the war duties in the army, I believe, he returned to us, and then he had this idea of more or less eliminating the art department, or so most of us thought. MINK: What was he going to put in its place? DELANO: VJell, he wanted to have just the history of art and put it in the Letters and Science. He degraded the art department, more or less, by calling it a vocational school, as though everything we taught there was vocational, I doubt that he ever v/ent to a real vocational school to see the dif f erence--like, for example, to go down to one
343
that vje have here in this city. MINK: The VJiggins School? DELANO: The Wiggins School, yes.
MINK: Would you say that this stance of his was due per- haps more to his background in history?
DELANO: Yes, it certainly was. He was from Princeton, as I reraeraber; and they had, at that time at least, no creative courses, say, in painting or sculpture or design or crafts.
MINK: It was all just the history of art?
DELAl-JO: It V7as all just the history of art — v/ell, history in general, I guess.
MINK: No art department with history of art per se? DELANO: His background was in the history of archeology. No, I wouldn't say exactly it was just the history of art. He had training with his own father in Egypt, and one would really have to go back and look at his references. MINK: VJas he really more like his father, an Egyptologist? DELANO: While he was with us, he was working on a book having to do v;ith the slave figures from Egypt, the ancient miniature figures that wore put in the tombs. He finally did bring out quite an interesting book that was delayed during the wartime, but I think it came out later. So most of his interest was on Egypt. Anyhow, this attitude which he had, he outlined in a letter to
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Provost Dykstra.
11 INK: Which you saw in the files?
DELANO: Yes, this I saw in the files.
MINK: ^-fliat was the date of that letter?
DELANO: That letter was May 16, 1945, Breasted to Dykstra,
in which he said, "At Berkeley the need for a split be-
tv/een vocational-liberal arts aspects of the arts has long
been recognized by establishing the School of Architecture,
the Department of Decorative Art," and he puts in parentheses,
"(largely vocational), and the Department of Art (mainly
humanistic) "--that ' s also in parentheses. Now, actually
a committee from Berkeley stood up for our art department.
At different times, committees, I noticed, with men on
the committees from Berkeley — sort of university-wide
coimmittees — whenever it came to reorganizing a department,
they stood up for what we had. So had Dr. Moore and
various people of the administration. They recognized
the value of our art department v/ith the pattern which
we had — v/hich was to carry on with the actual creativeness
in the arts and to make it as deep and as broad as we
could. But so often we had people ].ike Breasted who came
along and wanted to emphasize the history at the neglect
of these other subjects, calling them vocational, as he
did in this case.
MINK: Wasn't there any opposition in the art department
345
to what he wanted to do?
DELANO: Yes, indeed there was. I didn't find anything
in letters to the administration at the time about it,
but there certainly were discussions in the faculty meetings,
MINK: Can you tell me something about the people that
were most vociferous and about the discussions that went on?
DELANO: Well, there was always a feeling of reluctance on
the part of some of the staff in the art department to
get up in discussions--that is, with the administration--
because they probably thought, "Well, most of us don't
have our doctor's degrees." For example, they didn't give
doctor's degrees for the creative arts, so that put them
in a lov7ly spot to begin with. Bat if v;e had someone like
Mr. Cox v;ho had to speak for us, he had a chip on his
shoulder about the creative painting and sculpture.
He v;anted to have it mostly the decorative arts, so there
was a split there. So all of these different, I think
you'd call them, dichotomies in our thinking were a
disadvantage to the uniqueness of the art department,
trying to keep it as a whole.
MINK: I guess v;hat I was trying to figure out is, was
there anyone there who was bold enough to be a spokesman
for the whole group, to sort of try to put these people
in their place — like Cox and Breasted?
DELANO: I can't remember any one outstanding person who
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did go against them.
MINK: Did everybody just sort of lie down and let hiru
walk all over thera?
DELANO: Well, I don't know if they did that. I know
that Breasted talked so much against the art department
that friends that v.'e had from other departments told us
about it. Then the discussions carae on, and he probably
was quite sincere in thinking that it should be a divided
department or banish it altogether. He had no understanding
of it. This is the sort of a thing that I gained from
his sister-in-law.
MINK: This is Breasted or Cox?
DELANO: This is Breasted.
MINK: Oh, you gained this from his sister-in-law?
DELANO: No, not altogether.
MINK: Who was his sister-in-law?
DELANO: Well, his wife's sister was Mrs. Hocking.
MINK: Oh, that's right. You spoke about that in the other
interview, about how she said that Breasted was really
not equipped to teach.
DELANO: Not equipped to fit in with the ideals that we
had in the art department. Of course, I didn't question
her very much on that, but we'd already had some troubles.
He had arguments with different people in the department,
like Kenneth Kingrey, I remember, had quite an argument
347
with him and thought that the kind of art he was teaching shouldn't be taught in a university. So, he was sort of running down the different separate fields that we tried to cover. MINK: Where v;as Kingrey?
DELANO: Kingrey, nov;? He's the head of an art department in Honolulu.
MINK: Yes, but v;hat V7as he teaching?
DELANO: He was teaching, I believe, design in the adver- tising arts.
MINK: This was considered by Breasted to be vocational? DELANO: That's right. He called the historical field humanistic, as though all the rest had nothing to do with people.
MINK: All the rest was inhuman.
DELMJO: I laughter] Inhuman, I guess you'd say. He was trying to divide the art department. He said that the university is far behind the other ran];ing state-supported institutions. Well, we got busy and found a great many examples of curricula from other institutions and found that he was wrong about that. There were many schools, including Harvard, that included the painting and design and various courses of the kind — that is, what might be called practice art courses.
I looked to a sort of theme that runs tlirough a
348
great deal of the troubles we've had in thinking of the courses or the curriculiim, the layout of the department, the theme of a certain connectedness in the arts, where in any rich, deep, and broad study of a field where art is integrated is worthwhile; and that, for example, if v/e'd call some courses design, there could be all sorts of objects that students might be designing or interested in working out. These have their far-reaching effects in everyday life, all sorts of objects that we use; and, especially in a period when we have mass production, we need leaders who can carry on design because it's so far-reaching. We can't just look to a vocational school per se to carry out these ideals. So it's most valuable. MINK: I suppose it's somewhat parallel to the situation that's going on nov; in the university where, for example, they're talking about the fact that speech and journalism are not central to the main objectives of the university. And you notice, for example, that there are articles in the I Los Angeles] Times. I noticed an article by Art Seidenbaum just recently in which he stated that perhaps it isn't the role of the university to teach journalism, to teach people how to become commentators, but the whole problem area of coimnunication, which has been more or less crystalized by Vice-President Agnew's tirade against the media, for example, pinpoints or highlights the problems
349
that exist today in the area of comraunications.
DELANO: Exactly.
MINK: And this is really a logical area in which the
university should be concerned to train students at both
the graduate and the undergraduate levels. And I think
maybe that's somewhat similar to this experience you're
talking about in art.
DELANO: Yes. It's the sarae problem we met in earlier
years — I think during the wartime — that they decided to
have the School of Medicine or the hospital and training
of nurses and doctors on the campus. This was resisted
by the same type of people. So inany of them came from Europe,
and I just v7ondered about that. I v;ondered whether it
goes back to some of the insistence on the German philosophy
that's in so many of the universities, where the earlier
philosophies concerned more v/ith conceptual knov/ledge —
perhaps I could put it that way — had to do with v.'hat was
thought v;as the most sacred kind of training.
I found some quotations from Dr. Ernest Carroll Moore, who had been the provost and who originally had the vision for building UCLA and for adding years to teacher training. Y I found that in a book called Education and Society by members of the faculty of the University of California, done in 1944 and printed by the University lof California] Press. It was the seventy-fifth year of the founding of
350
the university, and they asked people from the education department to put together a series of talks. Dr. Moore led by giving one on what he called "Out of the Living Past. " He speaks of these dichotomies and disparagements which are nearly endless. "Plato's preference for con- ceptual knowledge and his decrying of sense information was, and is, a long -lasting entailment upon the activities of huiiian beings." Then he went on to say that some of these dichotomies are still v/ith us where one makes a "distinction betvv-een what is called liberal and illiberal education, the education which belongs to a free man and the education which is fit only for a slave. " They made a differentiation there, or pure and applied science.
Jlay I interject a thought of my own there? I tried to keep track of instances of this sort of thing just as you've brought in about journalism. I remember about science v;hen Caltech had this sort of thing to prove, and I know the head of Caltech I Harold Brown] came out with the whole idea that there was no vjay in which a scientist could be a scientist without doing the actual work and working in teams together to accomplish an^'-bhing. He couldn't see any way in which you could just divide a so-called pure science, as though you shouldn't dirty your hands by having to erect machines or do things that might be called impure. There was a v;hole newspaper
351
article by him.
liINK: Well, it's quite true that this v/hole matter of pure versus the applied permeated, for example, the physics department. It's been discussed by Knudsen in his interview. DELANO: That's interestincj , the theoretical against the practical.
MINK: The practical ^igainst the theoretical, and hov; this actually split the department and caused people to be downgraded, and to be fired, and all of this. DELANO: Exactly.
MINK: And I think it's somev7hat similar to the experience the art department had.
DELANO: Yes, and they may be having it today. Then one strange thing: we had people who were Communists in the art department--students, some of whom later becanie professors; and they v^?ere always trying to find anything they could tie onto to divide the department. Divide and conquer was the cry, I guess. So any of these ancient divisions that were likely to come out were pounced upon and promoted, like one of these men got up at a city conference that we had on art teaching and said that •design was dead. Well, you know, earlier Mrs. Sooy had said painting was dead. These silly sort of antagonisms, you know, for different purposes, arising tliroughout the years to split. Who are they conquering when such things
352
take place? We need the whole rounded experience no matter whether a person is just beginning or whether he intends to go on as a great genius in the field. He needs to get the grasp of the v;ho3e, no matter what he is training for .
Then, of course, sorae people tried to divide it by calling it — well, we said vocational against liberal — and disparagement, by contrast with the spiritual. Material against spiritual — this is another thing that some departjinents run up against. All these dichotomies have left their mark on the art department. We have had thern from time to time, and I guess we are still having them.
MINK: What success did Dr. Breasted have in trying to persuade the president that his theories with regard to the department were correct?
DELANO: I never found out exactly what took place, but he vras asked to leave the art department, and yet I find no dociiments about it. Everybody was glad v;hen he left. Ke took a job at the Los Angeles museum. MINK: You don't know why he was asked to leave? DELANO: No, except that he antagonized the members of the art department by this thing of trying to take the history cut of the art department. We had had history in reference to the types of curricula we had. Earlier
3 53
years, say, when it was a norinal school, the same department
gave v;hat was considered a type of history for people
vmo v/ere there for that number of years. And it did
range from over all the world of art history — Oriental,
American, Indian, South American, Mexican and so on, and
island groups, as well as the v;hole outlay of early
Mediterranean cultures on through European art history
and so on. So it was worldwide.
MINK: Well, now, you mentioned this in connection with
Nellie Huntington Gere, and how she traveled to collect
all this information. . .
DELANO: ...and amassed many slides for it...
MINK: ...and what thanks did she get for it, but then
someone was saying, "Well, after all, she was si>cty-five,
and she was supposed to retire; so really the university
wasn't giving her the short end of the stick."
DELANO: Well, the whole staff was behind her, vr/anting her
to go on until she reached the age of seventy, if she
liked. So the administration was thoroughly behind her.
You see, that incident was when Mr. Cox was head. He
taught some of the history courses, but he had this
hang-up, shall I say, on a certain harangue over the way
people lived and the art that was expressed in their
surroundings, the towns, more or less the art of the cities.
This was the thing that he thought about, whether it was
354
in the Middle Ages or. . . .
MINK: You mentioned his disgust with VThittier Boulevard
in Los Angeles.
DELANO: Yes, in Los Angeles. But it's like today.
We see great wrongs but hov; much good are we getting out
of the harangue over it? It seems to me someone who can
really go to the people who are dividing the property
to begin v^ith, like Westwood, and putting in a park —
we suffer from lack of places — and understand the system.,
Perhaps the Janss people — let's just put it bluntly —
maybe they didn't want a park because they'd have that
much less money. They could sell more lots by not having
a park. But if a group could have been organized by Mr.
Cox, since he wanted beauty every\v'here , and had forced
them to put in a park, then we'd have it today. This is
just ray opinion.
MINK: In other words, too much haranguing and no action?
DELANO: Yes.
MINK: Put your mouth where your money is. Something
like that.
DELANO: Or the kind of argument where you kill something
to do something else. Why bother with the fine arts?
This is what Mr. Cox used to annoy me with, because he
would say, "Down with the fine arts and up with the art
of the city." This is wrong, it seems to me. It shocks
355
somebody, those v.'ould tend to lose, and perhaps they don't realize that their words are taken by students especially as something that should be taken for gospel, almo st .
MINK: Well, after Mr . Breasted left....
DELANO: I think I spoke about it last time. He went to the Los Angeles museum, and he had what seemed like a well-thought-out plan, but he couldn't work v/ith the people there. I heard from Frances Nugent, v-'ho v/as v/or]:ing there then (she's passed away since, but she had been a former student of ours and taught art history for a v/hile, and then went to the Los Angeles museum in the educational progrcan which they have dovm there) , and she told me that Mr. Breasted was just insufferable. They couldn't get along v/ith him. He antagonized a great many people. I knew Mr. I Albert Arthur] Woodward, too, v.'ho was in charge of the history — the museum then was history, science and art — and I had heard him talk a great many times in the anthropological association v;hich I belonged to, and I'd been to many of the meetings that Dr. Beals had formulated for the beginnings of anthropology on the campus. So I knev/ Dr. Woodward. He, too, just thought that Dr. Breasted was so difficult to work with. He couldn't allow people to carry on their own ideas without inflicting them with the idea that they knew little. He just, in
356
other words, didn't knov; how to encourage people or to really be a good administrator, in the case of the Los Angeles museurri. So, in no time at all, he was asked to leave there. Then I saw him after that. He told me that he suffered; he knew that he had a difficulty in getting along v;ith people.
Well, let's see. Did I mention about Mr. Cox coming, and then how President Sproul relieved him of the chair- manship of the department, finally? I think it was due to the fact that he had a great deal of trouble in keeping track of the finances of the department, letting money go from our budget, not building it up. And having difficulty in having classes meet and there would be no instructor; and there v;ould be a great many ex-students hired so that long lists--! could look theni up but I did see a great many who were recent students hired at very little money to come in at the last minute, you knov;, and fill in for these classes. He V7as not a good admini- strator. Let's put it bluntly.
