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Original Dream. With its new building, the Whitney is also writing a new charter. Officially founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a Manhattan blueblood who fled the debutante life to study with Rodin and became a sculptor in her own right, the family-dominated museum all but lost its identity when it moved next to the Museum of Modern Art in 1954. Even its decision to sell its distinguished collection of historical U.S. art in 1949 now seems to have been a miscalculation.
Today, with triple the space and a national committee headed by Jacqueline Kennedy, the Whitney intends to make up for lost opportunities. It will selectively restock its historical collection, expand its once-eminent print collection, exhibit traveling shows of American art that have been bypassing Manhattan for lack of space. But Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's original dream will not be forgotten. In cutting the ribbon, her daughter dedicated the new building "to the ideal that the Whitney has always stood for—the service of this country's living art." And to keep the museum's view broadly national rather than parochial, the Ford Foundation gave the Whitney a handsome birthday present: $155,000 to pay for a five-year talent search among artists living outside New York.