Democracy's Medici

Mary Anne Goley was the founding director of the Fine Arts Program of the Federal Reserve Board (1975–2006). She led a fifteen-member advisory panel and liaisoned with Federal Reserve board members and the thirty-six system-wide bank presidents and their Directors advising on Board art policy. Organizing over 110 exhibitions (many catalogue essays were authored by Goley), the strategy at the Federal Reserve complemented that of local museums as well as made contributions to the field. Beginning in 1988 Goley worked with central banks and museums in Austria, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and The Netherlands. Scholarly contributions have included the exhibitions: The Hague School and Its American Legacy, Gerald Murphy, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, The Paintings of Eduard J. Steichen, Samuel Halpert, Austrian Biedermeier, Polish Constructivism, and The Influence of Velasquez on Modern Painting, The American Experience, among others. Two exhibitions resulted in foreign decorations from The Netherlands and Luxembourg. In 2006 she organized The Face of Contemporary Art in China and traveled an exhibition of the Board’s collection to the European Central Bank.