Now, there were some nice things about him. I'm speaking nov7 of Mr. Cox. When the department v.'as smaller \ and we were on the Westwood campus, we had a \vroman, Olive Nev;comb, who taught ceramics. She was a good soul, some- thing like Miss Gere and Miss Chandler and that early group, sort of the salt of the earth, you might say. V\^ell,
357
Hiss Nev;corab had many friends outside the department, and one day she had a group over to her house, and in this group was Miss Chouinard, who had built the Chouinard Art Institute. And they were having a little session and making some pottery or doing some kind of extra decorating on ceramics, wherein they had to have melted wa>: . Miss Nevrcomb had a little kettle of wax heating on the stove, and rest of the groiap of outdoors. The thing caught fire, and in her eagerness to do something about it, she grabbed the handle with her bare hand and it burnt so that she dropped it and this boiling wajc splattered onto her neck and face and arms. It was just dreadful. She screamed and they came running in; and, of course, they got her to the hospital, but she died in a few days. It was so unnecessary.
Mr. Cox v;as greatly touched by this, so he arranged for a little memorial service for Miss Newcomb. He put out a little leaflet with the picture of one of his vases, a Greek vase which he drew — he liked to draw delicate detail in black and white. So he had this memorial for Miss Newcomb. He had hymns and chorales, different ^ songs and so on. I think she was a Christian Scientist, so there was some hymn by Mary Baker Eddy incorporated in this. The friends who came were greatly touched by this service. The art department was there, the students, Dr.
358
Moore, and so on. There was something along this line that v;e didn't have from some of the other people who were heads of the department.
And I think the administration got a kick out of Mr. Cox sometimes, because he was an artist from the old country. He wore these fancy blouses with ruffles at the wrist, and it was a sort of traditional sculptor's blouse that had come down through the ages, I guess, in England. I think he gave one of these smocks to Laura Andreson, who later took on the ceramics work. The administration got a Icick out of his telling of stories and making poems out of alnaost anything. But to come dovm to practical matters, you know, the art department v;as running behind, and we didn't have our budget, and v/e didn't have promotions. It was about that time that — I think I've mentioned it — I went to Sproul about v;hy the artists didn't get promotions in the art department.
Then Mr. [Robert S.J Hilpert was named as chairman to come in, and right away he got promotions for people, just one after the other. He brought the department up to v/here it was on a going basis. I noticed the difference in the letters. Mr. Cox's letters were all carefully handprinted in black ink to the administration, and Mr. Hilpert ' s were everything that business should be. He didn't just pen his letters, but he wrote them so that you
359
could understand exactly what he v/as up to. And if he didn't understand about the different titles, v/hether we should have an associate or an assistant and the basis for all this, he soon found out from the administration. There wasn't any of this monkey business going on anymore.
One thing that I^Ir. Hilpert did right away was to bring S. Macdonald-VJright into the art department. He thought v/e needed somebody who had a name as a painter, and so Mr. Wright was brought in. Later he was a little sorry. Mr. Hilpert called him a prima donna in the art department. He didn't want to have to do any of the necessary things that instructors have to do. He didn't even want to do the grading or anything. He just wanted to be the greiit mogul to stand up and lecture a little bit to his classes and that they'd all kov/tow to him. He had to use rooms that other people would use after his hours were finished. For example, Mrs. Abraiaovitch, v;ho was teaching there then, had her class in there just ahead of his, I believe, and when he came in he would throw her work into a corner. Her work was piled neatly on her desk, and he had a desk on the other side of the V room. Well, he wanted to use that desk, so he just threw her work in a corner on the floor. This just about brought her to tears. The poor woman was already in a dreadful state of mind. She actually had a nervous
360
breakdown over the plight of the Jews under Hitler. This
preyed on her n.iind so much that she just had to quit
teaching. She just never got over it. She is still at
home and does her own painting and her work, and she
taught children's classes; but she couldn't put up with
somebody like Mr. Wright v/hen she v/as already in an
agonized state of mind. Actually I don't know what you
would have to be, but you'd have to be toughminded to
be around Mr. Wright.
MINK: Did you have any trouble v.'ith him?
DELANO: Well, I learned something about his character
long before he came to the university.
MINK: Through your work with the people at Caltech?
DELANO: As painters, as a painter. Did I tell you anything
about that once?
MINK: No, I don't think you did.
DELy\NO: Well, you see, Mr. Wright came back to California
sometime, let's say, in the early twenties, and he gave
a talk about Cezanne. But he was so arrogant, I marked
him right then as somebody who thought he was the only
one that had been to Europe, and who was arrogant about
v;hat he knev/ of the art at that time. V7ell, it happens
there are a lot of people v/ho had been to Europe and knew
about Cezanne's work. He gave some courses in painting,
private courses, and he had Fannie Kerns and Vivian
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Stringfield, tv/o art teachers — I4rs. Kearns was from Pasadena-
and these people organized the classes for him. It seems
he v/as always lucky to find some women who would do the
work for him, and he didn't have to turn a hand, just
stand up and talk the v;ay he said his master talked in
France.
MINK: And he figured he was in that role.
DELANO: He v;as the master. And so these v/omen would
come to his classes, mostly women and just adore him.
MINK: Drool.
DELA1\[0: Yes, just drool over his demonstrations of the
way Cezanne painted. V7ell, I remember just looking in
on one of these classes, and I decided it wasn't for me.
I didn't need a teacher like that. So I don't knov; whether
he ever liked me in the beginning, because I sort of saw
through some of this. But at the same time, he rather
liked somebody who v.'ould stand up to him, and I know v/hen
he came to the art department, I said something that made
him laugh, because I sort of saw through what he was doing.
In other vrards, if he could bully you into a position,
then that was what he loved to do.
MINK: l^at did you say to him?
DELANO: Well, I can't remember the incident, but it was
just something about our courses. I just don't rementber,
but I do remember that I crossed him. I said, "Now you
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can cut my head off if you want to," and I kind of drew my hand across my neck; and he laughed and thought j.t was the funniest thing that I had the nerve to contradict him, you knov/c He did have this sort of arrogance about his talk — it sort of got over to a lot of people. And Mr. Hilpert, of course, saw through hiin, too, and he called him a prima donna. Bat some of the students adored him and got a lot out of his courses. He went into a sort of Orientalism in later years where he, I guess, wanted to be a Buddhist. Perhaps he is one, I don't knov:. He was a colorful figure, let's say that.
MINK: You were going to say something about a little footnote that you had mentioned to me at the beginning of the interview about Professor Hungerland. DELANO: Mrs. Sooy went to Eruope one tjiae on a leave, and on the way back--this v/as kind of, I guess, towards the end of the Second Vtorld War, she met this handsome man, Helmut Hungerland. He was coming away from Europe because, I think, he'd been in a concentration camp. MINK: Was he Jewish, then?
DELANO: No, he wasn't Jewish, but the Nazis didn't like his way of thinking and his teaching and so on. That was what he told Mr. Cox. He wanted to get into an art de- partment, and so therefore he made up to Mrs. Sooy, and she thought he'd be just great. His background sounded
3 63
just fine; he'd had all kinds of experiences and he seemed to be jnodern and progressive in outlook. So she arranged to have him come to the art department to be looked over as a possible person to teach art history. So he came. MINK: The records, incidentally, there indicate that although he was hired in as associate professor the budget didn't really provide anything more than enough for an assistant professor.
DELAl^O: That's right. It was a mistake of Mr. Cox. Mr. Cox had to correct it, and he actually asked him to come in as an assistant professor. This would mean that he V70uldn't be permanent unless he v;ent before another committee and was tenured. But, you see, Mr. Cox vrauld get confused. He'd put in the wrong title or the v/rong amount of money and so on. This happened with Hunger land, too. But then that was corrected, and he did come in as assistant professor. He seemed to fit in and was liked. He made friends with a lot of the students in the stage- craft courses and with people who were carrying on the theatrical plays, like Bob Lee, I remember. There was a whole group of young people that he ran around with, ^ and they seemed to have a good time. It wasn't long that he was asking the office if he could have a little leave of absence to get married. There was a very attractive young woman teaching in the home economics department.
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I believe. He wanted to go to Hav/aii, where she had a contract to teach for the summer, and so that arrangement was made. He had a few days off and then had to come back. In the fall of that year, they rented the house of Dr. [Franklin P.J RoJ.fe, I believe it was, of the English department — people I knew. We had a sort of a house- warming for the Hungerlands, and the Rolfes were to go away on a sabbatical. At that party, Mrs. Hungerland announced that she was going to have a baby, and Dr. Hungerland threw a fit. He just rolled in the ground and bit his arms and just thought it was dreadful. He didn't want a baby. Nobody seems to knov; what went between them, but Mrs. Hungerland was frightened to death of him, and Mrs. Sooy hid her av;ay where Hungerland couldn't find her.
There was more gossip that year than anyone could ever imagine on a campus, going on about these personalities, It seemed that then Hungerland started to be seen in public with Dr. Isabel Creed, who taught in the philosophy department. Since it v/as public, I guess it's all right to speak about it. They were seen in the tearooms around \ the IWestwood] Village, and then in the summer of that year they went to Mexico together. After that, Mrs. Sooy helped Mrs. Hungerland get a divorce. Mr. Cox and the head of the philosophy department. Dr. iDonald A.] Piatt, decided
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that it would be for the good of the students and the courses
that these people were teaching if the tvra vrould just leave
the university. So they did. They went to Berkeley.
I know that Mr. Hunger land v/as active in the Journal of
Aesthetics — that's a magazine devoted to aesthetics and
he took part in that — and his v;ife, Isabel, vnrote articles
tlxrough the years. I guess they're still up there.
There was more excitement during the previous year to
the time they v/ent to Berkeley so that the students were
greatly disrupted and put on about.
MINK: Mr. Hilpert was well liked by the students and the
faculty then?
DELANO: Yes, he was a very good chairman. I'll say that
one of the most outstanding things about him was that he
ijranediately corrected the situation that the art department
V7as in and had been in for many years during the whole
period of the thirties and the forties when no promotions
had been given by Mr. Cox. He seemed to have such trouble
in that. He v;as sort of against women. And, oh, yes,
there was a thing about Warren Cheney. He wanted get some
more men in the department, so he hired Warren Cheney.
Even in the middle of the year, Cheney was put out.
MINK: What was Cheney's problem?
DELANO: Cheney was a fine teacher of sculpture. I don't
know whether there v/as some jealousy there between Cox
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and hira or what, but when Cheney came in, he heard all of this gossip about no one being promoted and v/hat we were going to do about Mr. Cox. So he decided that he would take it on his shoulders and go to the administration and tell on Mr. Cox. But somebody told on Cheney before he had a chance to go higher up, and so Mr. Cox got rid of him that day and told him to leave. This doesn't appear in any of the notes or anything, but this is the understanding that all of us had. Mrs. Sooy, being the one that couldn't be put out, the only one with tenure, went to the administration on the whole thing and told them that Mr. Cox had allowed the money to go and didn't make promotions and so on; and so then Dr. Sproul said, "Well, I'll fix this." And he did tell him one time at a party, one of his stag parties, vjhy didn't he stop being the chairman and he could go back to his own work and not have to just put up with all of these tedious letters and hiring and firing of people and so on. And so that's what happened.
MINK: Apparently that appealed to him.
DELANO: It did. There's a letter in here in which he expresses himself very well on that v/hole point about going back to creative work and so on and not having to pen any more letters. [tape turned off]
Dr. Sproul wrote a letter to Mr. Cox and suggested
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that "In accordance with the policy rotation of departmental chairmen, which is encouraged throughout the university," he said, "I am proposing to relieve you of the chairmanship of the Department of Art on June 3 0." MINK: What v;as the date of this letter? DELANO: This letter was written May 23, 1944. MINK: This was really just sort of a polite follow-up to what he had already told him at the party, then. DELANO: Yes. And he said, "And in your place I'm going to appoint Mr. R. S. Hilpert, v;ho discharged the duties of the chairmanship in a most satisfactory manner while you v'ere away this year. May I take this opportunity to thank you most heartily for your long, faithful and successful leadership of the department. I hope and be- lieve that Mr. Hilpert v;ill carry on in the tradition of harmonious cooperation that you have established. With all good wishes. Sincerely."
MINK: VJell, now, you said that his letter to Sproul really gave hira some heat.
DELANO: The reply to this gives somewhat the picture of Mr. Cox. "Without attributing or claiming any telepathic ^ pov-^ers, I am convinced that your letter of May 23 is an ansv.'er to some questions that of late have risen up to plague me. The recent vacation had discovered long dormant, underneath the lush verbiage of departmental
368
correspondence, a fev; creative energies still struggling to unfold. These neglected growths had disturbed the nice equilibrium established between the pedagogue and artist and revived desires to quit the chairmanship and concentrate upon teaching and creating art." MINK: He's very flovrcry.
DELANO: Oh, he was always breaking out into poetry — just give him the chance.
369
TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE APRIL 1, 1971
MINK: Last time we v/ere talking about the end of Cox's administration in some detail and about some of the people that came around that time, and you v/anted to continue on in about this same period.
DELANO: Wliat I would like to bring out is the difficulty in the understanding of a person like Mr. Cox, who had a background so different from the American plan of education. He had been brought up in England; he went to a royal academy of art; and he had certain traditional points of view. Then, when he came to this country, he took the job at Columbia University under Mr. Dov;, and apparently Arthur Wesley Dow was a person who charmed everyone that came within his influence. Mr. Cox was one who agreed with his general plan of art education. But the personal q-aalities that Mr. Cox had in relation to the department I think stood in the way of the development. Now, this was a young university. It v/as just a mere beginning. And yet the people that came here brought certain backgrounds, let's say, including all these people that came from Europe; and somehow there usually was a core of training and attitudes and principles which the department itself had already worked out before it became
370
a part of the university. Tliose v;ere so basic. MINK: I wonder if you could respond to a question that has always interested me. It seenis that the university, as you said, was such a young university. It really hadn't obtained the academic stature or the rank, say, among colleges and universities that it nov; has, like eleventh of the great universities in the country. And yet in this early period we v;ere able to attract many of these noted scholars from Europe. Art is just one field in which we were able to do this. There were many other fields in which v;e did it. If our institution had the same relation to total educational picture that perhaps some small state college in Wisconsin might have at just about this time in 1971, you wouldn't see these scholars going to some small town in Wisconsin. So I'm wondering if our climate here and the beauty of this region was a sort of carrot that v/e could hold out to these scholars to draw thana here; and they were willing to come as m^uch for that as they were for coming to the university. DELANO: Yes, this was very true. I think many that I know about in the art department came at lower salaries, y even. Some of them left their places where they had been promised, in the case of Mr. Hilpert, a full professor- ship there if he'd stay in Minnesota. He came here at a reduced position and salary, although he had been promised
371
to be put ahead. I'll come back to that in a raoment. I'jr. Cox was made a full professor at Columbia University, and yet when he corae here, he raved a}x)Ut the beauty of the surroundings of k'estwood — of course, it was very much more undeveloped as far as houses and buildings were concerned, a lot of open fields and the hills in their natural state and so forth — but I remember his making remarks about hearing mockingbirds sing on the campus, and he'd think of the contrast between that and the buildings of Columbia University in the heart of New York.
MINK: On Morning side Heights.
DELANO: Yes, where he felt that you couldn't have that natural effect. He would have done very well, perhaps, today, with all of this interest in the environment.
