1938: Painting And Sculpture

1938: Painting And Sculpture
Art in the United States.

In 1938 the United States Government continued to act as chief patron of the arts in America. The art projects of the Works Progress Administration and of the Treasury Department continued their programs, employing several thousand artists and bringing art before an increasingly large public all over the country.

Artist groups were very active during the year, organizing many exhibitions in New York and elsewhere. The American Artists' Congress, which held its second annual congress in December 1937, has scheduled its third congress for the spring of 1939. Its second annual membership exhibition, dedicated to "Peace, Democracy and Cultural Progress," was held in May 1938. The Congress now has approximately 900 members. Interest in abstract art continued to be strong, particularly among the younger artists. The 48 members of the American Abstract Artists, an organization which was formed late in 1936, exhibited together again in 1938. As part of a campaign for better housing, the artist members of An American Group organized an art exhibition called "Roofs for 40 Million." The formation of the Sculptors' Guild and the exhibitions which it organized will be discussed here under the heading of Sculpture.

A number of artist groups were interested during the year in presenting bills to the Congress of the United States for the establishment of a permanent bureau of fine arts. The so-called Coffee-Pepper Bill calling for a Federal Art Bureau within the Department of the Interior was voted down, but permanent Government sponsorship of the arts is still strongly advocated by many artist groups. Although the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the Procurement Division of the United States Treasury was made a permanent department of the Treasury to be known as the Section of Fine Arts, artists still feel that this does not adequately meet the problems which were raised during the discussion of the bill for a bureau of fine arts.

The Artists' Union, active in the United States for several years past, became affiliated in 1938 with the United Office and Professional Workers of America, a C.I.O. union. Mural painters organized under the United Scenic Artists of America, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor.

The Collectors of American Art is a non-profit organization, founded along the lines of the old American Art Union of the mid-19th century,to encourage the distribution of art in America and to bring into a more adequate ratio the supply and demand in contemporary art. During 1938, its first season, it distributed more than 200 works of art among its members.

New York's Municipal Art Committee sponsored the third annual National Exhibition of American Art, for which works of art were selected by committees appointed by the Governor of each State.

The two great expositions to be held in 1939, the New York World's Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, have given commissions for mural paintings and sculpture to many artists. The New York World's Fair invited 33 artists to execute a series of mural commissions, some consisting of a number of panels so that in all 105 mural paintings were involved. Similarly, 39 sculptors were given commissions involving 102 figures or groups. In addition, many murals and sculptures have been commissioned by private exhibitors at the Fair. The Golden Gate Exposition announced contracts for $40,000 worth of mural decorations. The Exposition has planned an old-master exhibition with many important loans from European museums, especially in Italy.

Both fairs organized exhibitions of contemporary American art. San Francisco's will consist of approximately 350 paintings selected by Roland J. McKinney. The contemporary art exhibition at the New York World's Fair, directed by Holger Cahill, set up a democratic method of selection in which every American artist community was invited to participate, an innovation in the selection of world's fair exhibits. Local committees all over the country composed of artists or other professionally concerned with art will select the paintings, sculpture and graphic art to be sent to the exhibition at the Fair, where a committee of nine artists and a governing committee of five persons will have final charge of the exhibition.

Museum Exhibitions.

A review of the activity of the art museums during the past year reveals an increase in the number of important exhibitions of American art, both of the past and present. Other trends which may be noted were an unusual and marked increase of activity in the field of sculpture; growing interest in the work of "primitive" or popular artists; and in the field of the art of the past, much interest in the Baroque period and in Chinese art.

America's early tradition in painting enjoyed an unusually brilliant season, the outstanding event of which was the exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Singleton Copley. This exhibition illustrated the entire career of the great Colonial painter, from his early primitive beginnings in America to the late historical and allegorical subjects which he painted in England, with special emphasis, however, on the American paintings as revealing his true personality. Harvard University portraits by predecessors and contemporaries of Copley, the earliest example dating from around 1700, were shown at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. The Philadelphia Museum of Art held the first comprehensive exhibition ever assembled either in America or Europe of the work of Benjamin West, the Pennsylvania Quaker who went to England and who at the age of 45 succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy in London, a position which he held until his death in 1820. Like Copley, West was born in 1738, and this exhibition celebrated the bicentenary of his birth. In honor of the Swedish-American tercentenary celebrations held in the summer of 1938, the Philadelphia Museum arranged the first showing of the paintings of Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755). Hesselius was one of the founders of American painting, the first formally-trained painter to arrive in America. He came from Sweden in 1712 and worked mainly in Philadelphia and Maryland. The first exhibition surveying the work of another early American painter, Rembrandt Peale, was held at the Municipal Museum of Baltimore, an institution which Peale founded in 1814. At Kingston, N. Y., in the historical Senate House, about fifty works by the painter John Vanderlyn, a native of Kingston, were brought together. This exhibition included a number of locally owned canvases which had never before been publicly shown. A general exhibition surveying 200 years of American painting was held at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York arranged an extremely interesting exhibition, "A Century of American Landscape Painting" (1800 to 1900), which was shown later at the Springfield (Mass.) Museum of Fine Arts. Paintings by Frank Duveneck, one of the most popular American painters of the late 19th century, were lent by the museum of his native city, Cincinnati, for exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York. Carnegie Institute recognized Pittsburgh's local tradition in art with an exhibition of the work of 19th century artists who worked around Pittsburgh, including such well known names as Audubon, Chester Harding and David Blythe.

