Word: harnoncourt
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Rockefeller has always sought and welcomed advice from associates at the Modern. The person on whom he most relied was the late René d'Harnoncourt, the museum's former director and a vice president of the Museum of Primitive Art, who was killed in an auto accident last summer. Rockefeller met the courtly d'Harnoncourt, an extraordinarily knowledgeable specialist on primitive art, in the late 1930s. Together, they built Rockefeller's collection into one of the finest in the world. In 1949, he became director of the Modern, demonstrating a flair for showmanship, fund-raising...
...ambition that he had cherished since the 1930s. Then, as a youthful trustee of the Met, he had tried to interest its director in starting such a collection on the ground that its esthetic beauty was as great as that of more classical sculpture. "René d'Harnoncourt and I shared this hope, this thought, this dream," said Rockefeller. "I am pleased that it has been realized...
...Harnoncourt's dream for the Museum of Primitive Art may have been realized last week, but the successor he groomed as director of the Museum of Modern Art was in trouble. A terse announcement from the museum said that Bates Lowry, 43, had "resigned for personal reasons." Actually, the reasons were not so much personal as mysterious. One put forth by knowledgeable observers was that President William S. Paley had demanded Lowry's resignation because he felt that Lowry had shown insufficient interest in raising funds. That was hardly enough to fire a man outright. An additional motive...
Died. Rene d'Harnoncourt, 67, Vienna-born director of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art from 1949 until his retirement last July; of injuries suffered when he was hit by a car while on a stroll; in New Suffolk, L.I. An authority on primitive art as well as a modernist, D'Harnoncourt first established himself in the United States in 1930 when he gathered and put on tour a formidable (1,200 objects) collection of Mexican artifacts dating back to the 16th century; he went on to teach at Sarah Lawrence College, became art adviser to Nelson...
Among the most dramatic exhibits set up by d'Harnoncourt is a circular roomful of giant, moonlike women's heads with protruding noses and eyes set in their cheeks that seem to float like his "classic" line drawings and etchings of the 1930s. The busts were inspired by Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso's mistress of that period, modeled in clay and cast in bronze-yet the world heretofore has known them only by the paintings he made of them...