Word: lees
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...good museum director must be a clever sleuth and a keen scholar, bold but tasteful, charlatan enough to fool his competitors, discreet in his dealings, a master charmer, a canny politician, greedy, and above all, always right in his purchases. Allowing for a bit of hyperbole, Sherman E. Lee of the Cleveland Museum of Art meets most elements of that prescription. Traveling 14,000 miles a year, he metaphorizes his annual buying foray into a military campaign: "One begins with strategy, continues with tactics, ends with responses to local situations." And, he might have added, measures his success-and ultimately...
Elegant & Eccentric. Last week, on the occasion of Cleveland's 50th anniversary, Lee looked like a Caesar back from the pillage of some artistic Carthage. Presiding at a candlelit banquet for 275 guests and trustees, he displayed a trophy case filled with 159 new acquisitions, valued at some $5,000,000. For sheer size, scope-and elegant rapacity -the booty was unparalleled in U.S. museum history...
Flawless Flair. Director Lee, who joined the museum in 1952 as curator of Oriental art and took over the reins from Milliken in 1958, uses subtler but equally effective tactics. When a Velásquez portrayal of a court jester turned up for auction in London last year, gossips cast doubt on its authenticity, reserving their admiration for Rembrandt's Titus. Lee arranged to have the Velasquez secretly Xrayed, jetted to Madrid to compare it with other works by the Spanish master. When the hammer went down, Titus sold for $2.2 million; Lee walked away with a rare early...
Because of Lee's Oriental background and Milliken's medieval interests, the museum's strength lies largely in those two fields. But with the new acquisitions, Cleveland now has at least one object that is near the top in every department. They range from a 5th century B.C. Greek lekythos to a 1962 painting by Richard Lindner, an exquisite gilt bronze Standing Buddha to a Berlinghieri Madonna and Child. An extremely rare set of early Christian marbles portraying Jonah and the Good Shepherd makes an illuminating contrast with a hypnotic 15th century panel, St. John the Baptist...
...Cleveland's finest acquisitions are Goya's portrait of the Infante Don Luis de Boróon and Ribera's Death of Adonis (see color pages). Both works demonstrate Lee's flawless flair for picking a masterpiece that is also an unusual example of its kind. "The modern audience," says Lee, "has come to look to Goya for a brush that is wicked and bitter. But this portrait is of a man that Goya respected and admired. Clearly, he would never win a prize for handsomeness, but there is a sensitivity in his eyes and warmth...