Book excerpt: The inside story of bringing Michelangelo’s Pieta to Queens

From Our Lady of the World’s Fair: Bringing Michelangelo’s Pietà to Queens in 1964, by Ruth D. Nelson, a Three Hills book published by Cornell University Press. Copyright (c) 2024 by Ruth D. Nelson. Used by permission of the publisher and the author.

INTRODUCTION

Robert Moses was renowned not just for his ambition and seemingly unlimited energy but also for his pugnaciousness and the less than diplomatic manner in which he treated those who crossed or merely disagreed with him. There was at least one person, however, to whom Moses extended every courtesy, and that was Cardinal Francis Spellman. Moses was “Bob” to Spellman, but Spellman was always “Your Eminence” to Moses.

Born to a secular German Jewish family, Moses graduated from Yale and, standing over six feet tall, presented an imposing figure. Spellman, of Massachusetts Irish ancestry, was stocky in stature, studied in Rome to become a priest, and emerged a Prince of the Church.

Spellman was installed (as) the sixth archbishop of New York in 1939, the same year Moses opened the first New York World’s Fair. Like Moses, Cardinal Spellman wielded enormous political and cultural influence in New York City – and he was as savvy about the business of the church as he was about its mission. Spellman had quickly learned of the archdiocese’s alarming financial state, with mortgages totaling close to $28 million. After a thorough analysis, he undertook a sweeping reorganization of the archdiocese by centralizing, then refinancing the debt at much more favorable terms. Initially the banks balked, but when Spellman suggested moving his banking to Boston, they quietly fell in line. Pastors, too, were reluctant to surrender their fiscal control, but the savings they saw outweighed any resistance. In essence, the archdiocese became the central bank for all church enterprises.

Like Robert Moses, Francis Spellman transformed the landscape through an ambitious building project, in his case including churches, schools, and hospitals for a congregation that had doubled to almost two million from the start of his tenure. Both men needed the other’s cooperation to accomplish their building goals.

These two powerful men had different approaches and temperaments but shared common values and found common cause in not only building a successful world’s fair, but one that could advance their own goals, whether spiritual or temporal. In the early stages of planning the fair, Moses brought Spellman to the table to gauge his support and to secure his cooperation. He would need every bit of both.

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CHAPTER 3

Due to Moses’ refusal to follow guidelines established by the Paris-based Bureau of International Exhibitions, the intergovernmental agency that oversees and regulates world expositions prohibited its member states from participating in the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair. This did not deter Moses and his six-man executive team.

The fair would eventually host 140 pavilions representing eighty foreign countries, twenty-four U.S. states, and over forty-five corporations, including a swath of Fortune 500 companies, such as Johnson’s Wax, Eastman Kodak, IBM, and of course, the “Big Three” automakers General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. While some countries, such as Austria, Sweden, and Spain, found a way around the restriction by participating “unofficially” through their country’s chamber of commerce, some BIE-member countries, such as Lebanon, would simply set up a government-sponsored pavilion “without recourse to any dodge at all.” Other nations previously locked out of or unable to participate in earlier fairs were only too happy to join. These were primarily nations from South America, the Middle East, and Africa, including Argentina, Brazil, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and even Sudan. Other non-BIE-member states agreeing to exhibit were India, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, and Japan. The Soviet Union had originally committed to participating but, owing to financial considerations, coupled with State Department interference, backed out. Faced with the absence of the Soviet Union, Britain, and even Italy, Moses set his sights on the Holy See.

Moses’s six-man team had already visited Yugoslavia, Austria, Greece, and Turkey by the time they arrived in Rome on September 1, 1960. There the team conferred with government and Vatican officials, and a papal audience was scheduled. Moses wanted to personally meet with Pope John XXIII to invite the Holy See to participate in the fair. The pope’s emphasis on aggiornamento, or “updating,” would dovetail nicely with the Vatican’s presence at the New York World’s Fair. Furthermore, the fair would only be a success, in Moses’s opinion, if the three most powerful organizations in the world – the U.S. government, General Motors, and the Vatican – took part. The first two were a sure thing, so Moses now had to focus his efforts on winning over the pope. To do this he would have to lean on the one person who could deliver: Cardinal Francis Spellman.

On December 7, 1960, William E. Potter, supervisor for all construction for the fair, bumped into Cardinal Spellman at the Lotus Club. Located at Five East 66th Street, the literary club was founded in 1870 and was referred to by Mark Twain as simply the “ace of clubs.” Housed in a French Renaissance-style brownstone designed by Richard Howland Hunt and completed in 1900, the “Club” was, and remains, an exclusive meeting place for New York’s elite. Potter had just completed his thirty-eight-year tenure in the Army Corps of Engineers as governor of the Panama Canal Zone. During World War II he had served as an engineering officer at the Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) and helped plan the invasion of Normandy in 1944. His military experience established him as a person with excellent credentials for overseeing the building of an array of national and corporate pavilions. Walt Disney would later hire Potter to oversee the construction of Disney World in Florida, but for now he was one of “Moses’s Men.”

Reporting to Moses on his exchange with Spellman, Potter wrote in a memo, “Last night at the Lotus Club, Cardinal Spellman shook hands with Boland, and then grabbed me. He said, ‘The lot you people have for us will cost us $168,000 each year. If we take a smaller lot, would we have to pay less money?’ I said, ‘Yes, but you have the prize lot of the Fair.’ He said, ‘You’ve told me what I want to know.’” 

