Paint the Wind, page 33
Nevertheless, as the weeks wore on without word from Marjorie Whittaker, Valerie had time to devote to Malcolm’s book and no other responsibilities. It also became clear she needed to seek out another conservation project, and sent out inquiries.
Returning home after a day at the Fogg Museum gathering background for one of the holes that needed plugging in Malcolm’s book, Valerie picked up the mail that had landed on the floor inside the front door after being delivered through the slot. She quickly flipped through the bills and flyers, looking, as she did every day, for the Gardner’s return address on an envelope. Today, finally, the envelope was in her hand. Inside was a single sheet of paper. The Gardner was willing to mount “Lost Vienna.” Marjorie Whittaker asked Valerie to contact her soon to set up a planning meeting. Handwritten at the bottom was a message: “Congratulations! Looking forward to working with you.”
Valerie did a little dance in the hall before calling Marjorie.
The initial planning meeting went well. The exhibition was scheduled for September of the following year, and Valerie was hired as a consulting manager to coordinate all aspects of the show. The list of tasks required to implement an exhibition of such complexity—eight artists whose works were almost all in Europe—was extensive and daunting enough. And then Marjorie told her, “We see the advantage of creating a major book to accompany the show. We’d like to commission you to pull it together. You’ve already done the major detective work, and are probably, at this moment, the most knowledgeable researcher on the art produced by these women.”
Valerie was both thrilled to have been offered the chance to compile the book and overwhelmed at the prospect of tackling such an enormous project. She called Wanona to share both the news and her trepidation.
“This is exactly what you set out to do, Valerie. Don’t be dismissive of your talents or your experience. Remember what I told you in the spring. It’s time to be more than someone else’s helpmate. Put on your big-girl pants and write a book with your name on the cover. Meanwhile, I’ll let Maya know. Perhaps we can persuade her and Elise to come for the opening.”
Fortified, Valerie plunged into the work of organizing the show and creating the catalog. For a while, she continued to gather the background information Malcolm needed for his revisions, but soon realized she couldn’t do the rewrites and the typing for him and still keep to her timeline for “Lost Vienna.”
The conversation with Malcolm was challenging.
“How can you drop this in my lap when you’ve been my partner on my books since grad school? I have a deadline. How am I going to find someone who knows the material as well as you do?”
“I have a deadline, too, Malcolm—a museum opening that can’t be postponed the way a book’s publication date can slip. And if you think of me as your partner on the books, why have I never been listed as co-author?”
“I don’t know who you are anymore. You haven’t been yourself ever since you found that painting at your aunt’s house, went off to Paris with her, and came back with all these grandiose ideas about raising the visibility of women in art. Frankly, I’m surprised the Gardner agreed to exhibit this show at all, but perhaps they have some wealthy Austrian donor who needs coddling.”
“I won’t stoop to your level to rebut your ridiculous allegations, but I’ll find someone who can do your typing for you.”
Malcolm sulked, flipping through the copious notes Valerie had provided for him and slamming pens on his desk. She found a flyer for a typist on the bulletin board at Harvard’s Extension School, interviewed her, and introduced her to Malcolm. She was a grad student at Boston University and familiar enough with the period Malcolm was writing about.
Valerie wished them both a productive day and left for the museum, which had provided her with a desk and a phone and a state-of-the-art IBM Selectric typewriter. With a smile on her face, she forged ahead.
The following year was intense, and involved a substantial amount of minutiae that was Valerie’s responsibility to manage. Over fifty works of art from several owners in different countries had to be insured, their packing overseen, and shipped. She made two trips to Europe to supervise the preparation and crating of the paintings herself. Artwork that existed only in photographic records had to be arranged in suitable displays. The text identifying each work and its provenance had to be painstakingly created and reviewed. The exhibit space had to be designed. And all of that was just for the exhibit.
The catalog was even more complex, as Valerie hunted down scholars who might have studied the artists or who could be persuaded to delve into their work and write essays. She wrote the biographies herself, based on the interviews she had conducted and the letters she had received from the living artists and the relatives of those who had passed away. The introduction of women’s studies departments at universities around the country was a help, but most of the programs were in the early stages of development. She was finally able to identify two art historians willing to participate.
In the midst of the complex administrative work she was handling for the exhibition, Valerie took on another conservation project for a private client referred to her by Catherine. Although she had negotiated a fair consultancy fee for managing “Lost Vienna,” she and Malcolm still needed her income as a conservator. Although it meant more time devoted to work, she found conservation an effective counterpoint to the stress confronting her in her curatorial role. As much as she loved the work of creating the exhibition, she was in new territory, constantly learning and sometimes making mistakes. The conservation project, on the other hand, was restorative to her spirit as well as to the painting.
