Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: patron of the modern.(Cover Story)

On October 9, 1901, several hundred statesmen, bankers, and robber barons journeyed by yacht, chartered steamer, and private train to Warwick, Rhode Island, to attend the elaborately choreographed wedding of Abby Aldrich (see Fig. 1), the daughter of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich (1841-1915). to John D. Rockefeller Jr. ("Junior"; 1874-1960), son of the wealthiest man in the world. Armed guards secured the perimeters of the 250-acre waterfront estate--President William McKinley had just been assassinated--and champagne flowed. Junior's mother, who disapproved of ostentatious displays of wealth, not to mention alcohol, declined to attend at the last minute, complaining of illness. Nelson Aldrich, although not as well known as John D. Rockefeller Sr. (1839-1937), was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. In a career that spanned three decades in the Senate (1881-1911), Aldrich helped to create an extensive system of tariffs that protected American industries from foreign competition, at the same time amassing a small fortune in sugar, rubber, banking, and public utility investments. As co-author of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909, Aldrich removed restrictive import duties on fine art, which enabled friends, such as John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), to bring vast private art collections into the country: and ultimately this enriched or led to the establishment of a number of American museums. (1)

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Abby Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller Jr. met in 1894 when he was an undergraduate at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Growing up at her father's side in Providence and Washington, D.C., Abby was a gracious hostess, comfortable in diverse social gatherings. Marrying into the Rockefeller family, however, must have been a formidable challenge. Leaving aside the obvious differences in wealth, her husband was a pragmatic and pious young man with a tendency to be withdrawn. She was compassionate and spontaneous--a handsome if not conventionally beautiful woman with hazel eyes and a distinctive aquiline nose. They had six children: Abby Aldrich ("Babs"; 1903-1976), John D. III (1906-1978), Nelson A. (1908-1979), Laurance Spelman (1910-2004), Winthrop (1912-1973), and David (1915-). Although Abby was a pioneering collector of American modern and folk art, her greatest cultural legacy was her role as a founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Her experiences as an intrepid collector combined with her close observation of the vast array of Rockefeller philanthropies were undoubtedly the foundation for this undertaking. (2)

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Junior and Abby shared the dubious distinction of having parents characterized as public pariahs--the targets of muckraking journalists such as Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) and Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944). (3) This common experience probably helped to shape their philanthropy, and it certainly forced them to define themselves independently of their parents. Junior moved beyond the doctrinaire Baptist positions of his parents to make a number of remarkably independent decisions, such as his public reversal on Prohibition in 1932. Abby, unlike her father, was a liberal Republican. Interested in progressive social change, she was an early supporter of woman's suffrage and charities that catered to the welfare of women. Encouraged by Abby, Junior gave money to Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) as early as 1924, for her pioneering work on birth control. Although perhaps temperamentally different, Abby and Junior complemented one another as husband and wife. The responsibility of managing his family's vast philanthropic empire at times overwhelmed Junior, and Abby's sympathetic counsel was, he often acknowledged, his greatest source of strength. In a revealing letter after twenty years of marriage, Abby wrote:

 
our greatest happiness, which is our perfect companionship, has nothing 
to do with money. I often feel that John and I are less conscious than 
most people of Mr. Rockefeller's great fortune; we so completely regard 
it as a trust to be sacredly administered, the by products of which are 
beautiful places to live in, the opportunity to buy beautiful things, 
and the great difficulty in making the world take us simply. Being less 
humble and less conscientious than John and harboring in my heart a 
secret conviction that most worldly success, political, professional or 
commercial is of a fleeting and uncertain value, I take life more 
lightly. (4)