A Deceptive Clarity

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"It's eleven-fifteen," Tony Whitehead announced peremptorily to the assembled curatorial staff of the San Francisco County Museum of Art. "We've been at this for over two hours and we don't seem to be getting anywhere. I don't know about you, but I've had enough talk, and now I want some action. By next Wednesday morning I expect to see each department's preliminary budget on my desk with three scenarios: current-year allocation, five-percent reduction, and ten-percent reduction."

He waved away the rumble of protest. "We don't have any choice. I'll do my best with the board. That's all." He shuffled his papers together and glanced at me. "Chris, you stay, please."

While the rest of the staff glumly packed up their file folders and made for the door of the conference room, the director nodded them cheerfully out, remaining plumply ensconced in his customary Duncan Phyfe lyre-backed chair at the head of the oval, deeply polished Queene Anne table. The conference room, like most of the administrative offices in the building, was filled with handsome furnishings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Access to the storerooms for office decoration is one of the pleasantest, least-known perquisites of curatorial rank in an art museum.

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