A year's end also signals a new beginning, and Helen Harrison has an important ending coming up in the new year. After more than three decades as the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, she has announced her retirement as of Jan. 18.
It is hard to comprehend what the center will look like, be like, without her. Stony Brook University, which owns and operates the site in Springs that was once the residence and studios of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, is still interviewing candidates for a replacement, but her combination of stewardship, historical inquiry, curatorial drive, and institutional knowledge could prove irreplaceable.
Having served as the head administrator and chief interpreter of the property since 1990, her tenure rivals the residency of Krasner, who lived there from 1946 to when she died in 1984, and well surpasses Pollock, who lived there for only 10 years before he died in a car crash in 1956.
Meg Perlman, the first director, was appointed by Stony Brook University in 1987 when it was deeded the property by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation without an endowment. She "started from scratch," Ms. Harrison noted. "I just carried on with what she had established." Perlman transformed private spaces into public ones and conceived of how the site would be run, also "discovering" Pollock's paint-splattered original studio floor under a layer of Masonite.
When Ms. Harrison took the reins of the organization three years later, it was still in its infancy. "One of the big problems at the outset was that it came with no money. All of Lee's assets . . . the cash, whatever she had on hand in liquid assets, plus her apartment and the artwork, all went to the Pollock-Krasner Foundation to give grants to artists. It's a laudable project that I would not disagree with, but she could have hived off a million just to endow the house."
One of Ms. Harrison's key achievements, which she worked toward throughout her time there, was that endowment. Perlman, who died in 2021, warned her that raising money for the center would be very difficult, "because people will wonder why Lee didn't support it" with money dedicated in her will.
Eventually, the foundation began annual gifts to the site after it became a national landmark in 1994. "And that meant I could go to potential donors and say, 'Well, Lee's foundation does support us' . . . and that was really helpful."
Another turning point was when Samuel L. Stanley Jr. came on as president of Stony Brook University in 2009. She was skeptical when he first came to tour the property. "He was a research physician. I thought, 'Why would he care?' " Yet "he took one look at the studio floor, and I'm quoting, he said, 'Oh, an accidental masterpiece.' "
That tour resulted in more effective support by the university, leading up to its 2012 endowment campaign, tied to Pollock's centenary celebrations. That year, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation agreed to match gifts up to $1 million. The goal was met.
Krasner's will did indicate that she envisioned the house as "a public museum and library," Ms. Harrison said, and she left her own books as the core. In 1992, the center received Jeffrey Potter's archives of more than 150 interviews with people who knew the artists, which resulted in his 1985 biography of Pollock. "That was a real indication that this was going to become an important research collection."
In 1995, the archives of both artists' catalogues raisonne were received. "Over the years, we've gotten many, many more things. Building up the research materials has been a real highlight." The reference materials are kept in the house and at the Stony Brook Southampton campus library, which is open to the public. Pollock's and Krasner's own papers have been digitized and are part of the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art.
Recognizing the importance of such efforts, the university will honor Ms. Harrison with an endowed research fellowship in her name to support a scholar working at the site. "It's something that I feel strongly about, the study center aspect of it," she said. It will allow a resident scholar who "can use our facilities and spread the word about Abstract Expressionism, because the first generation of Pollock scholars is now dead. . . . So we need to bring along a new generation of people who want to study Abstract Expressionism as a serious academic pursuit."
Not surprisingly, another pinnacle was the filming of the movie "Pollock" by Ed Harris during 1999. The crew filmed for 10 days that spring, just before the site opened for the season. They came back in August to capture the right look for the time leading up to the artist's death. "They wanted to have everything in full bloom . . . so that it would be obviously summer."
During the first shoot, they used some cinematic magic to have scenes look more springlike, given the late South Fork warm-up. When she watched the film recently to discuss it at the Southampton Arts Center, she noticed that the family reunion scenes in July had the cherry tree blooming in the background. She said with a laugh, "that doesn't happen in July."
Despite the artifice of filmmaking, there were moments, she said, when history came to life, "especially when Ed Harris was painting." The lead actor and director of the film had a studio built on his property in Malibu, Calif., to "get the moves" required to depict Pollock's painting process. But in Malibu, "he was awkward. He wasn't really getting it."
"When he actually got on site and started to practice, there were like 70 people standing around . . . doing whatever it is they do," she recalled. "Suddenly everybody got really quiet. And I looked around and I realized they were watching him. It was absolutely mesmerizing. He really got the moves," she said.
That authenticity, the animation he was able to achieve on site, "I don't think he would have gotten it if he hadn't been shooting on location."
At the film's screening during the 2000 Hamptons International Film Festival, Allene Talmage, who had known Pollock very well, was in the audience. When it was over, Ms. Talmage "embraced Ed Harris and said, 'I felt Pollock. I felt Jackson was in the room.' And that meant a lot to him, that people who actually had known Jackson and Lee felt that they were accurately portrayed."
Recognizing the wealth of information, history, and anecdotes Ms. Harrison has amassed throughout her time there, the Archives of American Art will soon interview her for its oral history project. One thing she promises to address is her "bete noire: Pollock did not listen to jazz while he painted." It's a misconception that is everywhere, including among docents at the Museum of Modern Art she has heard, and isn't true. The record player was always in the house. There are no traces of it or radios ever being in the studio in any of the photographs taken there. "And I have written about it, I have lectured about it. But it's one of those myths that just refuses to die."
Her other postretirement activities will include a continuation of her series of mystery books based within the New York art world of yore. A recently finished volume has been submitted to publishers. She has another one she is developing set at the 1939 World's Fair, which she is familiar with from much earlier work at the Queens Museum. She will also continue to lecture and consider other projects that come her way.
Originally a sculptor, she said she doesn't have the focus for making art these days. Readers who have long memories might remember that she was a curator at both the Parrish Art Museum and then Guild Hall before leaving the latter to take her current position.
What she will leave behind at the center is "an intact property," she said with a laugh, and the charge "to perpetuate the usefulness of this site." She will be available if a need for consultation or assistance arises, much as her predecessor did for her, but only if requested.
Ms. Harrison said the value in these historic properties is not just as "a shrine to some dead person. It's got to have some educational or interpretive function so that people can appreciate the art more fully." Places that have a direct relationship with an artist allow you to "look out the window and see the motifs" or "really understand some of the inspirational impetus behind the imagery, even if it's not directly related to the landscape or its natural forms. But if you see it, you know the rhythms and energies of nature are in the work. That's interesting."
This story has been altered from its previous and print versions to correct a misunderstanding regarding the screening of "Pollock" at the Hampton International Film Festival. Richard Talmage was not at the screening.
