In the decade of the Great Depression—1929 through 1938—many facets of American culture were transformed. Institutions such as private museums that depended upon voluntary contributions suffered in the stress of those years, yet some of the changes in their operations can be construed as progress. In the 1930s, museum employment was placed more on a merit basis, lessening dependence upon social and financial status, and a systematic educational scheme was developed to train leaders within what came to be understood as the professional administrative care of art collections. Harvard played a leading role in this developing system through the efforts of Paul Sachs (1878–1965), hired first in 1915 as assistant director of the university’s Fogg Art Museum. Beginning in 1922, Sachs taught a course within the graduate fine arts curriculum called “Museum Work and Museum Problems,” which took its mature shape in the 1930s. Philip Hofer (1898–1984), one of Sachs’ students, received his master’s degree from Harvard in 1929, and in the 1940s became the founding curator of printing and graphic arts at the newly built Harvard repository of rare books and manuscripts, Houghton Library. Yet Hofer in his own reminiscences tersely said, “There is nothing particular to record between the autumn of 1927 and 1929, except that I took a year getting an MA at Harvard.” ^[1]

This summation omits the very real fact that Sachs and Hofer established a close bond from 1927 through the early ’30s, practically the relationship of a father and son. It is seen most clearly in the professional instance when in 1931 Sachs offered to Hofer the opportunity ultimately to succeed him and Edward Forbes as the next director of the Fogg Museum; the paperwork concerning the offer, quoted extensively below, even explicitly refers to Sachs’ “paternal feeling” toward Hofer. The warmth of the letters exchanged between the two men and Sachs’ repeated enthusiastic recommendations of Hofer to Forbes demonstrates that the friendship went far deeper than strictly business. Yet by 1937 Sachs’ own development as a museum professional and his realization of standards for that profession caused him to withdraw his 1931 offer. Both men remained silent about it for the rest of their lives. In his memoirs Hofer omitted any mention of his participation in Sachs’ Museum Course or a personal relationship with his professor, then or later, and Sachs in his memoirs would refer to Hofer only as one among a large number of students who were patrons of the Fogg or went on to successful careers.

This gap, both apparent and very real in the historical record, is easily filled in by the two men’s letters through the 1930s that survive in the archives of the Harvard Art Museums. To them can be added letters from other museum staff members and reminiscences by other students. Together the documents flesh out two men’s growth and the larger development of museum careers in the 1930 for both men and women, whether they were rich or poor, Jewish or gentile, amateur or professional, academic scholar or relatively unlettered—all the cultural norms under which the ground shifted in museums in the Great Depression. This is the larger subject of this essay.

Paul Sachs and Philip Hofer star in this historical drama. Agnes Mongan, Sachs’ longtime curatorial assistant who ultimately did become director of the Fogg, and William Ivins, first curator of prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who was hired in 1916 at Sachs’ urging, play supporting roles. Edward Forbes, director of the Fogg, Belle da Costa Greene, director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, Charles Bain Hoyt, a collector and patron of the Fogg (though he never went to college or worked as an employee anywhere), and many others have bit parts. ^[2] Whatever their differences, it must always be remembered that they were united by their transcendent eye for visual art; they were all collectors to the core.

I start at the beginning, at the very beginning of the 20th century, when Sachs, the eldest son and heir to the Goldman Sachs private investment firm (his mother: Louisa Goldman, his father: Samuel Sachs), was an apprentice financier and Ivins was a very junior lawyer. ^[3] Sachs wrote in his memoirs about long-ago days, “If ever I did take lunch it was likely to be in the company of  a crony like William M. Ivins,” and Ivins reminisced about a Sunday at the beach, “When you were going to be the greatest banker on earth and I was working my gizzards out trying to get the half-nelson on the craft of drawing corporate mortgages, and we were both very solomn serious amachoors of prints.” ^[4]

But by 1927 Sachs had for a dozen years worked at Harvard with Edward Forbes to create the leading university museum in the United States. The two men were also, privately, art collectors, although, as Sachs had written at the beginning of his association with Forbes to Bernard Berenson, an expatriate Harvard-educated connoisseur of Renaissance art: “Both of us [Sachs and Forbes] are collecting, not for ourselves so much, as for the institution which we serve.” ^[5] Together they raised the money for and supervised the design of a purpose-designed structure that they routinely called “a laboratory for the arts,” the “New Fogg,” which opened in 1927. ^[6]

A generation younger, Philip Hofer, like Sachs and Ivins, and equally in conformity with family expectations, embarked after college on a business career—“the most distasteful job I have ever held.” ^[7] Quitting that, he started a profitable investment firm, cashed out before the 1929 crash, and returned to Harvard in 1927 as a graduate student in art history. To quote a memorial: “Hofer’s one slip from highest ranking was the B he received in Paul Sachs’ seminar on prints and drawings.” ^[8] Hofer had gone to Harvard specifically to work with Sachs. He introduced himself by mail in September 1927, citing a mutual friend and saying, “To place myself to you, I … am in business, but have found a chance now to give one half of my time to graduate study in Fine Arts, and, accordingly, plan to be at Harvard this fall. ... And I should like to meet you.” ^[9] Hofer did not present himself as a future museum professional. As Sachs wrote to Forbes a few years later about another man who had expressed interest in studying at the Fogg, “not with a view to a job or degree, but simply to get better acquainted and to see what it is all like at closer range, much as Philip Hofer did.” ^[10]

But Hofer had already begun collecting prints and rare books—first editions, a very conventional specialization—and he collaborated with his mother in collecting paintings and drawings. Sachs, who had begun as a print collector, by this time focused largely on drawings. In the context of an offering by a dealer, he would write in 1936, “This passion for works of art is a terrible thing, and the only excuse for indulging it is if one has the ability to choose wisely.” In other words, proving oneself as a connoisseur legitimized extravagance on art in the depths of the Great Depression, “not for ourselves so much, as for the institution which we serve.” ^[11] He immediately recognized in Hofer a like-minded soul.

