Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
Gone To Blazes
The MoMA Fire That Destroyed a Coveted Monet Painting
In
1958, a New York MoMA’s workman’s cigarette landed on some sawdust,
sparking a massive fire that killed an electrician, as well as
destroying a valuable Monet.
11.12.16 5:01 AM ET
Shortly
after noon on April 15, 1958, a group of electricians working on the
second floor of the Museum of Modern Art decided to indulge in the day’s
favorite lunchtime custom—a smoke.
The
workers had been hired to make repairs to the air-conditioning unit in a
part of the building that housed the museum’s permanent collection.
Nearly two decades before, MoMA had been one of the first major museums
in the world to bring the modern marvel of AC
to its galleries. But now, their system was sadly out of date, and the
museum had undertaken a month-long project to install a new unit and
make updates to the system.
So,
when the noon hour rolled around on this mid-April day, the
electricians hired to do the job dropped their tools where they were and
indulged in what was likely a much-needed break. Drop cloths covered
the floor, open paint cans sat nearby, and it is believed a pile or two
of sawdust were left where they had fallen.
As to what happened next, ++The New York Times reported The New York Times reported
that authorities believed a spark from one of the workmen’s cigarettes
fluttered away and landed on the saw dust, which went up in flames,
igniting the drop cloths followed by the highly flammable cans of paint.
With
that one little spark, a deadly chain reaction was set in motion that
would result in a destructive, three-alarm fire that raged through MoMA.
The
blaze, “brought traffic to a standstill in the Fifth Ave. area for
almost four hours and left the modernistic glass facade of the museum,
one of the city’s showplaces, a smashed and blackened network of broken
windows and streaked stone,” reporter Judith Crist wrote in the next morning’s edition of the New York Herald Tribune.
It
was an event that ended in tragedy. When the smoke cleared, one
electrician—55-year-old Ruby Geller from Brooklyn—was dead. He had
succumbed to smoke inhalation and was found lying face-down in a
six-inch pool of water on the third floor. Five hundred museum visitors
and employees had been evacuated from the scene, with three—in addition
to 28 firemen—sustaining injuries.
The
human toll of the disaster was joined by the destruction of a priceless
work of art. Five paintings, including a relatively small seven-foot
Monet “Water Lilies,” had been damaged in the blaze. (A later account in
The New York Times described
the small Monet as having come “through the fire looking like a toasted
marshmallow.”) But the worst loss was the total destruction of a giant,
18.5-foot Monet painting also titled “Water Lilies.”
Only three years earlier, MoMA had been proud to announce that it was the first public institution
to acquire one of the larger pieces from Monet’s famous series. The
artist, who was also an avid gardener, had moved into a new countryside
home in Giverny, France, in 1883.
Soon
after, he set about turning the surrounding property into his dream
estate. He planted vibrant and lively flowers on the grounds, installed
water lilies in the property’s pond, and created Japanese-style gardens.
“Suddenly
I had the revelation of how magical my pond is. I took up my palette.
Since that time I have scarcely had any other model,” Monet said.
And
this remained the case for the last three decades of his life, during
which time he painted nearly 250 different pieces inspired by his
garden. Most now consider these paintings some of the artist’s greatest
works. But in Monet’s day, his “Water Lilies” series wasn’t quite as popular; several of his contemporaries criticized
the highly Impressionistic effect of the blurred scenes and colors as
more representative of his failing eyesight than his exceptional
artistic ability.
Monet was reported to have responded to this criticism with the wise resignation that, “ They will perhaps adapt themselves to it in time, but I came too soon.”
The
time of the “Water Lilies” arrived in the 1950s, when the art world
began to take note of just how incredible this body of work was. MoMA
was on the cutting edge and acquired the large painting in 1955; on its
arrival, it was described
as “shimmering like an Impressionist’s version of paradise.” The
smaller Monet was purchased just one year later, two years before fire
would strike the museum.
When
the fire broke out, many of the building’s occupants escaped through
adjoining buildings, including an annex on one side that housed the
museum’s offices and the Whitney Museum of American Art, which was
located behind MoMA and had several shared doors. One group was stranded
on the sixth-floor penthouse garden until firemen could clear the
stairwells of a thick black smoke, while two women visitors were
evacuated through a smashed window and guided down a ladder extending up
from the street below.
Reports in the New York Herald Tribune
praised most for acquitting themselves well in the emergency. Except
for one unfortunate lady, that is, who had the distinction of panicking,
breaking a window, and chucking her hat, purse, and shoes out onto the
street below. Firemen rescued her soon after, and led her to an elevator
just a short distance away that was still in operation. (From our
comfort in the all-knowing future, we’ll refrain from commenting on the
frightening use of elevators in this rescue story.)
Once
safely on the ground, the building’s staff and visitors discovered that
one of the storage rooms on the second floor that housed over 300 works
of art was in danger. The fire department had intentionally used
smaller hoses and nozzles in an attempt to keep the water damage to a
minimum, but this room was flooding at a frightening rate. A group of
survivors, including many of the museum’s female employees and Nelson
Rockefeller, who was chairman of the board, decided to brave the
suffocating heat and smoke once again and try to save the priceless
works.
“The volunteers, all of
whom had been trapped for periods of up to one hour on various floors of
the museum, waited only long enough to clear their lungs naturally or
by pulling at an inhalator before making their way back into the
smoke-filled building,” Paul Tobenkin reported in the New York Herald Tribune on April 16, 1958.
“In
groups of five or six, many with noses and mouths covered by
handkerchiefs like bandits in a Western movie, the group took the
elevator to the storage room. Here they formed a ‘bucket brigade’
operation, passing the paintings from hand to hand until they reached
the elevator.”
While these
heroes rescued much of MoMA’s permanent collection, they could not save
the large Monet, which had been hanging close to where the fire broke
out. At the time it was destroyed, this “Water Lillies” was valued at
$40,000, but had it survived, it would undoubtedly be worth a whole lot
more. On June 24, 2008, Christie’s set a new record for the most
expensive Monet ever sold—Water Lily Pond went for $80.5 million.
But
money is beside the point when it comes to an exceptional work of art
that is now missing from history. It is an irreplaceable loss—for
everyone except the MoMA that is.
The
museum received around $300,000 in insurance payouts for the damage
done that mid-April day. The directors took the money and, a year later,
++they bought a new Monet
from the artist’s son Michel. This time, they went with the now
celebrated “Water Lilies” triptych. It is a stunning work, and one that
some have quietly suggested may be even more exceptional than the
original acquisition.
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