Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Robert Montgomery SCOTT
Robert Montgomery Scott, 76, father figure to the city's cultural community for several decades, a major civic minence grise and one of the last true Main Line aristocrats, died last night at Bryn Mawr Hospital, his family said. He died of liver failure after a long illness.
Former president of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Academy of Music, Mr. Scott was widely adored as a singularly stylish blend of wealth and brains, polish and strong opinions, pedigree and easy amity.
"He, for me, represented everything wonderful about Philadelphia and everything you would want in a civic steward," said Rebecca W. Rimel, president of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
"He was a very distinct individual," said Art Museum director Anne d'Harnoncourt. "He was this combination of being totally devoted to Philadelphia, deeply rooted here by family and by profession, and at the same time having a kind of sophistication and larger picture of the world . . ."
"When I think about the latter half of the 20th century in Philadelphia, he really was one of the stars," said Peter Mather, a fellow Art Museum trustee.
Mr. Scott might have drawn a more modest self-portrait. Known to nearly everyone as "Bobby," Mr. Scott once described himself as "a somewhat overweight man with a red face and slightly English accent who seems to do a number of things."
Those things included practicing law and leading major cultural institutions, riding to hounds in Unionville, and serving as a diplomat in Great Britain - where he once pedaled his bicycle (a lifelong hobby) 55 miles into the countryside to lunch with the Queen Mum.
Mr. Scott's father, Edgar Scott, was an investment banker and an heir to the Pennsylvania Railroad fortune. His mother, Hope Montgomery Scott, was a legendary socialite who served as the model for Katharine Hepburn's character in the 1940 classic The Philadelphia Story.
Mr. Scott was raised at Ardrossan, the 650-acre estate in Wayne that belonged to his grandfather, Col. Robert Leeming Montgomery, which Mr. Scott often opened up for use by numerous charities. He graduated from the exclusive Groton School in Groton, Mass., and from Harvard University - where he met his wife, Gay Elliot - and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After Penn, he joined the city law firm of Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads in 1955. The firm had been founded by a great-uncle of Mr. Scott's.
Mr. Scott started out at the firm as a litigator and soon shifted to corporate work. He handled major real estate projects at the firm, including 3 Penn Center and Market Square. He eventually became a partner.
He left legal practice temporarily in 1969 to serve for four years as special assistant to Walter Annenberg, who had been named by President Richard Nixon to be ambassador to Great Britain. Mr. Scott did everything from opening the mail to chatting with royalty.
His embassy post, social skills and fortune allowed him during his diplomatic tour to meet the cream of transatlantic society. He was ever the diplomat. When he pedaled out to the Queen Mum's country home one day for lunch, she asked "Bobby" as he was leaving whether she could watch him pedal away. He said he had to decline because (as the Queen Mum was forced to acknowledge) protocol demanded that she be the first to leave any social occasion.
Despite Mr. Scott's pedigree and access, admirers said he relished human contact with just about anyone.
"There was no pretense in this man," Rimel said. "He had perhaps every reason to be that way if he elected to be, and I think that's what made him so special. He had a real sense of self and a way of realizing that he had been born into privilege, was extremely well-educated, moved in circles many of us don't, and never let that affect the way he approached others in life."
In addition to his legal work, Mr. Scott was a force in the region's civic and cultural affairs for decades. In a 1993 profile, Philadelphia Magazine called him "The Quintessential Philadelphian" and estimated that he had served on 17 "top" trusteeship boards.
When he returned from England in 1973, Mr. Scott was tapped to be president of the Academy of Music. In his seven years on the job, the academy raised $5 million and upgraded its physical plant. Mr. Scott also helped assemble a real estate deal that provided the academy more office space and a new rehearsal hall.
Mr. Scott, however, was perhaps known best as the cheery personification of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Having served as a museum trustee since 1965, he became unpaid president in 1980. In 1982, at the board's request, he gave up his law practice and became the full-time paid CEO with responsibility for the administrative and financial aspects of the museum.
When Mr. Scott took over, the museum's endowment was $19.3 million; it was open five days a week, and more than half its galleries were dark. Annual attendance was 400,000 and dropping, and it relied upon the city for one-third of its annual $9 million budget.
When he stepped down in 1996, the museum was open six days a week plus Wednesday evenings, despite heated budget fights with then-Mayor Ed Rendell. Its annual attendance had climbed to 950,000. The museum had renovated both its medieval and European galleries and its endowment exceeded $100 million, thanks in part to a $64 million capital campaign. Its operating budget was $24.5 million, despite a city contribution reduction to $2.25 million annually.
As museum head, Mr. Scott became known for the bicycle tours that he led around Fairmount Park. It was said that his high spirits made the institution seem less elitist than its reputation.
"I think totally that Bob was an extraordinary ambassador for the museum everywhere," d'Harnoncourt said, "whether it was on his bike tour, whether in Mexico on holiday and meeting someone he could interest in the museum, and the next thing you knew they'd appear in the restaurant getting involved in the museum. He worked very hard for the museum during his tenure as president."
At various times, Mr. Scott invited the Art Museum's members - thousands of them - to parties at Ardrossan.
Mr. Scott and Rendell tangled frequently in the 1990s, when the city cut its subsidy to the museum from $4.5 million in 1992 to $2.25 million.
In part because of Mr. Scott's protests, the Rendell administration backed off plans to eliminate the subsidy entirely, but officials still complained that the museum should be more profitable. City Hall called for a management study on how to increase fiscal efficiency.
The study, however, backfired. It showed that the museum under Mr. Scott was well-managed.
Mr. Scott showed uncommon wisdom, too, when he made the Art Museum one of the few major Philadelphia cultural institutions not taken in by the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy, a once-coveted charity that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.
"Holy cat," Mr. Scott said in 1995 upon learning that New Era was a fraud. "Isn't it wonderful we were too stupid to participate? My God, it's astonishing. Originally when we looked at it, we didn't understand the economics, and therefore, when we don't understand something, we tend to avoid it."
He is survived by his partner, Margaret Anne Everitt; daughters Hope Rodgers and Janny Scott, and son Elliot Scott; brother Edgar Scott Jr.; former wife Gay Scott; and seven grandchildren. Arrangements were incomplete.
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