In the field of contemporary American painting several notable one-man shows were held in museums. Inclusive retrospective exhibitions of the work of William Glackens (who died in the summer of 1938) and of John Sloan were assembled respectively at the Whitney Museum in New York and the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Andover Academy, Andover, Mass. The Addison Gallery also arranged a showing of paintings and decorative carvings by the brothers Maurice and Charles Prendergast. Glackens, Sloan and Maurice Prendergast were all members of the group known as "The Eight" or the "Ashcan School," which thirty years ago aroused such a storm of protest with their realistic paintings of everyday American life. The work of "The Eight" was shown again as a group this year at the New York gallery where in 1908 they had their first and only other exhibition. The memory of Walter Gay, expatriate American who died in Paris in 1937, was honored by an exhibition of his paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Other contemporary Americans who were given one-man exhibitions in museums were Charles Burchfield, at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh; Franklin C. Watkins, at the Smith College Museum of Art; George Grosz, at the Art Institute of Chicago; Peppino Mangravite at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the Denver Art Museum; and B. J. O. Nordfeldt at the Denver Art Museum.

Many annual exhibitions of contemporary American art were held as usual in 1938. Of these may be mentioned the annual events at the Whitney Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the City Art Museum of St. Louis, the Worcester Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Colorado Springs' fourth annual, "Artists West of the Mississippi," was this year sent on to New York where it was shown at the Whitney Museum. The South came into national prominence this year with the inauguration, at Richmond's Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, of the First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting. For this exhibition 1,550 paintings were submitted from 42 states to a jury of five artists; 183 works were selected and shown, and two were purchased. Another exhibition of great significance for the South, also held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, was the "preview" show for the New York World's Fair, 1939. Several of these previews will be held throughout the country, and from them works will be selected for the contemporary art exhibition at the Fair. The Albright Art Gallery of Buffalo, N. Y., plans to make a biennial event of its exhibition, "Artists of the Great Lakes Region," held this year for the first time. The Art Institute of Chicago and Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh held their annual international exhibitions, which of course include the work of Americans.

Aside from the annuals, many group exhibitions of contemporary American art were held, of which the following may be mentioned: at the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City, five painters, each represented by at least ten paintings, the exhibition thus constituting a series of one-man shows; the artists included were Jon Corbino, Sidney Laufman, Reginald Marsh, Waldo Peirce and Frederic Taubes; American watercolor shows at the Toledo Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum; at the Art Institute of Chicago, a large exhibition of the work of Chicago artists on the WPA Federal Art Project; an exhibition of painting and sculpture entitled "Labor in Art" at the Baltimore Museum; and at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, the Artists' Union's National Exhibition in which eleven unions collaborated — the first time a major museum has given organized artists an opportunity to present their work on a comprehensive scale.

An important museum event of the past year was the opening of The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in the new building in Fort Tryon Park which was presented by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The Cloisters is the name given to one of the finest collections of medieval art, chiefly sculpture and architecture, in the world. It was assembled by the late George Grey Barnard and was purchased for the Metropolitan Museum in 1925 by Mr. Rockefeller, who in 1938 made many other additions to the collection including the finest known series of 15th century tapestries, the Hunt of the Unicorn. During the first three weeks after the opening over 75,000 people visited the Cloisters.

In the field of the art of the European masters, various museums showed an unusual interest in Venetian art. One of the outstanding events of the year was the great loan exhibition of Venetian paintings, from the fifteenth through the eighteenth century, at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. A small but choice group of Venetian paintings, including a Titian and a Carpaccio never before seen in America, was exhibited at the Columbus (Ohio) Gallery of Fine Arts. Two important exhibitions of paintings by the great 18th century Venetian, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, took place: in New York the Metropolitan Museum's "Tiepolo and His Contemporaries," an exhibition occasioned by the acquisition in 1937 of the Marquis de Biron collection of Tiepolo drawings; and at the Art Institute of Chicago, an exhibition of the paintings of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and of his son Giovanni Demenico Tiepolo. The Springfield Museum of Fine Arts held the first exhibition of the great 18th century Baroque master, Alessandro Magnasco, with loans from eleven major museums and five private collections.

A survey of British painting from 13th century manuscript illuminations to the contemporary period was arranged at Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford had an exhibition of still life painting over four centuries, and Dutch paintings of the 17th century were shown at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. The art and culture of France during ten centuries from Carolingian to Napoleonic times were illustrated at the Morgan Library in New York by manuscript illuminations, drawings and objects of art, as well as historical letters and manuscripts.

