2021 Preface

Philip Johnson (1906–2005) was one of the best-known American architects of the twentieth century. His Glass House residence in New Canaan, Connecticut, was an icon of modernism to many, and several of his buildings (although certainly not all) were deemed masterworks. One of these masterworks, the Pre-Columbian Gallery at Dumbarton Oaks, was completed and opened to the public in 1963. “The gallery for Dumbarton Oaks,” wrote Mark Lamster, the architecture writer and critic whose recent book, The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century, provided much of the detail used in this preface, “remains one of Johnson’s most satisfying and beloved designs.”Mark Lamster, The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century (New York, 2018), 297. Lamster further commented: “This gallery for pre-Columbian art, an addition to the Dumbarton Oaks museum in Georgetown, is a true hidden gem, with practically no visible exterior. Connected to the main building by an umbilical glass hall, it is a tic-tac-toe grid of nine circular, domed rooms, with a fountain in the center square. The materials are exquisite—marble, wood, curved glass—and if it is not the very best place for the display of art, it is among the most opulent.” Mark Lamster, “Arbiter of taste, enfant terrible: The best and worst of Philip Johnson: The prolific 20th-century American architect’s work, ranked by the author of Johnson’s mega-biography,” Curbed (November 26, 2018), https://archive.curbed.com/2018/11/6/18065616/philip-johnson-biography-mark-lamster (accessed January 13, 2021).

The following chapters of this study, which was first published in 2013 in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Gallery, chronicle the design history and critical reception of the Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Gallery. Since the date of this study, however, Philip Johnson’s history of bigotry has come to the fore and his name and reputation have been tarnished by his unsavory ideologies and associations. This preface, written in early 2021, serves as an addition and corrective to Johnson’s biography as outlined in the following chapters. In light of the facts narrated in this preface, Dumbarton Oaks has taken the position to discontinue any use of Johnson’s name in the title of or reference to the Pre-Columbian Gallery.Harvard University has taken a similar decision by renaming the Johnson Thesis House in Cambridge, Massachusetts with its street address, 9 Ash Street. See Matt Hickman, “A First Step: Harvard will remove Philip Johnson’s name from Cambridge home that he designed as graduate student,” The Architect’s Newspaper (December 8, 2020), https://www.archpaper.com/2020/12/harvard-will-remove-philip-johnson-name-from-cambridge-home-he-designed/ (accessed January 13, 2021). In doing this, as in all of its endeavors, Dumbarton Oaks affirms its commitment to anti-racism and to being an institution that welcomes and amplifies the voices of all races, ethnicities, and cultural identities.

Philip Johnson was a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite, whose racist and white supremacist ideologies and writings are now widely documented, most recently by Lamster. In the 1930s, Johnson collaborated with the German Nazi party, writing and translating pro-Nazi propaganda, visiting Hitler Youth camps and inspecting Nazi-commissioned architecture at the invitation of Germany’s Propaganda Ministry. He was suspected of being an informant and propagandist for the Nazis during the 1930s and, beginning in 1940, was repeatedly investigated by the FBI.See Mark Lamster, “Was Architect Philip Johnson a Nazi Spy?,” Intelligencer (October 31, 2018), https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/philip-johnson-the-man-in-the-glass-house-mark-lamster-excerpt.html (accessed January 12, 2021); Matt Novak, “One of America's Most Famous Architects Was a Nazi Propagandist,” Gizmodo (April 22, 2014), https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/one-of-americas-most-famous-architects-was-a-nazi-propa-1566021324 (accessed January 12, 2021); and Moutafa Heddaya, “Philip Johnson’s Pro-Nazi Sympathies Detailed in FBI File,” Hyperallergic (April 22, 2014), https://hyperallergic.com/121993/philip-johnsons-pro-nazi-sympathies-detailed-in-fbi-file/ (accessed January 12, 2021).

