MC: I wasn’t in New York during that period. I read that there was much controversy. But, I cannot remember if the exhibit was finally shut down at one point?

CM: They found that they were getting a little bit of heat. They didn’t shut it down but they did make their big excuses and didn’t do anything like it again. So there was a need for Rudy Giuliani’s panel, which he made me a member of, because my husband being in politics, he said, “Well I’ve heard what you say. Are you ready to put your money where your mouth is because if you are you could be on this panel? We would be happy to have you.” And I said fine, I was perfectly willing to put my name to that; I didn’t think it was right at the time to publicly support this.

MC: And that was called the...?

CM: Well it was called the “Cultural Committee,” but our adversaries subtitled it as the so-called “Decency Committee,” and that was supposed to be an insult by the way. I had somebody interview me, she was with a TV program, and she said to me “I shouldn’t really say “Decency Committee,” do you find that objectionable?” I answered “why should I find decency objectionable?” I mean, in itself it says what it should be. Somehow in this world, decency has come to be a dirty word. Is that reasonable? No. That’s what they were trying to say, that I should object to it because the Decency Committee has made it sound like something it shouldn’t be.

MC: And similarly there was another review or an article or an editorial?

CM: In the New Yorker magazine. I kept it because they called me on the phone to give me a phone interview. John Howard Sanden, who is a portrait artist who I know too, was also on the committee. They also interviewed him, but he was already very well established as a portrait artist and as a teacher at the Art Student’s League. I studied with him. Then, I was still in the midst of getting into portraiture so I was just finishing the Discovery and the American Women Series. So she asked me what I was doing and what my thoughts were about the committee and I told her that I objected to the public funding of exhibitions that insulted people’s belief system. I told her exactly what I just told you. Then she proceeded to ask me on the phone, “How old are you?” And I told her?I thought that was an odd question?“What does that have to do with anything?” But when the article came out and they used an illustration of my painting of the older Columbus?it appeared in the back section?next to John Howard Sanden’s portrait of Laurence Tisch it compared not our skill but choice of subject matter. The interviewer quoted what Sanden said concerning his opinion about why he thought the exhibition was anti-Christian, etc. However, much more was reported regarding his whole list of important clients and it actually gave him an endorsement. And then they got to my review, and it said “Here’s Christopher Columbus, and the older Christopher Columbus is a part of a series, and so on. She is a 63 year old housewife who paints, or some such thing like that.” It was such a blatant insult and they made it so obvious that was exactly what they were doing, that anything I would say in retort, would be ridiculous because what did I know? I was only a 63-year-old housewife, not a painter, nor a person with my own point of view.

MC: Meanwhile, you received recognition from Parsons School of Design when it really wasn’t fashionable to study art as a woman. You worked in a field that wasn’t interested in promoting women. You’ve continued painting and being interested in the art spirit your whole life and you’ve made sacrifices in your life to continue with your work. You’ve been outspoken and interested in your community and also the social aspects of being an artist and being involved in areas that haven’t always been “politically correct” and yet gone out on a limb and I think that should be acknowledged.

CM: Thank you. I appreciate that.

MC: Do you have anything more to add?

CM: No, I think you said it all. I just hope that it would be nice to be able to put the artwork out there and that we would progress to a time when it wasn’t necessary to have a National Women’s Museum, which there is in Washington, D.C. The only reason we have a National Women’s Museum is because women artists need help to be recognized. If they were just recognized as artists, there would be no need for this. There is no such thing as a woman artist, she is just an artist. You know you’re either an artist or your not.

MC: I agree with that. I have hesitated to get involved in any women’s co-ops, women’s galleries just for that fact, because I want my work to be out there because it’s work, not because it’s women’s work. And you can see that strength in your work. You’re interested in being a painter, not promoting any political agenda that’s going to involve you in a clique. That’s too easy. I don’t think you have ever taken the easy route.

CM: No, I guess I’m a natural born rebel, one way or another.

MC: And yet, because of your conservative political affiliations, your work is seen as parallel to your belief system. The critics have not grasped your struggle nor attempted to understand.

CM: I’ve always made a joke of all the people that I’ve done portraits of in the political arena, most of them are Democrats. My husband is a Republican conservative, I’m a conservative, but I’ve made jokes about the fact when they ask me, “How come they’re all Democrats?” I say, “Maybe they’re easier with their money than the Republicans, the Republicans are too stingy! They hold onto it. Especially where the arts are concerned.”

MC: Although Nixon was the one who promoted the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities?

CM: Which proves that you can’t go by labels.

MC: You can’t go by labels. And he is the one we should look at because he epitomized this conflict within the human drama. One must dig deeper.

CM: In fact there are many areas that may become blurred.

MC: Even Ezra Pound was a genius poet who was thought to have had fascist sympathies and yet his poetry is avant-garde. His politics were not compatible with his poetry.

CM: You can have a thought in one direction and another that overlaps to the other side and I think that is what makes an individual and why labels are really bad. It’s not right to slot you and put you in an area where you don’t belong. As if one would say she’s no good because she was on that panel then she stands for censorship.
MC: But, do you support censorship?

CM: No, I just think people should go on their own dime. That’s the whole thing, if you want to voice your own opinion - as I used to be a political cartoonist. So, if you want to make a political statement, that’s where it belongs in a political cartoon. That’s my opinion; in that forum one can say anything one wants.

MC: Art for art’s sake?

CM: Right. There are some areas that I think it takes some better taste or a need to be a little more discreet. There is a lot more you can get done with honey than you can with vinegar. You can make in roads in a gentle way more than you can with a hammer. It just doesn’t work that way.