L a s t Wo rd
Mr. Met By Michael Bradley
It wasn’t until Morrison “Morrie” Heckscher ’58 ventured into the vault that he realized his future belonged to the world of art. Until that point, Heckscher had concentrated mainly on what he was not. He wasn’t a furniture maker, that’s for sure. “I butchered many good pieces of mahogany in my ignorance,” he says of his high school efforts at constructing tables and chairs. He didn’t feel comfortable in the academic world, despite majoring in American history at Wesleyan College. But the school had “a small but fine collection” of European graphic art prints from the 15th through the 20th centuries, which attracted Heckscher’s attention. When a renowned Viennese curator arrived to inspect the assortment, Heckscher had the opportunity to join him and handle some classic works. “I could never deal with copies again,” he says. That encounter started him on a path that would lead to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he spent 48 years as a fellow, curator, and for the past 13 years, as chairman of the American Wing. Heckscher retired on June 30 but hardly plans to turn away completely from The Met. On a late July afternoon he was in his office, and he has been charged with writing a history of the museum to coincide with its sesquicentennial in 2020. Oh, and he plans on building furniture again, this time with a shorter learning curve and better results. “I’ve loved it,” he says of his time at The Met. “There are fascinating people in this business, and of course, wonderful works of art that only get more interesting as you know more about them and share them with others.” Heckscher credits Episcopal with “planting the seed” that spawned his love of art. Renowned teacher Anthony Wayne Ridgway, who established EA’s fine arts department, encouraged creativity among his students and nurtured their curiosity. “He allowed someone like me to wander off and look at things,” Heckscher says.
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Heckscher started at Episcopal in preKindergarten during World War II and graduated in 1958. “It took me 14 years to graduate,” he says with a laugh. While there, he developed his creative side by woodworking, something he learned from his grandfather, a member of EA’s class of 1902. Although Heckscher enjoyed squash and tennis, he distinguished himself in neither. He did, however, win the Forestry Club Prize in 1955 and still has the book he was awarded. Heckscher remains true to that calling and enjoys planting trees and gardening. He left Wesleyan in 1962 and spent the next two years working in a graduate program at Winterthur Museum, studying Early American culture and earning an M.A. at the University of Delaware. He started Ph.D. work at Columbia in 1964 and joined The Met two years later as a Chester Dale Fellow in the Prints Department. From 1968 until his retirement, Heckscher worked in the American Wing, helping to organize exhibitions. While chairman, he oversaw the redesign and reinstallation of the entire Wing. Over each of the past 20 years, he has hosted Episcopal’s fourth grade on its annual trip to New York City. The class visits the American Wing and usually the Egyptian section of the museum, and Heckscher delights in exposing the young minds to art. “It might have an impact on some of them—sooner or later,” he says. “I don’t want to scare them away or bore them to death.” That hasn’t been the case, as Sylvia Davis can attest. The fourth-grade teacher has had the privilege of squiring her students to The Met and believes the excursion to be a highlight of not only the year but of their time at EA. “Our kids have such a lovely time,” Davis says. “They get to see important pieces of American history. [Heckscher] is very pas-
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Morrie Heckscher CURATOR
sionate and excited about the art, and it’s a contagious kind of passion. He had 40 to 50 fourth graders glued to what he was saying.” Heckscher has given back in other ways. In 2011, he hosted an Episcopal senior, JJ Waldron, who chose to explore art history for his senior project. Waldron spent a month at The Met, researching the Hudson River School, a mid-19th century American art movement, and culminated his time there by writing the text for the placard that accompanied Andrew Wyeth’s Tennessee masterpiece. Heckscher helped direct Waldron’s work but more importantly encouraged him to pursue his growing passion for art. Now a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, Waldron is majoring in art history and spent this past summer working at a gallery in New York. “There were a lot of people who said it wasn’t practical for me to study art,” Waldron says. “[Heckscher] told me I could pursue something I loved academically and make it a successful career.” Morrie Heckscher has done just that during nearly a half-century at The Met. As he heads into “retirement,” he vows to keep learning and loving art—and wishing that the world would do the same. “My hope is that what is real becomes more precious, and people will realize how much better it is than the virtual,” he says. Maybe all we need is a trip into that vault. Michael Bradley is a writer and broadcaster whose work has appeared in several national magazines and on a variety of radio and TV stations around the country. He is the father of Bryan Bradley ’11. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York