A virulent anti-Semite and advocate of racial purism, Johnson openly talked about his hatred of Jews, at one point calling them “a different breed of humanity, flitting about like locusts.”Franz Schulze, Philip Johnson: Life and Work (New York, 1994), 136. Reporting from France for the newspaper Social Justice, which was published by the anti-Semite radio commentator Father Charles Coughlin, he stated: “Lack of leadership and direction in the state has let the one group get control who always gain power in a nation’s time of weakness—the Jews.”Lamster, Man in the Glass House, 172. Johnson was also a proponent of racist eugenics, if not cleansing. In 1939, he wrote an article, “Are We a Dying People?,” where he lamented the birth-rate decline of Americans of Nordic/Anglo-Saxon stock and the population explosion of African Americans and immigrants from Ireland and Southern and Eastern Europe.See Kazys Varnelis, “‘We Cannot Not Know History’: Philip Johnson's Politics and Cynical Survival,” Journal of Architectural Education 49, no. 2 (November 1995): 92–104. In the final section of the article, “The Will to Live,” he wrote: “The course of nature is not pre-destined. Human will is a part of the biological process. Our will, for example, interferes, constantly in the world of the lower animals. When English sparrows threaten to drive out our songbirds, we shoot the sparrows, rather than letting nature and Darwin take their course. Thus the songbirds, thanks to our will, become the ‘fittest’ and survive.” Philip Johnson, “Are We a Dying People?,” Today’s Challenge (June–July 1939): 36. Today’s Challenge was a publication of the American Fellowship Forum, an organization conceived by Lawrence Dennis, a former employee of the foreign service. Johnson was friendly with Dennis, who wrote books in support of the Nazi agenda including The Coming American Fascism (New York, 1936). Dennis was arrested and charged with sedition in 1944.

As a reporter for Social Justice and a member of the foreign-press corps in Germany, Johnson directly witnessed the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, the start of World War II. In a letter to a friend written in October 1939, he expressed his pro-Nazi sentiments and wrote: “We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed. It was a stirring spectacle.”Schulze, Philip Johnson, 139. Upon his return to the United States later that month, however, he became aware that he was being investigated by the FBI, which followed him, detailed his activities, and questioned his friends. The memos and letters in his file, beginning in May 1940, describe him as a pro-Nazi sympathizer who had “expressed his interest in the coming Revolution and has stated that things will be different ‘when the revolution comes.’”Heddaya, “Philip Johnson’s Pro-Nazi Sympathies.” During FBI interviews, Johnson passed off his activities as journalistic research and described his meetings with German officials as merely social events. Nevertheless, he quickly became aware that his pro-Nazi ideology was untenable, and that should America enter the war, which it did in December 1941, his involvement with Germany would become a liability. When a 1940 Harper’s Magazine articleDale Kramer, “The American Fascists,” Harper’s Magazine 181 (September 1940): 380–93. listed Johnson as a leading American Nazi and traced with accuracy the history of his Nazi and Fascist affiliations, Johnson seemingly chose that fall to quietly reinvent himself by enrolling in the Harvard University School of Design to study architecture, a decision which launched his career. As a graduate student, Johnson began to dissemble himself and rehabilitate his image. He organized an anti-Fascist league at the Harvard School of Design and later enlisted in the U.S. Army. However, as a 1941 FBI report in his file states, “In some quarters [it is] believed that [Johnson] has reformed and is attempting to convince people of his sincerity while others feel that his present position is covering up his real feelings.”Marc Wortman, 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War (Munich, 2018), 153. See also Nikil Saval, “Philip Johnson, the Man Who Made Architecture Amoral: How a Giant of Twentieth-Century Architecture Escaped—and Enacted—His Far-Right Past,” New Yorker (December 12, 2018), https://www.newyorker.com/culture/dept-of-design/philip-johnson-the-man-who-made-architecture-amoral (accessed January 6, 2021).