I was talking about Mr. Cox's personal behavior in relation to the faculty. It seemed that he had a way of arguing that if people said anything about their achieve- ments or what they'd been doing, he almost felt that it was egotistical. Everybody on the staff had this feeling about him, and if you brought up — well, like, suppose you had published a book, you hardly said anything about it because he might think you were showing off. This applied especially to the painters and to others. I know Mr. Hilpert felt it very strongly because, while not
372
exhibiting or painting — although he had been trained in
a broad way in his art education — still he had been offered
this position and in fact had been working on the Carnegie
Foundation. This was a national place that he had, the
coramittees that he worked on. They'd been doing that before
he caine. Nobody on our staff knew much about v;hat he had
done beforehand. Mr. Cox never told about it.
MINK: Did Cox know pretty well?
DELANO: He certainly did, because I have the letters here
which Mr. Hilpert, for some strange reason, put into his
own files before he died. They are the personal letters
between Cox and Mr. Hilpert v;here he enticed him to come
out here.
MINK: ^-Jhat did he hold out to him?
DELANO: He didn't hold out anything. He was so fickle
in the way he talked about what he might get and what he
might not get here, till you didn't knov; where he stood.
Mr. Hilpert was extremely loyal. He was that sort of
person, v/ith almost a religious attitude about everything
he seemed to do. Ke was loyal, and he finally came;
but he gave up so much to get here, and then he didn't
get a promotion right away. And yet he played along.
Finally, when he went back for another summer, I guess,
in Minnesota, he thought he'd v^orite to the president about
what he thought his chances were of getting ahead. And
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then there's a letter from Hedrick to Dr. Sproul... MINK: These are in the chancellor's file that you have been examining?
DELANO: ...yes, in April, 1940, in which he tried to pin Mr. Cox down to whether he really wanted Mr. Hilpert. Again, the only way I could explain this sort of thing is because it happened with so many other people that he could not praise a person without at the same time slamming him. These busy men like Sproul and Hedrick, it would just put a doubt in their mind: Does Mr. Cox really want Mr. Hilpert? This is the sort of thing. And so here it comes out just exactly what we had to put up v/ith for eight years with nobody getting promotions. He asked him whether he really wanted him, and Cox said, finally, when he was pinned down, that he did want Mr. Hilpert, that he couldn't get anybody that would do the work as well, and so on. But he had to just sort of squirm around, you see, before he'd really come out all for someone. This happened to many people.
MINK: You said that you didn't really discover these things about Mr. Hilpert 's background until it came time for you to write his memorial.
DELANO: Yes. Mr. Cox was v/ith us many years. He wasn't the chairman the full time, but he came as chairman when Mrs. Sooy was released from the chairmanship, and then
374
he stayed on until he died, which was maybe a couple of years after that. So maybe he was here ten or twelve years, let's say. We had this sort of equivocal attitude towards people and subjects. We didn't knov/ v/here you'd stand. He v;ould write a little newspaper article against painting, and it would be against sculpture; and yet he was making sculpture and he had painting in the de- partment. But he never came just straight out for things. And it was a mannerism.
Mr. Cox didn't let the rest of the faculty know about the attainments of Mr. Hilpert before he came here. MINK: Because he couldn't praise anybody.
DELANO: He couldn't praise anybody. That's putting it in plain words, yes. And so I was really surprised to find this in the records.
MINK: How was it that you were selected to write his memorial?
DELANO: For Mr. Hilpert? I don't know. I don't renember now who was the head of the whole committee. They pick out somebody that knows the person. MINK: I see. And they just asked you to do it? DELANO: Yes, and I \^n:ote really three of them for art people who died. But the people who were on this committee with me — well, say, Mrs. [Archine] Fetty, for example, I asked her if she vrould help on it; and she was very busy.
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and I really did all of it. She said, "V7ell, Mr. Hilpert didn't do anything." All this time she knew him, too, and we just didn't knov; what he did. MINK: Mrs. Fetty was...
DELANO: ...was on our staff. Still is. MINK: You haven't talked about her too much. DELANO: She comes in later years. She is a full professor now.
MINK: But at this time she was just an associate or an assistant professor?
DELANO: I'd have to look it up. She was one of our former students in interior design. I just gave that as an e>:araple.
MINK: Were there others on the faculty v;ho felt the same way as Mrs. Fetty about his achieveraents? DELANO: Well, I don't knov/. He was well liked in this sense: that as soon as he became chairman he was very much more businesslike in conducting the affairs of the department and in building up our money again, our budget, which had been allowed to go do\^m to where we didn't have enough money to hire people at a level where we could ^ really build a department. And if the people who were retained in the department weren't promoted, as they weren't for so many years, then there was something \^^rong. Well, Mr. Hilpert really looked into this and found out.
376
and it conies out in many of the files here from the provost's office, that people could be promoted for their creative work, such as in painting, or sculpture, or design ac- complishments, and so forth. And they didn't have to write books.
MINK: I think you said that while Hilpert v/as responsible for getting promotions and this v;as to his credit, however, he brought into the department — didn't he? — a group of people who subsequently — and we've discussed this — you learn, in various ways, were card-carrying Communists. Do you think that Hilpert was a person that was easily dissuaded or persuaded by people, and that these people took advantage of him?
DELAI^O: Yes, I think they might have. I think that maybe one or two were so much more skillful in their blandishments and in their attitudes towards others in appraising exactly v;hat attitudes to take towards people, to get on the good side of them. Yes, I think that he might have been taken in by them. Yes.
MINK: You don't think that he was av;are of their per- suasions or of their plans to disrupt the department or to disrupt the university?
DEIjANO: No, I don't think the things they did were that overt at the time. It started in the thirties, just about, when there was what they called the United Front. There
377
were so many organizations formed all over the country; this wasn't just here. MINK: During the Depression times.
DELANO: Yes. And you were urged to take part, and there was a lot of activity in organizations of all kinds — in the movies and in the v;r iters' organizations and so on; in the artists, Artists' Equity for one. There would be perhaps a few left-v;ing people in most of these organiza- tions, especially there to get converts. Also they v;ould be in the university because they would like to entice young people of that age to get into the party, or young teachers.
MINK: Well, now, we've said that there can't be any naming of najnes in this interview, but that you had agreed to talk in sort of general terras about how this group went about doing these things and some of the things that happened, and hov/ you feel that they were responsible for this, to shov7 and demonstrate how they tended to disrupt the university.
DELANO: Yes, I might say something in general about this if v;e can keep to a general trend. There was this little group with one man v;ho I know v/as especially a member of the party because his card fell on the floor in my office where he had a desk. MINK: Accidentally or on purpose?
DELANO: Accidentally, I imagine, because I don't think he wanted me to know that he was a monber, although he
378
tried very hard to get me to becoroe one, so I did knov; that way. But he never told me that he was a full-fledged member. He organized meetings outside the art department and it had to do with the painters' group. He enticed a number of the younger ones close to his age — although I think he was the oldest of that group, they v/ere all young — to meet outside. I went to Mr. Hilpert and told hiru that I v;as left out of these meetings that had to do with the painting, and they v7ould come back to the de- partment and announce a whole lot of things about policy, running the affairs of the painting group because it had become larger by this time (and so had all the other areas) , and that I felt, now that Miss Chandler had resigned, that I was the senior member in the painting area, as a painter.- and I ought to have some say. MINK: And yet you were left out?
DELANO: Yes, I was left out. Then Mr. Hilpert told thera that I must be included, so I went to one of their outside meetings, and there was a strange hush all that evening. Just my being there, I felt, was something they didn't like.
MINK: Would you say that you had a self -consciousness about it because you knew that you had gone to Hilpert and said that you vs^anted to be included, and you thought they might have known that you had done this? Or do you
379
think that they purposely were excluding you, unaware of what you ' d done .
DELANO: Well, they didn't knov; where I stood. They knew, by this time, that I v;ouldn't become a member. Back in the thirties it v/as very difficult to find out much — at least it was for me, I didn't know v;here to turn to find out — about v/hat communism meant. Later I found books that I could buy and did buy quite a number of them, and I ]x)ucjht the originals. This is v;here I really started to find out for myself. I was astounded, for example, at the first things I read about their attitude towards history and their manipulation of what I considei'ed history. That v;as one of the first things that struck me about it. And then I v;as greatly influenced by an article which John Dev.'ey had written for the Forum magazine, I believe it v/as called, v^hich lie titled, "Why I Am Not a Comraunist." And I think that influenced me more than anything I ever read.
MINK: I think that's a famous article. DELANO: Yes. And I did find, after he became ninety years old, that they published a thick volume of Dewey — many other books about hira, too, many of which I've bought throughout all these years since the thirties. But this thick volume that came out when he was quite old has a thick chapter, a part of the book, that contains a listing
380
of all the articles and books that he wrote. That would form a little book in itself, there's so many. But it takes his whole development. I didn't v/ant to get off on Johii Dev/ey; I v/ant to get back to this group and their doings.
Back then, I didn't knov/; I mean, I v/as confused myself because I knew that John Dev/ey had been a socialist. But after I knev/ him better and v;hat he stood for, and went to the Barnes Foundation in the early thirties, you know, I found out that his viev/s v;ere very much modi- fied. So it v;as difficuJ-t to knov/ where to stand. I wasn't really a person greatly interested in politics any\T/ay. I wasn't certainly going to follov/ communism or anything that extreme, and yet I didn't consider myself just too conservative. So then there was another meeting. MINK: What transpired at this meeting in which you v;ere, or felt you were, excluded?
DELAl'IO: They just didn't talk; they didn't do anything. They just had some tea and coffee.
MINK: So it v/asn't a policy meeting, in other words? DELANO: It was a policy meeting without discussion. Then, later, there was another one at Mrs. Brown's house (Dorothy Brown, who v/as in the department at that time; Mr. Hilpert had gotten her in to teach). And one member of this group came with a list of the committees. It must have been the beginning of a semester. I remember that
381
he put himself on seven and he put everybody else (who v/as there froin the group of painters) on committees but didn't put me on one. Not that I cared to be on these committees particularly, but I v;as a senior member. Miss Chandler had been, previous to my time, and had decided within this small group what the painters should do and so on in reference to the department as a v/hole. And here I was left out, and being eased out, as it were. Yet all of them had been my students. I had had them in my classes. I sort of was amused by it; at the same time, I thought it was a little dangerous. I didn't knov/ what to think. I could take it if they didn't think I was good enough to have ideas, but it v;as sort of a ruthless barging ahead with some kind of behind-the-scenes idea of having a policy. This went on clear along into later times to the point where they wouldn't attend the faculty meetings.
I remember one particularly. This was after I'd gone to the Barnes Foundation and I came back, and I think I heard that Dr. Sproul put Dean Jackey in charge of the art department. So Dean Jackey was leading the faculty meeting. I was there and one member of this group that I'm talking about was there, and the rest were not. Dean Jackey was furious and he wanted to know where they were, and he sent the other one out into what we called the sink room in those days, in the Education
382
Building v/here the art department v/as holding fort, to
find out why they didn't corae to the faculty meetings.
So they all came, and he bav;led them out for not attending.
And then we had a faculty member. Dr. With...
MINK: Karl With.
DELANO: ...Karl VJith, frcm Germany, on the faculty.
And he had come over to get av/ay from the Nazis and that
sort of thing. He was on our faculty, and he was a very
outspo]:en person. I remember that he got into a fight
with Dean Jackey in front of everybody, almost to blows.
Now, these things had been sort of promoted behind the
scenes.
MINK: Vlhat v;as the controversy, really?
DELANO: The controversy?
MINK: What was the main thead of the controversy that was
going on?
DELANO: I don't know. It was something to do with the
policy of the art department. I'd have to review notes
or something. There was this sputtering and fighting.
I know that Dr. With stood by most of the policies of the
art department. He liked the design areas; he wanted to
teach a course which had to do with the interrelation of
the arts to other fields; and he had ideas for modern art
and art history and art appreciation and so on, and that
kind of thing. He wasn't interested so much in teaching
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the actual painting, drawing, or designing. It was more lecturing that he liked to work on. As I v/ent over Europe several times and looked into art schools and big academies in various countries, I found that so many of them were broad, that they had training in design and in history and in painting and in sculpture and that most of it would be incorporated in one large art school. Especially in Germany, you had this broad background. So I don't think we had any quarrel v/ith Dr. With on that thing.
I just can't remember what it was that made these people get on edge with each other. Dean Jackey was the kind of person who was like a little old schoolteacher that loved to just get after people if they v/eren't just toeing the mark. I was fond of him. I liked the way he explained things, and yet this was something that the group we were talking about made fun of. They thought that v/hen he'd go to the blackboard and draw a little plan — this is what you have to do to train a designer, this is what you have to do to train a sculptor — that it was just a little . bit childish. MINK: Precious, perhaps? \ DELANO: Yes. Well, not so precious, but just a little too simple. I thought that Dean Jackey had a great many qualities that stood for him; for one thing, he had a practical angle that many people lacked. He had his
384
doctor's degree in vocational education. I don't knov/ just where he got that, but it was vocational education. Of course, that gave hjjn, inaybe, a black eye in terms of itiany other people, like this Breasted, who came frcsn Princeton and vrould look dovm on anything with the vrard vocational in it. Nov/ Dean Jackey often said, "Get your doctor's degree — it's your calling card." That didn't make much sense to rae, because if you had to get a doctor's degree in some field other than painting, where you can't get it even today in many universities, then you might just as well not try to do anything in the university. For many years, they have been giving full professorships for the creative painting even though they don't give a full degree in that. And of course we had to vrark-- I think I've talked about that before — to get even the beginning degrees for this, whereas they'd give it in art history. This is what I'm talking about. People from Europe, like Dr. With, had this Scirae sort of thing — Mr. Hilpert — none of them had doctor's degrees for just the creative thing, you see.
MINK: Were there other v;ays that you found that this group was disruptive?
DELANO: Yes. In finding out about people's promotions: it seemed that the moraent somebody v/as or was not promoted, they would know immediately. Nov/, hov; did they find out?
385
And then they \-;ould make it difficult for this person by- all kinds of practices that seemed to rae not honest or loyal .
MINK: You cited to lue off tape an example — and again keeping it perfectly anonymous — of an instance in which you felt that the committee on v;hich you had served, information had leaked out.
DELANO: Yes, immediately. This person was not allowed to stay v;ith the university. He was up for promotion to associate professorship.
MINK: In other words, up for tenure, right? DELANO: Yes, for tenure. The real reason for his not being allowed to stay on was because there were so many complaints stacked up in Dean Jackey's office against this person's practice of intii^idat ion of both students and faculty. These people had gone to the dean and complained about these tactics.
MINK: VJhat did these tactics consist of? DELANO: Well, going into classes, making fun of the students' work while the teacher was there, making faces at it, walking around the room, looking down at it, and also . making fun of the work with the student after he had perhaps come to his class. It was infuriating, you see. These students would be so amazed that they'd go to the dean and complain about it. I know of another instance
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where a student was called down in front of the others
in such terrible words that he went to the dean about
that. And so there were various instances--! didn't even
know about thein---and that's what really put hira out.
