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The Boston Raphael
A Mysterious Painting, an Embattled Museum in an Era of Change, & A Daughter’s Search for the Truth
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In his prime, Perry Rathbone was one of the most influential museum directors in America – a connoisseur of great breadth as well as a brilliant showman. Over the course of thirty-two years he played a crucial role in the modernization of the American art museum, transforming them from quiet repositories of art into palaces for the people. As director of the City Art Museum of Saint Louis (now known as the Saint Louis Art Museum) from 1940 to 1955 and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1955 to 1972, he ambitiously moved both museums forward into the postwar era. He staged unprecedented loan exhibitions, and with his flair for publicity, he attracted record crowds. He brought light and life into the galleries and expanded and improved auditoriums, restaurants, and gift shops. He established committees of women volunteers and with their help invigorated museum programs with films, lectures, and special tours both local and abroad. Under his leadership, attendance and membership increased exponentially, and consequently so did revenue. In Boston his staff tripled, the budget quadrupled, and the annual sale of publications increased more than 1,000 percent. These were achievements of which my father was justly proud, but he knew that numbers were not the only measure of success. More than anything, he was proud of the acquisitions he had made for the museums’ permanent collections. His career had been ascendant in every way, until the end. To this day many observers continue to wonder how the dean of American museum directors could have made such a fateful and avoidable error of judgment. More than one person has reflected that, in the manner of Icarus, Perry flew too close to the sun. Still others have called the behind-the-scenes drama at the MFA Shakespearean in the scope of its moral struggle. Some viewed Rathbone as a tragic hero, a martyr to the museum cause. As one former colleague said of his fall, “Perry had to take it for the whole rest of the art world.”9
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