John McAndrew was never famous but knew everyone who was—at least every American involved in 1930s modernism. He was Philip Johnson’s lover (they fell out over politics) and attended salons along with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Agnes de Mille and George Balanchine. McAndrew was no mere hanger-on, and his architectural studies won him commissions. He taught at Vassar and went on to become a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. In between, he designed the Vassar art library, the subject of this monograph, in Bauhaus geometry with De Stijl-colored rectangles. McAndrew led an interesting and active life near the heart of American art (though never in the spotlight). By the end, he traveled 180 degrees from modernist to preservationist, dying in Venice (1978) while trying to preserve the city’s treasures.