Because I was a senior laeraber and was on this promotion
comraittee, they thought that it was iny fault, that I should
ignore everything that happened, that I should sign, and
that he should be promoted.
MINK: In effect, though, you were fully supported by the
committee in your decision not to give hira tenure?
DELANO: Yes, after I saw what the dean brought in.
MINK: Was the dean there, too?
DELANO: He v.'as brought in as soon as this Ciune out.
Our committees are composed of five people, one from your
own department. This person had been passed as far as
his teaching, v;hich was very good — and I talked for it,
being the only manber from the department there — thought
his teaching was very good, and his ovm creative work
was progressing. He was having exhibits and getting
recognition. I had been on his first promotion committee
and got him through. So here v/as this next one for tenure —
appraisal committee, it was. But when all of these things
came in from the dean's office, then we went over everything
again and decided he shouldn't be on the faculty if he was
going to cause this kind of disruption. In fact, I remember
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his ccming into Tny classes and making fun of work. It's as though they had talked it over, what technique to use to intiqiidate people. So that was one.
Another example was in this particular case, when they found out the person wasn't promoted, they knew that I must be on the committee some way or other and sign the paper, because it came late into ray office. This person sat on a chair backwards — that is, he got hold of the back of the chair and was so violent that he broke the chair. Now^ this was a little hardwood chair v;ith a cane seat we'd had in the department from the Vermont campus days.
MINK: It was oak, in other words. DELANO: Yes, it was oak.
MINK: That's about the hardest wood there is. DEL/iNO: And he broke that, he was so angry, and said that I would never see the end of this. Now he was jjitimidating me right there. And I said, "You don't know anything about this — who was on it, or who signed it, or anything." MINK: The coimnittees are supposed to be secret. DELANO: They are supposed to be secret. . But he rattled off almost everything that was in the report, but with mistakes. So apparently it was like somebody had read it — maybe a secretary — very rapidly. And so I didn't say anything. I was backed into a corner. It was about
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five in the afternoon, late, nobody around. I was terrified for a while. I really was, I talked to somebody in the history department who had had a similar experience. MINK: What advice could they give you?
DELANO: Well, it v/as just up to you to withdraw from any dealings.
MINK: You mean not to serve on promotion committees? DELANO: Oh, I wouldn't do that; oh, not that. But be a little cautious in regard to them. And of course, I never was a friend after that to this particular person. You see, if you knew them and liked than and went along and you were friends, then you found out that they were holding a whole system of ideas which have to do with conspiracy. How can you deal with it? What can you do when they're right there? They're in your office; every day you see thera.
Well, it was strange. This person left in the middle of a semester and I just don't know the long-range effect of making the department divide. Certain antagonisms were brought out, it seems to me, and you'd never know whether a lie was placed there in the mind of somebody . and no one v^'ould take it out--no one would contradict
it. You'd have these high tensions going on all the time, and they go on today.
I didn't know what to do. I did talk to a man in
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the education department who had a lot of trouble that way. (He's not living now.) He thought you just had to go right along and believe in v/hat you believe in. Of course, there was one tjjne when a man came in and they felt that he wasn't doing exactly what they thought he was going to do in the department, so they had an all-night meeting where they brainwashed him. This was something terrible. I was called in to go to the meeting. I don't even know why they wanted me to go, v;hen they knev/ I was against so many of these tactics. But I did go, and I really saw what brainwashing meant that night. MINK: Without naming names... DELANO: I don't want to.
MINK: ...can you describe what went on at that meeting? DELANO: Well, the v;hole group was there plus graduate students.
MINK: The whole painting group? DELANO: Yes, plus graduate students. MINK: Who were also in the painting area? DELANO: In the painting area — painting or sculpture, or printmaking. This person was again back in a corner. They just spent hours going over the things that they felt he didn't do, that they expected him to do when he came here. Especially one thing — I can't mention it--it seems to mc a minor thing, but it was just to get
390
some point that they could hang on him, you see. They would go over and over, and even these students would come out with such things. I didn't take part in the discussion. I was back in another corner. Finally they turned to me and said something about the people in the design area. They had tried to divide painting and sculpture — you know, divide and conquer. Say that you could get hold of some of the older traditional things that did divide areas, perhaps for some other reason, but now use it for your political advantage. So vjhy not turn the design people against the painters? And they v;ere pretty successful in that, in getting the personalities at v/ar with each other. They asked me something about that and I stood up for them. I said, "I taught design, too, for many years, and most of them took courses from me in design, and I felt that we taught it as not only a practical course but as something v/hich gave a background that per- meated our lives with the qualities, the beauties that we would see in all our surroundings. These people are concerned with that, and you are using fallacious argu- ments here in trying to divide the department." \ Even argixments like that came out during the night.
But they turned to this man, and it was as though they were lashing. He didn't defend himself. He just stood there. He just sat there — he'd stand up some of the time.
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Finally he said to the leader, "You will have to go. I'm going to arrange a meeting v/ith the provost, and you can tell him v;hat you've been telling me." The irieeting v/as arranged for a Wednesday, I think, and there were other people there fx-om the design....
MINK: Other than those who had attended the meeting. DELANO: Yes, who had high ranks. Every one of the pro- fessors and associate professors was there. This man who had been beleaguered all night took the floor and never asked any of that group to say a word. MINK: He must have changed his mind.
DELANO: I don't knov; v/hat happened over several nights. But the provoGt said, "We don't need to have any of you people teach painting or sculpture. VJe can get new people if you don't cooperate. And this department is not to be divided. "
MINK: Was this Dykstra? DELANO: No, this was Murphy. MINK: Murphy? DELANO: Yes, it was.
MINK: Oh. You've carried this on up.
DELANO: I carried it 'way past the period from the thirties. If I've done anything, what I'd like to do is just to give some inkling of the devious ways in which they used this thing to divide and conquer. And I think I ought to tell
392
about a student. Should I? MINK: Yes.
DELANO: Another one, who wasn't on our faculty but who was a itiember of the Communist party, joined it during the Hitler v/ar when she went to Philadelphia. She went to the Barnes Foundation, but she didn't last there very long because she got into this other thing and she wasn't studying. And the people at the Barnes Foundation, v;hile they didn't tell you what to do — you were to be on your own — still, they knew if you weren't working. It was the most strict place I've ever heard of. So she didn't last very long there, and she spent the rest of her year one way or another woi-king with the Coiomunist party. Now I didn't knov; this until she came back, and she had already been teaching out in the schools. I had known her family background, and she v;as very talented; and she wanted to go on a painting trip with me. Of course, I v;ent every summer and so many of the students, after they'd know me wanted to go on these trips. I never wanted to be bothered with somebody that might not be a good camper in the first place, and maybe I couldn't get along with then camping. I didn't know. But finally this young woman persuaded her parents to let her go, and I told her mother and father that if we couldn't get along painting and drav/ing out there in the Indian country, then I'd just
393
bring her home. But she'd have to be on her ovm.
Well, v/e didn't get very far out into the desert that she started to talk conaraunism to me and make me become a member. I had already had some of these experi- ences with the group I've been talking about, so I had read many of the original books and made up my own mind. I told her that she was like the others I knew. You couldn't really discuss it directly: that there v/as sort of a closed, blank wall in their minds; that they were so enamored of it as a system that after a while you just get to a point they couldn't even listen to you. You couldn't really take up one point after another and discuss it. V7e quit talking about it, and then we went on, and we had a good time painting and just dropped it.
She has had a dreadful life. Later she married a young roan when he came back out of the war, and he wasn't allowed to go on and become a physicist at Berkeley, because, perhaps, of her background--! don't Jaiow. But this entered into their lives. They had a boy, a child, and in late years he committed suicide up there at Berkeley. I think this horrible thing of having a mind divided~~trying to live a normal life, at the same time carrying on a conspiracy — I just don't see hov/ they have the strength of mind to do this for all those years. MINK: Because, after all, once they are members they
3 94
are cortmiitted.
DELANO: They are coirmitted . And I learned a great deal from this young woman because she told me about the cell meetings they had in Pasadena and South Pasadena, different places where she met the people v;ho v;ent there. Even one of our greatest scientists, IJ. Robert] Oppenheimer, was supposed to be in love with this girl. She read the letter where he turned her dov;n, and said he was a Jew and she was not, and the marriage would be impossible. The party had sort of told her that she'd go out and get a scientist, marry a scientist — this is what they want. Not get him to be a member, but marry him. Now this is long before he was investigated by the government, you know. But he was in Pasadena and she knew hira . I was invited, in fact, to their house for a New Year's dinner once. I didn't go.
MINK: Well, this must have been an av.^ul strain on you personally.
DELANO: Well, it was. Where could you turn to find out what to do? Why would they come to the art department? Why so many there? I don't know whether there were more than in other departments or what it was. Of course, I know this young woman was not too stable. In later life, she did break down and v/as sent to an institution in San Francisco or someplace in the north. Her husband divorced
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her and her son coramitted suicide. Perhaps all of this extreme division within her mind created this. I've tried to get her in later years to go back to her painting, because she v/as talented, and save herself. I don't know. I hear from her at Christmastime and so on, but I feel extremely sorry. And this man who was the leader of this group back in the thirties went from school to school .
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TAPE IsRJMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO APRIL 9, 1971
MINK: We've been talking, the other day and to some degree this afternoon before we turned on the tape recorder, about the idea that after Ernest Carroll Moore resigned as provost of the university, the emphasis on education, which he had particularly espoused, began to decline. This was particularly true when the College of Education was organized into the School of Education. I wonder if you could talk this afternoon for a while about the effect this had on the art department. VJas there just generally a deemphasizing of teaching teachers, or teachers of art? DELANO: Well, no, I don't think it was a deeniphasizing , not at this time, for a while. You see, there v/as a twofold grovJth here. There was the university as the whole, or as an academic institution, expanding at a great rate. The art department, along with many other departments, had come in from the Normal School, and they were spread out in various departments under whatever it happened to be — Letters and Science or what. The training of teachers was carried out undei^ a Teachers College for some time, and they gave BE ' s as degrees — bachelor of education. So Dr. Sproul, in a letter to the regents in the chancellor's files for 1938, wherein he feels that the
397
Normal School procedures on the Westwood campus be dis- continued and have in its place a School of Education in the College of Applied Arts. The other fields or areas of education that had been under the School of Education v;ould go into a college called a College of Applied Arts. The art department went along v;ith that. MINK: There was no objection, generally speaking, in the art department?
DELANO: It didn't seem to do much to the teacher training. It was a matter of getting a higher quality degree, you might say, for trained teachers. Of course, the training had lengthened in time, anyway, for teachers, and this kept on going, until in recent years they had many more years added to their general training.
Just on the side a little here about those meetings that we had about the whole idea of a College of Applied Arts: The dean at that time was Dr. Jackey. Dr. Jackey had been a man very much interested in vocational education, He was a very practical man, and he felt that we were loaded dov;n with a lot of extraneous areas or subject fields that seemed to be collected under the idea of the College of Applied Arts, and that they had no business being there, but what were you going to do with them? MINK: What in particular? Do you remember? DELANO: Mechanic arts, physical education for men.
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physical education for women, home economics — especially those subjects- And military science. All of these tag ends that had been part of the Normal School training and were felt essential for teacher training. MINK: And originally they were under the School of Education.
DELANO: No. Before that the Normal School. MINK: I mean the College of Education. DELANO: No, it was called the School of Education. There's a difference between a school and a college, if I remember. First it was called a School of Education, then v/e changed it to a College of Applied Arts. No, wait a minute. First it v?as a Teachers College, I'm sorry--a Teachers College, more or less like Columbia. . And then it became a School of Education.
MINK: Right. And those things that you were mentioning, you know, like military science and so on, they were all part of that old College of Education.
DELANO: And previous to that, the Normal School — three •different names.
MINK: They came over, along with the School of Education, \ into what they were organizing as the College of Applied Arts, of which the School of Education would be one de- partment. DELANO: Applied arts came later. They just took on then
399
some of the subjects. That is, in other words, at that
Liiue, in 1938, from that time on, the students v7ho carae
to an art department did not have to take teaching ar; they
did before. Nov/ they could get a BA without having to
get a BE to get the art training they wanted.
MINK: Were they doing more, then, for it after this
reorganization, or did they just go on about the same
as far as what they v;anted to do?
DELANO J In '38, there wasn't so much expansion, but the
v;ar came along and it was later that it e>:panded terrifically,
and you can tell by the files that everybody in each
department had trouble getting enough money for the
expansion of students. They needed faculty, and so this
was the battle cry all along the lines, you know, for
the expansions there.
I can remember some of these meetings that Dean Jackey had, where he tried to keep everybody informed of what was going on, as the dean of the College of Applied Arts, and even as to the selection of the name. You see, if you say "applied", that right away has a stigma in the minds of some academic personnel. This has kind of persisted right along down through the line. At present, if you say "College of Fine Arts," then you remove that. Change the wording, and it doesn't have that stigma. I suppose it's come all the way dovTi from Greek
400
philosophers, trying to belittle the things that were done by hand-- just something of that — and that the most lauded subjects are those that are in the classical trend of so-called humanities. But v;hat could be more humane than the arts? That's the way I look at it. MINK: What were some of tlie other names that Jackey had in onind besides "applied arts"?
DELANO: We wanted to have it "fine arts," even at that time.
MINK: I see.
DELANO: But we didn't knov/ what other v.'ord to use that would cover all of these tag ends, like mechanic arts and physical education and home economics. They were all in one whole college.
MINK: Nobody brought up such a title as "vocational arts"?
DELANO: He was vocational ist, but he had already been hit over the head by many people, I guess, for being a vocationalist. You know. Dr. Moore was really practical also in that sense, but being a philosopher and having taught philosophy at Harvard, he usually resolved every- thing in a philosophical way, it seems to me. His attitudes weren't quite as earthy, let's say, as Jackey' s.
I thought that might be interesting to mention here, to keep in mind that there was a flexibility about all
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of these schools and colleges and the development of the academic world around about these different studies. VJe felt these different lines of tension going on down through the years. Not only that, but we had this grov.'th problem that came along, and a lack of funds, and the very difficult problem of finding people to take on the new jobs as the thing developed. Then there was another problem related to all of these, of interrelationship between the different departments and schools. The art department long ago felt that we should give a history of art curriculijm in Letters and Science. There were many people in Letters and Science who approved of it, but just hov; to get it formulated and really practical and as a going concern, you see.... I think some people might have been put on committees and felt that they had the most to do with it. But as I look over these files, there were a great many people, in the art department and outside the art de- partment, who had a great deal to do with it. In about the early forties, after Mr. Cox died, there were people who v/ere brought into the university. One man--like S. Macdonald-Wright came in. He was an artist first and foremost, I would say, and had worked in Paris, studied there, and had his first beginnings and recognition there in France. MINK: Now you spoke about him before and said that he
402
was rather an egotistical man.
