Date: Fri 26-Jun-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: LAURAB

Quick Words:

Winterthur

Full Text:

Winterthur Tribute To Al Cummings

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WINTERTHUR, DEL. -- Friends, colleagues, and students of Abbott Lowell

Cummings gathered at Winterthur on Saturday, June 20, to pay tribute to this

year's winner of the Henry Francis du Pont Award for distinguished

contribution to the American arts.

"Tonight we honor a scholar, curator, teacher, and gentle man," began

Winterthur's director Dwight P. Lanmon, introducing an evening's program that

included remarks by John A. Herdeg, chairman of the award committee; Mrs

Edward C. Johnson, 3rd; Edward S. Cooke, Jr; and W.L. Lyons Brown, Jr,

chairman of Winterthur's board of trustees. A response by Cummings and a

black-tie dinner followed the address.

"Abbott explains complex ideas clearly and comprehensively, reflecting the

precision of his thinking and the depth and breadth of his understanding,"

said Lanmon, noting the historian's legendary teaching talents. Cummings'

skills were honed in a 50-year career that took him from Antioch College in

Ohio to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing, the Society For The

Preservation of New England Antiquities in Boston, and the universities of

Boston, Yale, and Massachusetts.

"Abbott spent a career researching the domestic architecture of America's

Seventeenth Century. Mr du Pont shared this interest also," said Herdeg.

Following visits in 1923 to the homes of Mrs Watson Webb and Henry Sleeper, du

Pont's casual interest developed into a serious academic pursuit paralleling

Cummings' own evolving interests, Herdeg recalled.

"Knowing Abbott, a fine and dedicated man, has made a mark on our lives," said

Mrs Edward C. Johnson, 3rd, whose association with Cummings began when she

joined SPNEA as its youngest trustee in 1972. "The true principles of human

involvement, caring, and understanding shine through in all his endeavors,"

said Johnson, who is among this nation's foremost collectors of American

decorative arts.

Edward S. Cooke, Jr, who succeeded Cummings as the Charles F. Montgomery

professor of American decorative arts at Yale, joined in the affectionate

tribute to the man whose generosity was recalled by many. Cummings' reputation

preceded him, said Cooke, who noted that he had first heard of Cummings from

Winterthur's late furniture curator, Benno Forman. "I was intrigued, because

you were one of the few people that Forman held in respect," said Cooke,

producing laughter.

In his response, Cummings displayed the style, wit, and innate sense of timing

that has endeared him to his students. "As someone once remarked of one of our

Hollywood actors in his later years, he had become an old ham looking for a

platter," the award winner said disarmingly of himself.

Cummings then acknowledged the significant influences in his life: his

paternal grandmother, "who watched her several grandchildren like a hawk,

hoping for signs of the usual symptoms of antiquarian madness," and Clarence

Ward, from whom Cummings received the inspiration to teach. "His impact was

both immediate and electrifying," Cummings said of the Oberlin professor. "He

was lean and spare and would leap over anything in his path to get to the

podium. I may have inherited some of that," the historian added wryly.

Wallingford, Conn., antiquarian Elmer Keith taught Cummings to analyze early

architecture. "Keith graduated from Yale in 1911, became a Rhodes Scholar at

Oxford and a friend of T.S. Eliot. Midway through that he chucked it all and

went over to Vienna to sit at the feet of Jung for a few years. He returned to

the States about as ill prepared as one could imagine to pursue anything

remotely resembling a normal profession," the award winner said to the

enthralled crowd.

"Keith restored a splendid 1756 brick house just outside New Haven around

1930. He lived hand to mouth, both collecting and dealing, dabbling in

historic real estate, writing a little, though never enough. He introduced me

to Bert and Nina Little and taught me to decode architectural secrets. His

most casual statements always had an epigrammatic force that I still recall

with amusement," Cummings recollected.

The historian tossed a bouquet to the women who guided him in his professional

life. "They loom as a legendary breed apart. Of course I mean Nina Fletcher

Little, Louisa Dresser, Gertrude Townsend, Florence Montgomery, Katherine

Buhler, Lura Woodside Watkins, Alice Winchester -- the list goes on and on,"

said Cummings.

With characteristic grace, he concluded, "I should say very simply upon

leaving this podium that the greatest satisfactions of mine have been just

such moments as these when I find myself surrounded by students and

colleagues. The great honor of the Du Pont Award will always be associated in

my mind with infinite enjoyment of sharing this day with you all."

Two past recipients of the Henry Francis du Pont Award for the Decorative

Arts, Pamela Cunningham Copeland and Robert Sack, joined in the tribute to

Abbott Lowell Cummings. Other past prize winners include Bertram and Nina

Fletcher Little, Frank Horton, Alice Winchester, Clement E. Conger, Wendell

Garrett, and Israel Sack, Inc.

In addition to Herdeg and Copeland, members of the award committee include

William K. du Pont, Morrison H. Heckscher, Graham Hood, Jane C. Nylander, and

Dianne H. Pilgrim.