TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091889/09188900.073

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 9.0 KB | 199 lines

                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 86

The Fine Art of Giving


PAUL MELLON, principal heir to the Pittsburgh fortune, has
spent a lifetime handing out his money and art, and still
manages to live very well indeed

By Sam Allis


    At 82, he is the last of America's great patrician patrons.
Personally responsible for the East Wing of Washington's
National Gallery as well as the Yale Center for British Art, and
a key backer of the National Seashore Park at Cape Hatteras,
N.C., Mellon has bestowed more than $1 billion through his
family's foundations. Unencumbered by the need to work, he has
made the skillful acquisition and disposition of art his
full-time job. On the side, he has hunted fox, bred racehorses
and pursued such interests as veterinary medicine.

    Q. Why give your money away?

    A. Why not? My friend Chester Dale, who was a great donor
of the National Gallery, always used to say, "A shroud has no
pockets." You can't take it with you. And then you're reminded
by plenty of people that there are things to give money to. So
anybody with money is never far from advice as to what to do
with it. Whether you consider it a blessing or a burden, the
inheritance is there. I don't feel it is any great quality of
mine when I've always had money.

    Q. You never wanted to make more money. Why?

    A. It didn't interest me, from my childhood on, to spend a
lot of time in business or making money. Not that I had
anything against it, but I had more than I needed anyway, and
I was interested in other things. My father had the idea that
business would be as interesting to me as it was to him. I tried
to explain to him a couple of times that it was a little
different for him because that was his life and he started from
the beginning doing these things.Q. Why have you not had a
regular job?

    A. I was too busy to have a regular job.

    Q. How much control do you like to have over your money?

    A. My father's theory of business and my theory of
philanthropy is that what you do is find the best people in the
field to run whatever it is and then leave them alone. I've
always made the point since the Andrew Mellon Foundation was
started of not interfering with the thrust of the foundation.
Lots of people come to me and say they are putting in a plea for
such and such. And I say that has nothing to do with me. I am
not going to write to the foundation and say I like this idea.
In the first place, I personally don't want to be put in that
position. And because my name is Mellon, I know that what I say
in a foundation meeting probably has more clout than someone
else.

    Q. Is there a common thread to your philanthropy?

    A. I have a very strong feeling about seeing things. I
have, for example, a special feeling about how French pictures
ought to be shown and how English pictures ought to be shown.
I think my interest in pictures is a bit the same as my interest
in landscape or architecture, in looking at horses or enjoying
the country. They all have to do with being pleased with what
you see.

    Q. The British art historian Denys Sutton once said about
you, "His curiosity about the arts has something of the
character of the 18th century amateur, a concept that has meant
much to him." What does this statement mean to you?

    A. I suppose it means that I have never concentrated
particularly in one field. The basis of it is that I've
collected things that I've been interested in because of the
type of life that I lead, the kind of sports that I've indulged
in, the kind of places that I've lived in, and so forth. Most
of my decisions, in every department of my life, whether
philanthropy, business or human relations, and perhaps even
racing and breeding, are the result of intuition rather than
mental analysis. My father once described himself as a "slow
thinker." It applies to me as well. But the hunches or impulses
that I act upon, whether good or bad, just seem to rise out of
my head like one of those thought balloons in the comic strips.

    The other thing is that for all of my life I've been able
to have professional people help me in the various things that
I've been interested in. From my time in college, I was always
interested in an abstract way in English art and English life,
the English countryside. My family took a house in England every
summer from the time I was born until the war, and I have always
had a very special feeling when I think about those times. For
about ten to 15 years, Basil Taylor, the British art historian,
and I had a wonderful time agreeing on pictures. I'd go to
England two or three times a year. And that just grew.

    Q. Do you consider yourself primarily a philanthropist or
a collector?

    A. I would say half and half, although you could say that
collecting is partly a subdivision of philanthropy. But on the
other hand, I have collected because I have liked pictures and
I like to have them around. That's primary. And secondary, I
wanted to see them go to places where other people can enjoy
them. That's why I founded the British Art Center at Yale. I
always felt that nobody in America collected anything but those
big portraits that my father and Mr. Huntington (railroad
magnate Henry Huntington) collected.

    Q. How do you learn to give money away?

    A. I don't think there is any training for it. I suppose I
had a pretty good example from my father. I wouldn't say he was
a professional philanthropist, but he did give money away for
various things and he did found and build the National Gallery.
There is no way you can learn philanthropy.

    Q. What did your father teach you about philanthropy?

    A. He never tried to teach me anything. My father wasn't
very talkative for one thing. It's a thing I've thought of quite
a lot, because my mother was a bit the same way. She was a very,
very good gardener, but she never tried to teach me anything
about gardening. There would be little things, though. I
remember on a ship going to visit David Bruce (then U.S.
Ambassador to France) and my sister, who had a place at Cap
d'Antibes at that time, my father said to me at the end of the
trip, when it came time to tip stewards and people, "I always
give a little more than the average person, because people know
who I am and who we are, and they really expect more and
probably deserve a bit more."

    Q. President Bush has made a great deal of volunteerism in
his "thousand points of light."

    A. I've never understood what that meant.

    Q. Are you still collecting now?

    A. I've slowed down an awful lot because, in the first
place, everything important is ridiculously expensive. I still
get catalogs from Sotheby's and Christie's, and sometimes I see
a drawing that I might like. But even that's getting hard to do
because I just refuse to pay these absurd prices.

    Q. Is this distorting philanthropic efforts in the art
world?

    A. Yes. For instance, the National Gallery raised a $50
million purchase fund four or five years ago. We got the $50
million, and I think it's probably about $60 million now. But
$60 million doesn't help very much these days.

    Q. Does that place pressure on patrons to give more money?

    A. Well, the tax laws don't help you very much. It's a
combination of the high prices and the business and capital
gains things that have to be worked into it, and the minimum tax
and so forth. I can't understand it all, and I'm not sure my
lawyers understand it. But no, it's not helpful a bit.

    Q. Who are your favorite painters?

    A. In the French field, certainly Edgar Degas. Not only as
a painter but as a sculptor. And in the English field, the
so-called sporting artist George Stubbs. But it's hard to
compare because I think certainly Thomas Gainsborough was a very
great artist. In the sporting field certainly James Ward and Ben
Marshall. That's Marshall right there (pointing to the wall of
his office). And John Constable, J.M.W. Turner. It's hard to fix
on any one really.

    Q. What gives you the most satisfaction now?

    A. I can tell you what I had the most fun doing up to ten
years ago, and that was riding and fox hunting. And I've been
doing that since I was at Cambridge in 1930. That was 50 years
of fox hunting in this country and in England. And because I was
interested in fox hunting and had a farm, I got interested in
breeding horses. And because I was interested in breeding, that
meant I really had to get into flat racing rather than
steeplechasing. And one thing led to another in that way.

    Q. Do you go to Saratoga regularly?

    A. We go to the Cape in the summer, and I can get over from
Hyannis to Saratoga in about 40 minutes. So I'm able to go over
for the day, have lunch, see the races and get back in time for
a swim.

    Q. Is there anything in life that gives you more fun than
watching one of your horses win?

    A. I don't think so. I can't think of anything.