DELANO: Did I? Well, perhaps so. Some people might even
have called him arrogant because he had a way of talking
to people that v/ould raaJce you feel that he'd been the only
one that had ever been to France or knev7 anything about
jTiodern art- It's common knowledge that one of his exhibits
which he had — I believe it was at lEarlJ Stendahl ' s
gallery because Mr. Stendahl was the one that took him
on as a. . .
MINK: ...protege?
DELANO: Yes, to shov/ his works through the years. And
in his catalog, S. Macdonald-Wright talked about his o\-m
work as being so superior. I can't just reiaeiaber v/hat v/as
in that exactly, but I v.'as rather shocked at an artist
being that egotistical about his own work — the vray he
praised it, anyway.
I can remember going to little meetings in his studio where he had told about his kind of training in France, where they had the idea of the great master — who would come in, and the students would listen to him say a few words, and then he'd leave. There was this thing there where the master didn't have to do any of the tedious jobs that are usually associated with teaching. Well, when Mr. Wright came to us he still had this idea, and it made a great deal of trouble in the art departnient for
4 03
those who had to use the same room or tried to use the same desk. Then he wanted a place to paint and he v/anted to use some of the classrooms, you know, instead of going home like the rest of us did. The university didn't provide any place for our own work to go on. And I think I mentioned some of the other people trying to use the same room. Any of us might feel that it would be wonderful if v/e didn't have to make reports or grade or do any of these things, or come early for registration. Now Mr . Wright didn't do his part in any of these jobs if he covild help it. I guess he had to give his grades, but he v/as there first on half time; and Mr. Ililpert had a great deal of trouble, called him a prima donna in this respect. MINK: He never went befojre a promotion committee and got rated on poor teaching, then?
DELANO: Yes, his records v;ere sent to promotion committees. MINK: Were they turned down?
DELANO: No, he wasn't. He became a full professor. And the irony of this was that he v,'as on so many committees of promotion for people.
MINK: Well, that's really beautiful, isn't it? 1 laughter] DELANO: With all his bluster and all, I think he was on one of my earliest promotion committees — not the first one, after I went to Sproul and complained about the artists not getting a fair deal.
4 04
MINK: And Mrs. Coldren got your materials together from the library.
DELANO: She did, from the library, and I'll alv/ays thank her for that. She's not living now, is she? She passed away. She and Mrs. Humphreys got together. Mrs. Humphreys wasn't on my committee, but she told Mrs. Coldren that I had a lot of articles published and the art department wasn't doing anything about seeing that I got promoted. Well, that's beside V7hat I was talking about,
Mr. Wright v^as hired for about half time and was just teaching Oriental and modern art history, but as he got a little bit more familiar with the art department and the whole academic procedure, he wanted to become a full professor of art. So Mr. Hilpert wrote a letter to the administration wherein he complained about Mr. Wright not doing his part, and that he felt that he'd have to do all of these little odd jobs that we all have to carry on.
MINK: If he wanted to become a full professor. [laughter] DELANO: If he was going to have full time. Mr. Hilpert had not gotten after him for escaping from all of these little jobs in his half-time part of it, but he's the only one that I know of that ever got away with it. But he did for some reason.
Then there was this idea at the time to get somebody
405
in, because there were several people leaving. Mrs. Abramovitch — I think I spoke about that before--was ill and had to leave; and Miss Chandler resigned, and part of it had to do v.'ith the troubles they had had under Mr. Cox, and a feeling of discouragement in general. I think it was one of the lov/ periods. MINK: In the history of the art department. DELANO: Yes, before Hr. Cox died. Mr, Hilpert recommended William Bovme to come in and take some of I4r . Cox's classes.
MINK: VJhat was his background? DELANO: He'd been a student with us. MINK: I see.
DELANO: Now, this is kind of piecing together, if I don't lose the trend here, some of the things that perhaps displeased the general administration with Mr . Hilpert 's selections. I can understand Mr. Hilpert ' s side of it, too. MINK: Is that that this would displease the administration- in other words, sort of what you call in-breeding? DELANO: Yes, that. And he took a shine to William Bowne and to IE.] Clinton Adams at the same tdjne. .MINK: Who was also a student? DELANO: Yes, that was their only background — which is fine in a way. MINK: Were they California people?
406
DELANO: Yes. I had both of them in my classes and they were excellent students. The personality in these two men, I would say, v;as very different one from the other. Bill Bo'-vTiG — v/e called him Bill — was very waimi and affectionate and everybody seemed to like him. He had a great deal of reserved force you could feel about him. Clinton Adams was like crystal. I mean, he was extremely agile in his mind, he could keep track of many administrative details, and he alv^ays wanted to be a head of something. I think he wanted to be the head of the art department right away.
Mr. Hilpert perhaps told hhn that — I don't knov: — because he told me once that he wanted me to be head of the art department if he had a choice. Well, I had been offered to be head of different departments, like Scripps — I think I mentioned that once earlier--and over to Hono- lulu and. down to San Diego, and one other--Northwestern , I believe. I have a series of them in my stuff. But I never wanted to be head of an art department; I felt that that vrauld ruin me as a painter because I felt dedicated to painting. I was already releasing part of my energy to teaching, which I loved, and working with students; and the subject of teaching these different art courses broadened me. As I look back over the years, it was a life, you see. But I felt that if I had to take on ad- ministration besides, it would just kill me. I think I
407
could have done it, and I proved it to myself when I put on that big architectural show which was very involved — that I could work with a lot of people and manage the thing, which I did over a period of a year. When Mr. Hilpert told me that, I said, "No, I don't want to be head of an art department. That would ruin my painting. It's borrowing time, anyway, the way I'm working it out now." Well, he must have told Mr. Adams that, because I'm sure he had a feeling that he would boss everything he would come in contact with. Mr. Hilpert said, "Mr. Adams is a splendid teacher as well as a serious artist." I agree with that, too, because all of his students did like him.
MINK: He was primarily a painter?
DELANO: Felix Landau* took on a bunch of our ex-students like Clinton Adams and John Paul Jones. Clinton did become a head of a department in the East after he left us, and he went from one school to another; and I think he's at Albuquerque now. I don't think you hear of him much as an artist because, again, he'd have to divide his energies between painting and administration. MINK: But the proprietor of that art gallery on La Cienega, who we will remember some day, took him on to exhibit his paintings? DELANO: Yes. And others like John Paul Jones. I think
*name supplied during edit review
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Frank Perls, v/as the best. Perls did take on some of our teachers, too, you knov;. He took on [Sairiuell Ainato, I Jan] Stussy, j£mies McGarrell, and Williain Brice. MINK: V7hat does it exactly mean when you say "take on"? DELM30: Well, you become a member of the group exhibiting in that gallery under a dealer, in other words. It's just a commercial dealer. MINK: And he sells your paintings?
DELANO: He sells the paintings, yes. Supposedly. There's a whole story in itself that Los Angeles is not a center for selling. People in this country--I mean collectors — want to go to New York. Well, there's a whole bit about selling paintings, and I think that all of us from the university art department, teachers and the students who have graduated there, are lacking decidedly in understanding much about this whole area of dealers and v;hat they do. MINK: The crass, commercial world of art peddling. DELANO: Yes, and New York isn't much better. The people who have had most experience v;ould be in London and in Paris, I feel. And I've seen some things, writings from people from Paris, where they have now gotten things under the laws of inheritance some way or other. That is, people cannot just disregard an artist's paintings and sell them for just a small amount of money maybe as they go along, and then wait till they die and get wealthy from
409
selling their paintings. From now on, they have to divido it with the people who inherited even if the artist is dead.
MINK: Well, Mr. Adams — what part did he play in this v;hole matter of the department expansion and so on, after 1938? DELANO: After Mr. Hilpert ceased being the head of the art department, we got Dr. jGibsonJ Danes in, and Dr. Danes made "areas," he called them, wherein each area was organized under a chairman. The painters and sculptors and printraakers were under one chairman head, had their own private meetings to organize what they'd do and to come to the general art department faculty meetings with any ideas. Then the design area was another. Those were the two principal ones. And history, third. And art teaching. In fact, it went on, finally, until there were seven, when I think about it, gradually, under the seven different heads. Industrial design was one that expanded greatly under Dr. Danes. We had our nev; building.
Well, I'm getting a little ahead here. You were talking about Adams, and I see him through the years, you see, from early times when he was a student--and a very good student. I remember his getting A's in everything he took from me, for one thing, and I was on his first promotion committee. I don't suppose I should tell that, but he got his assistant professorship in that committee
410
meeting. And Mr. Hilpert's the one that proposed he come up for promotion; and Hr . Bowne came up at the same time on another coraraittee, and he passed also. So they were on the academic ladder, as Mr. Jackey says, to get in there somehov;. I might as well finish with Professor Adcuus. He was ready for an appraisal committee, and at that time he had had several exhibitions, was doing v/ell, and his teaching v;as very good. The students seemed to like him, and he had passed the promotion committee. But there were things brought in from the dean's office about his treatment of other faculty members and students in other classes, and this was too much for the committee to take, and so ho was asJced to resign. MINK: What had he done?
DELANO: He would go into certain classes — like Mrs. iMadeleine] Sunkees ' s classes, for example — and make fun of the students' v7ork. I don't just know what were in these things, but v;hat came from the dean's office put hJJT\ out — complaints from so many students and faculty about his treatment of running them down or making fun of their work — that kind of thing, the tactics he used . to discourage them. I didn't know much about all of this. I was astounded to see how much of it had piled up in the dean's office. I wasn't aware it v.'as going on. I know he had kind of made fun of some of my students' work at
411
times, but I just passed it off as a part of his personality.
He didn't like, you see, the costujne appreciation courses,
as they were called. And he'd send a student in there
perhaps to make fun of it, but the teacher involved v/ould
be so infuriated that they went to the dean. There were
many of these complaints.
MINK: And that would be to Dean Jackey.
DELANO: To Dean Jackey, yes. They decided that if he
couldn't get along with people, he didn't deserve to be
in the art department. They put him out on those grounds.
I had passed hira along without a word about that side. I
knew from my ovm experiences some things, but I wasn't
going to say a thing about it. But v/hen it all came from
the dean's office, this put him out. I heard later that
it v.'as one of the best things that ever happened to him.
He went to other schools and \^7as moved from one school
to another — he didn't stay very long at first, I think
he went to Kentucky, and I don't know just where now.
He finally landed in Albuquerque in the University lof
New Mexico] and I imagine he's done very well, because he
was brilliant. But this thing of not getting along with
a colleague just because they weren't philosophical or
brilliant in some field — I just didn't understand it. There
were a lot of people that had fine talent that were liked
by the students, like Mrs. Sunkees, since I've mentioned her.
412
I know she v;as one. In a v;ay it v;as a difficult decision,
but it V7as made and he left. That sam^e year, Mr. Bowne
left in the middle of the year, too.
MINK: V^y was that?
DELANO: I don't know. Nobody knows. He just got up
and left.
MINK: VJhere did he go?
DELANO: He v/ent to New York, and the first thing we knew
about him was that he v.'as teaching in a high school there.
He finally turned up in San Diego, and I believe he is
there now. I don't knov/ hov; far his painting progressed.
There was something I found in the notes from the office
about whei-e his painting v;as shown — that was before he
left us — in Glendale. Somebody wrote a letter to the
university about it, thought it v/as terrible and didn't do
any good for the university. And there was a fine letter
written back to this person from the administration saying
that perhaps they didn't understand that it was modern
art, defended Bowne. Another thing I might say as long
as I'm talking about Bill Bowne: he was asked to be the
head of the department there at a moment when Mr. Hilpert
was ill and Mr. Cox had died. This was in the early fifties,
I think. I know I was away at that time at first when he
was head--I v/as having a sabbatical leave--but judging
from what I discerned here in the papers from the office.
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he was very businesslike in asking for increased funds which v;e needed for everything — -more teachers all the time, more space, more this and that. He did a very businesslike job of that and people liked him, but I understand there were a lot of fights that year, too. I heard about it; I don't know just v.'hat the ruckus was.
We had trouble with some of these people v/ho had been trained in Europe and couldn't seem to adjust, like Dr. With, you see. He came in for art history and v^/as a blustery type v;ho couldn't get along with people, or perhaps he wanted to be the kingpin in every situation. I don't know what it V7as, but he seeraed to have trouble too. Mr. Bowne was leve].headed about understanding people and seemed to soothe them, it seems to me. He was a warm and affec- tionate type of person.
Another thing, as far as losing people in the late forties after Mr. Cox passed away: Dr. Breasted--! think I mentioned hiin last time — was teaching art history and then suddenly he seemed to have a nev; job at the L.A. museum where he was offered a great deal more money and he just couldn't turn it dovm. He went over there, and that meant that his library that had cost the university so JDany hundreds of dollars, or even thousands — I don't know how jnuch--to get it installed in place (and then, you know, the war came along and nobody could use it).
414
and then now it was being taken out again. Behind the scenes, the people that had to carry out all these little jobs, I think, were rather glad, because they were trying to raise laoney to catalog the thing for insurance. The insurance people wouldn't insure the collection. He wouldn't give it to the university and yet he v/ouldn't let anybody take books out. If they wanted to study they could come there in that room. When he went to the museum, I think those people behind the scenes v.'ere greatly relieved they didn't have to find the money nov/ to catalog them so that they could get insurance. I think I might have been talking about Mr. Breasted the last session.
7^INK: No, you did talk about him, though, earlier. DELANO: And about how he left the inuseura in a short time? MINK: Yes.
DELANO: He couldn't get along with people. MINK: Hov7 he alienated people.
DELANO: It ' s a strange thing, isn't it, to have people go along in a job v/here they have to deal with people and yet they can't deal with therri for some reason, either with the students, or the faculty or colleagues around them, or the administration.
I don't know whether I've said enough about Dr. With or not. I noticed in some of the recommendations from
415
other schools, or jobs that he had before he Ccune to us,
that they felt that he v;as a little difficult to get
along with.
MINK: Temperamental?
DELANO: Temperajuental . It might have been in his background,
After all, he left from Germany, too, you see, from Hitler's
business, and he caiac to Pasadena and was there in a
school of design for a vdiile. He had been the head of
different museums and had fine jobs there in Germany
before he came to America.. It's difficult to understand
these people v;ho've been uprooted to such a degree, I
think.
Breasted v/as different. He was an American citizen, born here and so on, but he was trained in Germany. Ke told me at one time thcit he felt that there was something about his training. It v/as difficult to work here, and being the son of a great man was another trouble with hira. MINK: Could you give me some background on VJith? Did he cause a great deal of trouble in the department? DELANO: Well, the fights that he had with Dean Jackey — he seemed not to admire people if they infringed in any way on his field. That is, he felt he was an authority on museums. You see, while he was still with us, over a period of years we developed a museum on the campus, and he probably felt hurt that he was not put in charge of it.
416
MINK: The gallery?
DELANO: The gallery. Previous to that time, wg had this little gallery on the third floor, you know, in the Education Building, and he didn't have rouch to do with that. Of course, v/e didn't have the money; everything tliat we did there was brought in by the teachers and paid for by very small funds--! mean, we'd just more or less beg for exhibitions. There was no elevator, and it was very difficult to show things.