Among exhibitions of French painting of the 19th and 20th centuries, several were outstanding. At the San Francisco Museum of Art "The Impressionists" stressed Monet, Pissarro and Sisley, admirably illustrating the whole movement. The work of Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, the so-called "intimists" who have won increasing recognition in this country in recent years, was gathered from American collections for a showing at the Art Institute of Chicago. The later phases of the work of Renoir from 1900 to 1919 were shown at the Philadelphia Museum in 50 small canvases from a private European collection. An unusual exhibition, "Courbet and the Naturalistic Movement," was arranged at the Baltimore Museum on the occasion of a three-day symposium dealing with the subject of Naturalism in literature, painting, drama, music and politics. As a contrast to the Courbet exhibition, the Walters Art Gallery of Baltimore arranged a show of French academic art of the Second Empire — the art which gave Naturalism its impetus. Another unusual exhibition, illustrating the relationship between French literature and painting in the 19th century, was held at the Columbus (Ohio) Gallery of Fine Arts.

Interest throughout the country in modern European painting was evidenced by several important shows and many minor ones. The Toledo Museum of Art arranged a survey of 20th century European painting. German 20th century paintings were shown at Columbus, Ohio, and contemporary painting and sculpture of Italy at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The international shows at the Art Institute of Chicago and Carnegie Institute have already been mentioned. The Detroit Institute had an international watercolor exhibition.

A type of painting never shown comprehensively in America before was brought before the public at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This exhibition, "Masters of Popular Painting," consisted of the work of naive or "primitive" painters of whom the Douanier Rousseau is the most widely recognized master. The European section of the show was selected from an exhibition called "Maitres Popularies de la Réalit‚" held in Paris in 1937; centering around the work of Rousseau, it contained paintings by eight contemporary Europeans, most of them French. The American section included such well known painters as Kane, Canadé, Branchard and Lebduska: several "discoveries" from New Mexico, West Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Canada, and examples by Edward Hicks and Joseph Pickett, whose paintings have become familiar in exhibitions of the earlier American folk art. Popular art has had a strong influence in European countries and in Mexico, and is beginning to enter the consciousness of artists and public in America, where the rich native tradition has not yet been deeply probed.

In the field of Oriental art two great exhibitions of Chinese painting and of Chinese bronzes at the Metropolitan Museum in New York were of paramount importance. The Chinese painting exhibition was the first event in America in any way comparable to the great Chinese exhibition at Burlington House in London several years ago. The 400 ancient Chinese bronzes assembled from American collections were a revelation of the wealth of American-owned examples in this field. Remarkable exhibitions of Chinese art were also held at galleries of several New York dealers.

Exhibitions in Dealers' Galleries.

During the past season art dealers' galleries in New York offered the usual rich opportunity to see works of French masters of the 19th century, particularly Cézanne, von Gogh, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec; and of the 20th century, Picasso, Matisse, Rouault, Derain and other leading contemporaries. The French Impressionists of the 1870's received an unusual amount of notice. Although French art continued to predominate over other fields, American art was very extensively displayed, and there were also a number of old master exhibitions of great interest in the dealers' galleries. The bringing together of seven paintings by the Florentine, Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521), was of surpassing interest to the New York art public. The work of this rare and comparatively little known master of Renaissance Italy has been increasingly valued in recent years by artists and connoisseurs, who welcomed this exhibition as the first opportunity to see so many of his works together. This was made possible by the loan of two important paintings by Piero which last year entered American collections: The Discovery of Honey, from the Worcester Art Museum, and Vulcan and Æolus as Teachers of Mankind, from the National Gallery of Canada in Ottowa; to these were added The Finding of Vulcan lent by the Wadsworth Athenuem, Hartford, three pictures from private collections in New York, and one from London. Another impressive show was a loan exhibition of some 20 Venetian paintings, dominated by Titian and Tintoretto, and including Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, Mantegna, Crivelli, Palma Vecchio, Andrea Solario, Veronese, and the earlier Vivarini. Other noteworthy exhibitions in the galleries were: 17th century Dutch paintings; Colonial American portraits; the French Romantic painters, Grosé Géricault and Delacroix; paintings and drawings of Claude Lorrain (1600-1682); Trompe l'Oeil in early and modern art; "Great Portraits from Impressionism to Modernism"; watercolors and pastels by James A. McNeill Whistler.

