DONAHUE: MEMORIES OF A SOFT-SPOKEN AESTHETE

The last time I saw the late Kenneth Donahue, then retiring director of the County Museum of Art, he was in his element. Surrounded by the Italian painting he loved, he reveled in the thrill of having three major works by Titian in the same gallery. The High Renaissance masterpieces had traveled to the museum with “The Golden Century of Venetian Painting,” a sumptuous exhibition that had consumed his energy during years of planning and, in 1979, became his public swan song.

Donahue, who died Monday at 70, had suffered a heart attack and debilitating effects of a baffling liver disorder. His physical stature had diminished, his coat was too big for him and--faced with a camera--he fretted that his wife would be upset with his appearance, but nothing could daunt his enthusiasm for the paintings. More important, he wasn’t vain enough to rush out and buy a properly fitting new suit for a newspaper interview. He had his priorities right for a man who got into museum administration the old-fashioned way--through scholarship.

Donahue was leaving museum administration after 13 years as director and a previous two years as deputy and acting director. His tenure had been marked by the growing pains of an institution that was spawned as a stepchild of the County Museum of Natural History. Having come to the museum at the urging of Richard F. Brown (his predecessor, who resigned after disagreements with trustees), Donahue saw the museum grow from an awkward new kid in Hancock Park to youthful respectability as it enhanced its collection (most notably with the Heeramaneck collection of Asian art) and established an enviable record of exhibitions and publications.

Upon retirement, he took fatherly pride in such accomplishments--the traditional ways for museums to earn their stripes in the international art community. He also noted that the museum’s membership growth from 4,000 to 60,000 indicated that the institution had become a cultural fixture and was serving its diverse constituencies. This soft-spoken aesthete, who had distinguished himself as an authority of 17th-Century Italian art, wanted the museum to be popular. He loved the possibility that people of all persuasions and descriptions might find something of interest there, and he was fond of recommending it as “a great place to take a date.”

Such remembrances may seem out of character to people who knew Donahue only as a sober man behind a desk or a podium. They probably never understood that an essential part of his passion for historical art was in finding ways to share it. Though he joked about becoming “parchmentized,” like old scholars whose skin takes on the translucent patina of archival volumes, he planned to embark on a project that would make rare source books available to the public. In particular, he wanted to organize the production of modern translations of 30 volumes on the lives of 15th- to 18th-Century European artists.

He knew he wouldn’t have time to see this vision become a reality, but he couldn’t let go of the idea that he had formulated as a research fellow in Italy in the ‘40s. Besides, he had retirement years to look forward to and he wasn’t about to be idle.

“Think what it would mean to have those books available,” he exclaimed, gleefully anticipating a project that could occupy the entire careers of several historians and produce a library shelf full of accessible information.

Kenneth Donahue thought about such things.