G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times
“I don’t want to preside over an
institution that puts on exhibitions
that have limited popular appeal.”
Louise Mirrer
Posted on 08/10/2004 3:48:43 AM PDT by Pharmboy
G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times
“I don’t want to preside over an
institution that puts on exhibitions
that have limited popular appeal.”
Louise Mirrer
THE "puppet" scuttlebutt - that her latest career move has strings attached and that she's not the person pulling them - rankles Louise Mirrer. Hence that furrow in the brow of the otherwise self-possessed president of the New-York Historical Society, who is inaugurating her tenure with a $5 million blockbuster exhibition on Alexander Hamilton, a founding father hitherto best known for decorating $10 bills with his somber visage.
According to some historians, Ms. Mirrer is allowing conservative board members to push the society into showcasing national history at the expense of the city's, and kicking it all off with a tribute to Hamilton, a conservative icon. But according to her, Hamilton is underappreciated, and she is getting a bum rap for steering the society from venerable stagnation into 21st-century relevance.
"For one thing, the people doing the complaining are not the decision-makers at this institution," she says, spoiling the hush in her third-floor office. "The society was too narrowly focused. Really, the new mission is like the old mission. The original mission 200 years ago was to focus in all ways possible on American history first, and then on history in New York State."
Her books (she was a medievalist in her academic days) are not yet unpacked, but the Oriental carpet and artwork - including a Klimt-inspired portrait of Ms. Mirrer's "inner spirit" by a Dominican artist, Jorge Severino, who painted her as a white-gowned and regal black woman - lend a rich ambience. "Maybe it's my ego, but I don't want to preside over an institution that puts on exhibitions that have limited popular appeal," she says. "If there's a small exhibit that has merit, fine, do it somewhere, but not on Central Park West! I personally would not want to see this institution become an inconsequential institution."
Next up after Hamilton, she's mounting another blockbuster, "From Bondage to Freedom," a $2 million overhauled version of the society's original $50,000 exhibition on slavery, which did not, in her opinion, make enough of an impression. No pizzazz. No revelatory narrative.
Next February she has planned an Audubon exhibition for birders, and others, to die for: taxidermy, artwork, avian surround-sound. Then there's a First Ladies exhibition that will - listen up, critics of Ms. Mirrer's "big picture" machinations - be New York City-centric. Her board, she admits, smiled benevolently about the Audubon show and has not yet signed off on First Ladies. But she is confident they will. "This is not a fractured board," she notes, a touch defensively.
With full panache intact at 51 - her black skirt is short, her patent heels are high, her blue Hermès scarf is, like that 600-pound granite gargoyle on a corner pedestal, a gift from colleagues at the City University of New York, where she was executive vice chancellor - Ms. Mirrer is an avowed fan of blockbusters on a national scale. This is no time, she says, for the society to do the museum equivalent of contemplating its navel, or the city's, though the focus on the latter was an inarguable strength of her predecessor, Kenneth T. Jackson, a Columbia University historian.
But she is adamant that the society is not compromising its integrity by supporting a blockbuster-friendly agenda endorsed by two deep-pocketed additions to its board, Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, both Republicans. And she insists that the loan to the society of historic documents owned by Mr. Lehrman and Mr. Gilder - a co-chairman of the search committee that recruited her - has not unduly influenced curatorial decisions. Sure, she wants their documents at her institution, especially after $1 million was spent on a vault for them. But the entire board, she says, endorsed the Hamilton exhibit: the proof is the $5 million raised for it since her arrival in June.
THE exhibition will sponsor a few private receptions during the Republican National Convention before opening to the public, but Ms. Mirrer denies that the society's agenda is partisan: "I don't see this as a place that nurtures one view of history at the expense of another," she says. Translation: Mr. Gilder is not controlling policy.
Besides, Ms. Mirrer, unlike her benefactor, is a Democrat. "I don't think he even knows," she says.
She grew up in Great Neck, on Long Island, where her father was an internist and her mother a historian and educator. Even her grandmother was a college graduate. Ms. Mirrer was a pre-med major at the University of Pennsylvania until a curriculum requirement - a history course - changed her trajectory. On her mother's advice, she opted for a medieval history course, then switched academic gears. She received a linguistics degree from Cambridge and a doctorate at Stanford and came to CUNY, where she supervised a revamping of the admissions policy, from the University of Minnesota. Her second marriage, to the University of California, Los Angeles, sociologist, David Halle, is on commuter terms: neither wished to become "a faculty spouse."
She lives on Beekman Place with two of her three children - both attend public schools - and, despite seeing her husband only on weekends, makes time for Saturday-morning tennis with another female executive, Kathryn Wylde, who heads the Partnership for New York City.
So they're doubles partners? Ms. Mirrer frowns. "Singles; we're way too competitive for doubles."
"He who controls the past controls the future."--Orwell
History *ping*
The socialist left has always been in your face aggressive. Has thrived on intimidation. Just look at their history in Europe. Problem in today's America is that 90% of journihilists are conduits for the left's propaganda.
...and this nice girl from Great Neck is standing up to them. On the Upper West Side, no less.
Yep, on the face of it she belongs to the tribe. She looks good for her years. Maybe this comes from right living.
I did research there when I was in college, they couldn't have been nicer or more helpful to me. I was just a 19 y.o. undergrad, but they made me feel like I was a great scholar. And the stuff I looked at really helped me.
I did research on stock trading around the time of the American Revolution while I was in law school in the early 1980s.
The staff was very helpful, and it was thrilling to be able to turn the pages of the original newspapers (since they were printed on ragstock rather than wood-pulp stock paper, which became the standard for newsprint around the time of the Civil War, they didn't disintegrate or turn yellow) and watch the stories unfold. Once I read the obituary of an individual who had been high profile in New York (a Mr. Duer), and I felt a momentary pang ("I didn't even know he was sick!") before laughing to myself about the absurdity of the situation.
She sounds like a good choice and I wish her well.
Research can really be a lot of fun!
Thanks!
Anytime kid!
When I was in Oregon, the federally controlled Lewis & Clark museum said Thomas Jefferson was not interested in commerce but only want the two explorers to explore for exploring's sake. At a privately funded museum along the Columbia River, there was a giant poster of an actual quote from Jefferson saying just the opposite.
Even with Audubon, one can paint him as the first environmentalist or as someone who enjoyed enormous freedom compared with what we have today.
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