The number of one-man exhibitions given contemporary American artists increases enormously each year, and during 1938 the number was little short of amazing. The names which follow represent only a part, possibly about two-thirds, of the number of contemporary American painters who enjoyed the privilege, some for the first time, of one-man showings in New York in 1938: Charles Aitken, Josef Albers, M. Azzi Aldrich, Vera Andrus, Rifka Angel, Revington Arthur, Milton Avery, Gifford Beal, Ben Benn, Virginia Berresford, Henry Billings, Richard Blow, Henry Botkin, Louis Bouché, Emile Branchard, Judson Briggs, Ann Brockman, Florence Cane, John Carroll, Jean Charlot, Nicolai Cikovsky, Paul Lewis Clemens, Mary D. Coles, John Steuart Curry, Nassos Daphnis, A. Mark Datz, Randall Davey, Adolf Dehn, Charles Demuth, Edwin Dickinson, Phil Dike, Thomas Donnelly, Arthur G. Dove, Elsie Driggs, Guy Pène du Bois, Arthur Emptage, Stephen Etnier, Philip Evergood, Lyonel Feininger, Lauren Ford, Joseph Foshko, Robert Francis, David Fredenthal, A. E. Gallatin, Emil Ganso, Frank di Gioia, Anne Goldthwaite, Adelaide de Groot, William Gropper, Louis Guglielmi, Pop Hart, Leon Hartl, Marsden Hartley, Eugene Higgins, Carl Holty, Walter Houmère, Iskantor, Morris Kantor, Richard Lahey, Ernest Lawson, Jonas Lie, Loren Maclver, Gus Mager, Reginald Marsh, Paul Meltsner, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Maud Morgan, Thomas Nagai, Fred Nagler, B. J. O. Nordfeldt, Eliot O'Hara, Georgia O'Keeffe, Cathal O'Toole, Honoré Palmer, William C. Palmer, John Pellew, Marc Perper, John Pike, Hobson Pittman, Henry Varnum Poor, O. A. Renne, Umberto Romano, Doris Rosenthal, Gordon Samstag, George Schreiber, Zoltan Sepeshy, Millard Sheets, Anatol Shulkin, André Smith, Jacob Getlar Smith, Issac Soyer, Raphael Soyer, Everett Spruce, William Starkweather, Gail Symon, Frederic Taubes, Manuel Tolegian, Tromka, Tschacbasov, Stuyvesant Van Veen, Coulton Waugh, John Whorf, Robert Jay Wolff, Henrietta Wyeth, John Xcéron.

Paintings by the following contemporary Europeans were seen in one-man exhibitions in New York: Mariano Andreu, Balthus, Max Beckmann, Georges Braque, Carlo Carrà, Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Russell Flint, Othon Friesz, Xaver Fuhr, Juan Gris, Jean Hélion, Karl Hofer, Wassily Kandinsky, Moïse Kisling, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Fernand Léger, Léonid, Renè Magritte, Henri-Matisse, Joan Miro, Jules Pascin, Max Pechstein, Pablo Picasso, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Gino Severini, Maurice de Vlaminck.

Sculpture.

In America the year 1938 brought a tremendous increase in activity in the field of sculpture. A great many young artists are turning to sculptural expression, contemporary sculpture has been extensively exhibited, and several sculptors' organizations have been formed. The growing public awareness of the possibilities of sculpture as a contemporary art form may well be owing to the activities of the art projects of the United States Government, which for several years past have given unprecedented support to the art of sculpture, as well as to mural painting.

The functionalist trend in modern architecture has turned again to the use of sculpture in relation to building — another factor in the new interest in monumental sculpture.

The Government took the lead in employing sculptors, but during 1938 private organizations sponsored several important sculpture competitions, open to all professional sculptors. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company offered a commission of $8,000 for a sculpture representing the American family, to be shown in the Company's exhibit at the New York World's Fair of 1939. This competition was won by Thomas LoMedico. Another important competition was sponsored by Rockefeller Center, Inc., which offered a $7,500 commission for a 20 by 18 foot bronze panel over the entrance of the Associated Press Building in Rockefeller Center. This was the first open competition sponsored by Rockefeller Center, and the winning model was that of Isamu Noguchi, with second and third prizes going to John Tatschl and Joseph Fleri. A competition was held for a $2,500 monument to the young farmers of America for the Art Building of the Los Angeles County Fair. In Oakland, Cal., the Brotherhood of Longshoremen and Auto Truck Drivers commissioned two sculptors, Warren Cheney and Elliott Sandow, to decorate its new meeting hall with sculptures expressive of the purpose of the Brotherhood. In Philadelphia the program of the Samuel Memorial in Fairmount Park is going forward. When completed the Memorial will comprise 18 figures or groups by nationally known sculptors illustrating American history. Figures of a Miner by John B. Flannagan and of a Ploughman by J. Wallace Kelly and a group, Spanning The Continent, by Robert Laurent were set up in the past year. Other figures, by Hélène Sardeau, Maurice Sterne and Heinz Warneke, are in various stages of completion.

The Sculptors' Guild, an organization of some 50 sculptors, formed in July 1937, held two exhibitions in 1938, a program which it intends to continue each year. The first of these was held out-of-doors in a vacant lot on Park Avenue at 39th Street, New York. This was a new idea in showmanship and it proved extremely popular, attracting an attendance of 40,000 in three weeks. The second exhibition was held in the Brooklyn Museum and contained some 110 sculptures. The formation of the Sculptors' Guild and the success of its exhibitions are indicative of the increasing interest in sculpture in this country.