Both men were avid and competitive, not with each other but within the larger graphic arts market in the United States, Britain, and continental Europe. In 1928 Sachs wrote to Forbes from Munich, where the professor and his student were visiting dealers together:

Am spending much time with Hofer. That boy is a real collector + will go a long way if his money lasts—particularly in Ill. [illustrated] books—Woodcuts—Drawing.... He tells them all that he wants Fogg prices—as all his things are going to Fogg in due course.… Hofer has the “Collecting—Harvard—Fogg bug”—as badly as you and I … I don’t find many youngsters like him + if you and I keep him—a lot can be made of him in constantly wider fields—though I am glad to back him in the Woodcut—Drawing—Book game—which twenty years hence will be impossible for any but the very rich. There is still a chance for a little while. ^[12]

And the student, in a 1930 letter to his professor outlining his Goya holdings, boasted that he had bested Ivins: “I have real reason to believe that in the graphic arts and in drawings, it is the best private­ collection in the world. I have ... 13 practically unique first states before all letters of the Caprichos (bought this last summer in a race with Ivins by which he got 6 and I 13 out of a possible 19—to my intense satisfaction!).” ^[13] The competition still thrilled Hofer more than 40 years later, when he remembered that Ivins “made my life miserable, because he was a rather cantankerous, almost sadistic individual who couldn’t stand rivalry of any sort. Since I had private means to buy good things and Ivins had none, it made him furious to observe my success.” ^[14]

Throughout Hofer’s adult life, from his years as Sachs’ student to his old age, his correspondence and memoirs reveal the same cocksure collector, his arrogance muffled by the courteous habits of a well-bred man otherwise kindly, generous, and educated in the best schools and by the best connoisseurs. He may never have acknowledged Sachs’ influence, but perhaps the professor’s emphasis on connoisseurship both in his courses and in his collecting can be discerned in the crucial change of orientation made by his student in 1928: “to sell all his first editions and concentrate on well-printed books that were well-illustrated and well-bound.” ^[15] But it was probably Ivins from whom Hofer learned to love illustrated books in particular. Years before, Ivins had written Sachs, “I’d rather have my name on ... at least one real book—the history of book illustration—a subject of great interest and importance and one that not only has never been written but which has its fascinations for me.” ^[16] In any case, Hofer explicitly credited Ivins and not Sachs for training his eye more generally. A colleague who worked closely with him in later years remembered that “Hofer certainly considered Ivins one of his most important influences, perhaps even a mentor … The tone of Hofer's reminiscences of Ivins was always near-reverential, but tinged with fear.” ^[17]

Sachs and Forbes—the Heavenly Twins, as they were dubbed by recipients of their attention who might give art or money to fill the galleries or replenish the coffers of the New Fogg—kept close track of those among the young Harvardians who were wealthy and showed signs of becoming art collectors. A 1933 letter from Sachs to Forbes makes their intention clear: “We are building for a long future and some future Directors will at least get some of the things that the Thachers, Hofers, Browns, Hoyts, McIlhennys, Walkers etc etc etc are pulling in with our help. So I am quite content to ‘miss’ a few things now—for a future benefit.” ^[18]

But with Hofer the future was now. Decades later, working on his memoirs, Sachs, in a draft titled “Important Years,” listed Hofer’s name repeatedly among the sources of “notable gifts and bequests … for which I consider myself responsible,” from the late 1920s till 1942–43. ^[19] In 1953 Sachs sent a letter to his museum course students who had had institutional careers asking them about their favorite acquisitions. Hofer reported back, “For the Fogg Museum, I was the person who found and advised the purchase of the complete set of proofs of Hans Holbein’s ‘Dance of Death.’… This was in 1928 or 1929.” ^[20] In fact, the Fogg bought “from museum funds” (to quote the prints’ credit line) only 12 proofs in 1929. A memorandum from Sachs to Forbes, arguing for the purchase, makes clear the elaborate payment scheme concocted by Hofer and the dealer holding the Holbeins, a transaction which reeks of Hofer’s success in the stock market. ^[21]

Hofer’s justification for discounts by his philanthropic intentions echoed Sachs’ constant mantra that everything in his collection was destined for the Fogg. Thus, this sentence concluded Sachs’ response on October 17, 1927 to Hofer’s description of his and his mother’s collecting ambitions: “Many years ago I made up my mind to give as freely as I could to the University that we both love during my lifetime, and to leave to the University every work of art in my possession at my death.” ^[22] Left unsaid was what Sachs might do during his lifetime with the art he owned. Eighteen prints that Sachs bought from Frederick Keppel & Co., Inc., on an art shopping occasion in 1922 in Manhattan (when he found three Holbein proofs for the Fogg at another dealer) totaled $685 dollars, a “Special Price.” He paid $350 in cash and received $335 in credit from the dealer. ^[23] Announcing his finds in New York and their pending arrival at the Fogg to his administrative assistant, Sachs wrote, “­ In due course [double underlined] you will receive a batch of prints from Keppel + Co. ( which are paid for ) + which are a gift to the Fogg : ... also as a gift to the Fogg 3 Holbein Proofs, which will come from Harlud + Co. and in addition [double underlined] + a set of Gauguin from Keppel [these do not appear among the Fogg 1922 accessions] and a batch of Prints ( of my own + not [double underlined] to be shown to anyone ) from Harlud.” ^[24] One wonders, of course, what prints were not to be shown to anyone, and why.

In fact, Sachs did give prints and drawings to other institutions and private parties. An example from his reply in 1937 to a cataloguer of early Italian engravings, Arthur Hind: Sachs reported that in the 1930s he had given away rare tarot cards to Agnes Mongan, his assistant at the Fogg, and to John Walker, one among Sachs’ list of promising students in 1933 and now the assistant director of the American Academy in Rome. ^[25] In 1942, spurred by a request for more information from Hind directly to Walker, who had risen to the position of chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Sachs, alerted by Walker, told Hind that Walker “may tell you of those prints which I have given [the National Gallery] anonymously.”

In the same 1942 letter and in conflict with this admission (and with the many other extant records of widespread gifts), Sachs summarized yet again his collecting and deaccessioning policy:

Perhaps it is just as well for me to say … that I look upon every work of art whether painting, drawing, print, book etc. of mine as the property of the Fogg Museum, and that if at times I have disposed of any artistic property the proceeds have always been used to acquire other artistic property that seemed more important to the Fogg, to Edward and to me. ^[26]

This implies sales from Sachs’ private collection to furnish cash for purchases and reveals why dealers’ receipts among the Sachs papers refer so often to credit owed to him. It may also explain why the bill to Sachs from Durand-Ruel for a set of Mary Cassatt’s color aquatints of women was marked by Sachs, “Fogg OK.” ^[27] Perhaps this meant that he had cleared with Forbes his gift of those prints (lacking even now in the Fogg collection) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art within a month of purchasing them. ^[28]

Sachs’ behavior raises the issue of loyalty: the obligation of the museum professional to one’s institution in all of its ramifications and of being also a private collector, of one’s financial resources and stature, and even of social and gender status. Note that all of the wealthy young collectors cited above for whom Sachs had high hopes in 1933 were white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men, Hofer included (who, at the time of his marriage in 1930, was described by Time magazine as “Socialite Philip Hofer).” ^[29] Sachs’ maturing comprehensive view of the museum professional, through the long decade of the ‘30s, beginning late in 1929 with the Great Crash and the dominance among museum ranks of dollar-a-year men and ending after a dozen years of economic disaster and social turmoil with a world at war, is embodied by the evolution of his relationship with Hofer.