When the first new art building was planned, Regent Dickson saw to it that the building v;ould be built earlier than had first been promised. I think we had been promised a building and there v;ere so many to be roade ahead of us-- V7e were forty-second or something on the list--but when the VCillits Hole collection came to the university and it didn't have a horoe — it was just put in the library for numbers of years — that's why Dickson saw to it that the building for the arts was built earlier. That's how v.'e happened to get that nev; building.
MINK: Did Dickson become personally involved with the faculty in planning the building? Did he come to any of . the meetings?
DELANO: I don't remember that. We had a Paul Hunter architect who designed the building. And it was a pleasing building, the proportions, and he seemed to cooperate very
417
well with the faculty.
MINK: Were you involved in any way in the planning of the building?
DELANO: Well, each area had to plan what they needed. This was before Danes came — I speak of areas nov; because I think it was a very good v/ord; but earlier than that, we thought of our subjects and everybody had to put in re- quirements. The requirements we had for many of the classrooms v/ere not so involved. Laura /^ndreson, v/ho taught the ceramics at that time, was very much concerned to get a good ceraraics department; so I raneraber one year before the buiJ.ding was finished, Laura and her mother and
I and Mrs. Hely, a friend of mine who lived close to me, went to Me>:ico betv/een semesters. Laura had to plan the ceramics department — it was just put down on her duties to do this within a matter of days and get it back to the campus. We stopped along the way before we got down into Old Mexico--! guess it was at Phoenix — she drew up a v/orking drawing of the floor plan and details of everything. She had the measurements of what she thought she needed, the space for the different kinds of thing s--equipment , how y much space it would take, and the shelving and everything else — and planned the ceramics department. It was such a rush job, but it was fine. It just \\rorked out, and it was built in the basement. You know, the basement wasn't
418
finished at first, along vvith the building. They found that the whole department had increased to such an extent that we had to have the basement developed after the building was built, and this is what they did. Gradually, they put in a sort of an L- or U-shaped basement area in v/hich we have the ceramics, the jev;elry section, the place for the industrial design with special equipment, and a place for weaving and for textiles and so on down there.
I had mentioned something about art history and trying to have that developed so that it would be approved by Letters and Science. This went on for some time. The administration appointed overall committees, at different times, to help the art department find somebody. This was a tedious job, because they would hear about somebody or investigate someone from the East who had a long history of publications and achievements, you see, that they felt would be a leader, and maybe even to be the head of a department. All this time, Mr. Hilpert was chairman, and then eventually when he was not put on the committee, his feelings \>?ould be hurt. I could just see between the lines that he felt that he should have been on a committee. After all, it was the art department, and why should somebody be on there like Lily Campbell, for example, or Professor I Kenneth] Macgowan? That would be better: Macgowan, after all, was in the arts; but Lily Campbell
419
was not in the fine arts. She v/as in literature but not space arts, as we call it. Or iCesarJ Barja. And they did put S. Macdonald-VJright , who had no sympathy for the design areas in our department. I remember having con- versations with Mr. Hilpert about it at the time, and this is probably one of the things that made him sick.
Another thing: he was greatly wrapped up in teacher training; and he could feel that this wasn't liked by other people V7ho were strictly Letters and Science people. That was another reason. Jackey was the kind of man who could turn this sort of criticism aside, even though he believed in vocational education. He called a doctor's degree a "calling card," so to speak, and he didn't mind the criticism. But someone as sensitive as Mr. Hilpert, I'm sure, felt badly. Another thing, with all of the squeeze on money, we never had enough, even for typewriters. The faculty would be using their own typewriters or giving them to the department, and they never had enough people to do all the stenographic work that we needed. The squeeze for money: Mr. Hilpert had the feeling, how can they spend a whole lot of money for somebody from the East, ^ bring them here at a great salary, and he can't even have a typewriter? This is the way he reasoned. To me, it seemed he was sort of a tragic figure. MINK: Who was it, do you think, that was pushing for
420
scjrue distinguished person from the East? Was this people from the art department, or was this the administration, like Sproul?
DELANO: Sproul and Dykstra. When it came right down to them they were very practical, too, but they wanted to be on a level with other universities as far as Letters and Science, and they wanted a big man. But when they would choose somebody — even Dr. Moore picked out scraebody that I don't believe the art department would have gotten along with, you see. He asked Dr. Barnes to head the department. Dr. Barnes told roe that; I don't think anybody in the art department ever knew that. Barnes turned it down; he said he didn't want to be bothered with the details of teaching. But this would be an impulsive kind of action that didn't take everything into consideration. Or, if they got somebody fran Princeton, like Breasted, who had most of his training there and earlier in Europe in the German point of view, you know, the university ideas, Heidelberg, I believe — well, if they took on the art department, they don't have the sympathy either for the arts that we had built up.
But when Danes came to us, it was an entirely different story. IVernJ Knudsen had been appointed as chairman of a committee to pick out at least three people — and they worked over all of the material that had been handed in by
421
three people — and then Knudsen went to visit them in the East, and he caine back with a report about them. His first choice was Gibson Danes; and when he told us about all three, we decided from just word of mouth that Danes would be the one we could live with. He certainly was. Through the years he proved to be a wonderful chairman, at least in my opinion. He expanded the art department; he saw these troubles that we were having, the tensions; he understood people; he made everybody feel cooperative. I just couldn't say anything more in praise of someone than Dr. Danes, of his cheery attitude. One thing that I remember Dr. Knudsen said at a faculty meeting — and Dr. Jackey V7as the one who wrote a letter to Knudsen and asked him to corae over and tell the art department how he happened to put Danes first of the three.
422
TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE APRIL 9, 1971
MINK: Where we left off on the other tape, you v;ere describing hov; Knudsen had came to a faculty meeting to tell you about the three people he'd looked over, and his recommendation, of course, was for Dr. Danes. He was describing him to you.
DELANO: Yes, the first. He had three people in mind, but he put Danes as the first; Bernard Myers, from New York University, second; and Lawrence Schraeckebier , from Cleveland, third. And he did describe all three. I have lasting impressions of hov; he described Danes and why he put him first. Danes was teaching at the University of Ohio and Knudsen said that Danes would walk down the hall and vrould say, "Hello, Mary. Hello, Henry." Everybody was called by his first name, and they all seemed to be so enthusiastic when they'd see hiiu. He said that struck him as something quite different from what you usually see in an academic hall. That was one thing. He thought his scholarship was very high. He felt that he had \ published a lot of things, and that he'd be excellent for the department. As I've just said, I felt, too, that he made one of the greatest contributions, because he came at a time when so many people had left or they had been
4 23
working under such high tensions. We were in a new building, and it took this kind of vision. He just didn't take the attitude that there v;as no money; he proceeded to enlarge the department. How can you carry out a vision and make it real? You jnight say in the future we are going to have a v;hole department of industrial design. There had alv;ays been a sort of a year course of industrial design — I happened to teach it. It was aimed more towards the teaching of it and appreciative side and being as practical as we could, and that's what led to my interest in architecture. I think I've talked about that. For someone to coine along and really find sometody v;ho'd had industrial design experience in getting things manufactured. I had only had a couple of years in outside work, before I ever started any teaching, in getting things made up. That didn't coropare, let's say, with this young man who Dr. Danes brought in there who was John Maguire — I believe he was the one. MINK: Where did he find him?
DELANO: Goodness, I don't know. I'd have to look it up. Right away, he decided to build that whole area up, and he saw to it that the rooms v/ere equipped with all kinds of specialized material or machines or v^hatever they needed in equipment to carry out models. This, to my mind, was one of the greatest things that happened.
424
Then again, \vhat he did was to continue the gallery and make it possible to find funds and to bring Mr. iFrederichJ Wight. I think that v.'as a great achievement that Dr. Danes carried out for the art department. He brought Mr. V7ight in from the museum in Boston, and he has been an outstanding person to put the university on the map. You see, there were people in the rest of the university who criticized the v/hole idea of ever having a gallery on a campus, and nov; it took these men, these two together, to say we needed it, aiid it v;ould be fine for the surrounding community, and it v.^juld put it on the map, and it was a going concern.
MINK: Edward Dickson, of course, never took an interest — or did he? — in trying to see who they could get and trying to get distinguished people. Because he v.'as pushing art; art was his personal favorite, I suppose.
DEL/iNO: You mean for teaching the art history, for example? MINK: Yes.
DELANO: No, I don't think he toolc any part in that. No, there were several committees appointed by the chancellors. You see, this ran over a period of time, and I think I named some of them a while ago, the first one. Then they re- activated these committees in time because, still, the whole Letters and Science thing had not been resolved yet. The committees would bring in names from time to time, like
425
Rensselaer Lee, for one thing. It v.'ould take laonths to go over; over a period of months they v/ould be corre- sponding, or people from here v/ould go and see them in the East, and maybe he would be in aarope, trying to entice him to come from Columbia University, to head up our department and teach some art history and help. Then these people from the East would probably dally along before they could make up their mind, and time v/ent on. You can see hov/ that would be. Then there was a man named iCharlesJ Seymour iJr.] they tried to get. Some- times these people would just be corresponding with theni without ever saying anything to the art department about it. This V7as v/hat sort of burned up some of the faculty. MINK: And that would be the administrative committee, or the committee appointed by the administration? DELANO: Yes, with just S, Macdona Id -Wright on it. MINK: V7ould he consult with the chairman of the department? DELANO: No, I don't think so. It was in Letters and Sci.ence except for one from the art department — and that not the head of the department. This is v/hat Mr. Hilpert, I'm sure, felt. ^MINK: S. Macdonald-Wright and Hilpert — were they friendly? DELANO: Mr. Hilpert brought him in. He thought it vrould add luster to the art department, and I guess it has through the years, in one sense. I think I've explained
426
hov/I^r. Wright was a difficult person to work with as far as detail, getting the job done. He would v/ant an assistant to do all of his work. He wanted to be a big master and come in. Well, he was very knowledgeable and a great reader, and all of that, and a very able speaker, and claimed to have originated a new form of painting with color while he v/as still in Europe. He had an original mind.
He had Mr . iJoseph WilliamJ Hull, for one thing, doing all the little dirty v/ork for him, Mr. Hull csiae froiTi England while Mr. Cox was living. He carae from the war, pretty torn up about it because he'd lost all of his records. I remember working on Mr. Hull's background to try to get him into the university with credit. (This is digressing a little when v.'e're talking about Mr. Wright, but these are also involved.) Anyhow, Mr. Hull had to prove that he had had what corresponds to our high school training. He had to take tests in all these subjects because he had no documents. They had been burned up in the war, the bombing of London. I admired him greatly for having gone through this whole tedious process of taking all these tests. Finally, he got into the university here. He went through our art department taking many courses and getting a degi-ee here. Then Mr. Cox brought him into the art department to teach, and very soon, he
427
kind of helped him aloncj to cjet a little textbook published on perspective, v/hich he did.
Then \vhen Mr. S. Macdonald-Wright came, there was this v/hole breach here. We didn't have these professors for art history all of a sudden. We lost Breasted, and we lost Ilungerland. Mr. Wright, I guess, thought he'd make up some nev/ courses, which he did right away. He didn't know how to go about organizing detail that would fit in v/ith making curricula. I don't think he'd ever heard of curricula. That's just my assessment of his difficulties in relation tol'r. Hilpert and the department. So Mr, Hull v;as the one who tagged along and, I think, did all the dirty work. Of course, he couldn't go on these committees v/hen Mr. Wright was appointed to represent the art department in an overall committee to try and find somebody that v;ould head the department. It's not to say he isn't brilliant enough to decide, but I think so many of the people in the department felt put dov\T» by him, you know, and undeservedly in many cases.
Finally, Knudsen was put at the head of this committee, and that's kind of winding this whole thing up about \ finding a chairman. That's how we found Danes, and I have tried to give an inkling of how great I think he was, in stepping in at this moment, making people feel like they were accomplishing something, expanding the art
428
department, adding different areas and enlarging them, and bringing Mr. Wight here. Should I say something now about Mr. Wight? MINK: Yes.
DELANO: Frederick Wight. I think that it was marvelous to have him--and he's still with us — because someone v;ith the kind of experience he'd had in museum v;oi"k, and es- pecially in Aroerica, was great, you see. Nov/ he'd had training in Virginia, got his BA there. Another thing: he had sympathy with the rest of us who didn't have doctor's degrees because he wanted to become an artist and a writer, but there were no doctor's degrees — as I've explained, I think — very early. VThen he was on committees for proraotjon, he did promote people even though they didn't have doctor's degrees. Mr. Wight studied in Paris and finally got his master's in Harvard. There, he took museum courses. He wound up in 1946, I think it was, for numbers of years, in the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, There, he had a wonderful experience, you know, in putting together shows on different artists, writing the catalogs, and writing, making books. They were just endless, some of them having to do with some of the world figures like Louis Sullivan--he wrote about his genius in a show he put together and organized. About Le Corbusier, the great French architect (really Swiss). There was a
429
book called Nev; World of Space, and I think Mr. Wight lielped as editor of the book. He v/rote about American painting in our century. He v/rote about Feininger, Walter Gropius, another world leader in architecture. So it wasn't just always painting, you know; it was architecture and different forms of art.
MINK: So he was very well versed to teach art history. DELANO: To teach art history, too, yes. He taught the modern art history after he came here. His first and initial job was to get that gallery going, you see, get funds for it and put on shows here which were to travel all over the country. Imagine getting the regents to agree to all of this.
MINK: Was he very good at this?
DELANO: He v/as very diplomatic. I hate to say just "politician," but let's say "diplomatic" in the v/idest, best sense: to get people in the neighborhood and in the town, and his friends everyv/here he went, to help on these projects. Eventually here we had naoney to really ecjuip the gallery. It had to have esipensive lights and lots of work done on it before it was ready. The Hole collection had already been installed when he came here. That's a whole story in itself. Finishing along here with Mr. Wight, he published books, hardcover books, about some of the exhibitions he put on here. Then those exhibits
430
were laade to travel to the Museum of Modern Art. Imagine this originating in Los Angeles! I think that's a feather in the cap of the art department to have somebody who is capable of doing that.
MINK: He was v/ell liked in the art department? DELANO: Well, I think so. I know I was fortunate. I might just tell this little incident--iaaybe I'm prejudiced in liking him, I don't knov/. One time we were having a sort of a reception in the art department gallery — and by the way that had a kitchen that was well equipped so we could have functions at these receptions for every exhibit. We Vr'ere having that, and I v;as in the kitchen washing dishes. The faculty was putting it on--I don't remember what it was all about. Mr. VJight and Gib Danes came marching into the kitchen, and one of them grabbed me by the shoulder and turned .me around and said, "Annita, you've been promoted to full professorship!" It just about knocked me over. Mr. VJight had been on my committee. Of course, I know we're not supposed to tell this, but I guess everybody that has good nev;s to tell v;ill tell the person involved. I think I was very fortunate, but he thought that I had done a lot of different things that he could appreciate, you know, like that architectural show that I did. He was, I think, the first person who really appreciated it. He knew what work went into that kind of
431
thing, that I'd worked for a year at least — every spare
moment. And I don't particularly think he liked my
paintings but.... VThen you v;ere invited to an exhibition,
say, like in the Palace of the Legion of Honor, those
letters would be in your folder, and nobody in the art
department v.'ould know about it but somebody on your
committee. And they never hear about it, you know. He
appreciated that because he thought it was one of the
great galleries.
