I have many memories of my time with the Foundation. I was in charge of the needlepoint project for the dining room chairs. I contacted several states to see who had needlepoint and how they had done it in their governor's mansions. With some of them, the projects were never really finished. We have a lot of chairs. We have twenty-seven chairs. I had a statewide competition for those interested in doing the needlepoint. Sally Kelley was the name of the woman who created the design. At the time, she had a needlepoint shop in Seattle. She designed the chair seats and painted all the canvases. We had one man who did needlepoint, and he did the governor’s chair. We did have two covers for that chair. I don’t know if that bag of replacement yarn is still anywhere or not. There also should be a list somewhere of who did those needlepoint covers. Each cover has the initials of the one who did all that work. And the needlepoint was fun, too. I mean, it got done. I might be able to look back, and I bet that many of the people who did them might not be around. I was going to write down the list of needlepoint donors. It would be very nice to invite the people to come and sit on their chair and have their picture taken.
While I was the Art Chairman, I was able to buy the first pieces of art for the mansion. We had the head of the Seattle Art Museum on the advisory committee. His name was Woods. He was the main person. We made up a list of artists who were appropriate for us to have in the mansion. In 1865, people would have had works of art that were on paper in their homes. That would have been the most popular. Other things would have been pictures of flowers and that kind of thing. The first name on the list was Audubon. I happened to be going back East to see my children who were in boarding school. I was in New York and saw that there was this auction. New York State, or City, was auctioning off its Audubon collection. I said oh dear, that’s the first name on our list. I think I should go.
I went to look at them, and I got the expert there to tell me which ones were of particular interest. Bobby Street, from Tacoma, was the Foundation president and I called her and I said, “Bobby, they’re auctioning off an Audubon portfolio. How much money can I have?” She said I could have about fifteen thousand dollars. Well, that was just fine and I told the expert how much I had and asked him what he thought I could get. I told him that it has to be a Washington State bird.
Then I saw Jenny Wright. And I said oh dear, I need help. And she said, “Just a minute, I’m trying to buy this Giacometti table or something.” And I said oh, all right. Then we looked at all the birds and figured out what we wanted. Then came the auction and I happened to sit beside some dentist from Connecticut. I said, “I have a job. I have to end up with some art. I have only fifteen thousand dollars. And it has to be a bird from Washington. I’m not really sure. Please help me if you know your birds.” He was very helpful. And I think he had about eight hundred dollars to spend, because he would go up to eight hundred dollars on all these things, and then he would quit. The advantage was that they weren’t going to charge tax on this art. That was an advantage to buying them at this particular time.
“The Night Heron” came up, and that was very attractive. I thought, well, I’ll go for that. All of a sudden it got to fourteen thousand dollars and I thought oh, dear. I can’t spend fourteen thousand dollars on one piece of art. That’s wrong. So I quit. And the auctioneer looked at me. The expert had told me it really should go for six to eight thousand. All of a sudden I realized I was in trouble so I just quit. And the auctioneer couldn’t believe it. “Come on, come on.”
I said, “No, no.” Then I had to revise, and I was going through the book. All of the ones that were before The Night Heron were already gone. You had to figure out well, which ones could you still have, and how much? So “The Merganser” came up, and I knew that was a Washington bird--a duck that was in Washington State. So I got “The Merganser”. And I said, well, what now? Then there were these two little yellow birds. One was a goldfinch.
Goldfinch is our State bird. I thought well, he looks sort of lonely, because compared to the duck, he was small. I thought well, we better get another little gold bird to go with him, so I got the children’s warbler. Jenny Wright’s only advice to me was just don’t buy something that you don’t like, because the committee might not agree with your choices. And therefore, you will own it. And I told her, right, good advice.
Sure enough, when I showed up with my three little birds, thinking I had a nice little yellow pair and then the merganser duck, they said, “Well, we don’t really need that children’s warbler.” So I have it in my library. She gave great advice. And that was the start.
It was a great adventure. On that same trip, I found an oil painting of Mount Rainier. I persuaded the Rainier Bank to buy it and then loan it to us. But unfortunately, that went back to the bank and we don’t have it anymore. My husband had said to me, “You should buy that.” I said, “No, no. This is much better. We’ll do it this way.” Well, my husband was right because we would have had it. But we lost control of it. The bank did own it, and then the bank changed. That was too bad, because it was a very nice little painting.