In 1929 Sachs wrote,

Mr. Hofer … has worked here industriously and to everyone’s satisfaction, and has, in the meantime, become a serious collector of unusual judgment and discrimination. He has always been a man of means, but now that his father has just died he finds it necessary to watch the family fortune by re-entering business. This is too bad from the point of view of a potential, efficient museum official; but on the other hand, fortunate from the point of view of the collector world, because he is bound, with his increased power, to do things of a very great importance. ^[30]

Hofer returned to New York and made an easy entry into rarified book collecting circles through a Harvard social contact: “He found that an old friend of the Delphic Club [a private Final Club at Harvard College] … could offer him a connection with the New York Public Library as part-time ‘advisor’ to the Spencer Collection.” ^[31] This meant easy access to a major library collection and to other book collectors, to whom he could show off his personal holdings and expertise. Yet Sachs remained convinced that Hofer was the man Harvard University needed and wanted.

In 1931 Sachs proposed to Hofer an apprenticeship to himself and Forbes so that Hofer could follow them as the next director of the Fogg Art Museum; the scenario that would unroll over the next six years would be a succession crisis. Hofer responded to Sachs’ overture with reasons why he should remain in Manhattan and with some pointed stipulations about the status of his initial employment at Harvard:

First I have a definite feeling that … Mr. Lowell [A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president] + the Governing Board is rather coldly oblivious to young men, who have not come up through the ranks of instructor, etc. … Will they give my position academic recognition [double underlined by Sachs]. … Second, I am glad to work without a salary, or a nominal one, but I have to ask whether there may be deficits [in the museum budget] which I, as well as you + Edward, must meet.

Sachs annotated this last sentence, “No!”

That Hofer took Sachs’ proposition seriously is indicated by his seventh and last question: “Do you know any attractive house in Cambridge I could lease?” Apparently, he could presume upon his professor and cast him as his realtor! Hofer then described how his personal finances were strained not so much by the burgeoning depression as by his acquisitions—“I have spent capital for my collecting these last four years”—but, confident of his ability to ride out any financial storm, he projected his present and future earnings: “Quite frankly, I can count on about 40.000 a year, and later, after a few years, I will have sixty to sixty five.” He closed with a request that Sachs did not honor: “Please destroy this letter after you have shown it to Edward.” ^[32]

Sachs began his reply, “The tone of your letter makes us even more eager than we have ever been before (if that were possible) to have us join you as a partner,” and ended with, “ We want you now! If it is impossible for you to make the change this Fall we shall still want you a year from this fall. Edward waited a year for me. We are ready to wait a year for you.” ^[33] The body of this long letter was a response to Hofer’s every question, including a summary of his own (and Forbes’) finances. Sachs admitted, “We, also, have spent capital for our collecting, not only these last four years [that is, during the Depression], but for many years.” As one rich man writing to another, he wrapped up his fiscal exposition: “I think it is a happy coincidence that you are in almost the identical financial position that we are in. Even after the recent cataclysm we all three appear, at the present time, to have practically identical incomes. … Edward and I have always felt that it added to our contentment that we were both ‘incomewise’ in almost the identical position.” In this context it is useful to quote from the published history of the Museum Course, referring to Sachs’ initial negotiation for his position with Forbes in 1914:

Sachs was willing to forego an annual salary so long as he wasn’t alone in doing so. He became one of a number of wealthy “dollar-a-year” employees at Harvard. In response to Sachs’ query, Forbes wrote: “I have asked a few questions today of the man in the president’s office who knows, and I am quite surprised to find how many there are in a great many departments.” ^[34]

By December 1931 Hofer had made a sort of decision: he hedged. “I must tell you straightforwardly,” he wrote, “that I am afraid I cannot join you yet ,” underlining the last word three times. He would not reveal all his reasons, except for business obligations, but he assured Sachs that “I do intend to come to Harvard one day—and in not many years.” ^[35] Sachs sent a reassuring reply. Three years later, Hofer wrote, again with strategic underlinings, “I have just been offered a position in New York … with a salary and a future . … Mr. Morgan and Belle Greene have offered me the ‘assistant directorship’ of the Morgan Library with eventual ‘succession’ if I make good. … I know if I can’t make a ‘go’ of it, you may well not want me later. But I must chance that …” ^[36] At the time the Morgan was the most important private library in America, but Sachs knew (and presumably Hofer, too, since he had been working at another major New York library) exactly what was in store for an assistant to its director, Belle da Costa Greene. A glimpse of her is given in a report written one year earlier to Sachs, then abroad, by his administrative assistant Frederick Robinson, in New York on Fogg business:

I had luncheon with Miss Greene of the Morgan library. When I got there Dr. Köhler [Harvard Fine Arts Professor Wilhelm R. W. Koehler] was there. … I think he was a little amazed by the excitement and general hilarity of Miss Greene when she got into the taxicab, and as we went to a speakeasy for luncheon, Dr. Köhler must have been even more amazed … but after a cocktail he got into the spirit of the thing, and we had a wonderful lunch. Miss Greene … continues to make rather amazing remarks apropos of nothing at all. I remembered, however, what you told me last year after I had met her for the first time, and was doubly conscious of it after one or two bomb shells which she let drop in the course of the conversation. ^[37]

The phrase above was underlined not by Robinson but by Sachs, who seems to have returned the letter with his gloss as his reply. He added in the margin, “I am glad you remembered!”

Sachs’ annotations suggest that he knew that a man with an assertive personality might find deference to the domineering Greene difficult on a day-to-day basis, and, indeed, after only a couple of years on the job, Hofer began floating a scheme to renew his connection with the Fogg. A letter to Sachs dated March 19, 1936, ended, “Sometime—very much at your leisure—I would like to talk to you about the ‘Print Department’ at the Fogg. I have an idea which might expand its field + usefulness, I hope.” ^[38] In his reply Sachs zeroed in on what was at stake: “I should very much like to talk to you about our Print Department, and your books in connection with the same.” ^[39] Discussion continued, as indicated by Sachs’ memorandum to file:

Summary of Hofer talk with PJS, Jan 1937

Conversation with Hofer. 3 alternatives:-

1. Stay where you are.
2. Give collection to Fogg to be used in Fogg with honorary title of Research Fellow of Printed Books.
3. To be invited by Harvard and then subsequently do what you like about your books. ^[40]

And then discussion lapsed, as indicated by a letter from Hofer in May:

I assume that the reason you have not spoken to me further,—in the past three months, —about the possible gift of my books to the Fogg, is that you did not want to “compete” in any way with the Morgan Library while I was talking to them.