MINK: Was Danes good about seeing that recommendations
were sent in for promotion?
DELANO: Yes, he did. And if they were not, he had a
nice way of telling the people that he thought that if
they'd look for a job someplace else then he'd help them
to find a job. Like, for example, Marybelle [Bigelow] Schmidt,
had been asked to come in and teach illustration courses
or commercial art of some kind, and she'd had several
things to her credit and achievenients; but it seemed not
to be enough, and he told her so. She v;as greatly shocked
by being asked not just to leave — she could have stayed
on and tried for another time to come up for promotion —
but she did find a job down at San Diego State College.
I understand she's a full professor now. She kept on in
her creative work and is much happier down there than if
she'd stayed with us. But Danes was the one that would
432
tell people.
MINK: Got her a job?
DELANO: I don't remember about that.
Kenneth Kingrey v;as another example, but it vyorked the other way. Kenneth was discouraged with the treatment he'd been having. He had been one of our students — so had Marybolle. Kenneth was an elegant teacher, and had great finesse in his own work and in his feeling for what he was going to do in the future as a young man, you know. His students liked hir.i very much. He was really going places with this v/hole field of commercial art that he was developing. In fact, the students made covers for Fortune magazine. Anyhow, he was not in a safe category. He was whatever they called them at that time — associate or whatever it was — just the way many of us had been for so many years. I think I spoke about that. This sort of category was still going on. I think they've abandoned it nov7. This meant that if he wanted to take a year off, which he did and went to Europe, he would have to lose his appointment. They could promise to ask him back, but he had no guarantee that he would I be asked] . MINK: He had no claim on it, in other \srords. DELANO: He did come back and took his job, but at a lower salary; and then he seemed to go on and they didn't put him up right away. He was having a bad deal. So
433
then he took the city examination, if I remember, and passed first and would have been taken into the City College in Los Angeles at a much higher rank, much higher salary, too — almost twice what he was getting here. At the same time, the University of Hawaii in Honolulu asked him to coaTie, and so he took that job. He just resigned. He wouldn't stay on. Gib tried every way he could to make him stay.
MINK: Did he try to get a higher rank for him? DELANO: Yes, he tried, but this started before Gib came, you see. MINK: I see.
DELANO: Going back to Dr. Danes, I just can't begin to say how he vrarked diligently and in all interrelationships. It comes out in every letter I read — the relations between the administration, the students, faculty, and then the building up of this group of patrons for the art department. It's called the UCLA Art Council, which is still going on. Danes and Mr. Wight really worked that out. This went on over the years. Now, you know, it ' s a grov^ing concern. They make thousands of dollars for scholarships for the art department and have sponsored the thing. Hansena Frederickson and Ann Sumner helped in the very beginning there in taking quite a part in working out this Art Council.
434
MINK: Were you involved in that in any way? DELANO: Yes, in the beginning. I was on the first organizing coramittee. Eventually, it became much more social, and I guess I didn't try to play a part in it. I reneged on getting too involved with something that would take too much time. It just sort of fell into the hands of the people in the neighborhood, many v/ealthy people, and it still goes on today, you knov;. They have v/hat ' s called the Thieves Market every year, and they raise thousands and thousands of dollars nov; for the art department. Most of that, I think, goes to scholarships plus paying for some expensive exhibit — that is, expensive to ship and insure and all of that — that the art department perhaps couldn't afford unless they had extra funds. It's not paid for by the state.
MINK: VJas Gustave Arlt involved in all of this too? DELANO: Yes. MINK: Very much so?
DELANO: Yes. He v;as on that committee. Well, not with the gallery. Is that what you meant?
MINK: He was involved with the Art Council, wasn't he? . DELANO: Oh. I was going to say that I think that this overall committee that was trying to look for art historians so that we could get a doctor's degree in Letters and Science — that thing, he was much involved with that.
435
Dr. Arlt — I think he was quite involved with that and perhaps with the Hole collection. I don't know. MINK: You said something a moment ago about the Hole collection, that it was a story all in itself. DELANO: It certainly was.
MINK: And maybe you have some recollections of that that you'd like to record. Of course, v/e know that in the dedication of the Art Building, the old Art Building, that Karl With used a four-letter word to Mr. Dickson to describe the Hole collection and said they v;ere nothing but s — t. Dickson, I guess was infuriated about this. DELANO: He wasn't the only one. There were many people who wrote furiously against the Hole collection. This was over a period of years. After the collection was given to us, it hung in the library above the stacks, in the old first main library, for years. MINK: In the big reference room upstairs. DELANO: Upstairs, yes, where you could hardly see them. And unless you made a special effort to go there, I don't think anybody paid much attention, but in the will they were supposed to hang them right and take care of them.
I roneraber going to the first showing of those after they were hung in the librciry. That evening it had rained so dreadfully that everybody got soaked, and we had to go down into the basement to dry off our shoes.
436
even if we had rubbers on. People weren't v^earing boots — at least, women weren't at that time. I remember going down the receiving line. Dr. Sproul was there, and he introduced me to somebody in the line, and I can still remember ray feelings because I had just come fresh from the encounter I had had over why we weren't promoted. So v;hen he introduced me to the next person, he said, "This is Annita Delano, a well~kno\'7n artist from Westwood." Or som.ething to that effect. [laughter] I just swallowed real hard.
MINK: At least you were well known to him. DELANO: I don't know. It seemed that he had a hard time getting it out, too. It's fuiiny hov; these things happen.
MINK: V7ere there people in the art department on the fauclty that felt that this collection was sort of foisted on them and they could have cared less? DELANO: Oh, yes. It seemed to me that the immediate art department wasn't consulted, but this was something to the glory of the administration if they could put it over. \ MINK: Well, this was really Dickson's doings. DELANO: Dickson's doings, I guess.
MINK: Yes. He's the one that got the collection. DELANO: In the files that you brought to m.e there are
437
n\imerous lettei-s and everything about this whole collection
and the actual newspaper write-ups, and from magazines,
too. I read all of those, and I really liadn't seen
quite that many v;hen it was happening.
MINK: I would have thought that with your interest in
studying paintings, and so much of what you've told me
about how you studied paintings, classical paintings, you
knov7, over in Europe...
DELT^NO: Yes, that's right, of all periods. Yes, that's
right.
MINK: ...and at the Barnes Foundation, that you would
have been fascinated with the Hole collection.
DELA^D: Well, I wasn't fascinated with some of them,
and I had read so many books about how wealthy people
had been cheated in collecting, you know. And I know
this: that it was very difficult in modern periods
to find really authentic old masters of the periods
that people like the Rindges collected, the Hole collection,
or Huntington out in San Marino, too. There are books
written about how people v/ho sold the paintings to these
collectors, those in Europe, for example--these men with
a great deal of money would depend upon their judgments,
you see, and buy the paintings, and then raaybe it was a
hoax. But again, you have to look at it this way: there
are many of the greatest museums in the world with fakes
438
in them, and sometiiries they hang for years before they find out that they are — for example, before they had ways of testing, the X-rays of the pictures that they have now. The Barnes Foundation makes minute appraisals of every detail in a painting. They count more on experience with the actual paintings and analysis of the finest details, so that when you immediately look at a picture you can tell, almost, whether it's false or not.
MINK: Well, you're bringing up an interesting question. DELANO: We weren't asked in the art department about whether v/e wanted the collection.
MINK: Yeah, but when the thing came, were there people in the art department that the moment that these things were uncratcd, the moment that they were first visible — were people on the faculty certain right then and there that they were largely fakes? Immediately? DELANO: Yes. You can tell, but it's like a sensitivity in any field. If you ware a musician, it seems to me you have to be in tune all the time, and if you neglect it for years you come to it and yoia're not so sure. Well, if you have just been from the Louvre, let's say, or from Rome, where you've seen some of the great collec- tions, and then come upon one that's supposed to be a da Vinci, your sensitivity will tell you whether it is or isn't. Of course, you also have to take into consideration
439
a picture could be extremely dirty, and these have to be cleaned and so on.
MINK: Let rae back up and corae at it another way. When was the first time you...?
DELANO: I didn't see them until they v;ere up there in the library.
MINK: Okay, when they were up there in the library and the faculty on the art department looked at them and you looked at thern, did you hear people say right off the bat, "Well, these are a bunch of fakes"? DELANO: No. No , I didn't.
MINK: Vfhen was the first time you ever heard anybody on the staff say they weire fakes? Maybe "fakes" isn't the right word.
DELANO: Well, yes, there were some that were. And there was a battle that went on. I think a great deal of it was exaggerated because, finally, when Danes came here, he got somebody from the Huntington Museum in San Marino to come here, and they paid him a lot of money to go over that Hole collection — the man's name was [Theodore] Heinrich; he's now in the Metropolitan Museum — to authenticate \ the pictures, and they worked a long time.
MINK: So up until that time there had been no attempt? DELANO: No real appraisal of them. And they knew that some were fakes from just a casual judgment. But now
440
Iwillican ReinholdJ Valentiner was do'.^n at the Los Angeles museura for a time, and he has passed on some of thera as good paintings, authentic. I think the more recent ones in the collection — that is, I mean some of the American paintings — were all right, and there were a lot more that were not fakes than were bad. What we tried to do then was to have the labels taken off so that the public wouldn't be misinformed. They'd say "In the school of...." This sort of thing you see in all the great musexims of the world. Thsy are copies and they'll put down "Copied" or "In the school of...." That's what had to be done, instead of saying it was a real El Greco or a real da Vinci or a Raphael and so on.
MINK: There really v;eren't any real paintings of the great masters, such as you've been mentioning, like Leonardo or Raphael?
DELANO: I never did follow up on Heinrich's final thing because this went over the years, even till after I left. It may still be going on, for all I }alov^?. I don't know. It took several hundred dollars for each picture, to have it cleaned, and then to have it appraised and authenticated. They did have documents for all these pictures, but [Arthur] Millier, I think, in his article, said that these were a dim.e a dozen. There was some woman — I forgot her name — that wrote for what was called Fortnight, a magazine.
441
and she condemned theiu terrifically, and she scorned the university and called them dov;n — I mean called thern to shame. It seems to me these men involved, from the president on dov/n, would be mightily disturbed by it; and they v;ere, you knov;, because it became public, and they said we v/ere fooling the students, and hov,' could they learn, you know. Well, heck, even the schools in Europe may have great masterpieces right there in the town and then they'll just use a black and white or a slide. They don't all work from the originals. MINK: Did the art department think it was a waste of money, really, to have the collection?
DELANO: A great deal of money had to be raised after it was brought in, because the building had to be built — that's how we got that building at that time. It was because Dickson moved it up from the forty-second place, Ion the budget] or whatever it was, till they built it in '51, I believe, or '52. We got the building, and then they finally vrarked some details out, like that we could have the gallery — which is a beautiful gallery--two months of the year for other exhibits. Of course, we didn't know we were going to have another new building so few years ahead of that.
MINK: But now the Hole collection is in storage. DELANO: Nobody goes to see it.
442
MINK; It's not even shovm, really.
DELANO: Isn't it? Well, there are tvra months that it
doesn't have to be. But I thank by the will they have to
show it the rest of the year. They had to spend a lot
of money on lighting and painting the gallery v/alls.
And the staff under Danes really cooperated to see that
everything was in tip-top shape. I think they really
wanted to have a collection, outside of this vicious
sort of publicity. It isn't that I'm not back of the
collection 100 percent, but I'm trying to show v;hat the
administration is up against. I think if they hadn't
been so quick in accepting it, and then not particularly
consulting the art departiiaent--even somebody in the art
department might not knov/. You'd have to get somebody
in the biggest museums to really find out, and it would
cost you money. But these wealthy men v."ho assembled
pictures in the late years are up against the whole problem
of finding authentic pictures. I-Jhy don't they go in for
modern art? That's what they should have done.
MINK: Huntington was lucky in that he had Duveen to
help him, and he was able to get Gainsboroughs and authentic
ones.
DELANO: Well, some of the later pictures were authentic
and all right in the Hole collection.
MINK: Late eighteenth-century [paintings].
443
DELANO: And scroe of the copies are very good. Now, large museums show copies and, if it's a good copy, it's better than having just a color reproduction, you see. I think some of the letters that I found from Danes about all of this was very good.
MINK: Well, then, let me ask you this question about the Hole in juxtaposition to the Ar ens berg . I think you've already mentioned that you felt that Dickson didn't like modern art and therefore he v;asn't interested in the Arensberg collection, and I pointed out that there is also something to be said for the fact that there simply wasn't the money--it was an administrative matter. Did the faculty, after the Arensberg episode, say, "Well, gee, we really should have had this. Instead of having this stupid Hole collection, look v/hat we could have had." DELANO: Yes, v;e were alv^ays saying that — that is, if the whole deal had been worked out, it seens to me, by the actual people in the art department instead of all these other people getting in the act, you see, just wanting something to do with the problem of getting these pictures as a gift to the university. So there was Kenneth Macgowan--he was not in the art department. Just because he knew these people, and everybody thought, except people in the art department, that if they were friends at all, that thoy could urge them to give it.
444
But why didn't they get the Arensberg over here? I just don't know the inner details, but I happened to go the Arensberg home several times with the Department of Anthropology. I think I told you about that. I had seen the collection numbers of times and thought that it v.'Ould be wonderful if v.'e could have it, and I did say that several times to the Arensbergs. But that wasn't like having an official sort of push, let's say, from the people as a group. It was all sort of undercover. MINK: You think Arensberg would have done it if they'd really pushed him?
DELANO: Given it to the art department? MINK: Yes.
DELANO: I kind of think if it v;ould have been handled differently that we might have gotten it. And v;hy should it go to Philadelphia, you see? This is v.'hat we could never understand. Whether it vms Dickson, I don't know. I do know this: Mr. Dickson was there one night when I was there at the Arensbergs, and Mr. Arensberg asked me to go along with him and try to talk to hira about how fine those pictures were. I did ray best, but he was not in the least interested. As we walked up the stairs to the second floor, he v/anted me to go into the small room where the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy was carried on — I mean the books, the library about this controversy that
445
Arensberg had been interested in all his life. And that- is what Dickson was interested in, not in the paintings, As he looked out at, v^ell, let's say a Picasso, he could care less about it. He just didn't like it.
I know from my own experience with my painting. When our new building — not the present building but the first building we had as a department — was opened, the second exhibit was a one-man shov/ of my paintings. Mr. Dickson carae to it. He walked around with me and he said, "Now, this is the kind of painting I like, Annita," MINK: Were you on a first -name basis with him? DELANO: That's what he called me, and I don't know why. But Marjorie iHarriman] Baker was quite a friend of theirs. I don't remember in what respect, but she was a great friend of Paul Hunter, and she v;as teaching in our de- partment. 7vnn Sumner and Hansena were in the Delta Gamma sorority, and I had been asked to be the faculty advisor many years ago. So there was i\ll of this kind of back- ground.
