Kenneth Donahue Dies; 2nd Director of Art Museum

Kenneth Donahue, a respected scholar who partially abandoned a lifelong fascination with 17th-Century European art to take over Los Angeles’ fledgling County Museum of Art, died Monday at UCLA Medical Center of liver complications.

Donahue was 70, and health problems had forced his retirement in 1979.

He was 51 and acting director at the museum when he was given a permanent appointment in June, 1966. At that time the museum was only a year old and still in a state of flux, organizing and displaying the several hundred thousand art objects that had been moved to Hancock Park from the museum’s old home in Exposition Park.

Donahue became the second director in the new museum’s history, succeeding Richard F. Brown, and the Donahue years proved singularly formative ones.

Dr. Earl A. Powell III, who succeeded Donahue as director in 1980, said Monday that during his predecessor’s tenure “we acquired many outstanding works for the collection, including the masterpiece “Magdalen With the Smoking Flame” by the great 17th-Century French artist Georges de La Tour, one of only four (versions) in the world and the internationally renowned Heeramaneck collection of Indian, Nepalese and Tibetan art.”

Powell also credited Donahue with obtaining Henri Matisse’s sculptures, “Five Heads of Jeanette;” a collection of more than 100 Peruvian textiles and such major European paintings as Fra Bartolommeo’s “Holy Family,” Frans Hals’ “Portrait of Pieter Tjarck,” and Guido Reni’s “Bacchus and Ariadne.”

Powell added that Donahue also presided over a very active exhibitions program that included “Treasures From the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art” and “From the Lands of the Scythians.”

‘A Most Difficult Time’

Edward W. Carter, chairman of the board emeritus of Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc. and the first chairman of the museum’s Board of Trustees, recalled that “Donahue took over directorship of the museum at a most difficult time shortly after the resignation of Dr. Brown. The museum was still in its formative stages and was in a bit of a turmoil. As the founding president of the trustees, I was well aware of the innumerable problems he faced and I believe that he handled them extraordinarily well.

“Donahue was a man of extraordinary integrity both intellectually and professionally and introduced into the museum high standards of professionalism and a level of quality which enabled it to become one of the nation’s leading institutions in a remarkably short period of time,” Carter said. “He was a quiet but personal man who was highly regarded by his peers worldwide.” In October, 1979, in his last official act after retiring, Donahue realized what he said was a life’s dream when he organized “The Golden Century of Venetian Painting,” the first major exhibition of Venetian Renaissance painting in this country.

It included a number of world- renowned masterpieces by the most celebrated artists of the time. Because of his own expertise, Donahue became more than an administrator. He took a scholarly interest in acquisitions and often became his own curator. The last instance of his involvement, for the Venetian exhibit, found him personally directing crews hanging the works of Titian, Bellini, El Greco and others, often directing them to a spot on a wall he found particularly correct.

Increase in Membership

His efforts were reflected in an increase in museum membership, which rose from 4,000 when he took over to 60,000 at his retirement.

Donahue came to Los Angeles in 1964 from the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Fla. Born in Louisville, he graduated from the University of Louisville and held a master’s degree from the Institute of Fine Art of New York University. From 1938 to 1943 he was a staff lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and then, after World War II military service, went to Italy for two years as a research fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.

It was that Italian journey that whetted his appetite for baroque art, he would say later.

Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic remembered Donahue as “a museum director of the old school--from an era when such cultural leaders were expected to be scholars first, public figures and fund-raisers second. He was a scholar at heart, but his mission was to make scholarship accessible to the public through exhibitions and publications. During his tenure, Donahue presided over hundreds of projects, but none was more important to him than the museum’s growth from an upstart on Wilshire Boulevard.”

‘Seeing Museum Develop’

Donahue admitted that he sometimes objected to the meetings and ceremonial functions that occupied much of his day.

But he also said in 1979, that while “it would have been much more fun to have spent my life being occupied with art objects, I wouldn’t have had the satisfaction of seeing the museum develop.”

His survivors include his wife, Daisy; a son, Craig, and a daughter, Nikki. A private funeral service has been scheduled, and in lieu of flowers the family is asking contributions to the Liver Assn. for Research and Education, 11646 W. Pico Blvd., Suite 21, Los Angeles, 90064.

In addition, a memorial service has been scheduled May 29 at 4 p.m. in the museum’s Leo S. Bing Theater.