An interview of Eleanor Sayre conducted 1993 April 19-1997 January 10, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Sayre talks about her early childhood in Williamstown and Cambridge, Mass.; her family background; visits to the White House with her maternal grandfather, Woodrow Wilson; living abroad while her father was in government service in Bangkok, then Siam (now Thailand), Paris, and Switzerland, with extensive recollections of her brothers and schooling in Europe.
Attending Winsor School in Boston; her mother's death; her years at Bryn Mawr College, including her switch to art history from political science; Georgianna Goddard King as an influential teacher; an internship under Laura Dudley at the Fogg Art Museum's Print Room and the lasting effect of this experience.
Being a graduate student in fine arts at Harvard and the importance of Edward Forbes and Paul Sachs as teachers; her decision not to pursue a PhD; working with Jakob Rosenberg; helping to get young Jews out of Europe; her position as assistant for exhibitions at Yale University Art Gallery under Theodore Sizer; the trauma of her father's internment by the Japanese in the Philippines, where he was High Commissioner and his rescue; and her decision to turn down a military intelligence job in order to work with German Jewish refugees.
Her brief tenure at Lyman-Allyn Museum, Conn., under Winslow Ames; her years in the education department under Lydia "Ma" Powel at the Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design with Gordon Washburn as director; and working closely with Heinrich Schwartz on prints and drawings.
The liberal tradition of her father's wealthy family; her father; being brought to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston by its curator of prints, Henry Rossiter and on the charming collector and benefactor, Maxim Karolik; MFA curator of paintings, William George Constable; and George Harold Edgell, MFA director.
The collector, Philip Hofer, who by putting his Goya proofs on loan at the MFA, led to Sayre's life-long study of the artist; her research on Goya in Spain; raising of a large sum from Boston businesses to purchase Hofer's prints for the MFA, and the MFA's eminence by the 1960s in Goya's graphic work; the disgusting repression of dissent in Franco-era Spain; Goya's passionate self-assertion, which is what principally attracted Sayre to his work, and his conceptual process and method of work.
Earlier years at the MFA, Boston, including the accessibility of the print department's study rooms; Edwin J. Hipkiss, curator of American decorative arts; the Christmas poetry and prints exhibitions designed as profound learning experiences for a broad public; and being chosen as successor to Rossiter; and further comments on Maxim Karolik.
W.G. Russell Allen and other collectors who gave their collections to the MFA; her efforts to effectively present art to the broad public; her methods of appealing to the public coalescing at the MFA in 1989 with the "Goya and the Spirit of the Enlightenment" exhibition; and an exhibition of the work of Beatrix Potter.
Spain under the dictator, Francisco Franco; her first study in Spain of Goya's drawings and her urging the Prado Museum to conserve its drawings; the Prado's director, F. Sanchez-Canton; her research on prostitution at the Ministry of Justice; being decorated for her recommending the preservation of Goya's art and the marvelous private collections of Goya in Spain; and her obsession with interpreting the meaning of Goya's work.
The MFA, Boston, under the directorship of Perry Rathbone, who wanted many more people involved than had his predecessor, George Harold Edgell, who ran it like a Boston Brahmin Club; Rathbone's accomplishments; his downfall and that of his assistant (and curator of European decorative arts and sculpture) Hanns Swarzenski in bringing a so-called Raphael into this country by irregular means, which led to Rathbone and Swarzenski's firing by George Seybolt, the trustee president; Rathbone's reluctance to hire women curators and Sayre's finally becoming curator of prints and drawings in 1967; her philosophy as curator; on Hanns and Brigitte Swarzenski as dear friends; her exchange of positions with the curator of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, where she put their valuable but neglected print collection in order.
The exhibition and catalog, "Rembrandt: Experimental Etcher," (1969) in collaboration with the Pierpont Morgan Library; general views on exhibitions; co-authoring the exhibition catalog "Goya and the Spiris of Enlightenment" (1989); her contributions to Goya research; her current research and writing on Goya's Capaprichos print series; and her satisfaction in having spent her career in art museums.
Biographical / Historical:
Eleanor A. Sayre (1916-2001) was a curator and art historian from Boston, Mass.
