Edmund Pillsbury, left; Charles Ryskamp, right
Edmund (Ted) Pillsbury and Charles Ryskamp, both of whom died late last week, were members of a dying breed—the museum director/connoisseur.
Pillsbury, who from 1980-98 served as the Kimbell Art Museum’s second leader, may have been the last of the buccaneering museum directors. Armed with a connoisseur’s sharp eye and his institution’s substantial financial resources, he repeatedly bagged the big game on the art market. His acquisitions greatly enhanced the Fort Worth museum’s world-class reputation for presenting a select, beautifully installed array of some of the world’s great masterpieces in a Louis Kahn-designed facility considered one of the world’s finest examples of museum architecture. Among Pillsbury’s trophies—paintings by Caravaggio, Velázquez, Cézanne, Matisse. He also brought a succession of top-quality exhibitions to the Kimbell.
Less praiseworthy was his decision to auction virtually the entire collection of old master drawings and prints (briefly mentioned here), claiming that the museum could not properly preserve and display them. His Romaldo Giurgola-designed expansion plans for the Kimbell were scotched in 1990. (A Renzo Piano-designed expansion is now planned.) In 1998 Pillsbury precipitously
resigned his directorship. At the time of his death at age 66, he was chairman of fine arts at Dallas’ Heritage
Auction Galleries. Before arriving at the Kimbell, he had directed the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and afterwards, the Meadows Museum, Dallas.
The Kimbell has posted a brief tribute on its website.
Ryskamp, 81, was former director of the Frick Collection (1987-97) and of the Morgan Library (1969-86), keeping both institutions on an even keel during his tenures. He actively acquired drawings for his extensive personal collection during the time that he was serving at those institutions. The Morgan Library mounted an exhibition of selections from his private holdings in 2001—“The World Observed: Five Centuries of Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp.” (William Griswold, currect director of the Morgan, co-edited that catalogue.)
An exhibition of some 200 works from Ryskamp’s collection (about one-third of his total trove) is now on view (to Apr. 25) at the Yale Center for British Art. Varieties of Romantic Experience: Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp has now become a fitting memorial to his connoisseurship.
The NY Times published a profile of Ryskamp and his collecting activities in 2004. Writer William Hamilton included this feisty comment from the director/connoisseur:
”I don’t want this to be an obituary,” he said sharply, after a few
questions about the past.
With his passing, it has become one.