Yes. Which was not the title of the exhibition, if I
remember correctly, that I had agreed on or been
approached on. It was "American Painting," not New
York. It was "American Painting," the title that I
understood it to be. It was American painting over
the date. Somehow this other exhibition got
substituted because it had been my expectation,
being "American Painting," that certain West Coast
artists would be included, namely, at least Sam
Francis, Richard Diebenkorn—and it wasn't painting,
it was American art—Richard Diebenkorn and possibly
one or two others, younger painters: Robert Irwin,
Edward Kienholz, people of substance whom I regarded
as major contributors, but not necessarily as
important figures as some of the American abstract
expressionists, or Jasper Johns, or someone like
that, but nevertheless certainly worthy of
inclusion. The exhibition should be aimed towards
including them, so it was a survey across. To my
astonishment, I later discovered that it was only to
be New York painting. I was thrown into a complete
tizzy by this. The major budget had gone towards
this exhibition. Solomon wrote the catalog essay,
and I got a list of the works, and I was in complete
consternation about it because there was nothing
about any West Coast artists. I mean, it was just, I
knew, a complete slap in the face for them. So I
went to the art committee and put up a protest, you
know. Solomon heard about it and was furious, you
know, that I had made a—we had sharp words about it.
I think even Demetrion was in disagreement with me.
He may have mentioned it in his interview. But I
think he was in disagreement with me about my anger,
you know. And the art committee said, "We'll
allocate you one room with $5,000." I made up a kind
of catalog and a show, one work each. Of course, the
West Coast artists were furious. Now I have to say
this: the pressure was very great, and I probably
made an error on my part. I didn't think it through
clearly enough. What I should have done, I think, in
retrospect—soon afterwards I realized it, not years
later—was to have said, "The second exhibition will
be an equally important exhibition of West Coast art
with the same kind of catalog, which I will do." I
could have worked on that, but I didn't. I tried to
do a remedial exhibition, which was an absolute
failure from the point of view of the local artists.
They were furious with it. And I had, I said, a
tremendous quarrel with Solomon about it. He was mad
with fury about my attitude about what I—you know, I
said to him, "You have no West Coast artists. And it
was not supposed to be painting." He said, "You're
just the curator here." You know, "Demetrion and I
have—" You know, whatever, it went on and so on. I
had a big row with him. We never spoke to each other
again. I was also furious with Jim because he was
kind of running away and leaving me handling the
boat, you know, leaving me alone in the boat with
this very bad situation. So I just put together, as
well as I could, an exhibition of the best West
Coast artists, included them in the other galleries.
They were obviously receiving inferior treatment and
resented it enormously, were furious about it. It
was a bad situation. It was not good. It was not
good for me, and I decided to leave the museum soon
after that. I mean, I was fed up. There were better
things to do than go through this kind of agony. To
have worked so hard, so long, to put the West Coast
on the map, and then in the most critical moment—you
know, Artforum, if you go through the
index of Artforum—you should make a Xerox
of it—you'll see the largest number of entries in
the first index of Artforum
for the first years are by me. I mean, it's my name
consistently, and it's on the history of the West
Coast, of these artists. For me to be put in this
situation was, to say the least, impossible. I
resented it deeply. I was full of anger about it,
and fury, that I had even allowed myself to be put
in this—I hadn't thought it through. But the
pressure was so great, and I was operating on the
long hours and things like that, that I was in a
daze. I just couldn't—I just hadn't worked it out
well enough. I made a mistake, and it caused a lot
of problems. I lost my integrity over it. You
understand? You have so much integrity—see, you have
to understand that outside of universities, in the
art world in general, if you are a critical writer
or a curator, your appointments are not like
academic appointments. You can operate to the extent
that people will permit you to operate, that they
believe that what you are doing is good and
important. So you become a center of power, but you
don't have the power. It's not part of you, born in
you and radiating outwards. The power is granted by
the exercise of your intellectual abilities and your
energy and the belief that people have that this
power is benign and useful. When the power is no
longer benign and useful they react against it in
anger. And I had been put into a situation like
this, which I—it was horrible, you know. I mean, it
just cut the ground from under my feet. So it was a
bad situation. It was a bad situation. Not good. Any
more questions?