We had this wonderful Mount Rainier, and next we wanted George Washington. I think Ann Barwick was really the one who engineered George. She’s not here, so she can’t say. Tom and Ann collected art together, and Tom might be able to give us some history of the paintings.
We had advisors. I started with the directors of the museums for the advisory board, because they were the people we were borrowing the art from. Since we didn’t have any art, we always had to borrow our art from the museums. For the advisory board now, I would suggest that the GMF have Tom Barwick on that. He is the premiere American art collector.
One time I had all this art borrowed from the Henry Gallery. I think the president then was Ginny Kitchell. She called me up one day and she said, “Diana, are you aware that the governor’s wife has sent all of the art back to the Henry Gallery,” etcetera, etcetera? “And she’s put up her own art.” I told her that I was unaware of that and, apparently, she was threatening to paint over the wallpaper in the dining room as well, because she didn't like it.
I said, “Oh, dear!” Well, so we had to deal with that situation. And even though papers were signed that they know that those are public rooms and the foundation has control of them, these were things that went on. It’s embarrassing. Here you, as the representative, had borrowed all this art and arranged for it. And we never could pay the insurance, because you can’t pay insurance on what you don’t own. So that was another thing. They were really loaning the work to us and it was a wonderful situation. The pieces she had arranged for stayed where they were, but the dining room walls were not painted over. You know, it is really a tightrope and every governor is different.
The other thing that happened was the Dale Chihuly piece we got. We got that, and then we had to have that expensive case made, and it was so big. It’s a fabulous piece. I was all for trying to get pieces and donations. The head of the Seattle Art Museum said, “Oh, no! You have to be so careful.” Well, the Chihuly, it’s wonderful for us to have a Chihuly.
We started the Green Books while I was president. We had to have something that contained all the information about the areas of the state. It was based on the style that was used by the Seattle Tennis Club. They had the green books first. It is a resource, and it’s important to have things you can look up when you can’t remember everything. I divided the State into areas. I did that because I felt, well, we had to get some positions as to how we’re going to approach this. And it was fun to have the different areas, and to be able to go over and visit Yakima and Spokane. It gave identity to those people. The Eastern Washington people feel, I think, disenfranchised a bit. So I tried to bring them in and we could, also, get representatives from those various places.”
Let me tell you about the piano forte. We had the case of the piano, where some ladies got very excited and decided that they were going to restore the piano and spend all this money on the piano. And this poor piano. The design of the square piano forte was changed, because it didn’t work as a square piano. Some workman got a hold of them who they believed. They spent a lot of money fixing it so it would work. But really, those were never great pianos. I went to the Smithsonian and they were trying to give them away. I mean, don’t spend any money on that thing. It’s a piece of furniture that’s fun to have. It’s historical. It takes up a wall. Its fine if somebody sets a drink on it or a drink falls in it. No worry. Don’t bother. These are not instruments of value. That’s one thing you have to be clear on. The pianos in the ballroom, on the other hand, are. There are two Steinway grands, and they are definitely worth being careful who you get to tune them, who you get to work on them.
I would think that Robin McCabe, being at the university, would be a wonderful resource. You might even have an advisor for the pianos. Because you don’t know, down the road, when these original concert people change their focus or something like that, you might even have some musicians, pianists, who would advise on who to tune and who to repair. Because things do happen to pianos, and then people get ideas, just like they did with the square one. “Well, the action isn’t quite right.” “We need to have the hammers filed.” “We need to–” Whatever. And it’s true that all of these things need attention. But who does them can greatly affect the piano. It’s really important. I can’t stress that enough.
We had a successful fundraiser where we all went in a bus and rode to a place where we had a black tie dinner. We tried to do it again. We had all the money raised, the whole thing, and Mrs. Spellman canceled it because there was a budget crisis and she thought it was too extravagant. She had no idea the amount of work that had been done nor the amount of money it would have meant to the Foundation. She just canceled.
As another fundraising idea, we had a choice of doing scarves or umbrellas. Now, I don't know about umbrellas, but I do know about scarves. Georgia Penfield designed the scarf. She was a friend of Jean Jongeward and very professional. Georgia got them done. We were going with a French company. They did all of the scarves for the Metropolitan [Museum of Art, NYC]. But I would warn you about our scarf fiasco. We only wanted to print about two hundred. And that’s not enough. Beacause of the set up cost, you cannot do it. You cannot make your costs back on two hundred scarves. So we didn't attempt it. Georgia did the book, and I think we did postcards at the same time. Georgia did not think small. She had several thousand printed [10,000]. I think they thought that they were going to be sold at the State Museum. And I think they were. I also think she thought they were going to be sold at the mansion when people came for tours. She thought of those items as moneymakers for the Foundation and, as it turned out, they were.
