THE EDUCATION OF TONY MARX
JACOB BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
October 11, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition – Final
EVERYWHERE Tony Marx goes, he does a lot of smiling and nodding. As the
president of the New York Public Library (a job he took over in July
2011, after eight years as the president of Amherst), it is his job to
smile and nod at big-name writers around whom the library plans events.
It is his job to smile and nod at the business leaders who serve
on his board. It is his job to smile and nod at heads of foundation
boards, at members of the City Council and officials in the Bloomberg
administration, whom he lobbies for money and patronage, since the
library (like most publicly financed institutions) has been subject
to brutal budget cuts over the last four years.
Anyway, smiling and nodding are certainly what he was doing on an early
September evening at a cocktail party for the Doris Duke Foundation
for Islamic Art at the Museum of Arts and Design at 2 Columbus Circle,
working the room, introducing himself to anyone and everyone, offering
tours, giving pats on the back and providing reassurances to people
who appeared to be slightly wary of him.
Mr. Marx has had to reassure a lot of people of late.
Last November, right on the eve of the annual Library Lions dinner,
he was arrested in Harlem at 2 p.m. on a Sunday after he sideswiped
a parked truck with a library-owned vehicle. Mr. Marx then failed a
Breathalyzer test, which determined that he had a blood-alcohol level
of 0.19, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08. (Mr. Marx pleaded
guilty to charges of driving while intoxicated and was ordered to pay
a $500 fine, give up his license for six months and attend counseling.)
Hello, New York!
The arrest was, of course, big news in the tabloids, and for a while
it appeared as if Mr. Marx’s tenure as the library’s president might be
short-lived. But despite having what several board members described as
“intense conversations” about his future, they ultimately decided not
to fire him. Recently, in an interview in his office, he declined to
discuss the incident except to say, “It was a stupid mistake and it
won’t happen again.”
In April, Mr. Marx was again in the news, this time when a host of
big-name writers and scholars, including Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard
and Jonathan Lethem, took a stand against the board of trustees’
plan to move off site millions of rare books in the 42nd Street
flagship (because of budget cuts, they explained), while plans were
being completed to spend around $350 million to have the space there
spruced up by the star-architect Norman Foster. Opposition also came
in a 5,300-word cover story in The Nation, then a two-part series in
the literary journal N+1.
Resistance to the plan crystallized with an Op-Ed article for The New
York Times written by Edmund Morris, and headlined “Sacking a Palace
of Culture.” In it, Mr. Morris, a biographer of Teddy Roosevelt and
Ronald Reagan, referred to himself as “a habitue of all of that great
institution’s research facilities” and explained that “it was with
a surge of emotion, therefore, that I read newspaper reports about
the determination of Anthony W. Marx, the president of the library,
to spend $300 million to transform the main building, long devoted
to reference, into what sounds like a palace of presentism.”
No matter that the plan was under way well before Mr. Marx had
assumed the presidency of the library; he was now the public face
of a dispute that seemed poised to divide the city’s cultural and
business communities.
Yet on this recent Wednesday evening, you would not have thought Mr.
Marx was a man under siege. In fact, there seemed to be something of a
spring in his step. He posed for photos with foundation staff members,
joked with Nan Keohane, the former president of Wellesley, and chatted
with a historian named Susan Zuccotti, who had done her dissertation
at the library and took the opportunity to let Mr. Marx know that
she was “very concerned” about the plan. Very concerned indeed.
“My big problem is,” she said, “not so much now, but I had three
kids. If I’d had to wait three or four or five days to get a book,
it would be very difficult — — ”
Mr. Marx, holding a glass of Diet Coke and listening politely, took
this is as a moment to make a gentle interruption. The library had
hoped, Mr. Marx told her, to “encourage people to order in advance.
That doesn’t work. So I believe the board will vote next week to
change the plan so that basically all the books on site are going to
stay on site.”
“Well, that is fantastic!” Ms. Zuccotti said. “That’s fantastic news.”
Mr. Marx smiled and nodded.
