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The Midshipmen summer cruises to Europe were
eye-opening. I discovered art in Paris and Amsterdam, and developed an
interest in international travel.
After graduation from Texas and becoming an Ensign,
USN, I accepted an offer from Esso (now ExxonMobil) to work in their
Baton Rouge refinery. Part of the attraction of the job was a potential
scholarship to graduate business school. If I worked for Esso three
years, I was eligible for a Teagle scholarship. Teagle, one of the
founders of Standard Oil, established this private, no-strings-attached
scholarship for any employee with three years’ service to attend either
Harvard or MIT business schools—with no obligation to return to a
Standard Oil affiliate after earning an MBA. All I had to do was put in
a few days work en route to my first Navy duty station, then return to
Esso for any period after my three years of military service, I would
qualify. I did, and I did.
I served three years in the Navy, mostly at sea, aboard
a ship that was mapping the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in places to
locate hydrophones to track Soviet submarines. Long stretches away from
civilization, but a technically interesting occupation. The high school
summers I’d worked with my Dad’s land surveying crews proved more
valuable than my engineering degree. Back to Baton Rouge after discharge
to earn the scholarship, then to Boston for Harvard Business School and
an MBA two years later (Class of 1961).
My finance professor steered me to Wall Street, and I
joined a small investment management firm as a securities analyst
specializing in the chemical and energy industries. For the next forty
years I worked in some aspect of securities and investment, at Waddell &
Reed, a mutual funds company, next at Mitchell, Hutchins, a
research-oriented stock broker, then the last twenty-one years as CEO
and Chairman of Alliance Capital Management (now Alliance Bernstein), a
large pension fund and mutual fund company. I retired from Alliance in
2001.
My principal avocation has been collecting fine art
prints, an activity my wife (Ph. D. Art History) and I shared from the
time of our marriage in 1975. Over a nearly 35-year period, we built
what was thought to be the largest collection of prints by American
artists in private hands. Drawing on our collection, we created
traveling exhibitions (to more than 100 museums in the United States,
Canada, Europe and Japan) and wrote nearly all of the exhibition
catalogues that accompanied the prints. We responded to a question “Is
there a good video on prints?” with All About Prints, an
hour-long PBS show and DVD. In 2008, we donated most of our collection
to the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Resume
Education:
High School: Austin
High School,
Austin,
Texas
College: University
of Texas,
Austin. B.S. Chemical Engineering
Graduate Studies:
Harvard
Graduate
School of Business Administration,
MBA;
Hunter
College: graduate courses in Art History and
History;
Graduate
Center, CUNY: graduate courses in Art
History.
Spalding
University: graduate courses in creative
nonfiction writing
Work Experience:
1977-2001: Chairman, then Chairman Emeritus,
Alliance Capital Management
Ten years as Director of Research, Executive Vice
President, Mitchell, Hutchins, Inc.
Six years as a securities analyst in investment
management
Military Service:
1956-1959: U.S.
Navy, Lt. j.g.
Other Activities and Affiliations:
Honorary Keeper of American Prints, The
Fitzwilliam
Museum,
Cambridge,
England
Member, Council on Foreign Relations
Previous Affiliations:
Trustee, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Trustee, The American Federation of Art
Trustee, The Foreign Policy Association
Awards:
2001 Gold Medal Award from the Spanish Institute (with
Reba Williams), November 2001.
Spanish Government, Order of the Civil Merit, for
“distinguished services or significant cooperation in matters that
result in benefit to the country,” 2001
Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship (with
Reba Williams), October 2000.
2000 Swan Award (with Reba Williams), lifetime
achievement for furthering the arts both nationally and internationally,
Cheekwood
Museum,
Nashville,
Tennessee.
Distinguished Cultural Leadership Award (with Reba
Williams), for outstanding contributions to the arts and culture of the
Empire
State, February 10, 1999.
The Augustus Graham Medal (with Reba Williams),
presented on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum of Art Board of Trustees, for
“Outstanding support of the arts,”
April 30, 1998.
The Polish Order of Merit, Cavalier of the Grand Cross
of Poland, First Class (with Reba Williams), honoring contributions to
the financial industry in Poland.
The Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver for Merits to
the Republic of Austria, 1996 (for founding The Austria Fund, a mutual
fund investing in Austrian securities)
Bayard
Rustin
High School for the Humanities (with
Reba Williams). Appreciation: “In helping to re-establish a very
special environment, you have begun a renaissance which we hope
continues until the school has regained its original beauty,” October 25, 1995.
Personal:
Married to Reba White Williams
Member, The Knickerbocker Club,
New York,
NY
Member, The Century Association,
New York, NY
Member, New York
Yacht Club, New York, NY
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