Occasionally, as Johnson’s architectural career flourished, questions of his past Nazi sympathies surfaced, although none had lasting consequences or inflicted career damage. Johnson undertook some concerted steps to atone for his racist past: in 1956, he designed a synagogue for the Kneses Tifereth Israel congregation in Port Chester, New York, at no charge for his firm’s work; in 1959, he worked for the state of Israel, providing plans for a nuclear reactor in Rehovot; and he promoted the work of some Jewish-American architects, including Frank Gehry. In the late twentieth century, as public figures faced ever-greater accountability, Johnson more directly repudiated his political ideologies of the 1930s. In a 1993 Vanity Fair interview, he stated: “I have no excuse [for] such utter, unbelievable stupidity. . . . I don’t know how you expiate guilt.”Kurt Andersen, “Philip the Great,” Vanity Fair 56, no. 6 (June 1993): 154.

Many have questioned the sincerity of Johnson’s acts of contrition. Kazys Varnelis pointed out in his 1995 article, “We Cannot Not Know History,” that Johnson never overtly said that what he did was wrong or that he was sorry to have been an open advocate of evil for so many years.Varnelis, “‘We Cannot Not Know History,’” 99. In late 2020, the Johnson Study Group,See https://www.instagram.com/johnsonstudygroup (accessed January 14, 2021). The group’s stated purpose was to study “the legacy of a 20th century white supremacist who founded the most significant modern architectural institutions in the United States.” founded in part by V. Mitch McEwen, a Princeton architecture professor, published an online letterThe letter was first published on November 27, 2020; see https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9AGFviN6FRzDwzzTwmxEGsRyHfccwUchZm6BoTXTueUpIwA/viewform (accessed January 14, 2021). At the time of its first publication, 31 prominent people in architecture, design, and art also signed on. in which they further condemned Johnson for his lifelong history of racism. They stated that “[h]e effectively segregated the architectural collection at MoMA, where under his leadership (1933–1988) not a single work by any Black architect or designer was included in the collection [and that he] not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in the field of architecture, a legacy that continues to do harm today.” They admonished that “Philip Johnson’s widely documented white supremacist views and activities make him an inappropriate namesake within any educational or cultural institution that purports to serve a wide public.” The group called on MoMa, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and “any other public-facing nonprofit in the United States to remove the name of Philip Johnson from every leadership title, public space, and honorific of any form.”See Diana Budds, “Artists to MoMA: Take Down Philip Johnson’s Name,” Curbed (December 1, 2020), https://www.curbed.com/2020/12/philip-johnson-name-removal-moma-fascism.html (accessed January 14, 2021) and Fred A. Bernstein, “MoMA and Harvard GSD Respond to Activists’ Call to Remove Philip Johnson’s Name,” Architectural Record (December 4, 2020, updated December 7, 2020), https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/14911-moma-and-harvard-gsd-respond-to-activists-call-to-remove-philip-johnsons-name (accessed January 14, 2021).

In light of the above narrative, the question arises: did those responsible for the commission of the Pre-Columbian Gallery know of Johnson’s bigoted past? That question cannot be answered through documentation. The extant correspondence related to the design development and construction of the Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Gallery is devoid of any bigoted references or insinuations and makes no mention of Philip Johnson’s racist past. Whether or not this past was known to Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss, the founders of Dumbarton Oaks, who were instrumental in the building’s commission and design, or to John Thacher, the institutional director at the time, is also not documented. The Blisses, however, are on record as being greatly concerned about and financially supporting Jewish friends during World War II, including arranging for the Jewish archaeologist Doro Levi to come to the United States to escape Fascist Italy.James N. Carder, “Doro Levi in America,” in Lebensbilder; Klassische Archäologen und der Nationalsozialismus, ed. Gunnar Brands and Martin Maischberger (Leidorf, 2016), 363. And what can now be stated with hindsight is that the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection possesses a remarkable pavilion built to house the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art that was designed by a noted architect with a considerably troubled past. The history of how that building came to be is narrated in the following chapters.