At the urging of the ATLANTIC, FRANCIS HENRY TAYLOR,director of the Worcester Art Museum, flew to Florence for a visit with his friend Bernard Berenson. Their mornings together at Berenson’s bedside produced this self-portrait of a man who for half a century has been recognized as the greatest connoisseur of Italian art.
During his fifteen years as Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, FRANCIS HENRY TAYLOR rose to be one of the most outspoken and influential figures in the world of art. Now as Director Emeritus of the Metropolitan and Director of the Worcester Art Museum he returns to New England and to a regime which will afford him time for writing as well as for his administrative duties.
On a recent trip to Florence, FRANCIS HENRY TAYLOR,at the urging of the Atlantic, blocked out this birthday letter expressing his affection and admiration for Bernard Berenson. During his fifteen years as Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mr. Taylor rose to be one of the most influential figures in the world of art. As Director Emeritus of the Metropolitan and Director of the Worcester Art Museum. to which he returns this summer, he gives us his evaluation of the foremost connoisseur of art in our time.
Director of the Metropolitan Museum, FRANCIS HENRY TAYLOR has worked for twelve years on his rich and fascinating history of art-collecting, The Taste of Angels. While Director of the Worcester Art Museum, he was for two years Regional Director of the Federal Art Projects in the New England states. He is therefore not unmindful of artists" needs and aspirations. But he insists on judging their works by the same high standards which have governed the art of the past. “We cannot have” he says, “a double standard — a gold standard reserved for the Old Masters and a blocked currency or scrip for a national art of the present.”