Now, however, the way is free for further discussion—if you [double underlined] wish it.  I have not been able to work out a plan with the Trustees of the Library which would not involve building expansion on their part, which they feel they cannot undertake at present. … Moreover, on my part, I desire to keep the collection substantially together . Accepting the books in this form would also commit the Library to later (18th, 19th, and modern) fields which is against its established policy. ^[41]

The issues of building a space for a particular collection and of expanding the collecting mandate of the library were the official reasons Hofer always gave for his departure from the Morgan, and they undoubtedly played a large part. His colleagues of later years, however, told of a far more dramatic conflict of egos, including even, according to Hofer in conversation, his rejection of Greene’s romantic advances ^{. [42]} To resume Hofer’s May letter to Sachs: “So I am now writing you before negotiating with anyone else. Would you tell me under what circumstances the books would be acceptable to you? … I need to make only one alteration in my own suggestions … that is, I do not feel I can afford to build a part of a wing … and to put up money for printing a catalogue.”

Sachs responded quickly, outlining a new role for Hofer and his collection at the Fogg, which he must have hoped would sound exactly like what the Morgan had vetoed. “As the MORGAN LIBRARY has now given you a definite answer, I feel free to say to you that nothing could be more deeply appreciated than what you propose. With your magnificent collection part of our DEPARTMENT OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS … we envisage a distinguished department at Harvard.” He proposed an immediately available space and elaborated upon one yet to be built, a permanent “HOFER ROOM.” ^[43]

Hofer reacted immediately to Sachs’ effusion, again temporizing. “I have them [his books] very well housed now where I can work on them. Thus, I’d rather not move them until I have a definite place as well as plan for their future.” ^[44] Sachs then resorted to in-person persuasion, as reported in a memorandum which he dictated to Robinson, who had not been present at Sachs’ and Hofer’s long evening meeting in Boston at the Harvard Club and in Cambridge at Sachs’ home. First, Robinson listed Sachs’ positions in numbered sentences:

1. My position as an officer of the University and of the Fogg Museum make it my duty to secure for Harvard the maximum support in money and in objects.

2. My friendship and paternal feeling for Philip Hofer make it my duty to be entirely frank and point out the problems which confront Edward and me in this situation. [Although] the Hofer Collection would be … a valuable addition to our collection of Prints and Drawings … neither Edward or I have the power to accept anything on behalf of the University, with even a suggestion that the donor could receive a position within the University in connection with his gift. ^[45]

Et cetera. Then in his memorandum for the record dictated by Sachs, Robinson gave Hofer’s positions, also in numbered sentences: “1. I have various problems to clear in my own mind—the first being … the Widener Library people who have constantly attempted to obtain my collection.” Hofer asserted his faith in Harvard, referred to his family’s dependence on him alone, asked about physical and financial resources to receive the collection, and said he wanted “no position as honorary curator or any other title in payment for the gift of my collection.” Finally: “9. My intention would be, if my proposition was accepted by the University, to give outright now a fund for such work and maintenance as would be decided upon, and yearly make donations of the books now housed adequately in New York; the yearly gift serving as an available form of tax deduction.” Robinson added to the memorandum his transcript of a statement that Sachs had made to him the following morning: “I have advised Philip Hofer to take advantage of what appears to be an offer of a job at another institution, and I herewith show you and ask you to read my entire correspondence on the subject with Mr. Forbes.” ^[46]

Sachs followed up on this conversation with a long letter to Hofer, “as per your [Hofer’s] request, to ‘Phil Hofer, the owner of a great collection’, and not to ‘Phil Hofer, as my friend and former pupil.’” There followed extremely detailed particulars, beginning: “The Room in which this Collection might ultimately be housed would measure about 30 by 22 feet, and would be a Basement and one story in height. … For the permanent room … you would put up $25,000. (half the cost of such an addition to the Fogg), plus $25,000. for an adequate Catalogue of the Collection.” Evidently, he had thought twice about providing a HOFER ROOM and collection catalogue for nothing.

Sachs’ letter continued with responses to questions Hofer had put to him on a “pencilled memorandum dated June 11, 1937.” Hofer’s first question was about money: “How would money I put up be administered? Could I, with one or two others, or alone, have the say as to spending? As to investing?” This reflects Hofer’s other career: he had been and still was an active investor in the stock market. His second question was whether he could borrow back the books after he had donated them to the Fogg or put them on deposit. “What happens if I lost a book?” Sachs reassured him on every point. To Hofer’s question, “Could books, while only loans, could be included in a catalogue?” Sachs answered yes, “since the catalogue covers the full Hofer Collection, and since loans or their equivalent will eventually be part of the Fogg Collection,” stating this last as a matter of fact. The obvious analogy was the catalogue of Sachs’ own drawings (along with other old-master drawings already owned by the Fogg), then under preparation by himself and Agnes Mongan, although “their equivalent”—a loophole for trading—could have given Sachs pause. By then, while his own collection was essentially stable, he knew well that the Hofer collection was “fluid,” its description by a later colleague who knew of its lifelong fluidity. ^[47]

Hofer and his focus on the financial pragmatics of fluid collecting finally raised Sachs’ metaphorical eyebrows with question 5: “As I do not wish to make any absolute provision against sale or exchange, and as I want to reserve the right during my lifetime to make exchanges if it seems wise, what do you think of a restraining clause in the Deed of Gift, that if sales are made after my death half of the proceeds of such sale should go to my heirs?” Sachs replied, “This seems an unusual provision … but if the Corporation sees no objection to it I am sure that Edward and I will have no objections.” Sachs had had enough experience with the fiscally arch-conservative Harvard Corporation to know where that proposal would die.

Now we see Sachs finally coming to grips with Hofer’s modus operandi as a private collector. He articulated his ethical position; his “still” suggests he had said this before:

I still think that it would be much better for you to make a provision in the Deed of Gift that after your death there shall be no sales or exchanges but that during your lifetime you may have the right to sell or exchange for the improvement of the collection—that is, that you may exchange an item or items for better items or that you may use the proceeds from the sale of any book or books for the purchase of another book or books for the collection at your discretion. ^[48]

The same day, June 15, 1937, that Sachs wrote this to Hofer, he forwarded to Forbes copies of his letter and Robinson’s memorandum with a cover memorandum which speaks to the journey that he had made since his projection of a future Fogg directorship for Hofer in 1931.