Several other museums throughout the country held exhibitions of sculpture. The Whitney Museum in New York put on its annual show. Carnegie Institute asked 36 living sculptors to send three works each to the first general exhibition of sculpture held in Pittsburgh in ten years. The Rochester (N. Y.) Memorial Art Gallery showed modern German sculpture. The most brilliant early sculpture exhibition of the year was that of the Detroit Institute of Arts. This was a survey of Italian sculpture from the late Romanesque period through the Gothic period to the end of the early Renaissance. All loans for this exhibition were drawn from American collections, showing the wealth of important examples now in this country.

The number of contemporary American sculptors who had one-man exhibitions in or around New York during 1938 nearly trebled the number in 1937; a considerable proportion of these sculptors had not had one-man shows before. A partial list follows: Russell Barnett Aitken (ceramics), Margo Allen, Saul Baizerman, Stuart Benson, Cornelia Van A. Chapin, Nathaniel Choate, José de Creeft, Jo Davidson, William Edmondson (a "primitive" shown at the Museum of Modern Art), John Ferren, John B. Flannagan, Genevieve Karr Hamlin, Malvina Hoffman, Isabella Howland (caricatures in sculpture), Mario Korbel, Boris Lovet-Lorski, Liza Monk, John Rood, Charles G. Shaw (abstract panels), David Smith, Justin Sturm, Lillian Swann, Allen Townsend Terrell, Lawrence Tompkins, Polygnotos Vagis, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Carl Walters (ceramics), Nat Werner, Anita Wechsler, Wheeler Williams, Arline Wingate, Mahonri Young. Foreign sculptors whose work was given one-man showings were: Alexander Archipenko, Ernst Barlach (memorial exhibition, Barlach died in 1938), George Kolbe, Henri Laurens, Maryla Lednicka, Aristide Maillol, Mirco, Chana Orloff, Renée Sintenis.

Among contemporary sculptors whose work was acquired by American museums in 1938 are: Constantin Brancusi, Ernst Barlach, Jacob Epstein, Gerhard Marcks, Gaston Lachaise, Reuben Nakian, John B. Flannagan, Minna Harkavy, Heinz Warneke, José de Creeft. A number of important examples of European and Oriental sculpture also entered American museums.

The will of the distinguished American sculptor, George Grey Barnard, who died in 1938, asked that his memorial arch, depicting the futility of war and dedicated to the Gold Star Mothers of America, be executed in marble and erected. Barnard left a 100-foot model of the arch and 50 full-sized plaster models for figures for it, on which he had worked the last 18 years of his life.

United States Government Art Projects.

The Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture continued to function during 1938. The WPA Federal Art Project, which was set up three and one half years ago to employ jobless professional mural and easel painters, sculptors, art teachers, and other art workers, has operated in 41 States, the District of Columbia, and New York City. At its peak it employed 5,212 artists; at the end of December 1938 it was employing 4,079. Effective Jan, 15, 1939, this figure will be reduced to 4,700 persons. The WPA Federal Art Project has done great service in bringing art to the people, particularly people who have had the desire but not the opportunity to enjoy art. It has been the opinion of those responsible for the WPA art projects that in the American people as a whole the desire to enjoy art, to take part in some form of art activity, lies close to the surface and that the desire has not heretofore been satisfied. The Federal Art Project has done much to open the way for the great popular consumption of art of which America is undoubtedly capable.

The drift of talent away from home communities all over the country toward the great cities has been counteracted for the first time in the history of American art. The community art center program has enabled the WPA art project to carry art into parts of the country, especially in the South and West, where opportunities in the arts have been completely lacking. Sixty-two Federal-sponsored community art centers have been established in 19 states, the District of Columbia and New York City. Plans are now being completed for art centers in five other states. The interest of the communities in which these centers have been established is shown by the fact that over $300,000 has been contributed toward the program by the communities themselves. In two years more than 11,000,000 persons have participated in WPA art center activities, which include free instruction in the creative arts and the crafts, lectures, demonstrations, and exhibitions.

In the past three years more than 100,000 works of art have been produced by artists employed by the WPA Federal Art Project. These works of art are actually being put to public use: in other words, these murals, paintings, sculptures and prints have been allocated to schools, libraries, hospitals, airports, court-houses, and other tax-supported public institutions. Works of art for which they have contributed the material and other non-labor costs — a fact which testifies to their desire to receive them — have been given to 13,458 such institutions. Besides works of creative art, project workers have produced 450,000 posters, 35,000 maps and diagrams, 350,000 photographs, 45,000 craft objects, 550 dioramas and models, and 10,000 lantern slides and other types of visual aids, all of which are being put to public use. For every worker now employed on the program the public has received 200 works of creative and applied arts.

Over 10,000 plates for the Index of American Design have been completed. This is the great pictorial record of indigenous American decorative arts from the earliest Colonial period to the end of the 19th century, which is being compiled by the WPA Federal Art Project. A number of educational institutions and other organizations are interesting themselves in plans for the publication of the Index of American Design in a series of color portfolios.