ON paper, Anthony W. Marx, 53, would seem like an ideal candidate
to run the nation’s largest public library system. Like many of his
predecessors, most notably the near-legendary Vartan Gregorian, he was
a well-regarded academic. And at Amherst, he proved himself not only a
popular leader, but also an effective fund-raiser who in 2009 presided
over what the college heralded as the largest unrestricted cash gift
ever made to a liberal arts college ($100 million), a skill that would
be crucial for anyone taking on the perennially cash-strapped library.
But there was more.
Mr. Marx grew up using his own branch of the library in Inwood,
where his parents were anything but rich. His mother was a physical
therapist and his father (whose education stopped at high school)
worked at a steel trading company.
At Yale, which Mr. Marx transferred to after two years at Wesleyan,
he studied political science and did his senior thesis on Plato’s
Academy, using it to discuss the role of education in society.
He went to graduate school at Princeton and studied with Albert
Hirschman, the father of development economics. Mr. Marx also
ventured to South Africa, spending 3 ½ years, on and off, working
for a nongovernmental organization that set up a school for black
students whose education had been stymied by apartheid.
Shortly after getting his Ph.D., Mr. Marx joined the political science
department of Columbia University in 1990, and met his future wife,
the sociology professor Karen Barkey, whom he married two years later.
(The couple have two children and now live near Columbia in faculty
housing.)
In 2003, he was hired as the president of Amherst, a school that
was known for being politically left-leaning, but conservative when
it came to getting anything done in the way of reform. A particular
focus for Mr. Marx was diversifying the student body, bringing in
not only more minorities, but also international students, veterans
and the middle-aged.
It wasn’t always a seamless process, and some professors complained
that Mr. Marx was arrogant and talked too much about democracy when
his management style was fairly autocratic.
“Faculty members wanted to be consulted more,” said Amrita Basu,
a professor of political science and women’s and gender studies there.
“They felt Tony was trying to change too much too quickly.”
But the board of the New York Public Library, which heard a fair
amount about these skirmishes, thought that if anything, this made
him more qualified for the job, not less.
Said Joshua Steiner, a former chief of staff in the Treasury Department
under Bill Clinton and a vice chairman of the board of trustees at the
library, “If you look at Tony’s experience in a complex environment
pushing through meaningful change, that to my mind was a clear and
important indicator of his willingness to think deeply about issues
and to believe strongly in the importance of change.”
And by the time Mr. Marx left Amherst, it was being heralded as a
beacon of change, offering a higher percentage of its student body
financial aid than almost any other liberal arts college in America.
IN 1981, the New York Public Library, broke and facing a slew of
terrible options, hired Mr. Gregorian, an Armenian academic and an
expert in Asian studies, to help rescue the place.
“When I accepted the presidency, someone told me to see a
psychiatrist,” he recalled in a recent interview. “Because we were
bankrupt.”
At his first meeting, the agenda was how to shut down the branches,
sell off the collections and charge the public admission at the
central library.
It was time for a savior, and one arrived in the form of Brooke Astor,
the socialite and philanthropist, then in her late 70s, but still a
formidable force on the city’s social scene, which she would remain
almost until her death at 105 in 2007.
Mrs. Astor had recently been sidelined at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art and was looking for something to do. “They’d invoked a clause
making her an emeritus and she didn’t feel very emeritus at all,”
said the journalist Meryl Gordon, who wrote the biography “Mrs. Astor
Regrets.”
So Mrs. Astor called Mr. Gregorian, and they joined forces with Richard
Salomon and Andrew Heiskell (a former chief executive of Time Inc.) to
begin a huge fund-raising effort. Soon enough, in came big donors
like the real estate developer Marshall Rose, and the heiress Celeste
Bartos. The library began holding increasingly high-profile readings
with authors and started giving galas like the library Lions dinner,
which had its first event later that year.
Tables cost $10,000 each, and the guest list (much of which came
from Mrs. Astor’s formidable Rolodex) rivaled any state dinner. Look
over there: it’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis! And a hop, skip and a
jump away, Norman Mailer and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Not to mention
countless other Social X-rays, who, to quote Ms. Gordon, “realized
that if they donated to the library, they’d get invited to dinner.”
