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Frank Mason, beloved painting instructor at the Art Students League for 57 years, died June 16, 2009 at the age of 88. With the support of the Mason family, the League has established the Frank Mason Fund to support the League's 135-year commitment to instructional excellence. Please give generously to this fund.
Below is a tribute to Mr. Mason written by Executive Director Ira Goldberg for the fall 2009 issue of Linea, the journal of the Art Students League.
Frank Herbert Mason, 1921-2009
The relationship between the League and its instructors is a special one. The League is the League because of its instructors. Each studio is run by a master who brings his or her knowledge, aesthetic, experience, and persona to bear in guiding students through the complexities of making art. Over time, the spirit of these artists becomes part of its lore. Our 135-year-old institution evokes that history to all who pass through its doors. Most League instructors are hired to carry on where their predecessors left off. This preserves both a broad array of aesthetic philosophies and a strong pedigree of instruction that dates back to our origins. At the same time, it is these lineages that allow the Art Students League of New York to continuously evolve.
Anyone who has attended the League during the last six decades has heard the name of Frank Mason. The legacy of Mr. Mason, who died this past June at the age of 88, after 57 years of teaching, is indelible. Like many master instructors before him, he had come to the League first as a student.
Frank’s reputation had already become legendary by the time I arrived at the League in 1979. There were stories of marches he led in front of the steps of the Metropolitan Museum and the Italian Embassy, protesting the zealous over-cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and many other Old Master works. His trombone-like tenor reverberated throughout the building, ringing out warnings of how museums were washing away our artistic heritage, layer by layer, mistaking thin glazes for dirt on many a masterpiece. It seemed odd to a newcomer that this issue should become someone’s personal mission, that an individual could feel he might make a difference and stop an injustice that most ignored. Frank’s persistence occasionally bordered on obsessive, and had it not been for the fact that he was right about the damage inflicted by conservators, his reputation might have been that of a hopeless eccentric.
You would have to go back much earlier to understand Frank Mason’s forcefulness. In 1937, at the age of 16, while a student at the High School of Music and Art, he saw an exhibition of League instructors at the Metropolitan Museum, which prompted him to drop out of high school for study at the League with Frank Vincent DuMond. His personal aesthetic always pointed in the direction of the old masters. When he wasn’t taking classes, he would draw and paint at home, copying Michelangelo drawings from books or masterworks in the city’s museums.
 As Frank’s work matured, the postwar American art scene was undergoing enormous change. As the New York school emerged, the modernist gentry rendered traditional realism passé, and Frank spent much of his career taking a stand for his cause. His was a crusade for the preservation of the sacred, and he traveled that path with religious fervor.
When DuMond died in 1951, Frank was asked to take over the class. Over the years he gained a following that embraced his ideology and learned the techniques of Rubens and Hals. He was adored by his students for whom he was a hero, taking on the museums, academia, and the post-modern establishment. But it was Frank’s sense of lineage, his carrying forth the teachings of his master, DuMond, that make his place in League history special. Frank related stories DuMond told his class of his adventures studying in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, which included encounters with artists such as Whistler and Sargent. Though this may seem quaint or trivial, it is not. The oral tradition remains an essential part of the artist’s education. It is extraordinary to think that for 113 years, there have been only two instructors who’ve occupied Studio 7 in the afternoons, one emerging from the other. Tom Torak, a former Mason student, now follows him to carry on the lineage.
For Frank Mason, tradition and ritual were his life’s guideposts and he impressed his classes deeply with those values that were for him the foundation of art. His is a great League story. He was part of an institution that has been an incubator for talent that, when driven by an unshakable desire to learn and succeed, can unleash enormous potential. Frank was proof of that. What he learned and synthesized he then gave back to his students. The gift he received, he then passed on to those who do the same in turn. The value of that pedagogical lineage cannot be overestimated. It is how artists have learned their craft for centuries and no one adhered to that principle with greater devotion than Frank Mason. His spirit will be part of the aura of the League for as long as it stands.
To honor his memory, the League is establishing the Frank Mason Fund, a special fund for instructors. Frank, his wife Anne, and I discussed creating this fund in his name a few months before he died. If you would like to honor Frank’s fifty-seven years of devotion to his students, his art, and the League, we would be grateful for your support.
As a not-for-profit institution, donations are critical to our future. Donations support our tradition of offering the finest quality art education at an affordable cost and help maintain and improve the facilities at our landmark building in Manhattan and at our Vytlacil campus and Artist-in-Residency Program in the Hudson River Valley just outside the city.
We thank our donors for their dedication and loyalty to the League, and look forward to working with new League friends as we shape the future of our great institution.
The Art Students League of New York is a public charity, exempt from income tax under 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue code. Gifts to the Art Students League of New York are tax deductible as authorized by state and federal law.
A copy of the Art Students League's latest form 990 and Audited Financial Statement may be obtained upon request from the organization or from the New York State Attorney General's Charities Board, 120 Broadway, New York, New York, 10271. Copies of our 990 may also be viewed through Guidestar (http://www.guidestar.com) or at http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/990finder/
For any questions about making a contribution, please contact Denise L. Greene at 212.247.4510, extension 130 or at denise@artstudentsleague.org
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