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What Fed Chiefs Like
By MARY ANNE GOLEY
Will Tuesday's Federal Open Market Committee meeting in Washington display Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's continuing dexterity in responding to the current financial crisis? Variously described as "creative," "innovative" and "flexible" by his admirers, this characterization could also apply to Mr. Bernanke's taste in art, something I saw up close during my years as director of the fine arts program of the board of governors.

Associated Press
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The program was established in 1975, when then-Chairman Arthur F. Burns acted in response to a 1971 White House memorandum that urged the heads of federal agencies to "most vigorously assist the arts and artists" through their various internal programs.

At the time, the Fed's board of governors possessed only three works of art, assigned as part of President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. Thirty-five years later, the collection numbers 450-plus works. Most are American from the 19th and 20th centuries, but there are also some outstanding foreign examples, such as the 1937 Cubist-derived "Abstraction-Verte" (1937) by the Frenchman Jean Helion, a 1975 Aboriginal bark painting by Walter Djambidjimba and a 2004 photograph of multiple foreign currencies by the contemporary Chinese photographer Hong Hao. There are no budgeted acquisition funds; all art in the permanent collection comes to us through donations. It was my responsibility to vet not only the works before they entered the collection, but the donors to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Typically the chairman selects the art for his office at the beginning of his term. To get a sense of his tastes, I would assemble a number of books, catalogs and reproductions for him to mark the images he liked. Then the hard work would begin, as I assessed what I had in inventory. If there wasn't anything suitable, I then developed a list of potential lenders of artworks. Next, I would assemble the available works for a "show and tell" session with the chairman, when I would explain the choices and answer questions about each work.

Paul Volcker, who chaired the Fed from 1979 to 1987, may be the only chairman with museum credentials. While he was deputy undersecretary for monetary affairs at Douglas Dillon's Treasury Department, he would, on occasion, represent Dillon at board meetings of the National Gallery of Art. (The Treasury secretary is an ex-officio trustee.) So he knew a masterpiece when he saw one. Nonetheless, he preferred to display works by people with whom he had a personal association, such as a fluidly executed forest scene by Sandy Walker, the son of a former neighbor, and a pastel-colored plein-air landscape by Kathy Axilrod, the wife of one of his senior advisers. If I could have borrowed a work by the British artist Bridget Riley, I am certain Mr. Volcker would have allowed me to hang it in his office. I had come to learn that he liked Op Art.

In 1987 Alan Greenspan began his long tenure as Fed chairman. If I'd thought his background as a jazz musician would translate into bold office decor, I was mistaken. Mr. Greenspan picked two landscapes we owned, Alexander Lawrie's crisply executed "Pleasant Valley, Essex County, N.Y." (1867), in the style of the Hudson River School, and Friedrich Konig's winter "Snowscape" (c. 1900) in the Viennese Secessionist style. Not much irrational exuberance there.

Still, Mr. Greenspan was not without his bolder side. He admired the work of two Dutch masters, Franz Hals, a 17th-century painter known for his bravura brushwork, and Piet Mondrian, a 20th-century pioneer of abstraction. No works by either artist were within our reach, so we decided that a work by Ellsworth Kelly would be a good alternative to Mondrian. In addition, we hoped to add an outstanding work to the collection in Mr. Greenspan's honor to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the program. I gave Mr. Greenspan the catalog of a recent Kelly exhibit at the National Gallery of Art and asked him to choose his favorites. His picks, "Tiger" (1953) and "Colors for a Large Wall" (1951), were similar to Mondrian's compositions and colors, so would have been perfect. Unfortunately, our efforts did not meet with success.

Rather than being predictable, Mr. Bernanke's stylistic choices at the Fed changed three times during my years at the Fed. His willingness to try different styles and periods of art was indeed the mark of a man who could be creative, innovative and flexible.

At first, Mr. Bernanke's choices were what you would expect from a central banker. In 2002, at the beginning of his tenure as a Fed governor, he picked two traditional landscapes: "Harvest Scene, New York State" (c. 1859), a rare American subject by the expatriate artist Thomas Hotchkiss, and an untitled romantic view of a verdurous valley by Arthur F. Bellows. I was able to satisfy Mr. Bernanke's artistic predilections from Fed inventory. My work was done, or so I thought.

About 1½ years later, I received an email from Mr. Bernanke asking for a change. This time he picked "Samarkand Stitches #IV," an assemblage by the American pop artist Robert Rauschenberg. The work is a combination of boldly patterned Samarkand silks collected by the artist when he stopped in the Uzbek city while on a world tour. Measuring 61 inches tall, the large work was a challenge for Mr. Bernanke's modestly sized but high-ceilinged office. Much to my surprise Mr. Bernanke accepted my suggestion to hang it over the fireplace. He was absolutely ebullient about the Rauschenberg.

In 2005 Mr. Bernanke went to the Council of Economic Advisors, returning to the Fed as chairman in February 2006. On his third day on the job his assistant informed me that he was ready to choose art for his office. I was again struck by the unpredictability of his newest selections. Having progressed from the Hudson River School to contemporary assemblage, he now settled on two paintings from the post-World War II era. O. Louis Guglielmi's "New York 21" (1949) is a bold and colorful New York street scene of fragmented forms and pulsating rhythms. Ilya Bolotowsky's "Double Diamond" (1949), with two overlapping diamond shapes and interlocking patterns of color, is as good as it gets for American nonobjective painting.

Here's to equally creative, innovative and flexible solutions for a robust economy.

Ms. Goley served from 1975 through 2006 as the founding director of the fine arts program of the Federal Reserve's board of governors.