The Desire to Acquire

"In the middle of a vast and desolate plain in Mexico, by the side of the long road stretching from Merida to Chichen Itza, stands a lonely, dead tree. Day and night, perched in the dried-out branches, are half a dozen vultures, just waiting for something to happen. You see, Hoving, art collecting is primarily a waiting game. Most of the time, you have to let the play come to you. Face it, a lot of curators are really nothing but creatures of carrion, picking off the leavings of creative artists."

This was clearly a lesson Thomas Hoving, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1967 to 1977, took very much to heart. During his tenure, he transformed the Met into a focal point of the art world and the public, performing feats of public relations with practiced deftness. He never hesitated to acquire art, often by questionable means, and enjoyed paying handsomely for his sport. His most notable exploit was the acquisition, in 1972, of the Calyx Crater, a large Greek urn of dubious origin and value, for which the museum generously paid $1 million, plus $300,000 in coins.

In King of the Confessors, Hoving details an earlier exploit: A three-year chase after an ivory Romanesque cross. Despite the warnings of colleagues that the cross might prove a forgery, Hoving, inspired by the descriptions of its incriptions, begins to track it down in 1960. The owner of the cross, a greasy Yugoslav with the unlikely name of Ante Topic Mimara, finally lets Hoving see the piece, and its beauty confounds him. Then, the hard part: The Met, where Hoving is assistant curator of the Medieval Department and the Cloisters, must outlast the competition and fork over $600,000.

Establishing the authenticity of the cross by researching 12th-century documents from the area surrounding Winchester, Hoving deciphers the many inscriptions on the 30-inch figure. He carries the reader step by step through his discoveries, not only conveying the meaning of the cross in its time, but also the flavor of the entire epoch.

Beneath the entertaining detective-chase motif, however, lurks the shadow of the seemier aspects of art acquisition. Even Hoving cannot help but allude to that most popular of methods of removing a piece from the bosom of its native country--smuggling. Harry Sperling, "The world's leading expert in arranging that almost any work of art you've seen, any place in the world, suddenly turns up safe and sound in Switzerland, eminently exportable to the United States," explains his technique to Hoving, a quick study:

One of my favorite techniques is to take a small station wagon, pile the back with mattresses, lay a work of art under them, and rent the services of a small child. On a very hot Sunday afternoon, I drive from Venice to the border. So will thousands of other tourists. A few kilometers before customs I stop and buy a large ice-cream cone for the child. By the time I have reached the crowded border and the smartly dressed, white-gloved and harried customs officers, the child has smeared the gelato all over his face. The customs man always recoils in horror and orders me to drive through.

What right had I to rip away from Italy a work of art which had been created within the very bosom of the land? What act of piracy were we about to commit? Suddenly I was shaken. But not for very long. Collecting meant taking risks. Collecting meant possession. The pulpit up there is San Leonardo already ahd enough sculptures. A seventh would only cause administrative confusion. By the time I had reached the top of the stairs I had tucked my ridiculous anxieties into the recesses of my mind, never to surface again.

How fortunate for curators and collectors that remorse troubles them only infrequently.

In a later passage, Hoving confesses to contemplating theft. Visiting Florence's Bargello, a sculpture museum, he spies an ivory plaque with the same distinctive workmanship as the cross. Knowing he must feel the ivory piece in his hands to examine it, and reluctant to petition for permission, he slickly unscrews the case in the absence of the guard. "For an instant," he concedes, "I even thought the unthinkable."

What emerges from these insights to the business of acquisition is a warped success ethic intrinsic to collecting. A man's measure becomes the sum of his acquisitions. A piece of art becomes nothing more than a trophy at the end of the race, a testament of the winner's endurance. Hoving's protests to the contrary, the book chronicles the sublimation of his love for art to the grander passion of the hunt. His goals are stated clearly in the diary entry he reproduces from the beginning of his career: "I want nothing more than success. Success, adulation--notice--are my primary wishes. I believe I deserve success, yet I feel I am doomed never to find it."

"Winning would give my career a vital boost" seems to have been the motto which determined his entire course of action. It is hardly surprising that his alma mater, the Met, should decide not to display this disciple of Machiavelli's book in its shop. Persistence and ruthlessness marked him from the beginning as the epitome of the successful collector and curator. Despite the excitement and acventure of the contest for the cross, the value of King of the Confessors lies in the questions it raises about the acquisition process. Hoving has written a more provocative book than he intended.