Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

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Baltimore-95 BALTIMORE: Oh, yes. Again— I mean, I have a real interest in contemporary art. LIPPINCOTT: I know. BALTIMORE: I love it; I have a collection of my own, which used to grace the walls of the President’s House. Richard Serra is the greatest living sculptor. You like him or you don’t like him, but he is the greatest living sculptor. When we built the Broad building, we agreed to keep that lawn free of further building, and in fact, in the master plan, we traded some space into there, so that we would have the opportunity to build a campus center building elsewhere, but we would keep that lawn open. And that was partly homage to Arnold Beckman, because although Arnold at that point was very old and he himself wouldn’t have thought much about it, his daughter, who was a member of the board, was tending his image, and she didn’t want to see— we didn’t want to see—the Beckman building, which sits on that lawn, blocked off. Not because it’s great architecture. It’s actually terrible architecture. But— LIPPINCOTT: Were you thinking of the lawn maybe as a site for some kind of public art BALTIMORE: Right. So that lawn now looks ridiculous. And we knew it would look ridiculous, because it doesn’t have a tree on it, it doesn’t have— Well, now it has the set-up for the construction, but it will go back to being grass. LIPPINCOTT: Oh, will it It looked to me like they were going to build something on it. BALTIMORE: No, they’re not building anything on it; it’s all support for the Annenberg building and the new chemistry building [the Warren and Katharine Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry]. And it desperately needs something. I thought it would be a great site for a sculpture. Now, I imagined the sculpture being on a corner near the Broad building. But when I got Richard Serra to come out and look at it, and I got Eli to agree to pay some of the money for it— It would cost us a little bit more than that, and I never did figure out how I’d get that money, but I was convinced I could get it. LIPPINCOTT: So you were the one who approached Serra
Baltimore-96 BALTIMORE: Yes. LIPPINCOTT: Did you like him BALTIMORE: Oh, he’s an awful man! Oh, he’s terrible! LIPPINCOTT: In what way BALTIMORE: He is egotistical. He is bombastic. He is crude. He’s just the greatest living sculptor. But he’s not nice, and he was not helpful. He designed something which would take the whole lawn. LIPPINCOTT: Was this one of his walls BALTIMORE: No, it was not a wall. It was a series of levels that came up. He looked at the site; the site actually falls, so he was going to build these various levels into the contours of the site. It was an interesting piece. It wasn’t the work he was doing at the moment; it harkened back to work he had done at Storm King in northern New York State, on the Hudson. He had done this in Storm King, and it was somewhat related to what he had done at Storm King, but that was many years before. I was a little surprised by that, but that’s what he wanted to do, and I couldn’t convince him to do anything else. LIPPINCOTT: Did you try BALTIMORE: I did, at various times, try—in particular, when it became clear that the opposition in the school to it was enormous. LIPPINCOTT: I remember what I thought was the very funny thing the students did, with the couch and the lamp— [Laughter] BALTIMORE: The students were actually pretty good about it, but they were also adamant and they were prepared to make a lot of trouble.
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DAVID BALTIMORE (b. 1938) INTERVIEW
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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
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Baltimore-iii 51-55 1975 Nobel Priz
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Baltimore-2 BALTIMORE: The family w
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Baltimore-4 LIPPINCOTT: Oh! That wa
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Baltimore-6 BALTIMORE: Suburban, si
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Baltimore-8 I remember a big thing
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Baltimore-10 college at that point;
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Baltimore-12 BALTIMORE: Yes. That e
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Baltimore-14 BALTIMORE: No, I don
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Baltimore-16 BALTIMORE: I did not w
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Baltimore-18 BALTIMORE: Yes, that
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Baltimore-20 LIPPINCOTT: How big a
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Baltimore-22 BALTIMORE: No, this wa
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Baltimore-24 BALTIMORE: That’s ri
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Baltimore-26 BALTIMORE: I spent all
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Baltimore-28 BALTIMORE: No, I think
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Baltimore-30 BALTIMORE: Polio and i
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Baltimore-32 LIPPINCOTT: So your Ph
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Baltimore-34 BALTIMORE: No, I’m n
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Baltimore-36 BALTIMORE: Oh, yes, I
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Baltimore-38 BALTIMORE: It was year
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Baltimore-40 LIPPINCOTT: No, it was
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Baltimore-42 DAVID BALTIMORE SESSIO
Page 49 and 50: Baltimore-44 BALTIMORE: The Cookery
Page 51 and 52: Baltimore-46 appears in Howard’s
Page 53 and 54: Baltimore-48 BALTIMORE: Yes, it’s
Page 55 and 56: Baltimore-50 The experiment I descr
Page 57 and 58: Baltimore-52 room and they didn’t
Page 59 and 60: Baltimore-54 LIPPINCOTT: OK. Renato
Page 61 and 62: Baltimore-56 all the pictures that
Page 63 and 64: Baltimore-58 and the profits from t
Page 65 and 66: Baltimore-60 contemporary. So that
Page 67 and 68: Baltimore-62 BALTIMORE: And that’
Page 69 and 70: Baltimore-64 BALTIMORE: No, it was
Page 71 and 72: Baltimore-66 understand that. Becau
Page 73 and 74: Baltimore-68 BALTIMORE: I still had
Page 75 and 76: Baltimore-70 LIPPINCOTT: Were they
Page 77 and 78: Baltimore-72 BALTIMORE: This was—
Page 79 and 80: Baltimore-74 LIPPINCOTT: You don’
Page 81 and 82: Baltimore-76 a biology school, in s
Page 83 and 84: Baltimore-78 LIPPINCOTT: OK. So on
Page 85 and 86: Baltimore-80 Judy’s book calls it
Page 87 and 88: Baltimore-82 never came to pass for
Page 89 and 90: Baltimore-84 BALTIMORE: I don’t b
Page 91 and 92: Baltimore-86 BALTIMORE: Well, he wa
Page 93 and 94: Baltimore-88 BALTIMORE: We intervie
Page 95 and 96: Baltimore-90 about this, but when I
Page 97 and 98: Baltimore-92 to announce it.” Gor
Page 99: Baltimore-94 BALTIMORE: I don’t r
Page 103 and 104: Baltimore-98 LIPPINCOTT: You mean h
Page 105 and 106: Baltimore-100 LIPPINCOTT: OK. In th
Page 107 and 108: Baltimore-102 BALTIMORE: I had no i
Page 109 and 110: Baltimore-104 BALTIMORE: So I was g
Page 111: Baltimore-106 BALTIMORE: Well, not
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Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

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