This much I’ll say in confidence to you now (and I sense you feel the same way):—that whatever my feelings were about Phil years ago as a “possibility” in the Fogg picture, my attitude is now changed. … much as I like him personally as a human being I do not want him in any intimate association. … To have another man associated with us who does not have a nine to five job would lay us open to the charge of being surrounded by gifted but amiable dilettantes. Evidently that was the situation at the Morgan Library from which Phil resigned in May. That is, he was allowed to resign. Well, I don’t have to dot all the “i’s.” ^[49]

To support his allusion to men without nine to five jobs, Sachs referred specifically to Charles Bain Hoyt. Hoyt was, as Sachs reported to Bernard Berenson in 1927, “a young bachelor of substantial means, who for years has been an active collector of Oriental art.” He had given to the Fogg “some 200 engravings and etchings. … In exchange for his duplicates I secured a group of 15th century woodcuts which we very much wanted.” ^[50] By 1928, Sachs reported that Hoyt was in league with Hofer, “discussing between themselves the advisability of presenting to the Fogg a printing press so that a lot of the poster and other printing that we might do be produced right in our own building. … As it is a further evidence of their growing interest I am encouraging them.” ^[51] And in 1933 Sachs included Hoyt (and Hofer) in his prospect of prospects to Forbes, quoted above.

Hoyt quickly integrated himself in museum operations. In December 1932, Robinson reported to Sachs in connection with “the amazing [Arthur B. Duel] collection of Japanese prints that sort of seemed to fall from nowhere into our laps. … Mr. Hoyt is having a regular field day working on them.” ^[52] By the next February, “Mr. Hoyt arranged the exhibition [of Duel prints] and did a masterly job of the whole thing.” ^[53] But only a few years later Robinson, and undoubtedly Sachs and Forbes as well, had realized that volunteers without the training or discipline of professional museum men, especially museum men who had taken Sachs’ museum course, could be drawbacks to museum operations:

Unfortunately there is no system whatsoever in the arrangement of the Japanese prints. … Mr. Hoyt and Mr. Burdon-Muller [Rowland Burdon-Muller, another rich young WASP bachelor] … have time and again thrown out with the old mats the catalogue numbers of the prints. They have also developed a system of their own for arranging the prints which, with all due respect to it, is not a good one considering the possibility of future growth.

I call these various needs and matters to your attention realizing that some of them have gone too far to rectify without considerable expense, energy and time. I also realize that a personal element is one that must be taken care of with great thought. ^[54]

To enlarge upon Sachs’ allusion to dollar-a-year men in his letter to Forbes justifying his second thoughts about Hofer in late spring 1937, another sentence from his letter of June 3 to Hofer is pertinent: “With your magnificent collection as part of our DEPARTMENT OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS; with Miss Dudley, Agnes [Mongan], Dr. Rosenberg and Miss Evans (a niece of Russell Allen) on our staff:—we envisage a distinguished department at Harvard.” ^[55] “Dr. Rosenberg” was Jakob Rosenberg, a Jewish art historian who had left Nazi Germany and had just come to Harvard through Sachs’ patronage. Less than two months before the devolution of Hofer’s career hopes at the Fogg, Sachs had written to thank Hofer for his donation of one quarter of the $20,000 kitty required to secure Rosenberg’s employment. “It is a princely gift. Your $5,000. settled the question, as far as I am concerned, of bringing Rosenberg to the Museum.” ^[56] In a letter on June 7, Sachs added, without referring to any role for Hofer himself in the print department, “I have taken the liberty of telling Dr. Rosenberg in strict confidence about your collection … he would be thrilled to have it come here.” ^[57]

With his master’s degree from Harvard and experience at two major libraries, Hofer fell somewhere in between Hoyt, who had never attended college, and Rosenberg, who had received his Ph.D. summa cum laude under Heinrich Wölfflin at Munich and had worked in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett under Max J. Friedländer and Wilhelm von Bode. By 1937 Hofer was knowledgeable to the n th degree about illustrated books and fine printing. He was never a scholar in the academic sense, yet he was the peer of Sachs, Rosenberg, and Hoyt in their respective specialties as a connoisseur, with a superb eye for quality, attribution, and authenticity. It was not his education, experience, or these talents that led in June 1937 to the withdrawal of any opportunity for a tie to the Fogg Museum beyond that of patron.

With a reference to the two Phil Hofers, the “Phil Hofer, the owner of a great collection’, and not to ‘Phil Hofer, as my friend and former pupil” of his letter of the same date to Hofer quoted above, Sachs continued his June 15 report to Forbes about his recent conversations with Hofer:

That second Phil Hofer had two questions. … (A) He practically had an offer in his pocket for a job that suited him … should he accept. … To this I answered an emphatic “Yes”. (B) Would I think it dignified if … this second Phil Hofer … were to be simply a private scholar. … I told him that this was a highly honorable career. ^[58]

Four days later, Sachs tried to explain to Hofer his and Forbes’ disengagement, reiterating yet more of their—his and Hofer’s—recent conversations:

Furthermore I added that even if we wished to call you we were in no position to do so because you ought not to accept, in my opinion, any post without salary, and we did not have the funds with which to pay you, and in view of the fact that our Print Department is now well staffed we ought not to try to raise funds for the introduction of any further new personality other than Dr. Rosenberg. ^[59]

His reference to fundraising for Rosenberg’s salaried position must have stung. In any case, Hofer was not happy; he felt he had not been treated as a gentleman.

I did not realize you would feel it necessary to report the conversations you had with the “Philip Hofer” who was once your pupil, or to keep a record of them. It seems to give an “official” aspect to words which were asked so very un officially that I rather hate to see them in “black + white.” But of course I have no [double underlined] objection to Edward’s knowing every word of what passed between us. Could I ask, however, that it go no further?

Hofer then implied his status as a man of means with the appropriate attitude of noblesse oblige: “I intend to study for at least a year—which means I am turning down the position now offered me. But I hope to find ways of being useful .” ^[60]

A more nuanced view of the entire situation is revealed by reciprocal reassurances immediately exchanged between Sachs and his assistant Agnes Mongan, who, as a contemporary of Hofer, had perhaps even a clearer understanding of his personality. In Sachs’ initial letter to Mongan, with which he enclosed his Hofer correspondence file, he made no mention of the first “Phil Hofer, the owner of a great collection” and stood firmly behind his estimate of those characteristics of the second “Phil Hofer” that militated against the latter succeeding, literally and figuratively, as the next director of the Fogg Art Museum.

