Thom Nickels
Contributing Editor
Anne d’Harnoncourt and her husband Joseph Rishel
When Philadelphia Museum of Art Director Anne d’Harnoncourt died suddenly of a stroke on June 1, 2008, the art world stood still.
Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, told The New York Times that he was in total shock and disbelief. ”She was a friend of mine for more than 40 years. She went to school with my wife. She was a guiding light in all the museum world and I can’t tell you how much I’ll miss her.”
The Times went on to describe Ms. d’Harnoncourt as “a natural museum director in perhaps the best, most basic way…She had the kind of star quality that lights up rooms, but also the confidence to let her curators shine.”
The Times also mentioned her “uncanny ability to communicate with anyone as an equal.”
The New Yorker quoted Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Hiller: “Like George Plimpton, William F. Buckley or Julia Child (whose height and vocal timbre she shared), Ms. d’Harnoncourt had one of those throw-back, lockjaw, plummy, patrician voices of an earlier era, as musical and entertaining as a Gilbert and Sullivan performer.”
The New York Sun highlighted d’Harnoncourt’s close relationships to contemporary artists. “She was very good friends with Jasper [Johns], [Cy] Twombly, and Ellsworth [Kelly], and she got them to loan her things and do things with her that were exceptional. Most directors don't have that intimate connection with artists, and she was very beloved by them.”
In an odd twist, Philadelphia radio station WRTI reported that d’Harnoncourt died on Monday, June 2, 2008. It is the only June 2 date listed anywhere. It’s odd that the erroneous date has not been corrected in 13 years.
I began attending PMA press events in the 1990s. When d’Harnoncourt became the museum’s chief CEO in 1996, I wouldn’t think of missing these events. At the opening of every blockbuster PMA exhibition the museum would host a sit-down luncheon for the press. This was truly a golden era of generosity and plenty. The luncheons were so grand one had a sense that such splendor could not possibly last. As it turned out, it did not.
At many of PMA’s press exhibitions, d’Harnoncourt and I would often say a quick hello. One of our longest museum conversations was during the 2005 Salvador Dali exhibition. During the press walk through the exhibition d’Harnoncourt caught up with me and we spoke for some time under Dali’s monumental crucifixion painting. I recall telling her then what a magnificent exhibit it was.
In 2005 I was not yet aware of the existence of a Dali painting called Vision of Hell, which Dali painted in 1959 when commissionedby John Haffert, cofounder and director of The World Apostolate of Fatima to paint a picture of the first part of the Fátima Secret, the Vision of Hell, as seen in 1917 by the child seers of Fatima.
The painting was essentially a work for hire but over time it turned into much more than that. Dali, the son of an atheist father and a Catholic mother, struggled throughout his life with questions of belief. To prepare himself to work on the painting he met with Fatima scholars and had a private meeting with Sister Lucia, the only surviving seer of 1917. As a result of that meeting, Dali rekindled the Catholic faith of his childhood.
The existence of the Vision of Hell painting was kept secret for many years. I do not know whether Anne d’Harnoncourt knew of its existence.
In 2007, the museum staged a retrospective exhibition on the work of Thomas Chimes, one of the most important artists to have emerged on the Philadelphia art scene in the past half century. The exhibition included 100 paintings and works on paper.
I was shocked when I received an invitation to accompany Anne and another PMA staffer, artist Thomas Chimes and an Inquirer art critic at a special dinner at the Water Works Restaurant (2006-2015) at the old Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River. The opportunity to sit down with d’Harnoncourt and Chimes with only one other journalist present for a 3-hour multiple course dinner, was extraordinary.
In 2007, a year before her death, d’Harnoncourt did a two-part Drexel interview which can still be seen on YouTube. She must have done the interview shortly after the Dali press preview because on the video she’s wearing the sametree of life broach she wore during the Dali press tour.
“There hadn’t been a Dali exhibition for so long,” Anne said. “It was time,” adding that she thought the exhibit was timely because Dali was fascinated by popular culture, and the relationship of art to new media, like film. “It was also one of the largest exhibitions we had,” she said.
She continued to talk about Dali, mentioning that he hid behind his big personality, was very shy, and felt things very deeply.
When the host of the Drexel InterView brought up the term ‘blockbuster’ exhibit,’ d’Harnoncourt did not mind the term at all but in fact said that the idea for a Philadelphia Museum of Art “was born out of a blockbuster, out of the 1876 World’s Fair, when the world’s attention turned to Philadelphia.”
She went on to talk about the general circus atmosphere in a museum. A museum is enticing, entertaining, educating, she said. Museums also carry people away, “inviting them to time travel, sexy travel and even spiritual travel.”
“I model myself,” she said, “after Neil Harris at the University of Chicago, an art historian who wrote a book about circuses.” (Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum, 1981, Univ. of Chicago Press)
When asked about the museum’s role in the community, and if the idea of visiting a museum might potentially turn away some people because they think it might be too high brow or exclusive in some way, d’Harnoncourt’s answer would probably not bode well in today’s woke culture.
Woke culture would likely suggest that the museum needs to change to make it more inclusive and accessible to people who feel they are on the outside looking in. But that’s not how d’Harnoncourt saw it.
“You first get somebody in a museum, whatever their age, background or status, and you walk with them to find something that catches their attention. You don’t need to do anymore. They suddenly see that something in the collection relates to them.”
…A brilliant, simple answer that should be emblazoned in lights over the Rocky statue.
For d’Harnoncourt, a successful exhibition must have three basic ingredients: The passion of the curator, the strength of the museum in a certain area, and something that’s timely.
She spoke highly of Dali curator Michael Taylor who put his heart and soul into the project. (Taylor is now the Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.)
d’Harnoncourt told Drexel InterView that she initially wanted to be an actress, then a writer. “I studied the history of literature, did a lot with language, but at the end of my college years I felt that something was missing, and it was art. I spent some time at the Art Institute of Chicago where I met my husband, Joseph Rishel.”
Rishel was the museum’s Senior Curator of European Painting & Sculpture and her husband of 37 years at her death. Rishel, a legend in his own rite, died in November 2020 in his sleep after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. As The Inquirer noted after Mr. Rishel’s death:
“He is most well known for his expansive 1996 Paul Cézanne exhibition… the most well-attended exhibition in PMA history. Nothing before it showed so clearly the power of art and culture to drive civic life and tourism.”
Born September 7, 1943 as the only child of Rene d’Harnoncourt, MoMA director and art historian and Sara Carr, a fashion designer, Anne d’Harnoncourt grew up in New York. Her father was not a modernist but a lover of folk art.
She told Drexel InterView that she started at PMA as “a pipsqueak,” an assistant to an assistant.