MINK: So Dickson said, "This is the ]cind of painting...." DELANO: Yes. He said, "This is the kind. If I were going to buy one of your paintings, I'd buy this." It was back in the northeast corner, and it was a large watercolor painting of landscape, in kind of cool tones, clouds and trees. I've been interested to do these very.
446
well, I'd say representational types for many years; but
most of ray work at that time — this was in the fifties —
was going in a little different direction, and he'd just
brush right by them. Yes, he involved me in quite a
conversation over that painting that he liked.
MINK: VJhat did he say about it?
DELANO: Well, he liked it.
MINK: Did you think he was going to buy it?
DELANO: No, I didn't think he was going to buy it; he
just said that. He said, "If I were going to buy one,
this is it." No, I don't know anything about their home,
whether they collected pictures or not.
MINK: Oh, yes.
DELANO: They did.
MINK: He V7as very much interested in art.
DELANO: Well, Majl Ewing and his wife, Carmelita, came
to the exhibit, and she lilced one of a triad. I had
three large oils on the north v/all, and in the center was
one which was the sort of key to the other two on the
sides. She was crazy about that. She told her husband
about it, and so one day he saw me on the street in
Westwood going into the bank, and he said, "Say, Annita,
Carmelita loves that picture of yours. Would you sell
that one out of the triad, the central one?"
DELANO: I said, "Yes, but I don't know what to ask for
447
it." Well, I didn't have any dealer, and so I just asked a nominal suia and they bought it. He gave it to her for Christmas.
, MINK: VJhat was the noininal sum? DELANO: I don't remember — $125, probably. It was a large oil, framed. Oh, well, the problem of getting dealers.... I did have one in the very beginning in San Francisco, but the v7oman died that v/as in charge. Well, that's another long story.
The Ewings had that painting up until they both died, so I don't know what's happened to it now. It was sort of an abstract from the adobes of the Indians out in New Mexico. I think that's v;hy she loved it. Her whole living room was built around that picture. MINK: Did you ever had an opportunity to have him see any of your other pictures, other than that exhibit? DELANO: No. No, I never had another one-man shov; there. I finally joined up v^ith a gallery on La Cienega where at least two dozen from the art department showed their work. A lot of us went into that gallery. I never thought of sending him a brochure, I guess. I didn't
^ know he v;as that interested in art. MINK: I just don't think he was interested in the kind of art that you painted. DELANO: No, he wasn't.
448
MINK: I don't think so. DELANO: No, I don't think so.
449
TAPE KTJMBER IX, SIDE TVJO APRIL 22, 1971
MINK: At the end of the last session v;e v/ere discussing the one-man show that you had at UCLA in the gallery there. You had mentioned that you had not had any other one-man show at UCLA. Or did you?
DELANO: Yes, I did, before we had this building that we're concerned with at that date. MINK: The old Dickson Art Center?
DELANO: Yes, the first building that the art department occupied as a vvhole. We felt that the art department really had a home and v/e really had a place to e>:hibit, whereas before, when we had the exhibition room in the third floor of Moore Hall, it was a very difficult place- as I think I've mentioned before--to place arrangements. I had several one-man shows there throughout the years. MINK: But after this one-man shov; that you had in the art gallery of the old Dickson Art Center, you had no more one-man shows at UCLA? DELANO: No, I did not.
MINK: I think you mentioned at the end of the hour last time that you hadn't had a dealer except quite a long time before in San Francisco and that she died, and that was another long story which you wanted to talk about.
450
DELA?W: Artists in relation to outlets for their work
and hov/, perhaps, to become successful in that sense:
Most artists paint regardless of what happens to their
paintings, because it's such an expressive part of their
lives; and yet they always have hopes of releasing some
of at. It's as though you v;ere composing music and no
one ever heard it — so [the artist seeks] some way to have
it shown.
MINK: Is it so much the money, really, in a sense?
Isn't just the fact that you have a satisfaction in your
mind that your paintings are hanging on walls of houses
or institutions and so on?
DELANO: Yes, I think that a person has a feeling that if
their paintings are appreciated it means a lot to the
artist.
MINK: Wouldn't it be sort of like: as long as a faculty
member has a v/hole bunch of manuscripts of a book in his
office which he hasn't published, why, he isn't as
satisfied as though they were published and available in
the library? Is that the idea?
DELANO: That's it, yes. It does a great many things to
him, perhaps. It tests, perhaps, the qualities in his
work, if people appreciate them. Of course, artists
vary so from the more gifted, creative and types of artists
who bring in entirely new movements. You could say.
451
looking back on some of the late French history and painting, that a person like Picasso was innovative all tlirough his life, much more so than many other artists. Then many artists took what he gave to painting, the innovative parts, even though he can be traced back to other artists and so on; yet others took it and added their ovm. Any artist has to have something of his ox^m. qualities in the work, but the one way to test it, and one thing that makes an artist feel good about his work, is the fact that someone with taste and individual sensitive percep- tions \vould like his work. This would be m.ore gratifying than almost anything else.
MINK: ' Annita, I was v7ondering, in this sense — I was making a comparison with a faculty member who has the manuscripts, you know, in his office — were the painters ever judged as far as promotion was concerned on how many paintings they had released to public institutions, or sold, as opposed to how many they'd actually done or shown? DELANO: Whether they sold them or not I don't think ever entered into it, unless you had a committee, a v.'hole committee, that had that idea that success meant selling. Then, maybe, you were sunk because there aren't too many artists who really sell their work unless they're world- known . MINK: But placing theiti, say, in a museum....
452
DELANO: Well, that's the highest honor, I think especially if you've been invited. That's why I hate to feel like I'm just pushing myself or something, but 'way back when Mr. Cox was chairman I had been invited — I just don't know hov; it carne about — to show at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. They didn't have that big downtown gallery at the time. That was the place to show modern painting. And I filled two galleries. MINK: V7as it the place on the West Coast at that time? DELANO: Oh, yes. Other artists, later, friends of mine in New York, said it was a great honor to be invited there by the tv;o men who were in charge.
MINK: It \vOuld be a greater honor though, of course, to be asked to show them in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
DELANO: Yes. Yes, it would. MINK: And you v/ere. DELANO: It was the center. MINK: But you did show later there, too. DELANO: Well, I showed in the Metropolitan during the war. There were a lot of paintings collected from all ^ over the country and only about 27 6, I think, shown. MINK: That one that I have, The Hou se of_ the Yesteryear, was one. DELANO: That went with the California Watercolor Society.
4 53
It traveled throughout the country with what we call our
traveling show. Then, when it got to Nev; York, somehow
or another the critics in the Nev/ York Times wrote it up,
and several magazines, and it was during the period a lot of
artists were interested in the old houses and architecture.
That was sort of a theme that just recurred throughout
for a period there, sort of a nostalgic interest in those
old houses. Now people are saving them, literally; here
in Los Angeles, they have that society, or v/hatever it is,
to save those old houses. But the artists were doing
these things. It was a wave of interest back in the late
forties or fifties — I've forgotten v/hen. Then these things
sort of died do^vn. Something else takes its place.
MINK: Did this find currency among the painters group in
the art department?
DELANO: Yes, yes. Bill Bov/ne, Dorothy Brown — let's
see — well, those two and Clinton Adams and I v/ent dov;n
to the old part of to\^m and painted houses on the top
of the hill.
MINK: Bunker Hill?
DELANO: Yes, on Bunker Hill. That's where one that you
have that I called House of Another Age was at the time.
VJhen I painted that, it was during the war, and Buffy
Johnson, another old student of mine — well, she wasn't old,
but I mean long ago . . .
454
MINK: ... in crironology.
DELANO: In chronology, yes. She came out here to marry a boy she knew that v;as going off to the v/ar, another ex- student of mine. Buffy went out to paint, and we got up there on that hill and chose that house to paint. But, you see, that was just a little later than the period — well, I mean, it v/as in the same period but a little later in years. It was four or five years that many artists painted those houses, or parts of old to\i7ns. And then something else takes its place.
I've noticed back in periods in France~-in the earlier moderns, say, during the development of iiiipressionism — many artists v.ould do almost the same thing in subject matter. But they had been trained to paint still life, landscape, figure, and draw from all kinds of things-- everything visual that interested thera. The subject matter once in a while comes up just the way it does, say, if there's a large convention or Vtorld " s Fair. I remember one time one in Spain, and all the arts sort of reflected something Spanish; even costume design took on the idea of Spanish influence. The painters sort of went along with it, even unconsciously. These are sort of minor stimuli, and then the artist goes back to his own condition of whatever he wants to paint most. MINK: Did any of the faculty, including yourself, ever
455
have any paintings that became, say, the permanent exhibits
of a iTiuseuro?
DELANO: Yes. I had one that's in the Los Angeles museum.
I'm kind of ashamed of it now. I hope they don't ever
shov; it. Bat it did get the Henry E. Huntington prize
and is in the permanent collection.
MINK: Had you painted it with that idea in mind?
DELANO: Oh, no. I was arranging still life in the art
department before we ever moved to Westwood. I think I
had a red dish, a glass dish, some brilliant blue-green
and some other things. The color scheme of the still
life was very dramatic. I imagined a composition of
figures floating dov/n a stream and had some rocks in
the picture — I don't quite remanber now. The qualities
of that thing, the arrangement that I made for the students,
just stayed with me, and I m.ade up this imaginary thing.
Now I remember. The people v:ho chose it as first prize,
or purchase prize, for the museum: the committee was made
up of S, Macdonald-VJright and a man named Franz Geritz.
I don't remember v;ho the others were.
MINK: S. Macdonald-Wr ight wasn't, of course, at that
time on the faculty.
DELANO: He wasn't on the faculty, no. This was in 1925,
I think, and I was just beginning. I think ray work was
influenced way back there by the Orientalism that we had
456
been exposed to by many of our teachers that I had--I mean, when I was a student there in that department — plus the violent color that v/e were exposed to v/hen we saw German expressionism. Madame Galka E. Scheyer came to Los Angeles and brought a collection of German paintings, I think it was sort of a melding of these qualities in my work. Until you look back, you don't know v;hat ' s influencing you. You think it's a bre.nd-new thing, but you can even trace the qualities in your ovm work, which amount to something new if it's truly integrated, I guess. But you V7ere asking about the galleries. MINK: Yes, and you said that you did have a woman who handled your paintings in San Francisco and she died. DELANO: Yes. It was called the East-West Gallery. I did run across her name, but I've forgotten. MINK: We can put it in the record later. DELANO: She had seen my work at the museum there in San Francisco...
MINK: At the Palace of the Legion of Honor. DELANO: ...at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and wanted to handle my work. She came dovm here to look at it and was impressed, so she thought I could send a one- man show to her gallery, which I did. They were all different paintings from what I had there before. She sold some for me, and things were just going along
457
fine. The paintings had to be shipped by express freight in those days, and it was quite a costly thing. MINK: Did you have to pay for having them sent up there? DELANO: No. No, I didn't. That was one wonderful thing. I don't know what backing she had, or whether she was a wealthy v/oman. I really didn't get a chance to know her very well. It was about a year or two that we had corres- pondence back and forth, but then she died very suddenly*
Of course, I joined the Watercolor Society. It was a new organization, a part of v/hat was called the California Art Club in those days, and this seemed to be a very good outlet and very good for a beginning artist to get started, to knov/ some of his ovm colleagues who are painting. I enjoyed that very much. VJe had shows that were organized across the country and back, and that is kept up even to this day. Now it's called the National Watercolor Society. I've kept my membership all these years.
As for galleries here, say, during the twenties,
thirties, forties, there were very few that persisted
down through the years. There was the Hatfield Gallery,
and it moved around from place to place, but it had been
in the Ambassador Hotel for some time. I believe his son \
carries on there. What v.'as that other man that handled
S. Macdonald-Wright ' s paintings? And he collected Mexican
primitive art. He has a collection of the primitive things.
458
and he had the gallery for many, many years, too, and it
persisted. Then there was this wave of axcitement about
many galleries opening on La Cienega, all about the same
time.
MINK: Was this about the 1950s?
DELANO: Yes, v;ay up there in time. They instituted
this thing of opening the galleries on Monday night so
people came to see the openings and the exhibits that
had opened previously, possibly. Everybody had their
doors open, and a lot of students and people interested
walked up and down the avenue to go into the galleries
there. That v;as quite exhilarating. One could say that
the people who opened the galleries were very seldom really
schooled in being gallery directors. There v/ere some
exceptions. Perhaps iFelixJ Landau was, second to Perls.
Perls wasn't on La Cienega, but he would be a good example of a dealer who is closer to the European type, or even the New York galleries, where he has some knowledge about the history of painting and taste and so on. Mr. Perls was showing drawings of old masters and recent modern paintings and so forth.
About this time that we're talking about on La Cienega, he took on some of the people from UCLA. One had been a recent student of mine. Of course, he'd studied with everybody else in the department, but I think I helped
459
him there in the beginning because he came from a teachers'
college in the East and didn't have much sense of direction
with his color. I think I helped him there. He prospered
with Perls. And Perls took even his student v;ork, he
thought he was so gifted. This was James McGarrell, and
his work was shown all over the country through the kind
of promoting that Perls could give a young artist, you
know.
MINK: He took, in other words, things he'd done at UCLA.
DELANO: Right out of iTiy classes and some of the other
classes that he'd had there. He thought a lot of his work.
MINK: VThat did you think of it?
DELANO: Well, I thought he was gifted; but I don't knov/,
I didn't think at the time he had matured. Of course,
I'm sure Perls didn't either, but he gave him the opportunity
to shov/ in what I considered the best gallery. This was
over in Beverly Hills, a little farther over in the center
of Beverly Hills.
Very soon he took on several others from UCLA. He had Bill Brice. Of course, that was sort of natural for him to take Bill Brice. Fanny Brice, Bill's mother, had helped Perls hang a show one time, and I think Perls wrote a book about Fanny Brice. It's terribly interesting about how she had a feeling for art. Her son, you know, came to us. (I think that Danes was chairman at the time;
460
I'm not certain what year he came in there.) Bill Erice went to Perls, also Sara Toaato and Jan Stussy. MINK: Who were on the faculty.
DELANO: On the faculty, yes. And then these other galleries up and do\'m the street: I think to ray mind, the best one on La Cienega then was Landau. He took some more of our faculty — Clinton Adams for one, and John Paul Jones. John Paul Jones had been brought in to teach and to make a whole area of printraaking under Danes. Danes had been the chairman then. Everybody v;as finding a gallery.
Then V7e had a student, Cecil Hedrick, who was a very quiet, sort of introverted person.
MINK: He v;asn't related to the Hedricks of Earle Hedrick? DELANO: No, not that he knows of. He came from South Carolina, and his father had been a coal miner, and he was