Our friend Phil Hofer … was allowed to resign from the Morgan Library. Since then, I have had hours of conversation with him, and the best way to give you the whole picture in strict confidence is to ask you to read the enclosures. … You will be able to read between the lines and to understand the decision that I have reluctantly reached as far as the Fogg itself is concerned. I share your affection for Phil, and in my case as a human being, as a friend, and as a former pupil. I have decided, however, that there is no place for Phil in our organization as I envisage the future. … I based my decision on what I might term a “general feeling” … [and] also on this: that at Edward’s time of life and at mine, we are against introducing a man of Phil’s disposition and age, who, in my judgment is unable temperamentally and physically to drive himself as Edward and I have done these many years, and finally, he just cannot help “talking too much”, and I see, furthermore, no evidence that he makes up in executive ability or administrative ability what he lacks in downright scholarship. ^[61]

So much for the “efficient museum official” that Sachs had projected in his letter to the director of the Art Institute of Chicago on January 28, 1929, quoted above. And, with reference to Hofer’s inability to “drive himself,” in 1933 Sachs had written to Mongan regarding poor oral presentations by Museum Course students: “The only thing that I can think of is for the ‘old man’ [Sachs’ nickname for himself] to treat the youngsters a little more roughly. … Most of our youngsters have not yet the faintest idea of what it means to ‘take punishment in work.’” ^[62]

Mongan reassured him by repeating the substance of his letter to her about Hofer:

Your decision is wise + forward thinking. Yes, I am very fond of Phil as a human being, but I have had for some time doubts + some fears as to his administrative + scholarly capacity. … I have long felt that there is some part in his make-up where he is not quite sound. If he were a genius of course he would not need to be sound … but his talents are not really inspired except by a more than generous heart + attitude. And though he talks, it is not really the talk that is his weakness. It’s only an indication of it. Perhaps as a country scholar he can seek out successfully his own real destiny. ^[63]

Sachs was gratified. “Your answer about Phil helps me no end. … I think your analysis is perfect. … You must help me continue in my resolution to do only ‘what is best for the Fogg’…” ^[64] And now it was Mongan’s turn: “Did I sound unkind to him in my last letter? … I was afraid afterwards that my remarks when written might have seemed heartless—+ how could one be heartless to Phil? I think he shows extraordinary generosity in every aspect of his questioning.” She then continued as if the only factor in play was the fate of Hofer’s collection rather than his professional career: “His proposed gift would, of course, be a great addition to the Print + Drawing Department. I think there is no question but that you would make it more desirable for him to give the collection to the Fogg than to any other institution, but I can understand why he wishes to deliberate before making an irrevocable decision.” ^[65]

Taken all in all, what this crisis in 1937 reveals is that in the 10 years since Hofer first entered Sachs’ universe, Sachs’ criteria for the successful museum professional had undergone a profound metamorphosis. The year 1927, with the completion of the New Fogg, was the hinge on which Sachs’ attention could swing from the reconceptualization, both intellectual and physical, of the art museum itself to a new conception of the specialists needed to lead and staff that museum. He acknowledged the context for his refocus in February 1927, in the very letter in which he lauded the exemplar whom 10 years later he would cite as who was not the ideal museum man, Charles Bain Hoyt. In 1927, Sachs wrote to Berenson, “My ‘Museum Course’ continues to engross my attention more than all else in my teaching, and perhaps because I am conscious, in this field, of having something that is truly my own to give.” ^[66]

In the decade between 1927 and 1937, Sachs not only refined and codified his and his staff’s presentations to Museum Course students, he also devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to the growing cadre of graduates who now sought employment in institutions that had been financially eviscerated by the Great Depression. He used every means possible to place “his” men and women; he also followed their careers closely, advising them on leaving—or not—whatever position they had been able to obtain. Typical was his correspondence with Meyric Rogers in 1933 and 1934. Rogers, who had assisted Sachs in designing the New Fogg and was now director of the St. Louis Art Museum (thanks to Sachs’ recommendation), complained that he was nothing but a “highly specialized clerk” under the thumb of an interfering trustee. Sachs wrote that Rogers was lucky to be employed at all, even at a “fresh water institution.” ^[67]

Sachs’ exposure to nationwide successes encouraged him to formalize his curriculum. That his graduates were working nationwide caused the national museum culture to become fascinated by his pedagogic goals and methods; Sachs became the resident expert at a moment when technocrats were aiming to invent novel remedies for the social and economic catastrophe that had overwhelmed America. This came close to home at Harvard, where in 1933 its patrician president, A. Lowell Lawrence, had been replaced by a professor of chemistry, James Bryant Conant, who immediately launched a university-wide overhaul of the faculty, emphasizing scholarship and measurable achievement.

Sachs participated. In the words of the historians of the Museum Course, “In 1937, at Conant’s request, Sachs prepared a paper … for the Board of Overseers, in which he emphasized the need to ‘develop a more severe discipline’ and to foreground the value of faculty research and the ‘scientific training’ offered at the Fogg.” ^[68] Sachs emphasized the progressiveness of the entire Fine Arts curriculum (he was now department chairman) by the title of his paper: “New Methods of Research and Instruction in the Fine Arts at Harvard.” He moved on to serve on committees and present papers to the American Association of Museums (AAM) through the late 1930s and into the 1940s, as did his associates at the Fogg. An encounter at a 1942 AAM meeting by George L. Stout, head of the museum’s innovative Department of Conservation and Technical Studies (Forbes’ special interest), with William Ivins is pertinent here. Stout wanted to have an AAM-proposed program for conservation training subsumed into a larger proposal for museum training. After the meeting, he sent a memorandum to Sachs which he headed, “ Confidential and should not be included among memoranda on the subject of professional museum training.” To the typed “ Confidential ,” another underline was added in Sachs’ red pencil. Stout reported that he had informally discussed with Ivins his own and Sachs’ curricular philosophy, but

It was Ivins’ contention … that all of the work should be done by museums as such. … He was doubtful if the kind of learning which could be helped by teaching was large enough in quantity to require graduate study as such. I pointed out that on this thesis there was only one logical conclusion: that the fine arts do not constitute an academic subject. He was willing to go to that extent and to say that it was a mistake ever to have cultivated them beyond the elementary and survey limit. ^[69]

In 1946, the year after Sachs’ and Forbes’ retirement from the Fogg and when Sachs had just accepted the position of chair of the AAM Committee on Preparation for Museum Work, Sachs wrote to his successor as chairman of the AAM Policy Committee a letter that gives a précis of his fully matured views, focused upon the pragmatics of preparation for a professional career:

The period of training is to me too long. … Five years from the date of a first degree would make a student 27 or 28 years old.  This seems to me too old to tackle a first job. The danger is that the best men would get posts before the period of training was up and that the weaker ones would complete the course, to find no job in museums or elsewhere. … I suggest, therefore, a compromise:—a maximum of four years. At some point in any course of training stress should be possible on either the museum or academic aspect according to the wish and temperament of the student.

