Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Kykuit
I have not blogged for a while because Susan was
visiting. We had a great time while she
was here. We toured the former
Rockefeller home known as Kykuit in the Hudson River Valley north of New York. Upon Nelson Rockefeller’s death in 1979 this
massive building (36,000 square feet), the contents and grounds were donated to
the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Starting in 1994 a local agency began giving tours of the estate, and it
is a terrific tour.
John D. Rockefeller was, of course, the richest man in the
world when he decided to build himself a new home in 1913. Under the guidance of his son, John, Jr., the
Rockefellers built a massive four-story home, surrounding it with elaborate
gardens. They picked an incredible lot,
high on a hill overlooking the Hudson River at its widest point. The house has huge windows and a gigantic
patio overlooking this view. It is the
kind of spot it is easy to imagine just sitting in all day and staring out at
the view.
The grounds are incredible. Not elaborate like Versailles, but
big and well appointed. There is a
nine-hole golf course and an outbuilding with both indoor and outdoor swimming
pools and a bowling alley. There are
rose gardens and a building where they used to grow orange trees during the
winter to be replanted outside in the spring.
Apparently flowers were cut and brought to the house every day for
decades.
Although Sr. was basically a bore, Jr. and his wife had an
interest in art, primarily European art.
Upon the old man’s death, Jr. and his wife filled the home with art. They commissioned a pretty ugly fountain, the
replica of a piece from Florence, replete with statutes of Roman gods. This monstrosity still sits at the end of the
driveway in front of the home. Jr. hung
portraits, some of family, some of famous men like Washington and Lincoln and
some because the background of the portrait included bodies of water. Seriously.
That is like buying a painting because the color matches your furniture.
However, the third generation, Nelson Rockefeller, former
governor of New York and Vice-President of the United States, was a art connoisseur. Nelson hobnobbed with Picasso, among
others. He tore out the old kitchen
which was in the basement of the home and installed what can only be described
as an art museum. Along with his Picassos
he has pieces by Bracque, Calder, and Warhol.
The main room of the house is dominated by a huge Miro. Rockefeller filled both his home and its
grounds with sculpture by masters like Brancusi, David Smith, and Henry Moore,
whom I believe he knew personally.
Some of the more interesting pieces are tapestries of famous
Picasso paintings which Rockefeller received permission from the artist to have
created. And while some critics describe
this as tacky, I think they are fascinating.
These tapestries are huge, perhaps 10x6 feet, much larger than the
paintings themselves. Next to where
Rockefeller had a pair of swimming pools (one for adults, one for children) was
a small house which he used as a soda fountain.
Flanking the taps used to make ice cream sodas are two large vases made
by Picasso.
All of these works passed to the National Trust for Historic
Preservation along with the house and land.
They have left each piece exactly where it was placed at the time of
Rockefeller’s death. Whether this is by order
of the bequest or their choice I don’t know.
Certainly all of the art is worth millions of dollars, perhaps hundreds
of millions of dollars. (After all one
painting recently sold for $120 million dollars. About the total expenditure of
the DA’s office for the past seven years.)
Unfortunately, the tour does not emphasize the art, and much is in areas
which are not part of the tour, so we could only glimpse a fraction of this
world-class collection.
The incredible generosity of the Rockefellers in donating this
property to the National Trust is staggering.
Even if the family felt the house was too large and too old to maintain,
there was no reason they could not have kept or sold the artwork. Yet, this man who was in the one percent of
the one percent gave it all to an organization devoted to preserving the
history of this nation. The Rockefellers
are well-known for philanthropy and this is a classic example.
Personally, I wish they had chosen differently. While the choice to leave the art with the
house does allow insight into the way Nelson and his family lived, I think it
does not do justice to the caliber of the work.
The tour we were on did walk us by the art and the guide even discussed
some of the pieces superficially, but the impact is lost. There are several different tours of this estate,
but there is no tour specifically to showcase the incredible art
collection. It is almost an afterthought
of showing how the rich live. I have no
idea what art sits on walls kept from view, but we could see upstairs at one
point and obviously many pieces lined the walls. I believe Rockefeller should have left all
his artwork to the Museum of Modern Art which his mother helped found, or even
to have authorized a sale. The National
Trust could raise enough money to protect many historic sites in America. The artwork could have been preserved in a
way which would allow for many more people to enjoy it, and it could be put in
context with other works.
I have included some pictures of the grounds, but they did not
allow pictures inside the house.
Comments:
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Regarding the comments about the lack of emphasis on the art. Some of us (Kykuit guides) spend a GREAT DEAL of our tour time talking not only about the collections, but also about the importance Nelson Rockefeller believed art played in the daily life of all of us. He thought of himself as "an environmental artist," because he felt that where you placed a work of art changed - or enhanced - the immediate environment, and the environment brought certain elements to bear on the art itself. Three pieces on the front porch - by Wotruba, Giacometti, and Brancusi illustrate this point very well.
You decry the lack of focus on the art. Interetingingly enough (sadly, actually) there used to be an "art tour" - focusing just on the art (and a similar tour of just the gardens), but there was not enough interest from the public to keep the tour going.
You may think that NAR should have given the art to MOMA (or some other museum), but the whole point of leaving it where it is is to illustrate to the public how important art was to the family in their daily lives. And just how they lived with it. Art to NAR was like oxygen to the rest of us - it revived him, refreshed him, restored him, energized him - and as you walk through the living spaces of the home, you can see clearly how integral it was to the life of the whole family. JDR Jr. was a collector of Chinese porcelains, NAR of sculpture and modern art, Abby, of Japanese art, Amerian Folk art, and the Impressionists. It was Abby who stamped the art gene into the Rockefeller DNA - and ALL of them were lovers and collectors of art. And artists. And the creative process.
Come back for another tour - you'll see for yourself!
A Kykuit Guide
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You decry the lack of focus on the art. Interetingingly enough (sadly, actually) there used to be an "art tour" - focusing just on the art (and a similar tour of just the gardens), but there was not enough interest from the public to keep the tour going.
You may think that NAR should have given the art to MOMA (or some other museum), but the whole point of leaving it where it is is to illustrate to the public how important art was to the family in their daily lives. And just how they lived with it. Art to NAR was like oxygen to the rest of us - it revived him, refreshed him, restored him, energized him - and as you walk through the living spaces of the home, you can see clearly how integral it was to the life of the whole family. JDR Jr. was a collector of Chinese porcelains, NAR of sculpture and modern art, Abby, of Japanese art, Amerian Folk art, and the Impressionists. It was Abby who stamped the art gene into the Rockefeller DNA - and ALL of them were lovers and collectors of art. And artists. And the creative process.
Come back for another tour - you'll see for yourself!
A Kykuit Guide
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