Nostalgia
Nights at the Museum
the economic superiority of his specialty and mocking my mother’ s lowly prints and illustrated books. There were also regular updates on Brooke Astor, the late heiress, with whom my mother lunched from time to time— and here the tone of the report shifted. Mrs. Astor was extraordinary; the chauvinist was forgotten amid reflections about Mrs. Astor’ s palatial apartment, the pleasantness of her conversation. Sometimes celebrities appeared, requesting tours. There was the week of Brad Pitt. Despite repeated entreaties, all my mother would say was that he seemed“ attentive.”
I knew from the Avedon installation picture that my mother’ s life at the museum had been different before my time, maybe more surprising. It was, after all, her first big job. She’ d fled a difficult family situation in San Diego and taken a master’ s in art history at Columbia. Here she’ d met my father, who was studying law and had previously worked construction on the side. They’ d made a go of it. My mother changed her first name as well as her last in marriage, and my father left behind Yonkers and his working-class roots. My mother had the physical gifts that permit self-transformation: She was slender, with sweet, symmetrical features and beguiling brown eyes. She made powerful friends, including the philanthropist Lincoln Kir stein, and rose quickly through the ranks at the Met, becoming the director of her department. She met Andy Warhol.
“ But what was Andy like?” I demanded to know. I was a teenager now, and the 1990s had brought renewed hunger for Warhol’ s commodified irony. Even Kurt Cobain seemed to be modeling himself on the Factory magus.
“ Weird,” my mother said.“ Quiet.” transformed, at nightfall. I continued to grow away from her, at first physically, then creatively. I became obsessed with drawing, a pursuit my mother discouraged vehemently when a high school teacher suggested I apply to art school. I would go often to the museum on Friday afternoons to work on my sketches. I no longer bothered to venture up to my mother’ s office; I came alone and sat alone and left without her.
After I was accepted at Harvard, the polar opposite of art school, my mother began taking me with her on research trips, perhaps because I was a good sounding board or perhaps to keep an eye on me. We went to London, Paris, Australia, and French Polynesia. Our last trip, an inquiry into Paul Gauguin’ s final days on the remote island of Hiva Oa, was challenging. I was tailed by wild dogs when I foolishly attempted to visit the artist’ s grave alone, and my mother came close to drowning.
By this time, my mother and I disagreed on many topics. Not least among these was my appearance. All my clothing was deemed too tight. My eye makeup was eternally inappropriate, what my mother termed“ your Cleopatra eyes,” a mild dig I tried to take as a compliment, given the Met’ s spectacular Egyptian collection. Meanwhile, I was athletic, verging on Amazonian, or so I felt. By age twelve, I was already passing my mother in height. I played three sports. My face came from my father. His Assyrian-Iranian and Polish features— dark hair, broad face, pronounced nose— had won out over Mom’ s German-WASP blend. In spite of my apparently British last name— in fact an Ellis Island corruption of my paternal grandfather’ s Ivas— everyone assumed I was of Eastern European descent and Jewish. Among friends’ families I usually smoothed over any confusion by preemptively proclaiming that I had no religious education at all, which was true.
Only later did I understand how fully one can reinvent oneself in New York City, particularly with a good partner in metamorphosis, as it were. In my mother’ s case, I was never entirely sure if that partner was my father or the museum itself, which during certain periods seemed to consume her whole each morning, spitting her out again, mysteriously
BALANCING ACT THE AUTHOR’ S MOTHER, COLTA IVES( SECOND FROM LEFT), INSTALLING AVEDON PORTRAITS AT THE MET, 1978.
This episode took place on a volcanic beach, where we were walking. I don’ t know why my mother decided to swim, but swim she did, and was caught in a rip current. Our host, Monsieur Gaby, and I stood on the shore, watching with mounting horror.“ Swim to the side!” Gaby yelled, probably in French. Eventually all was well, but in that petrifying moment I saw clearly and for the first time the distance between my mother and me. It wasn’ t just the fast-moving ocean.
Later, after my mother had staggered back to land, we all stood staring at one another. I felt as if I was meeting her for the first time. Gaby, meanwhile, seemed ready to depart. We piled into his SUV. As the vehicle bounded up the lush mountainside, I reflected on what an odd couple we must appear: the brooding daughter wandering off into an overgrown cemetery; the sociable mother nearly swept out to sea. Or perhaps we were not so much“ odd” as inverses, I thought, mirror images.
But what a strange and difficult mirror it was. □
COURTESY OF COLTA IVES
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VOGUE JUNE 2017 VOGUE. COM