General requirements [prerequisites] 1. A sound, broad, real undergraduate education—not primarily in the fine arts field. Intensive fine arts training should only be attempted at the graduate level. The technical side of museum work is best acquired in a museum, while systematic academic work in a museum is not easy. In contrast, in academic study, first-hand familiarity on an extensive scale with objects is difficult, while systematic study along broad lines should be easy. Concentration in fine arts at the undergraduate level is in many ways an absurdity. ^[70]

Sachs here betrayed his comprehension if not complete acceptance of Ivins’ position.

Not spoken of in all these letters, reports, and memoranda about curricular matters was the evolution of Sachs’ understanding of the relative balance of his students’ social, economic, cultural, and even ethnic circumstances with their personal aptitudes, ambition, and moral fiber. In fact, he grew to take into consideration every aspect of their personalities that might enhance, affect, or blight their professional prospects. To return to the early 1930s, when Sachs’ association with Hofer was at its most enthusiastic, here are excerpts from letters exchanged by Agnes Mongan, who as a Harvard Special Student had taken the Museum Course in fall 1928 and became Sachs’ assistant that semester, and her younger sister, Elizabeth, who also wanted a career in museum work. ^[71]

In 1930 Agnes wrote to Elizabeth, then a senior at Bryn Mawr,

The Contemptibles opened a new exhibition yesterday, Modern Photography … socially brilliantly illuminated by Betty Perkins. I wish she didn’t turn me so sourly silent. It made me want to leave these New England States + go somewhere where the discussion was not to [of?] parties to which I will never be invited.

Don’t come back to Cambridge. It’s no use, go somewhere away, away. There is an array of circumstances we can’t beat. I’m giving in. What’s the use! At the moment I want to be let alone, to sink into a quiet obscurity. If only I didn’t run into people who are going places + doing things I want to do + can’t. It’s not just the social life. It’s everything. ^[72]

Elizabeth understood perfectly. The next year, in a letter to Agnes responding about a dinner party at the Bradfords—a name with a Mayflower pedigree—she asked, “Did you have the curious sensation at dinner not of being an outsider, but of being removed a mile or so from the group and so able to look on and talk easier. I find that happens.” ^[73]

The Mongan sisters were Roman Catholics, and they, as the children of a graduate of the Harvard Medical School and themselves graduates of Bryn Mawr, were “lace curtain Irish,” a world above the “shanty Irish” against whom signs had been posted in Boston and Cambridge: ”No Irish Need Apply.” ^[74] They were also worlds below male WASPs, as Elizabeth herself acknowledged explicitly in a letter to Sachs in 1935, when, already employed at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, she hoped to become its director if a co-worker, Winslow Ames, a Museum Course graduate, left for another job that he was considering. She told Sachs, “I feel if Winslow stays, I will go. This job needs a person of forty years of life, not necessarily Museum experience, a conventional mind, great tact, Congregational religion, and a private income to make a great success.” ^[75] Winslow Ames stayed, and Elizabeth Mongan, who had none of those qualifications, left.

Both Mongan sisters, and Sachs as well, may have understood, at least subliminally, the commonality of their social dilemma. All three were talented and highly educated persons within their particular family traditions but still minorities in their field of chosen work. They sought places in a museum culture that had traditionally been open at its highest levels only to rich Protestant American men. (Foreigners occupied parallel tiers.) Sachs, a member of the class comparable to the “lace curtain Irish” among American Jews, was a wealthy third-generation member of a German Jewish family in New York that owned one of the city’s pre-eminent financial institutions. Although Jews were discriminated against at Harvard (in the 1930s especially by some academic departments, the private clubs, etc.), they had their own underclass, the Eastern Europeans that at the beginning of the 20th century flooded lower Manhattan and drove German Jews ever farther uptown. ^[76]

To return to the Contemptibles: this was the Mongans’ nickname for the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, which had been founded in 1928 by three men of the class of 1930, Edward M. M. Warburg, Lincoln Kirstein—both rich and Jewish, and not among Sachs’ 1933 list for Forbes of prospects for the Fogg, quoted above—and the rich and Protestant John Walker, who was among the prospects. Sachs, Forbes, and Hofer were among the society’s trustees (along with Warburg’s father, Felix, a major donor to the New Fogg). Given the reactionary attitude of some members of the Fine Arts Department toward controversial modern art, the Fogg Museum’s co-directors were glad to duck any institutional obligation to promote it. Sachs was the trustees’ liaison to the upstart undergraduate museum men, who often called on their friend Agnes Mongan to run interference because Sachs was notoriously impatient with inefficiency and makeshift solutions (and he recognized his own short fuse; years before, he had written Meyric Rogers, “The only really unhappy times I have had in my own life have arisen on those occasions when I have been unfortunate enough to lose my temper”). ^[77]

Sachs’ students generally remembered their mentor with gratitude, especially for the many letters of introduction and recommendation that he unfailingly provided; Walker wrote that he “ran a one-man employment agency for museum personnel.” ^[78] But late in their lives, the three founding Contemptibles were less than flattering in personal characterizations of Sachs, perhaps reflecting their experience as undergraduates. Kirstein and Walker were brief, if acerbic: “a small and nervous man, who hated being a Jew”; “a stocky, strutting little man with an iron-gray moustache.” As quoted by Nicholas Fox Weber, Warburg, after a lifetime of interaction with Sachs, was more forthcoming:

“…a humorless little cannonball of energy.” … His rages were frequent, especially toward those who weren’t lucky enough to be his social inferior. Sachs was a reverse snob, and found it hard to accept others of his background as serious academics. … Except for himself, there were to be no gentlemen scholars. It was all right for Sachs to have gone from being an investment banker in the family firm to being an art collector, and from there to being a professor and codirector at the Fogg … but this sort of easy route would not do for anyone else. ^[79]

Here Warburg seems to have touched on every issue that confounded Sachs’ relationship with Hofer.

