INTERVIEW, Page 86The Fine Art of GivingPAUL MELLON, principal heir to the Pittsburgh fortune, has spenta lifetime handing out his money and art, and still manages tolive very well indeedBy 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