Despite the prime real estate reserved for a Vatican pavilion, Cardinal Spellman remained on the fence regarding such a commitment. As an alternative to the costly construction of a pavilion, the option of an off-site exhibition space was bandied about. Unlike the Brussels Fair of 1958, the New York World’s Fair, Moses decided, would not compete with the city’s already impressive display of visual and performing arts. Instead, events could be scheduled at the brand-new Lincoln Center (under construction at the time) and other venues to coincide with the fair’s run. St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Frick Museum were considered as possible sites for an exhibition of Vatican artwork. Roland Redmond, the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, offered the museum facilities as a possibility, as they could accommodate more people than the cathedral.

Moses was not enthusiastic about any of those options, but in a memo to Thomas Deegan he wrote, “Of course we shall accept cheerfully a verdict not to build a Holy See Exhibit building at the Fair and to use the existing facilities near the Cathedral,” but he predicted that it could be regarded as a “private sectarian show.” He continued, “On further reflection, I’m not sure the analogy with the Lincoln Square Center of the Performing Arts is a true one, and fear there are possibilities of repercussions these days of emotional church and state arguments over schools, education, etc. On the other hand, I need not emphasize my own enormous respect for the judgment of His Eminence and would not think of questioning it if he has made up his mind.” Moses was referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent prohibition of official prayer in public schools; but as the fair was a private corporation, Moses had no such separation qualms and decided to waive the rental fee for all religious buildings. Figuring into his decision was most probably Spellman’s reluctance to build a pavilion, but also the (correct) anticipation that religion would be a draw. With this news, the papal envoy to the United States, Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi, was elated.

At the time the pope had appointed Vagnozzi as apostolic delegate of the Vatican to Washington, D.C., in 1958, the papal representative already had twenty-eight years of experience as a Vatican diplomat. If the United States had had diplomatic ties with the Holy See at the time, as it does today, Vagnozzi’s title would have been nuncio, with the rank of ambassador.

When Thomas Deegan, chairman of the fair’s executive committee, officially called on him (with Spellman’s “concurrence”), Archbishop Vagnozzi expressed his belief that “the Vatican should have one of the most memorable and effective pavilions at the Fair, however small or large.” Vagnozzi suggested that Moses “counsel with Cardinal Spellman about the Church setting up a small national committee made up of key figures in the Church and the laity to see how the pavilion can be brought about on a self-liquidating basis and what its general concept should be.”

Over the next few months, Moses and Deegan would have four visits with Vagnozzi and at least a half dozen with Cardinal Spellman to obtain a firm commitment to participate in the fair. The question was whether or not the American bishops were willing to contribute their pro rata share toward the support of the construction and maintenance of a pavilion for two seasons, which at that time was estimated at $2 million.

Spellman was not opposed to the Vatican participating in the fair, but with far more pressing needs in the archdiocese, he was strongly against spending large sums on an exhibition when money was needed to support the church’s schools and hospitals. He also knew that bishops across the country would be reluctant to commit funds to the construction and operation of a Vatican pavilion without an assurance it would be successful. Spellman voiced doubts that the Vatican would even lend its important works of art, as the fair would coincide with Rome’s tourist high season.

Undeterred, Moses consulted Roland L. Redmond, the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to consider which Vatican masterpieces should be on their short list of requests. A major cultural force in the city, Redmond oversaw the Metropolitan Museum’s massive building expansion as well as an astounding doubling in visitor attendance from the start of his presidency in 1947 to its end in 1964. That Redmond himself was perceived as hostile to contemporary art mattered little; indeed, precisely because of this, Moses trusted his artistic judgment completely.

Redmond first suggested that the Vatican pavilion be a replica of the Sistine Chapel, “with frescoes, ceiling, etc. blown up by the best kind of photography.” Redmond had also assured Moses that there was practically no danger in transporting artworks for exhibitions – museums did it all the time.

The museum’s director, James Rorimer, had served as a monuments and fine arts officer – a “Monuments Man” – so Redmond spoke with confidence. Under Rorimer’s tenure, the museum had hosted a number of important postwar loan exhibitions from European museums, among them paintings from Berlin museums in 1948, art treasures from Vienna in 1949, and Japanese paintings and sculptures in 1953. The most popular, still to come, was the two-month loan show of the Mona Lisa in late 1962.

Ultimately, there was only one piece that combined drawing power with a suitably religious theme: Michelangelo’s Pietà, which, Redmond noted, was “one of the most moving and dramatic statues ever made and represents one of the finest examples of Italy’s greatest sculptor.” Since there were no Michelangelo sculptures in the United States, its uniqueness would add to the attraction; but more important, it carried a deeply religious theme that would be most appropriate for the Vatican pavilion. Redmond already pictured the sculpture staged alone, against a neutral background, with proper lighting, quite unlike the Baroque chapel in which it had been placed centuries ago.

It could only have been the incredible audaciousness of this proposal that won over Cardinal Spellman. Like Moses, who was first to grasp the bigger picture, Spellman understood the weight of selecting the Pietà, regarded by many as Western civilization’s finest and most beloved work of art. Now the deal took form – Spellman would raise the needed funds on the condition the pope approved the sculpture’s loan. On March 29, 1962, the New York Times broke the news: the Pietà was coming to the fair.

Under the headline “Fair Sees Pieta as Top Feature,” journalist Gay Talese credited Cardinal Spellman for his eighteen months of tireless efforts to make this gesture possible; yet exactly how this loan was initiated remains clouded. Spellman himself, however, turned all the credit over to Pope John XXIII, who was “delighted to do it” for two reasons. First, it would offer the chance to see the rare work for millions of people who otherwise would never have the opportunity to make a trip to Rome. And it provided the pope a vehicle to convey his gratitude to the United States for its generosity to the world’s poor. In reality, there would have been no Vatican pavilion if there was no Pietà – that was the deal.