My first Magazine Vogue_USA__June_2017 | Page 54

Nostalgia
Her Brilliant
CAREER
Her mother’s job as a curator at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art
gave Lucy Ives a glimpse into
a mysterious, adult world.
SCULPTURAL STYLE
MODEL INGRID BOULTING IN GRÈS, PHOTOGRAPHED
BY RICHARD AVEDON FOR VOGUE, 1970.
discovering a photograph of my mother taken a few
years before I was born. In the image, my mother stands
in a white room. She is laughing as I had never seen her
laugh in life, completely taken by elation. Surrounding
her are large-format photographs, presumably waiting
to be hung on the walls. Some are still wrapped in pa-
per, but two—showing beautiful women—are visible.
One of the women is also laughing, almost as much
as my mother. I later learned that this long-haired,
gently disheveled, smoking and ring-wearing figure
was the singer Janis Joplin—though for now she was just
an anonymous subject who reminded me a little of myself.
When I brought the picture to my mom, she told me that the
photographs were by a man named Richard Avedon. In 1978
Avedon, a.k.a.“Dick,” had a retrospective at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, where my mother worked as a curator.
This was a standard mother-daughter conversation. There
were many unusual objects in our Upper East Side apartment,
and I was a wily sleuth. I was even beginning to believe—
knowing nothing of the cost of child care—that my mother’s
reason for sometimes bringing me with her to her office after
school was that she wanted my assistance. We traveled, hand in
hand, from the neighborhood’s upper reaches to Fifth Avenue
and the Met’s imposing neoclassical façade. As we ascended
the steps together, I believed that the building belonged to us.
Only we knew about the unfinished blocks at the tops of the
grand columns—meant to become figures personifying the
four great periods of art, from Ancient to Modern, but never
carved. This was the power of the museum: It could hide a
flaw in plain sight and look magnificent while doing so.
My mother and I proudly entered, making our way to my
mother’s department. She was a specialist in European draw-
ings and prints, and her office was accessible via a secret door
in the wall of one of the galleries, which she opened using a
key, often in full sight of gawking tourists. We’d pass through a
study room, into the haven of my mother’s private work space.
The smell was of ancient papers, leather, inks, and resins.
I did homework or looked through my mother’s collection
of antique doorknobs, keys, and keyhole covers. She liked to
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VOGUE JUNE 2017
purchase these odds and ends at European flea markets. I had
no idea what they meant to her.
Later, museum closed and workday done, we exited the
departmental warren and descended through the empty,
darkened building. We passed shadowy busts and portraits,
obscure arms and armor, sacred objects visible only in outline.
These walks, sometimes up or down staircases inaccessible
to the public, would reappear in my dreams. Sometimes it
would be impossible to find my way out of the museum; or a
work of art might come, disconcertingly and messily, to life.
In reality, we always reached an exit without incident. In one
subterranean storage hall, passing a giant two-dimensional
reproduction of a blue hippopotamus sculpture from ancient
Egypt nicknamed “William” by the staff, we’d even salute. My
mother’s heels clicked reassuringly. This was her place.
These are my most vivid childhood memories. Of course,
there were privileges: an early viewing of the immense Christ-
mas tree along with the intricate, miniature crèche, put out
every year without fail in the medieval hall; my mother’s abil-
ity to give the occasional tour to my grade-school class, an
event that filled me with pride. However, it was the incidental
things I cherished: eating lunch in the staff cafeteria, looking
through my mother’s suitcase after she’d come home from a
business trip. These moments impressed upon me the dignity
and solace of work. The institution encompassed my mother;
it seemed to support her at every turn.
Dinner conversation with my father revealed a different
side of the job: other people. There was the macho cura-
tor who always had to get his way, flaunting N O S TA L G I A > 5 6
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I RECALL, AS A GIRL OF EIGHT OR NINE,