The painting arrived in February, a Sybil that was believed to be the work of Ginevra Cantofoli, a seventeenth-century Bolognese painter. When Catherine had told her of the assignment, Valerie was pleased to learn it had been created by a woman. Valerie’s work on “Lost Vienna” had converted her into a missionary, passionate about bringing the work of women artists into public view. Restoring the Sybil was another way of shedding light, literally, on paintings lost to obscurity.
She inspected it first in natural light before examining it closely with her loupe and then under a microscope. Under UV light she searched for signs of repainting and burnish, shiny or polished areas that indicated mishandling. She was relieved to find no burnish, which would have been time-consuming and delicate to repair, if at all. The main issue with the Sybil was the discolored varnish that had darkened the painting. With an array of solvents at her disposal, she began to test small areas for one that would dissolve the varnish without harming the paint. After she found a suitable solvent, she removed the varnish and replaced it with a new coating. One of the key elements of conservation that Valerie adhered to was the concept of reversibility. Anything she did to the painting could be undone. Nothing would permanently change the original work.
She became absorbed in the task, letting go not only of the many balls she was juggling for the exhibition but also of the mounting tension between her and Malcolm. Finding him a substitute typist and researcher had helped, but his resentment and perception that she had “abandoned” him had led to a palpable emotional distance between them. The hours she spent in her studio focused on work that required both concentration and control were a respite.
As the date for the opening of the exhibition neared, Valerie arrived home every night both exhausted and exhilarated as everything began to take shape, filling in the framework she had created. The museum was doing an effective job disseminating information and building excitement about “Lost Vienna.” But the mounting interest added another layer of conflict between her and Malcolm when he announced that ARTnews had called the house to interview him about the show.
“Why you?”
“They had heard that the curator’s name was Langdon and naturally assumed it was me.”
“And you corrected them, right?”
“Well, I told them I’d be happy to schedule a conversation to provide an overview of the exhibition.”
“Malcolm, ten months ago you told me this show wasn’t worth my time, that no one cared about these women except some wealthy Austrian dowager, and now you want to be a part of it because it’s caught the attention of a prestigious art journal? You can’t be serious. You know nothing about these artists because you chose not to.”
“But think of the added weight it would give the exhibition if my name, as an expert in twentieth-century art, was associated with it.”
“There is only one member of this family who is an expert on these twentieth-century artists, and that’s me. Give me the name and number of the editor who called. I’ll do the interview.”
She barely contained her fury as she snatched the slip of paper from his reluctant hand. As if she didn’t have enough on her plate, she would now have to be vigilant in preventing Malcolm from inserting himself into what he had finally recognized as a significant event.
At the museum the next day, she spoke to the publicity department about identifying clearly who the press should be contacting. She didn’t want to reveal that she couldn’t control her husband and his interference, but at least she could try to minimize his involvement.
She really didn’t need this, with so much at stake. After the exhibit opened, she realized, she would have to give some serious thought to the state of her marriage. The tension her new role had caused between her and Malcolm was something she should have anticipated. She was changing, growing in ways she hadn’t imagined possible. She still loved the quiet, intense work of restoration and the way she could lose herself in a painting. But she was discovering talents that probably had been within her grasp all along; they simply had not been exercised except as Malcolm’s amanuensis.
It frightened her to realize that Malcolm might not be able to accept this new version of his wife. He already had shown signs of it when she stopped rewriting his book, but this latest stunt—assuming he could speak more authoritatively than she to ARTnews and take credit for the development of the exhibition—was one she couldn’t ignore.
For the first time, propelled by Malcolm’s arrogance, Valerie considered a future without him. She sat with the idea as she pursued the rest of her responsibilities for the show. The thought was overwhelming at first, but eventually she felt lighter as she imagined casting off the burden of needing to please Malcolm.
It had only been since discovering Maya’s painting and meeting the artist herself that Valerie saw the possibility of another life—a life still marked by losses and challenges, but one she believed she had the resources and resilience to embrace. The realization brought with it a sense of freedom that influenced her relationship with Malcolm as the opening drew closer. Her firmness over the issue of the magazine had surprised him, and she noticed a dawning realization on his part that she was no longer as pliant as she had been earlier in their marriage.
Although she had hoped they could postpone a confrontation until after the exhibit opened, it was not to be. A major issue arose one night over whose needs took precedence when Malcolm’s editor sent the manuscript back for more edits, commenting that it lacked the coherence and originality he was used to seeing in Malcolm’s work.
“You need to help me salvage this. It was your absence in the last year that has caused the book to suffer.”
Something snapped in Valerie.
“I won’t do this anymore, Malcolm. You know as well as I do that I’ve essentially written your books for you. Find yourself another ghost writer. I have my own book to write.”
Malcolm left that night, claiming that he had already found someone willing to be a more supportive partner—his new typist, of course.
After he left, Valerie sat in the quiet house. She had galleys to proof for the catalog and a logistics meeting in the morning to prepare for. She would get to both. But for a few minutes, she needed to acknowledge that she wasn’t falling apart. Life would undoubtedly be messy in the coming months as she and Malcolm unraveled their marriage, but she knew she could weather it.
