Robert de Forest and the founding of the American Wing - New York Metropolitan Museum

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2000 by Amelia Peck

The opening of the American Wing to the public in November 1924 was the culmination of many years of work and thought on the part of an indefatigable group of well-to-do New Yorkers with a mission. Led by R.T.H. Halsey (see pp. 186-191), Henry W. Kent (Fig. 3), and Robert Weeks de Forest (Fig. 1), this group of like-minded men had set out to prove that "American domestic art was worthy of a place in an art museum." [1] In this article I will briefly relate the story of the planning and building of the American Wing and investigate the forces that motivated these men to create what was then an innovative collection of period rooms and galleries. The focus of the article will be the role played by Robert de Forest, president of the museum, who along with his wife, Emily Johnston de Forest (see pp. 192-197), donated the funds that built the American Wing.

Robert de Forest was one 0f New York City's best-known citizens and philanthropists during the first decades of the twentieth century. Born in New York City, he was the son of Julia Weeks de Forest and Henry G. de Forest, an attorney. His maternal grandfather, Robert D. Weeks, was president of the New York Stock Exchange, and his father's family had roots in New York extending back two centuries. De Forest graduated from Yale College in 1870, received a master's degree from Yale in 1873, and earned a law degree from Columbia University in 1872, the year he married Emily Johnston, the daughter of John Taylor Johnston, president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey and the first president of the recently founded Metropolitan Museum of Art. That same year de Forest entered his father's law firm, and twenty-one years later he and his brother established De Forest Brothers, a firm that specialized in corporate law. He served as general counsel for the Central Railroad of New Jersey for fifty years and was on the board of directors of two other railroads and an assortment of other companies. However, he was never exclusively engaged in law or business. In his thirties he began to work with the Charity Organization Society of America (now part of the Community Service Society), a privately financed and operated organization meant to promote the general welfare of the poor, and by 1888 he was president of the society, a post he held for the rest of his life. In addition, he worked closely with other charitable organizations too numerous to mention in the context of this article. Suffice it to say that he was actively involved with many groups that attempted to better the lives of New York's poorest inhabitants. After his fiftieth birthday, he left almost all his law and commercial concerns in the hands of associates, so he could be free to pursue his philanthropic work.

De Forest became a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum in 1889; in 1905 he was elected secretary of the board of trustees; in 1909, the second vice-president; and in 1913, the president. The museum and the de Forests' marriage seem to have been inextricably bound together from the start. In his obituary in the New York Times of May 7, 1931, de Forest is quoted as recalling,

My personal recollection of the museum goes hack fifty years to its beginning. On the day the museum was founded I became engaged to the daughter of one of the founders and I married her as soon as I could. It was my good fortune to be associated with my father-in-law in the worries and pleasures of the early days of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In an undated memoir written in the 1930s Emily de Forest, an inveterate collector of Americana, remembered:

my Rob, who bad gradually become very sympathetic with my hobby, said to me: "You and I are becoming more and more interested in early Americana, and the more we think about it the more we wish that such pieces of early American furniture, silver, brass, glass and china as are now scattered in the Metropolitan Museum could all be collected and shown together." "We have more means now" he said "than when you began to find such things. How would you like it if we gave to the Museum an American Wing in which some or all of these interesting things could be shown together?" That thrilled me and we agreed that we would offer to add an "AMERICAN WING" to the Museum. [2]

De Forest's first important role on the behalf of American decorative arts came in 1909, when he served as the chairman of the art committee for the Hudson-Fulton exhibition at the museum (see pp. 170-175). Many of the objects in that exhibition were on loan from the Boston collector H. Eugene Bolles (1853-1910). After the show, de Forest convinced Mrs. Russell B. Sage (1828-1918) to purchase the Bolles collection for the museum. As her lawyer and principal adviser, he had helped Mrs. Sage set up the Russell Sage Foundation in 1907 in memory of her husband. The foundation's charter stated simply that it would support "the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States of America," which to de Forest's mind included supporting the arts. In 1919 he wrote: