0.7 Chapter five: new initiatives and economic shocks, 1982-1987  (Page 3/18)

Bell's administrative honeymoon was brief. Less than six months after he took office, public controversy developed around his dismissal of Mary Black, the Soci­ety's curator of painting and sculpture. Black, who had been at the Society since 1970 and was sixty years old, was dismissed on December 29, 1982, without, she said, "prior notice or explanation." She also said that Bell refused to give her a letter outlining the reasons for her dismissal. She filed a complaint against the Society in early 1983 claiming that the Society had violated sex and age discrim­ination laws.

In February, the Society's board of trustees formed a special committee to deal with the matter. Shortly thereafter, sixteen prominent New Yorkers sent a let­ter to the Society protesting Black's termination and released it to die press. The letter, parts of which were excerpted in an article in the New York Times, asserted that "Mary Black had been fired—dismissed with no explanation, on short notice, with meager allowance for financial hardship, and given three hours for the removal of personal belongings with the threat of eviction for trespass after that." It added that the dismissal was "very difficult for anyone acquainted with Mary Black's age, career and accomplishments to comprehend."

Although it is not uncommon for a new leader to struggle through difficult personnel issues during a transition period, the negative publicity helped neither Bell nor the Society. For example, among the signers of the letter of protest was Kent L. Barwick, chairman of New York City's Landmarks Preservation Com­mission. The leader of that agency was not a person the Society wanted to offend as it was quietly preparing plans to develop a residential tower adjacent to and over its landmark building.

Another controversy developed, this time within the Society's walls, around Bell's pledge to "pay more attention" to the Society's architectural drawings. The new emphasis created tensions between Society staff and the board. Although a survey of the drawings was completed quickly and presented to the trustees on January 26, 1983, changing the way drawings were used proved to be more dif­ficult. Battle lines were drawn within the Society over whether the drawings, along with other prints and photographs, ought to reside under the jurisdiction of the museum or the library. Apparently, Bell's idea to do more with these neglected collections involved moving them from the library into the museum, a move pro­posed in a museum committee report issued in February 1983. In that report, the committee criticized the underutilization of the prints and indicated that the Society should be more aggressive in pursuing twentieth-century items. It pre­sented a "wish list" of print makers and photographers whose works the Society ought to pursue.