Chapter Fifty
By the middle of August, Malcolm had moved out of the apartment and taken half the furniture. He and Valerie had spent a strained evening slapping colored stickers on bookcases and lamps—orange circles for Valerie, green for Malcolm—to divide up the possessions they’d accumulated in five years of marriage and two years of living together during grad school. After the last box was carried out the door and loaded onto the rental truck, Valerie took a broom and swept up the bits of debris that had lain under Malcolm’s desk and dresser: notes in her handwriting, gum wrappers, a crumpled cigarette pack. She hadn’t known that he smoked, but she supposed there were many things she didn’t know about him.
The next day, Catherine drove to Cambridge from Williamstown and she and Valerie went shopping to replace the household items that had left with green stickers on them. Valerie found that purchasing a new set of dishes and glasses that matched her taste was invigorating, an outward sign that she was starting over at the age of thirty. In a housewares shop at Porter Square, she even found a set of flatware that would have been at home on Maya’s table in Paris.
With Malcolm gone, Valerie realized she could host Maya and Elise when they arrived for the exhibition and looked forward to welcoming them to her home. The museum had offered to cover their travel when it invited them to attend the opening. A flurry of letters and a couple of phone calls from Wanona and herself encouraging them to consider the invitation finally succeeded in convincing them to make the trip.
Wanona joined Valerie in greeting Maya and Elise each with a bouquet of flowers when they arrived at the airport three days before the opening. Valerie had had the foresight to arrange for wheelchairs to pick them up at the gate. Despite the long flight, both women looked animated—even a bit giddy—as they emerged from customs.
After their luggage had been collected, they were bundled into a cab and whisked off to Cambridge.
Although it was early evening, Maya and Elise were still on Paris time, and after a short visit and a light snack, the two women went to bed. Valerie had transformed Malcolm’s study into a guest room. Despite the crush of last-minute details for the exhibition that needed attending to, she’d taken the time to make the space both beautiful and functional for two artists in their nineties.
They were both more fragile physically than Valerie remembered, and she hoped she’d made the right decision in urging them to come. She was grateful that Wanona was available to shepherd them around and manage the pace of the next few days. Not only would they be the center of attention at the opening, but a writer from Art in America had secured an exclusive interview with them, scheduled for the day before the launch. It would be a whirlwind, one that Valerie thought Maya would relish, but she was anxious about Elise’s stamina. As Elise herself had noted the first time she’d met Valerie, her age and her more subdued personality set limits on how much she could do, despite her desire to be fully present.
The next morning, Valerie was off early to work. Wanona brought Maya and Elise to the museum later in the day to preview the final hanging of the paintings and drawings. Maya with her cane and Elise with her walker stood at the entrance to the gallery. Maya reached out her hand to Elise and squeezed it.
“Did you ever imagine we’d see our art once again on the walls of a gallery?”
Together, they wandered slowly around the room, oblivious to the awe of the museum staff who had stopped what they were doing to look at the artists. The buzz of voices and the hammering of tools came to a standstill as the two women stopped at one painting, the field of poppies Elise had been painting the first day she had met Maya on Skiathos.
“It was a lifetime ago, but I remember and cherish that day with exquisite detail—the moment that redefined who I was. Thank you, my friend.”
“I merely offered you a different way of seeing your life, my dear. You are the one who transformed that life.”
“We should let these young people finish their work. What a relief that we don’t have to be the ones measuring the walls and aligning the edges of the frames. They have a tendency to tilt if you merely look at them, don’t they?”
The press interview the following day was a runaway success, with the two women playing off each other’s strengths. They were articulate, knowledgeable, and full of stories of the vibrant art scenes in Vienna and Paris that had shaped both their art and their lives. They were vessels of history, bringing to life a forgotten moment.
The afternoon of opening night, Valerie’s apartment became part beauty salon, part fashion boutique. Rather than exhaust Maya and Elise with a trip to her local hairdresser, Valerie had arranged for the shop to come to them. It was no surprise that both women had firm ideas about how they wanted their hair done. As expected, Elise, with her silver hair and dark eyes, kept to her subdued, elegant style. She had her hair fashioned into a French twist and donned a Dior gown of black chiffon with a white linen collar and cuffs. Maya, with her raven hair piled on top of head, Aegean blue eyes, and statuesque height, wrapped herself in a vibrantly colored floral silk caftan from Givenchy.
The museum had arranged for a limousine to pick them up, which garnered the attention of Valerie’s neighbors as the women emerged from the building in their finery. They arrived at the Gardner to a flurry of cameras as they walked a red carpet, both of them radiant and regal.
Valerie watched as they entered the gallery. The look of wonder on their faces as they gazed at the retrospective of the Salon Pisko artists was a precious gift more rewarding than the international accolades the Gardner would receive in the coming days or the excitement the exhibit would ignite among women art historians.