The Section of Painting and Sculpture of the Treasury Department continued its basic program of decorating Federal buildings with murals and sculpture. By June 30, 1938, 243 painting and sculpture projects had been completed since the Section was organized in 1934. The Section of Painting and Sculpture conducted national competitions for sculpture and mural paintings for the United States Government Building at the New York World's Fair of 1939. The WPA Federal Art Project is executing a series of murals for both the New York World's Fair and the Golden Gate Exposition.

Museum Acquisitions.

A large number of paintings by European masters entered the collections of American museums during the past year but only a few can be noted here. Probably the outstanding acquisition was the gift to the Metropolitan Museum in New York of the great painting Venus and Adonis by Rubens, a magnificent late example of c. 1635 which had been on loan in the museum since 1920. The Metropolitan Museum also acquired its first example by Fragonard, the Lady with a Dog, c. 1767-70. The Frick Collection in New York acquired a great portrait by Tintoretto, a Venetian Senator, and the Cleveland Museum of Art a famous Watteau, the Minuet in a Pavilion, c. 1717-18. A painting by Hieronymous Bosch, Christ Taken in Captivity, c. 1500, entered the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts acquired a recently discovered Rubens portrait of Isabella Brant of c. 1618. Two paintings by Karel and Barent Fabritius were the first examples by these pupils and associates of Rembrandt to come to America: St. Peter's Escape from Prison, c. 1650, to the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design, and Eli and Samuel to the Art Institute of Chicago. The Tiepolo Madonna and Child with Adoring Figure, c. 1721, went to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Two eighteenth century works, The Wash Women by Fragonard and The Dovecote by Boucher, entered the City Art Museum of St. Louis. Paintings by three eighteenth century Italian Baroque masters, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Sebastiano Ricci and Guiseppe Maria Crespi, were acquired by the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts. The Detroit Institute of Arts acquired examples by several early painters of the Netherlands: Hercules Seghers (1590-1640), Joos van Cleve (active 1530-1550), Pieter Huys (active 1545-77), Frans van Mieris (1635-1681), Roelandt Savery (1576-1639), and others. Two Monks in a Landscape, c. 1645, by Murillo, and several early Italian paintings from the Martin Ryerson Collection were added to the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Baltimore Museum of Art received a bequest of paintings from the Mary Frick Jacobs collection, chiefly by eighteenth century French and English masters, but also including examples by Perugino, Luini, Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruysdale, Murillo, and others.

The Samuel H. Kress Foundation continued its generous policy of giving works of art to small museums throughout the country. Museums or colleges in New Orleans, San Antonio, Memphis, Savannah, Montgomery, Macon, Charlotte, Wichita, Phoenix, Seattle, received paintings by old masters from the Kress Foundation.

In the field of modern art some important nineteenth century works acquired were as follows: an early painting by Corot, Hagar in the Wilderness, 1835, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a Cézanne of 1883-85, Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan, by the Frick Collection; a Cézanne of 1904-06, Mont Sainte Victoire, and Reverie by Gauguin, by the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery in Kansas City; by the Art Institute of Chicago, an important Winslow Homer, The Herring Net, and several French pictures: Corot, View of Genoa; Manet, Young Woman in Round Hat; Degas, La Toilette and Dancer in the Wings; Redon, Woman among Flowers; Renoir, Lady at Piano and Artist's Son Jean As a Child.

Among twentieth century works acquired were: Picasso's The Mirror of 1932, La Coiffure, 1906, Seated Woman and Guitar and Fruit of 1927, and examples by Derain, Bonnard and Utrillo, given to the Museum of Modern Art, New York; abstract works by Hans Arp, Georges Vantongerloo, Theo Van Doesburg, and others, by the Gallery of Living Art of New York University. The following acquired works by contemporary American painters: Boston Museum; San Francisco Museum; Addison Gallery; Denver Art Museum; San Diego Fine Arts Academy; Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum, New York; Carnegie Institute; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; City Art Museum of St. Louis; University of Nebraska; Sweet Briar College; Los Angeles Museum; William Rockhill Nelson Gallery; Brooklyn Museum; and many others.

The New York Historical Society purchased the contents of Mr. and Mrs. Elie Nadelman's Museum of Folk Arts at Riverdale-on-Hudson. This unique collection, containing almost 15,000 objects of European and American origin, will be installed in the new building of the New York Historical Society.

Art in Europe.

The tenseness of the political situation in Europe during 1938 was reflected in the art world in the decrease in major art expositions; a few were noteworthy, however. In Paris the most comprehensive survey of British art ever shown in France was exhibited at the Louvre. An exhibition of the paintings of Edouard Vuillard at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris aroused great interest. A large and comprehensive exhibition of American art, which had never before been adequately presented in any city of Europe, was sent to Paris at the invitation of the French Government. This was selected with the collaboration of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was shown at the Musée du Jeu de Paume. Entitled "Three Centuries of Art in the United States," the exhibition included paintings, sculpture, graphic art, folk art, architecture, photography and motion pictures. At the Orangerie in Paris thirty paintings of first quality by Goya were shown. These were selected from museums and private collections of France only, since it was impossible to draw upon the collection of the Prado in Madrid as was originally planned. Also shown in Paris during the year were a large Surrealist exhibition and a comprehensive collection of the work of Juan Gris, the Spanish Cubist painter who died in 1927.

