Nov. 15, 2000 — I'll never forget the last words Dan Terra said to me.

We were standing near the elevator at the Terra Museum of American Art, on Chicago's Miracle Mile. Terra had founded the museum a decade or so before, in 1980, to house his vast, if uneven, collection of famous works by American artists. At the time, the amiable multimillionaire was telling me how, years earlier, he had tried to work out a deal in which his collection would go to the Art Institute of Chicago while maintaining its unique identity with a separate board of directors and autonomous status.

Alas, no go.

"Can you imagine, Jim," he exclaimed as he stepped into the elevator, "I offered them the entire collection and $86 million, and they turned me down!" The door closed with a thump, and Daniel J. Terra - chemical industry magnate, avid art collector, Republican political activist, Reagan-era "ambassador at large for

culture" - vanished from sight. He died years later, in 1996, at age 85.

It was a pity, really.

He just didn't understand.

The fact is, one suspects, that the Art Institute failed to land the Terra Collection because it didn't want to establish a precedent by which major bodies of work could enter the fold but remain independent of curatorial and administrative oversight. An Art Institute spokesman, contacted last week, said it was true there had been "very general" conversations with Terra long ago, but "nothing really amounted to anything that was beneficial to either side.")

Certainly, the Art Institute would have relished acquiring and showing such Terra-owned delights as Samuel F.B. Morse's "Gallery of the Louvre" and George Caleb Bingham's "The Jolly Flatboatmen," plus any number of vintage American Impressionist pictures.

But agreement eluded the two parties. So Terra opted for independence, first in a neatly converted flower shop in suburban Evanston, Ill., then, in 1987, in a multilevel facility improvised out of several adjacent buildings in downtown Chicago. On the face, it was a good idea: popular, patriotic images; a high-traffic location; big-name artists. I remember interviewing Jamie Wyeth there. But the museum business was changing, and the Terra lacked a number of amenities.

Parking and gallery space were in short supply. There was no on-site restaurant. Even before his death, Terra was telling the media he had done his part. It was time now for the Chicago community to pick up the burden.

Only 135,000 admissions were recorded at the museum's front desk last year, former U.S. Sen. Alan K. Simpson, a member of Terra's board, told The New York Times last week. That's a far cry from the 1.2 million visitors who stopped in at the Art Institute a few blocks away.

Inevitably, disputes erupted within the board, and within the Terra family as well.

Internal battling

According to the Times report, Dan Terra's widow, Judith Terra, 57, is considering moving the Terra Foundation - and the museum's art holdings – to Washington, D.C.

The money involved is not insignificant. The foundation, which operates two museums of American art, one in Chicago and another at Giverny, France, has assets valued at about $450 million. The present museum building on Michigan Ave. is said to be worth $30 million.

To complicate matters, several members of the Terra museum board have filed a lawsuit charging that Judith Terra wants to move the museum from Chicago to the nation's capital because she is anxious "to obtain a prominent place in the social circles of Washington."

All of which serves to tie the hands of non-dissident board members who are eager to consider alternatives to the present setup. Judith Terra and these trustees argue that the museum is free to conduct business anywhere, not just in Chicago. One possibility: that the Terra's board may strike some sort of deal with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to show and maintain the collection.

The problem is, that would deprive Chicago of an entrancing trove of artworks, including recently acquired pieces by Thomas Eakins and Rockwell Kent. Dan Terra loved the town. He made his millions there. He was a Chicagoan to the core.

New show, familiar instincts

I recently paid a return visit to the Terra. I found it as pleasant and welcoming as ever.

On display, through Nov. 26, was a show that fit right in with the museum's roots: "Indivisible: Stories of American Community."

This, I decided, was an enterprise of which Dan Terra, the Italian immigrants' son who rose through hard work to make millions, would have heartily approved. The show documents self-help projects that have unified communities from one coast to the other— something of an irony given the recent internal strife at the Terra itself.

"Indivisible" wasn't curated by the Terra's slender staff. It was put together by Duke University's Center of Documentary Studies, in partnership with the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography.

It's a credible effort, as much for the ideas it promulgates about community development and empowerment as for the images that have been produced by a cadre of well-intentioned documentary still photographers.

"Indivisible" is big in scale and purpose. It tells, in emotion-packed images and heartfelt words, about efforts being made at the grass-roots level to solve problems ranging from immigration and health care to housing and race relations.

It's so high-minded that it verges at times on the 1930s-style populist agitprop. The camera work is purposeful rather than art-for-art's-sake. There's plenty of attitude, but it's pragmatic and adaptive rather than in-your-face and revolutionary.

The artists' sympathies are with their subjects, and it shows. It's work for hire with a clear-eyed, progressive edge.

Altogether, 12 portfolios of community-oriented images are being shown. I admired much of the work, but was particularly attracted to the contributions of:

• Sylvia Plachy, whose intimate, softly limned images of mothers and midwives point up the co-operative, transformative nature of childbirth among the African-American people of Stony Brook, N.Y.
• Jerry Evans, whose exquisitely detailed photographs of loggers and the landscape give a human - and, not so coincidentally, an aesthetic - slant to the ceaseless battle between eco-friendly forestry and the need of folks for jobs and income.
• Reagan Louie, who injects a touch of unalloyed fantasy into his color photographs of the tapestry-like murals that adorn the walls in a small section of Philadelphia that serves as a Village of Arts and Humanities.

Also deserving of mention are photographs by Joan Liftin, of a community crime patrol in Florida; by Dawoud Bey, of the faces of the Southwest Youth Cooperative of Chicago; and by Eli Reed, of citizen groups that are moving toward reconciliation in a small, racially troubled community in South Carolina.

"Indivisible," which was funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, is a show appropriate to the Terra. It promotes pride, independence and communal action. It blends the arts with activism in a positive, non-threatening way.