Double Loss

Art has its many pleasures, its private and its public aspects. It can be contemplated alone, in the silence of a study, or it can bring brightness and glory to vast galleries. The best museums try to offer the visitor both. In the U.S. the two polarities have long been the Phillips Collection in Washington, an ideal haven for art lovers tucked inside a staid Victorian mansion, and New York's Metropolitan, the nation's largest and richest museum. Last week death came to the two men who directed these institutions: Duncan Phillips, 79, who ran the most intimate of museums, his own, and James Joseph Rorimer, 60, who on a Sunday could watch 47,000 visitors pour through the Met's portals. Both men, in their way, had given visual pleasure, instruction and enlightenment to millions.

No Guards for El Greco. Duncan Phillips was above all else the single-minded connoisseur. His goal: "To stand sponsor especially for the lonely artist in quest of beauty, independent of all cliques and movements." Art, he felt, was to be shared as he had experienced it best, in "an intimate, attractive atmosphere that we associate with a beautiful home." Grandson of a Pittsburgh steel tycoon and independently wealthy, Phillips, after Yale ('08), turned to art. One of his initial loves was Daumier. He bought the French caricaturist's Three Lawyers in 1919, the first of what became one of the choicest Daumier collections in the U.S.

Settled in Washington and married to a fellow art enthusiast, Marjorie Acker, he was soon buying selectively throughout the ages, from an El Greco to a classic Renoir such as Luncheon of the Boating Party, picked up in 1923 for an adventurous $125,000. Bonnard became a special love (he owned 26). As his collection grew (it totaled some 2,000 paintings when he died), the Phillipses in 1930 were crowded out of their home, but they maintained it as a museum with its Oriental rugs, comfortable chairs and ashtrays, and no cordoned-off areas or guards.

Phillips had a special feeling for the artists of his own time, early bought John Marin, financed U.S. Abstractionist Arthur Dove with a monthly check from the 1930s to the artist's death in 1946. In later years, Phillips' taste moved on to such U.S. moderns as Pollock, Motherwell and Rothko, bought each for his own merits. "There are no schools or movements worth a moment's attention," Phillips maintained. "There are only true artists and pretenders."

Fountains for Pleasure. By inclination, James Rorimer was equally the scholar, with a liking for privacy, but his position as head of the Met placed him at the epicenter of the museum explosion that saw the Met's attendance during his decade of direction soar to more than 7,000,000 visitors annually. In response, Rorimer turned builder. He added a 150,000-volume art library, reopened 43 newly air-conditioned galleries, expanded exhibition space by 41% to a total of 20 acres. All the while, he had to preside over a staff of 600 and administer a budget of more than $5,500,000. During his stewardship the Met's collection grew to 6,000 European and American paintings, including 33 by Rembrandt alone.