AUDAX
This page, clockwise from top left: Carter Burden’s life was filled with the best of society’s parties; Susan Burden, Carter’s wife at the time of his death, is a psychotherapist and well-known for her philanthropic work; Amanda Burden, Carter’s first wife. Opposite page: The Morgan Library held an exhibit last year, “Gatsby to Garp: Modern Masterpieces from the Carter Burden Collection,” featuring nearly 100 works from his outstanding personal library.
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thing of a dreamer, warmhearted, kind, and a gifted photographer. His mother, Flobelle Fairbanks, was a niece of the actor Douglas Fairbanks, herself an ever elegant beauty, and both father and mother were prominent in Los Angeles and New York social circles. His first girlfriend was Geraldine Chaplin, to whom he remained grateful for the tutelage that decisively overcame the deficiencies of a Catholic education. The year after graduating from Harvard, in 1964, following a bachelor party at an elegant Upper East Side brothel organized by Bartle Bull, which Carter once told me (no ladies were within hearing range) was “the greatest night of my life.” He married Amanda Jay Mortimer, daughter of Standard Oil heir Stanley Mortimer and Babe Paley. A law student at Columbia at the time, he and Amanda moved into the Dakota and gave parties there for guests including, according to his New York Times obituary, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Larry Rivers, Robert and Ethel Kennedy, Joan and Teddy Kennedy, and Prince Philip of Britain. After graduating from law school, he went to work for Bobby Kennedy, one of many idealistic young reform-
ers whose dreams were dashed when Kennedy was assassinated. But Burden ran for office himself and, with the help of campaign managers Tim Hogen and Bartle Bull and a fiercely dedicated staff, was elected to the city council in 1969, serving until 1978 and launching early initiatives in gay and tenants’ rights. Tim Hogen recalls, “For a person of such total privilege he was incredibly zealous, driven, and completely enmeshed in all of the relevant issues. He could have been lying on a beach somewhere, but he wasn’t. In that sense, and also because one felt he didn’t want to let people get too close to him, he was something of an enigma.” In 1969, Carter Burden also became the majority owner of the Village Voice (Bartle Bull and Alan Patricoff were among those who had minority stakes), which he merged with New York magazine in 1975 before selling his interest to Rupert Murdoch. In addition to books and contemporary art, he also collected masterly drawings, including works by Sargent, Picasso, and Matisse. His many philanthropic activities included the Bedford-Stuyvesant Development Project, the New York City Ballet, the New York Public and Morgan Libraries, and the Burden Center for the Aging.