How widely the Contemptibles’ nickname spread beyond contemporaries of the three founders is unknown, but certainly “Ag” was close to both “Linc” and “Eddie,” and it was Warburg who wrote to her in 1932 a letter equivalent to Sachs’ letter the next year to Meyric Rogers urging patience in a difficult situation. Sachs had apparently offered Mongan an upgrade to her position, probably the co-authorship of his drawing catalog. Warburg chided her, “In what sense does Sachs’ letter mean that you take the veil any more heavily? You sound so—Oh, what-the-hell—about the whole thing. Cut that out. What other job could you possibly want more? Don’t you go and get the pre-depression ambitions.” ^[80]

Although Sachs “never questioned that women should be paid less and frequently told the women in the class they would do well to add typing and shorthand to their resumes,” Agnes Mongan refused to learn to type and was proud of it. ^[81] As a drawing connoisseur and researcher, she so earned Sachs’ trust and admiration that when in 1939 Belle da Costa Greene asked for his recommendation for yet another assistant, he suggested none other than John Walker and Winslow Ames but added, “Better than either of these are the Mongan sisters, particularly Agnes. They are not available now, however.” ^[82] Sachs held Agnes tightly to the Fogg, where she would remain through the rest of her long, distinguished career. She became Keeper of Drawings and then Curator, after Harvard decided that women could bear such a prestigious title. She advanced in administrative positions—Assistant Director, Associate Director (previously Sachs’ titles)—and eventually became Director of the Fogg Art Museum, from 1969 until 1971.

Exploiting the German Jewish equivalent of Harvard’s Delphic Club, Sachs placed Elizabeth Mongan, an old master print specialist, with his friend Lessing Rosenwald. Rosenwald’s father, Julius, co-owner of Sears Roebuck & Co., had in 1906 “turned to his old friend Henry Goldman, who was now a senior partner at Goldman Sachs, to issue the initial public offering,” a Goldman Sachs specialty. ^[83] By 1939 Lessing, who had succeeded his father as a principal at Sears, had also become a major print and illustrated book collector. He would give his collections to the National Gallery and Library of Congress in 1943, but they remained with him through his long life at Alverthorpe, his country manor just north of Philadelphia. Elizabeth Mongan was his print curator.

The old boy network worked for Hofer, too, in the late 1930s. He did not rusticate for long after he learned in June 1937 that there was no future for him at the Fogg. To resume quoting from his memorial by Bentinck-Smith, which is utterly silent about any relationship to Sachs,

Instead of looking immediately for another position [after leaving the Morgan Library], Hofer decided to take his time about deciding what to do. … It so happened that at this time Hofer’s friend, William Alexander Jackson, a fellow bibliophile and member of the Grolier Club, had a falling out with [a patron whose book collection he was cataloguing]. … Hofer’s real hope was some connection with Harvard, and Jackson agreed, even to the extent of going to Cambridge in 1937 to see how the land lay. … To Jackson’s and Hofer’s delight, Harvard’s choice for library director was Keyes DeWitt Metcalf. … Both of them knew him. … And almost as soon as Metcalf discovered that Jackson and Hofer were eager to move to Harvard, he secured Jackson’s appointment as rare book librarian and Hofer’s as curator of printing and graphic arts. ^[84]

Sachs and Hofer exchanged warm letters in January 1938, even before the latter’s Harvard appointment was certain. First, from Sachs: “I had a talk with Metcalf of the Library last night and was delighted to hear from him that you are seriously considering the important post at the Widener Library. It ought to be exactly the kind of post that you are looking for. … And I hardly need add that Meta [Sachs’ wife] and I will be very happy to see you often … It will seem like renewing the old days.” ^[85] And then from Hofer: “I have always wanted to be at Harvard. … I also look forward with keen anticipation to many happy times with you + yours, and to close cooperation with the Fogg.” ^[86] With his Harvard employment settled, Hofer could not resist a jab at past bugbears. After he returned from a collecting trip to Europe in the spring, he reported to Sachs that he had “managed to secure a group of books which our friend in the Metropolitan [Ivins] has long coveted, and told Miss Greene was ‘impossible’ to obtain.” ^[87]

Hofer went on for the next 40-plus years to a brilliant career in the Harvard library system. He was the founding curator of the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts at Houghton Library, Harvard’s new rare book and manuscript repository, when it opened in 1942. Jackson became Houghton’s first director, and, in contrast to Sachs’ tactic of demonstrating collecting ethics by example, he took Hofer to task at least twice, according to Hofer’s own wry testimony. ^[88] Sachs and Hofer maintained a cordial working relationship while the former remained at the Fogg, and under John Coolidge, Sachs’ and Forbes’ successor as the museum’s director, Hofer became the museum’s secretary, an honorary administrative office with light, mostly social tasks.

After the death of Hofer’s wife in 1978 and his own in 1984, virtually the entire Hofer collection came to Harvard, with the Fogg receiving prints and drawings that were not associated with book illustration, graphic design, or typography, as well as a separate collection of Asian material. ^[89] But even in the catalogue of the Houghton exhibition honoring his bequest to the library, it seemed necessary to allude, with the hint of an apology, to the fluidity of his collection:

Most of the new acquisitions [during Hofer’s lifetime] made their immediate way to the Harvard shelves, but some he retained for his own personal collection in anticipation of a later gift. This situation was often a source of confusion to those innocent of the distinction between his collection and Harvard’s. … To the end of his life, Hofer was buying and trading … To share his collection was his ultimate goal in forming it at Harvard, for this was the context that gave it meaning. ^[90]

By then, with the bequest of Paul Sachs, the many drawings and books that he had collected over his long life had come to the Fogg Museum and Fine Arts Library. Sachs had died at his desk, working on his memoirs, on February 18, 1965; but even after his retirement (with Forbes) 20 years earlier, he had never stopped prospecting for collectors and collections. His grandson, Franklin W. Robinson, tells a tale of the “old man”:

He deeply believed that collectors had a responsibility to give their collections to public museums. … To illustrate his attitude: when I was 13 years old, I started collecting, and by chance bought a really wonderful Bloemaert drawing, for $10, in Rome. … I took it up to Cambridge, to show it to him, very proudly. He looked at it long and hard … and finally said to me, Frank, this is a very fine drawing, and it belongs in a museum; in fact, it belongs in the Fogg Museum—why don’t you give it to them? I was thrilled, at age 13, to hear his reaction, but, as it happens, my mother [Celia Sachs Robinson] was hovering proudly over this conversation, and she immediately stepped in firmly and made sure I kept it. He backed off, but this does show how deeply devoted he was to the Fogg! ^[91]