In London at Burlington House "Seventeenth Century Art in Europe," a loan exhibition drawn with but one exception from collections in the British Isles, was one of the most significant exhibitions yet held of the work of the great Baroque masters. The Tate Gallery showed "A Century of Canadian Art." Picasso's great mural painting Guernica was exhibited in London, together with 60 preparatory paintings and drawings, to aid the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief. This work had been exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exposition, Paris, 1937. Works by 53 of the internationally known artists who were included in Nazi Germany's exhibition of "degenerate art" in Munich in 1937 were brought to London for exhibition. At London art dealers' galleries an important exhibition of 74 paintings of the School of Paris, and an American exhibition consisting of 51 canvases by 42 contemporary painters were held.

In Rotterdam at the Boymans Museum the "Masterpieces of Four Centuries," an important loan exhibition of 300 paintings and drawings from private collections in the Netherlands, showed the art of the Low Countries from 1400 to 1800. Naples had an exhibition of the work of painters of Naples from 1600 to 1900.

Sales.

The most important event in art markets since J. P. Morgan sold part of his collection at auction in 1935 was an announcement that William Randolph Hearst would dispose of his famous collection by sale and gift. The Hearst collection is one of the largest and most varied in history and is valued at some $15,000,000. The bulk of the collection of the late Mortimer L. Schiff was sold in London, bringing a total of £101,949, (over $500,000), the biggest event in a London salesroom for several years. The most important item in this sale was the painting by Roger van der Weyden, Scenes from the Life of Pope Sergias I, which brought 14,000 guineas ($70,000).

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1944: Painting And Sculpture

Art and the War.

The fate of the art treasures and historic monuments of Europe has been the most vital interest of the art world during 1944. Preliminary reports on the European situation have come from newspaper correspondents, from the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives officers attached to the various armies, and from the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas. While the destruction of the art heritage of Europe has been appalling, it is nonetheless remarkable how much these losses have been reduced by the intelligent policy of the Allied armies. General Eisenhower's order of Dec. 29, 1943, to all Allied commanders in Italy regarding the protection of historic monuments was made public by President Roosevelt on Feb. 16, 1944, following the destruction by the American Fifth Army because of military necessity, of the Abbey of Monte Cassino southeast of Rome. General Eisenhower said: "Today we are fighting in a country which has contributed a great deal to our cultural inheritance, a country rich in monuments.... We are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows. If we have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men, then our men's lives count infinitely more and the buildings must go. But the choice is not always so clear-cut as that. In many cases the monuments can be spared without any detriment to operational needs...
It is a responsibility of higher commanders to determine through AMG officers the locations of historical monuments, whether they be immediately ahead of our front lines or in areas occupied by us. This information, passed to lower echelons through normal channels, places the responsibility on all commanders of complying with the spirit of this letter."

These orders were carried out in all European war theaters by Allied commanders in the field and by Civil Affairs officers attached to Allied headquarters. They were the result of a plan worked out through the Army's initiative by such groups as the Harvard Group of American Defense which was asked by the Army as early as December 1942 to list sites of artistic and historic importance in the Mediterranean area. The lists made at Harvard became the basis of an extensive mapping of Europe, begun in 1943 by the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Treasures in War Areas, set up by the American Council of Learned Societies. Under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation this Committee was enlarged in June 1943 to include museum heads, teachers of art history, archeologists, archivists and librarians. Two months later President Roosevelt set up his Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas under the chairmanship of Justice Roberts, including in its membership many of the committee members mentioned above. Through the activities of these various groups the location of every historic monument, art gallery or museum, library or archive in the war theaters was clearly mapped so that these areas might be avoided and protected. Many historic sites were saved through brilliant artillery direction and precision bombing guided by these maps. Advisers on Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives were sent into the field to aid in the salvage of monuments and to enlist the help of local experts and custodians wherever they can be found in the war areas. The same care will be exercised for the preservation of monuments within Germany.

Reports from Europe.

In spite of these efforts the damage in many areas has been severe and in some such as Florence and Pisa, Rouen and Caen, it is tragic and irreparable. In October 1944 the Office of War Information issued a report based on information secured by Francis Henry Taylor of the President's Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas. The report indicates that, proportionately, England has suffered more loss in the cultural field than either France or Italy. London has taken more battering from the air than any other European capital, with the exception of Warsaw and possibly Berlin. Some 4,000 historic churches in England have been damaged and 2,800 of them destroyed beyond repair. Damage to museums, libraries, and universities has been widespread, not only in London, but throughout England and in Scotland. Exeter Cathedral, one of the finest examples of Middle Gothic architecture, was severely damaged. Canterbury and Wells to a lesser extent. In London the churches of Sir Christopher Wren, rebuilt by him after the Great Fire of 1666, have been damaged and many of them destroyed. Hundreds of other historic buildings in England have been lost.

