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Tuesday, January 4, 2005
FDR and New Deal leads to
new direction
Artist
focuses organizational skills on new endeavor at Union
Station
Cyrus D. Lipsitt is
pictured with some items at the Franklin D. Roosevelt
American Heritage Center Museum in Union Station,
Worcester.
(T&G Staff / TOM
RETTIG)
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WORCESTER— The phone rang just
as Cyrus D. Lipsitt was saying that the museum of the Franklin D.
Roosevelt American Heritage Center was starting to get more
inquiries. The caller wanted information on a certain speech given
by FDR in 1941. Mr. Lipsitt replied that he’d make every effort to
find the speech.
Mr. Lipsitt, admittedly, is not an expert
on FDR and the New Deal. But he’s learning.
A copy of “No
Ordinary Time,” historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s tome on FDR, sits
on his desk at the museum, which is located on the second floor of
Union Station, 2 Washington Square.
The museum, which opened
last summer, is the creation of Dr. Joseph J. Plaud of Whitinsville,
a forensic psychologist and FDR scholar, who, dealers say, has the
largest collection of materials on the nation’s 32nd president in
private hands.
Dr. Plaud’s choice of Mr. Lipsitt to head the
museum’s day-to-day operations represents a new chapter in Mr.
Lipsitt’s career. A potter and graphic designer, he is well known in
the city’s cultural and arts communities.
Among other
positions, Mr. Lipsitt had a seven-year stint as executive director
of the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston and a 15-year tenure as
executive director of the Worcester Center for Crafts. Several
months ago, he was appointed chairman of the nine-member Worcester
Cultural Commission, which awards annual grants to local artists and
organizations. Recipients for 2005 are expected to be announced this
week.
Mr. Lipsitt and Dr. Plaud had not crossed paths until
Mr. Lipsitt’s brother, Dr. Lewis Lipsitt, a professor of psychology
at Brown University, got them together. They hit it off.
“I
consider myself an FDR scholar, and I have the materials and the
collection itself and have learned how to archive and preserve, but
I did not have the know-how to present the material,” Dr. Plaud said
by telephone from Florida, where he was vacationing. “Cy had the
experience in terms of the mechanics of running a museum that I did
not.”
Mr. Lipsitt first offered his services on a volunteer
basis. When the museum space was secured, he went to work designing
the layout. The trick was to make digestible to the average visitor
a large amount and wide range of material — original signed
documents and letters, photographs, portraits and artifacts, such as
mugs, clocks and marionettes of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. Mr.
Lipsitt oversaw the installation. He and Dr. Plaud selected the
photographs for the montages, which play an important role in the
museum’s aesthetic design.
“It’s a nice way of expanding the
exhibit; it breaks up the material,” Mr. Lipsitt said of the
montages. “You see the exhibit in segments.”
Mr. Lipsitt was
explaining that the museum’s hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday
through Saturday, when the phone rang again. The caller wanted to
speak with Dr. Plaud about Cass R. Sunstein’s book, “The Second Bill
of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than
Ever,” and its connection with a New Deal summit the museum is
planning.
Asked about the summit, Dr. Plaud said: “Those of
us who keep the New Deal flame alive will meet and decide how to
deal with issues like revamping Social Security and other New Deal
programs that are potentially on the chopping block in the next four
years.”
Visitors come to the museum most often on Friday and
Saturday. It is also a magnet for people who are waiting to catch a
train. Some are surprisingly knowledgable about FDR. “We had one
child, about 12, who could hold his own with Joe,” Mr. Lipsitt said.
Along with the New Deal summit, Dr. Plaud is talking with
Dr. Lipsitt about organizing a psychology symposium connected with
FDR’s paralysis, following his bout with polio. The symposium would
focus on succeeding despite a disability, using FDR as a model.
Cyrus Lipsitt’s current focus on FDR has a serendipitious
quality to it. In the 1950s, his father bought property in Fairhaven
that had once been FDR’s mother’s home.
But it was art that
captivated Mr. Lipsitt, even as a child growing up in Marion. After
graduating from Tabor Academy, he studied graphic design at Rhode
Island School of Design. During those years, he also took up pottery
and clay sculpture. He then entered the corporate world as a graphic
designer, working for Container Corporation of America and MITRE
Corp.
Yet his interest increasingly evolved toward pottery
and sculpture, and he became involved in the world of crafts. It led
to his taking the job at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston.
He and his wife, Carole, settled in Worcester in 1980, when he began
running the Worcester Center for Crafts. The Lipsitts have two
children, Alisa, a documentary film editor living in Los Angeles,
and a son, Adam, a student living at home.
Mr. Lipsitt and
the craft center parted ways in 1995; he took a job as development
director at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell and
eventually became assistant director. He stayed for five years. He
was consulting with start-up nonprofit organizations when he got
involved with the FDR museum.
Mr. Lipsitt’s commitment to the city’s cultural life
is reflected in his position on the Worcester Cultural Commission,
which is the local arm of the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The
council divides up state arts funding among the local commissions
based on their populations. The commissions then solicit
applications for grants.
“We request proposals from artists,
organizations and schools,” Mr. Lipsitt explained. “As a group, we
review and decide on eligibility and ability to perform the task
described. Then we decide on the amount of money.”
The
Worcester commission received 51 requests for 2005 and will dole out
a total of $57,000 to 38 recipients. The commission always selects
two artists to receive fellowships of $2,500 each to use as they
choose, within the parameters of their artistic work. The others
receive about $3,000 each.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lipsitt,
surrounded by original documents and unique FDR memorabilia, has
been inspired to achieve expertise on the New Deal era. Among the
most useful sources, he said, is the FDR center’s voluminous Web
site, http://www.fdrheritage.org/.
“He’s an
engaging and intelligent person,” Dr. Plaud said of his museum
director. “It’s just a matter of time before his knowledge will be
up there. I’m very pleased with his work.”
Visit the FDR American Heritage Center online: http://www.fdrheritage.org
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