[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 22 (Wednesday, February 26, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1685-S1686]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTE TO LAWRENCE A. FLEISCHMAN

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, though perhaps most Americans 
outside the world of art will not readily recognize the name of 
Lawrence Fleischman, they will know his legacy. Before he died last 
week at 71, his extraordinary contribution to the Nation's major 
museums ensured that his name will live on, along with the magnificent 
artistic treasures he and his family so generously donated.
  As an art dealer, he was, by any measure, a success. But his 
refreshingly modest attitude toward the worldly goods he accumulated 
bears repeating. Many of these were priceless antiquities from ancient 
Greece, Rome, and Etruria. If I may quote from the New York Times 
obituary:

       ``No one owns a work of art,'' he said. ``You're the 
     custodian of it for the future. You take care of it, you have 
     the pleasure of living with it, and then you pass it on. It 
     is our hope that we leave it to the public.''

  Here in Washington, he helped establish the Archives of American Art, 
a wonderful research resource of the Smithsonian Institution. In New 
York, the Lawrence A. and Barbara Fleischman Gallery of American Art 
will stand as long as the Metropolitan Museum stands, as well as the 
three other galleries the couple so thoughtfully supported. He has also 
promised the New York Public Library a substantial gift.
  In short, Lawrence Fleischman was a philanthropist, a word with a 
distinctly archaic ring to it. But in an age

[[Page S1686]]

of private wealth and public stringency, it is a word we need to hear 
much more often.
  There being no objection, I ask that the full text of Carol Vogel's 
obituary from the February 4 New York Times be printed in the Record.
  The obituary follows:

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 4, 1997]

               Lawrence A. Fleischman, 71, an Art Dealer

                            (By Carol Vogel)

       Lawrence A. Fleischman, chairman and chief executive 
     officer of Kennedy Galleries in Manhattan, an authority on 
     American art from the 18th through 20th centuries and a major 
     collector of antiquities, died on Friday at his home in 
     London. He was 71 and also lived in Manhattan.
       The cause was heart failure, said Lillian Brenwasser, vice 
     president of Kennedy Galleries.
       Besides being an expert on American art, Mr. Fleischman was 
     known for his philanthropic activities. In June, he and his 
     wife, Barbara, gave a large portion of their antiquities 
     collection to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif. In 
     an arrangement whereby they donated most of the collection 
     and the Getty purchased the rest, the museum was able to add 
     about 300 objects, worth an estimated $80 billion, to its 
     collection.
       The works, from ancient Greece, Rome and Etruria, dated 
     from 2800 B.C. to A.D. 400. They had been collected by the 
     Fleischmans over the last 40 years.
       The Fleischmans have also been major supporters of the 
     British Museum as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 
     Detroit Institute of Art, the Cleveland Museum and the 
     Vatican Museum.
       In 1982 the couple endowed a chair in the Metropolitan 
     Museum's department of American art and supported the 
     installation of three galleries in its American Wing that 
     feature examples of American art from the museum's permanent 
     collections. The Lawrence A. and Barbara Fleischman Gallery 
     is an oval room that houses John Vanderlyn's ``Panoramic View 
     of the Palace of Versailles (1818-1819). A room endowed by 
     Kennedy Galleries is filled with folk and painted furniture 
     as well as decorative arts. The third gallery, the Martha and 
     Rebecca Fleischman Gallery, named after the couple's 
     daughters, shows American examples of 19th-century revival 
     styles.
       In 1983 the Fleischmans also gave money to establish a 
     gallery of late medieval secular art at the museum that also 
     is named after them. A decade later they helped underwrite a 
     permanent position for a senior scholar in the Met's 
     department of Greek and Roman art.
       Mr. Fleischman worked to foster wider appreciation of 
     American art. He served on a White House advisory committee 
     during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and was co-
     founder with the art historian E. P. Richardson of the 
     Archives of American Art, which was created as a primary art 
     research resource for writers and scholars and is now a part 
     of the Smithsonian Institution.
       Mr. Fleischman also founded the American Art Journal in 
     1969 and was a board member of the Art Dealers Association of 
     America and a fellow of the Pierpont Morgan Library. In 1991 
     he became chairman of Caryatides, a group that supports the 
     British Museum's department of Greek and Roman antiquities. 
     He also began and was chairman of the American Friends of the 
     British Museum.
       In 1978 Pope Paul VI named Mr. Fleischman a Papal Knight of 
     the Order of St. Sylvester and in 1986 he was named a Knight-
     Commander of St. Sylvester, one of the highest distinctions a 
     lay person can receive from the church.
       Born in 1925 in Detroit, Mr. Fleischman studied at the 
     Western Military Academy in Alton, Ill., at Purdue University 
     and at the University of Detroit, from which he graduated in 
     1948. That year he married Barbara Greenberg.
       His interest in antiquities had begun during World War II 
     when, as a soldier stationed in Paris, he visited ancient 
     Roman sites.
       In 1966 he and his family moved from Detroit to New York, 
     where he became a partner in Kennedy Galleries.
       Mr. Fleischman had recently committed himself to 
     refurbishing a room at the British Museum and had just 
     promised the New York Public Library a gift described by the 
     Kennedy Galleries to be ``in the seven figures.''
       In addition to his wife and his daughters, Rebecca, of 
     Portland, Ore., and Martha, president of Kennedy Galleries, 
     he is survived by a son, Arthur, of Boston.
       Mr. Fleischman always insisted that he and his wife were 
     only ``temporary custodians'' of their collections.
       ``No one owns a work of art,'' he said. ``You're the 
     custodian of it for the future. You take care of it, you have 
     the pleasure of living with it, and then you pass it on. It 
     is our hope that we leave it to the public.''

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