In the vice president’s house in Washington, DC, there are wonderful murals on the dining room wall. When Jean Jongeward was the decorator, she looked at all those national homes and thought they should be the standard. She replicated that. But she put her own spin. She was a great friend of Edwin Chapman of San Francisco. Mr. Chapman was a native of Spokane. I’m sure she and Edwin had done the ballroom at the Sunset Club in Seattle. She was the decorator for the Sunset Club, and he was the muralist. I don’t know which came first-- the ballroom at the Sunset Club, or the dining room at the Mansion.
Jean really researched the furniture and the kind of fabrics that were on the particular kinds of furniture when she visited Winterthur. Also, I know she researched at the State Department. Jean Jongeward was just such a wonderful decorator, and she worked with two people, Dinah Hutchinson and Charlotte Reed. Charlie Reed was a friend of Jean’s. These were both Seattle ladies. And Dinah Hutchinson just was also a friend of Jean’s. So we sort of got them into helping the process. Everything that was done had Jean’s approval. But she was no longer able to do the footwork. So these two gals really did the footwork. And I think there were lamps purchased for the Hay bedroom. Finishing off those upstairs bedrooms was sort of interesting. We just had a lot of fun. About the last thing Jean did, by herself, was the dining room rug. And then we did the two bedrooms, sort of with her, upstairs.
Then there was some quilt that some ladies had given. I can’t remember the occasion that the quilt was given, but it was at the time we were doing those two bedrooms. The family was allowed to use those two bedrooms for guests. There was always a discussion about the towels. I can’t remember if we furnished the towels or not. But I think we did put some finger towels in there, just to make it look nice at the time. But then we were always concerned about the flower arrangements and the containers.
Every now and then, people will take exception to the veracity of an antique. Is it real? Is it a copy? I can remember a chest in the upstairs hall. Getting the estimate, the appraisal of our furnishings was always a big deal. And the one thing, I know, Willis Woods was the head of the art museum, and one thing he always said was that you just have to be careful about this appraisal business. One time someone recommended somebody for the appraisal and he said to me, “Well, if I don’t appraise a piece at the price you think it’s worth, then maybe you’re not going to think I’ve done a good job.” And I said, “No. We’re not doing this appraisal for resale. We’re doing this appraisal for insurance purposes.”
That person then never did the appraisal, because he was problematical in a lot of people’s minds. But who does the appraisal and the reason that they’re doing it has to be clear.
If the appraiser believes something is a copy, I say, “Fine. We’ll insure it for less. It’s a pretty good representation of such and such.” Not that we want to be a collection of fakes. But on the other hand, you know, that’s one person’s opinion. The next person might come along and say, “You know, look at this. That’s what historical research is all about. People have different levels of expertise. And I think that some things, in the early days, did sort of either disappear or were de-acquisitioned. And that is what Willis Woods was always saying. You had to be so careful of what you de-acquisition, because people have memories and people who you may not realize have history on something, do remember the past.
At one point, we had to see about setting up an endowment fund and we decided to meet with a representative of Frank Russell. I remember a meeting we went to and they had assigned us to this woman. And she had on a tie. I mean, she had been his personal assistant forever. And I can’t remember her name right now. She was one of the first women executive-kind of people. She had old-fashioned looking brown oxfords that were ties. Sensible shoes. She said to us, “Now, I note that you do not have any men on your committee.” And she, as a woman! And we said, “No, we don’t. But we think we can do this.” That was sort of an amazing remark. We thought we had Frank Russell. We were just charmed by her, because she was just obviously very competent, and we felt fine being in her hands.
We began recognizing people by presenting pitchers that had the Governor’s Mansion logo on it from Kusaks. I started that. We had the logo and thought it would be a good way to thank people. I'm not sure who designed the logo, but we may have taken it from the architectural print of the mansion. We used it for our notepaper and stationery.
My term as president with the Governor's Mansion Foundation was for three years. Jane Langlie's term was two years. I'm not sure exactly how that happened. I think Jane just didn't want to commit to a three year term, and we told her that would be okay. And, that's the way it remained. We didn't have the same commitment that you have. That would be two years as vice president, two years as president and two years following as past president. That's six years of your life that one is dedicating to a single organization. Although, one would certainly gain some idea of the history of the mansion and the Foundation and that can be invaluable.