Like many young professionals just starting out, Max Levai also strived to make a name for himself independent of his heritage. For his first show as director, Levai went behind his father’s back to produce a “risky” exhibition he truly believed in — a show that ultimately won him the respect and support of his father, before being tragically destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.
Art runs in the family. Mr. Levai’s great-uncle, Frank Lloyd, was a founder of Marlborough, in London in 1946. Mr. Levai’s father, now 76, met his mother, Rosemary, when she was an assistant to Philippe de Montebello at the Metropolitan Museum in the 1970s. Looking at art was as regular an activity for father and son as fishing.
“When my father took me to museums, I always wanted to rent the recorded-tour headsets,” Mr. Levai said on a recent evening in a spare but imposing office he borrowed from a staff member of his gallery, since he doesn’t have his own. “But he said no because he wanted to talk and he also wanted to hear what I had to say.” Was that a key to raising a son willing to step up so early without the requisite period of rebellion? “My father didn’t push, but we’d go and look at art, and he’d tell me a little, and then we’d talk about other things,” Mr. Levai said. “He never pressured me to join the business, but he was always around for me. I see him as much as a friend as a father.”
Max’s dad even praised him when being risky. That’s what happened when he was late with the catalog for his first major group exhibition, “Blind Cut,” a multi-generational survey of international artists held this winter.
“He warned me the catalog would take longer than I thought,” he said. But once it materialized, he added, it was so impressive that his father had nothing but praise.
Max Levai is an art consultant, curator and dealer in New York.
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