In short order, junkies disappeared from the steps of the central
library, the facade was cleaned up and scores of curators were hired.
Services at the branches around the city improved considerably.
The library was a hot institution, one that bestowed upon
its benefactors a decided social cachet — something that future
presidents would come to rely on. (On Oct. 22, as a fund-raiser for
the library, the board will stage a reading of works by Nora Ephron,
this reporter’s mother.)
In 1989, after Mr. Gregorian left to become the president of Brown
University (he’s now the president of the Carnegie Corporation), the
organization was taken over by the Rev. Timothy S. Healy, a Jesuit
priest and former president of Georgetown University, who three years
into the job died of a heart attack. As his successor, the board tapped
Paul LeClerc, a Voltaire scholar with prodigious fund-raising skills.
Over the next few years, the library raised $100 million in donations
to open the Science and Business Library at 34th Street and Madison
Avenue. In 2001, the organization completed a $38 million renovation
of the performing arts library at Lincoln Center.
But with the financial crisis of 2008 came severe budget cuts from
the city. The science library and the mid-Manhattan branch (on 39th
Street) fell into disrepair. The size of the research staff declined
by almost 30 percent. Meanwhile, the main branch at 42nd and Fifth was
being closed down with increasing frequency for corporate events —
a necessary fund-raising move but one that rankled staff members,
some of whom complained that a monument to intellectual life was
turning into a nightclub.
Even a $100 million gift from the financier Stephen Schwarzman,
earmarked for the upgrade of the central building, did little to quell
a sense among the rank and file that the library board was perhaps
more interested in the building’s housing than the books inside it.
What to make of Kanye West’s appearance at a Paper Magazine gala
celebrating the magazine’s 25th anniversary? Or the fact that at
a 2011 Thom Browne fashion show, in the Edna Barnes Salomon Room,
there were models kneeling before a makeshift altar as Gregorian chants
blared? An indication that the library was successfully moving into the
21st century, or proof that it had totally, completely, lost its way?
“We began to say that it was going to be Cipriani Fifth Avenue,”
recalled one recently retired senior administrator, who asked to remain
anonymous because of a separation agreement he signed with the library.
“I’d be in the elevator and there’d be a blond girl in a little black
dress who worked in development escorting people around and saying,
‘You have to mention in your release that this is in the Stephen A.
Schwarzman building.’ I can’t tell you how many times we dismantled
really serious pieces of equipment that cost us millions of dollars
to acquire so that we could have a free rein for, oh, runway shows
during the February and September fashion weeks.”
“We have existential questions to ask,” Mr. Marx was saying as a
spokeswoman hovered nearby. “How do we build and deploy our staff to
meet the educational needs of this city? How do we ensure that we are
providing ideas and information to New Yorkers and to the world at a
moment when that is all becoming digital while preserving our great
book collection?”
He was sitting in his office at the central library, and if it
sounded a bit like a script he had delivered before, well, that’s
probably because Mr. Marx was reading from a page of notes he had
come prepared with.
“So I had a lot to learn and we have big decisions to make,” he
continued, in a conversation that went on for more than an hour. “And
that generated considerable debate, as it should, as we try to make
the smartest decisions we can going forward.”
Eventually, Mr. Marx got up from the table and embarked on a tour
of the library, going first to the rooms that the library plans to
renovate. “This should be filled with library users,” he said entering
one such room, which had a view of Bryant Park and was being used for
storage. “I’m going to start to reopen these rooms. Because there is
no reason they shouldn’t be filled with people doing library work.”
He walked into the Rose Main Reading Room, pausing to give a pat on
the back to the security guard.
“Literally every seat is filled. Every seat is filled, and everyone
practically has a computer in front of them,” he pointed out, adding
that some of those computers belonged to the library.
“And you walk up and down and you see that relatively few people are
using our books. Right? Which raises an interesting question. Why
are they here? Well, partly they’re here for computers and Wi-Fi, but
mostly they’re here because it’s an unbelievably inspiring space. And
because people actually want to work in inspiring spaces together,
not at home alone. And that’s not going to change.”
This went on for a while, his voice trailing off, as Mr. Marx walked
the reporter out of the room, giving the security guard another
fraternal pat as the two went by.