General:
Originally recorded on 8 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 15 digital wav files. Duration is 11 hrs., 21 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Science, Medicine, and Society Search this
Extent:
3.5 Cubic feet (11 boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photographs
Laboratory notebooks
Electron micrographs
Correspondence
Technical literature
Reprints
Photomicrographs
Date:
1904-1968.
Summary:
This collection consists of materials from the professional life of Dr. Bruno Z. Kisch.
Scope and Contents note:
Contains correspondence, most relating to Kisch's service as President of the American College of Cardiology; photomicrographs, of animal tissue specimens; writings and notes; notebooks on Dr. Kisch's experimentation and research, including many electrocardiograms; and printed material, such as medical journals containing articles by Dr. Kisch, and reprints of articles by Dr. Kisch.
The materials are useful to those with an interest in the American College of Cardiology during the 1950s, or those who have the ability to read and understand cardiological printouts.
Electrocardiograph: An instrument which records electrical currents produced by the heart.
Electrocardiography: A method of recording electrical currents traversing the heart muscle just previous to each heart beat. The study and interpretation of electrocardiographs.
Electrocardiogram: The graphic record of the heart's action currents obtained with the electrocardiograph.
Electrogram: Any record on paper or film made by an electrical event.
Tracing: Any graphic display of electrical or mechanical cardiovascular event.
Arrangement:
Divided into 5 series:
Series 1, Personal materials
Series 2, Correspondence
Series 3, Notebooks
Series 4, Photographs, Micrographs and Negatives
Series 5, Publications
Biographical/Historical note:
Dr. Bruno Zacharias Kisch (1890-1966) was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1890. He received his medical degree in 1913 at the Charles University of Prague and served in the Austrian army during World War I as a physician from 1914-1918. With the rise of Nazism, Kisch relocated to the United States in 1938 with his wife, Ruth, and their two children, Charlotte Rebecca and Arnold Emanuel. A colleague called him "one of the princely gifts that fell to America because of Adolph Hitler". In 1943, Kisch became a United States citizen.
Amongst his peers Kisch was credited as a "Da Vinci in a modern age" due to his wide range of interests. He was a founding member of the American College of Cardiology in 1949, and completed the first president's term upon his death in 1951. Kisch was elected as president in his own right at the end of the term and held the office of president from 1951-1953. From 1939 until 1966 Kisch had his own medical practice in New York City and was a researcher and consultant in cardiology. Kisch's major contribution to the field of cardiology was his experimentation with electron microscopes. He was the first scientist to use electron microscopes to perform cardiac research on warm-blooded animals. The microscope allowed researchers to study heart fibers more closely by magnifying cells by 30,000. Discoveries Kisch made through this research furthered the field of cardiology and led to the formation of the Electron Microscopic Institute in 1953.
The professorships he held at multiple schools, including Yeshiva University, in New York City, and Yale University, reflect his wide range of knowledge from physiology to the philosophy and history of science as does his consultation to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. on "the study of scales, weights, and measures", and his position as curator to the Edward Clark Streeter Collection of Weights and Measures at Yale University. Kisch's other interests can be found in the articles he wrote and the publications for which he served as founder/editor: "The Jewish Refugee and America"; "History of the Jewish Pharmacy (Judenapothek) in Prague"; "Scales and Weights – A Historical Outline"; "Shekel Metals and False Shekels"; Cardiologia; the Journal of Experimental Medicine and Surgery; and the Transactions of the American College of Cardiology. Dr. Bruno Z. Kisch passed away while visiting Germany in 1966. The Electron Microscopic Institute was dedicated in his memory in 1967.
Related Materials:
xMaterials at the National Museum of American History
Division of Medicine and Science
Other artifacts in the collection include sphygmomanometers, sphygmographs, stethoscopes, pacemakers, stents, and one of Claud Beck's defibrillators. The collection also has early examples of Bayer Aspirin.
Provenance:
The collection was donated by Dr. Bruno Kisch's wife, Prof. Ruth Kisch, of Brooklyn, New York, in 1971.
Restrictions:
Collection open for research on site by appointment. Unprotected photographs must be handled with gloves.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
