The Lure of Luers

The Metropolitan Museum's new presidential couple

VANITIES

Shall I still call you Ambassador?" I ask William H. Luers, who was formerly our man in Venezuela and Czechoslovakia, and was the favorite of certain Reagan insiders for the ultimate foreign-service assignment: Moscow.

"President's fine," he answers, referring to his new post at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, an institution every bit as byzantine as the Kremlin. Given the high political and social profile of Luers and his energetic wife, Wendy, the Fifth Avenue patroness pack was quick to wonder whether his appointment (suggested by Met chairman J. Richardson Dilworth) meant that Met director Philippe de Montebello was being subtly upstaged.

"Philippe and I meet once a week," says Luers, dismissing speculation, "and we alternate between his office and mine. He runs the curators and I run the vice presidents, the administration." With an annual budget of $94 million and almost two thousand employees, there's a lot to administer. "It seems like I've spent my whole life preparing for this."

Born in Springfield, Illinois, educated at Hamilton College, Northwestern University, and Columbia University (where he earned a master's in Russian studies), Luers has always been more interested in culture than your average ambassador. He and Wendy turned both the Caracas and Prague residences into veritable galleries of contemporary American art, and their houseguests included Richard Diebenkom, Frank Stella, Edward Albee, E. L. Doctorow, and William Styron.

"The museum provides a moment of relief in a city like New York," Luers says. The question is whether the new job will allow the Luerses any relief from the high-powered socializing required to raise funds. They have become instant stars of Manhattan's donor class, and have been entertained by everyone from Brooke Astor to Brooke Hayward. "The main thing,'' says Wendy, "is to maintain your balance and priorities."

Bob Colacello