CALL up people who work with Mr. Marx, and some of the things you will
hear repeatedly are that he’s a “little slick,” that the volume is
always “on high,” and that he continues to speak to groups of adults
the way he might have spoken to his students at Amherst or Columbia.
But Jide Zeitlin, a former board chairman at Amherst who helped
recruit Mr. Marx to the college and who has now been friends with
him for roughly a decade, said that this was slightly unfair.
“There are some people who pull it off really effortlessly, so that
it looks like they aren’t really trying,” Mr. Zeitlin said. “It’s
like the duck, smooth on the surface and paddling like mad underneath.
Personality-wise, that’s not Tony. He is at times too transparent,
so what you see is what you get. But I’d argue it’s honesty. … He
cares about what he’s doing.”
Others caution that he deserves time and the benefit of the doubt as
he grows into his new position.
“Tony’s a good scholar,” Mr. Gregorian said. “He has democratic
principles and he’s learning about bureaucracy and the various
constituencies of the library. I’m confident he’ll do his best.”
And increasingly, members of the board — among them Louise Grunwald,
Gayfryd Steinberg and Marshall Rose — seem to be moving into his
corner. A couple of weeks back, at a board meeting where Mr. Marx
revealed an $8 million pledge from the trustee Abby Milstein and her
husband, Howard, to keep the bulk of the books on site, the board
announced that the library had raised $98 million in charitable
contributions in the last fiscal year, a result of 329 meetings Mr.
Marx had with potential donors and a record for the most money raised
in a single fiscal year.
Annette de la Renta was there smiling brightly. Nearby were David
Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, and Ms. Grunwald. Before
the meeting started, Mr. Marx greeted a group of scholars who sat
anxiously in the front row and Mr. Schwarzman, to whom he gave a big
pat on the back.
When it came time for him to speak, Mr. Marx thanked people on the
board, whose work had made it possible for him to raise so much money.
Then he thanked the scholars, whose protestations led the board to
roll back part of the central library plan.
“We’re really grateful to everyone who contributed, even loudly at
times,” he said. “That’s how I think democracy should work. It’s
certainly how I think publicly supported institutions should work.”
Said Mr. Rose afterward: “I’ve lived through four presidents, and
he has a real ability to know when he’s wrong and to see when things
can be improved. I think he’s doing great.”
Mr. Steiner concurred: “I don’t think that the first year has been
perfect or that everything has been seamless, but I do feel, and I
think the vast majority of trustees agree, that we’ve made meaningful
progress. And that while there were moments of discomfort, we would
happily trade off that discomfort for the progress we’ve made. That
reflects the trustees and the staff and Tony’s work.”
That work also includes an ambitious plan, announced by Mr. Marx and
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in late September, to turn every public
school student into a member of the New York Public Library.
The way the program will work, said Mr. Marx, is that “over the course
of three years, every school in New York will end up with computers
and its library connected to a circulating system that combines the
Brooklyn, Queens and New York Public Library, which in total have
17 million circulating items. Students and teachers can order online
whatever books they need, for whatever research they’re doing at that
point, and we will deliver to them the books that they need.”
Scholars continue to be skeptical about parts of the central library
plan, but Mr. Marx has clearly ingratiated himself to them somewhat
in recent weeks.
“I think he has politician written all over him,” said Annalyn Swan,
who in 2005 won the Pulitzer Prize (with Mark Stevens) for “De Kooning:
An American Master” and has been one of the most vociferous critics
of the central library plan. “But there are better politicians and
worse politicians, and he seems to be a better politician.”
As the dispute over the central library plan dies down, Mr. Marx is
choosing to see the sunny side of things. “The good news,” he said
after leaving the Doris Duke Foundation event, walking toward the
nearby Time Warner Center, “is that people are talking about the
library. What they want it to be and what they don’t want it to be,
rather than taking it for granted and letting it sink. Right?”
At which point he walked into another lobby, got on another elevator,
on his way to another cocktail party, another Diet Coke, and more
smiling and nodding.
URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/fashion/tony-marxs-challenges-running-the-new-york-public-library.html