In France the section of Normandy around Calais, Cherbourg and Rouen has been devastated, although a few of the famous buildings such as Bayeux Cathedral and the two great abbeys built by William the Conqueror at Caen have escaped serious damage. Rouen Cathedral was very severely hurt and the town has suffered much. At Chartres, the damage to the Cathedral, which is situated only 500 metres from one of the great airfields of France which was bombed repeatedly by the Allies, was limited to the old South tower, and some surface damage from snipers' bullets during the liberation. Mont St. Michel, in the area of St. Malo where the fighting was heavy, was unharmed. Paris was practically untouched. The Luxembourg Palace, which became a military objective when Goering made it the headquarters of the Luftwaffe, was the only historic monument wrecked. The state art collections from the Louvre and other museums of France were stored in 1939 in 70 depositories, chiefly the cellars of chateaux south of the Loire River. It appears that during the first two years of occupation these depositories were protected by the Nazis and as a whole did not suffer looting. During the latter part of the period of occupation increasing pressure was put upon French museum officials to release important works of art for "cultural exchange" with Germany. Jacques Jaujard, director of the National Museums of France, is reported to have been clever and courageous in stalling Nazi attempts to exchange minor German works for important French ones. The most notorious case of looting in France was that of the Ghent altarpiece, The Adoration of the Lamb by the brothers Van Eyck, one of the most famous paintings in the world, which had been sent to the Louvre for safekeeping by the Belgian government. This painting was removed from its depository at Aix-en-Provence on an order signed by Abel Bonnard, Vichy Minister of Education, and presented to Hermann Goering as a birthday gift. This theft was violently protested by Jacques Jaujard. The protest brought about Jaujard's dismissal from his post, whereupon the entire staffs of all the French museums resigned in a body, forcing Vichy to reinstate Jaujard. Another prized art treasure, the Bayeux Tapestry, was about to be shipped to Germany when the Allied armies entered Paris. Early in the war this 11th century work, depicting the conquest of England by William the Conqueror, had been stored in the Chateau de Sourches near Rennes. The Vichy government gave the Nazis permission to remove the tapestry and it had been taken to Paris for shipment to Germany. Reports from Allied headquarters in France indicate that while there had been comparatively little looting of French national art treasures, private collections, and especially those owned by Jews, had fared badly. Many of these had either been confiscated or acquired by fictitious sale and placed in the Jeu de Paume Museum where agents of Hitler, Himmler, and Goering (mostly leading German art scholars) came to select the most valuable items.

The record of destruction in Italy is one of irreparable loss to the world. Many of the most beautiful buildings which have come down to us from the Medieval and Renaissance periods no longer exist. Florence and Pisa suffered the most tragic and extensive damage. At Florence on Aug. 4 the Germans destroyed the Arno bridges and the surrounding medieval palaces with a violence and thoroughness that went far beyond military necessity. The only bridge which was spared was the Ponte Vecchio with its old craftsmen's shops, but whole streets along the river at both ends of the Ponte Vecchio were destroyed instead, and 13th and 14th century houses with their irreplaceable furnishings and libraries were reduced to rubble. Among the most tragic losses were those of the Ponte di Santa Trinità, built in 1569, of which nothing remained except two pylons; and the Palazzo di Parte Guelfa, a 14th century structure decorated by Brunelleschi and Vasari. Some ancient manuscripts, books and objects of art, especially those of the Società Colombaria, have been found in the rubble, and fragments of the sculptural ornament of the Santa Trinità Bridge have been recovered from the Arno.

In 1942 Florence's great treasures of Renaissance painting and sculpture were gathered from museums and palaces and stored throughout the Tuscan countryside in the cellars of villas, castles and convents. All but two of these depositories known to the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Commission are now in Allied hands. Reports indicate that most of these works of art are safe; but it appears that at least two of the Tuscan depositories were looted by the Germans of many cases of paintings and sculptures. Possibly as many as 500 to 600 works of art are missing, famous among them being Raphael's Veiled Woman, Botticelli's Minerva and the Centaur, Michelangelo's Bacchus, and Donatello's St. George. The great paintings by Uccello from Santa Maria Novella have been reported somewhat damaged, but the Medici Chapel sculptures by Michelangelo and famous works by Donatello, Andrea Pisano and Luca della Robbia, stored in the same depository, are reported safe.

The picturesque medieval city of Pisa suffered greater destruction than any of the other important Tuscan cities. Pisa, which was a veritable gold mine of art treasures scattered through every part of the city, was battered in many Allied raids and fought over by land armies from July 24 to September 3, 1944. It is virtually in ruins. Hundreds of buildings which had escaped bombs and shells were mined by the Germans. In the Campo Santo, which is part of that famous group of buildings including the Leaning Tower, cathedral and baptistry, the world of culture has suffered one of the greatest losses of the war. This building contains precious fresco paintings by Benozzo Gozzoli and the great masterpiece, the Triumph of Death fresco ascribed to Andrea Orcagna and painted about 1350. Though ravaged sections of these paintings still remain, they are damaged beyond repair. The destruction took place at a time when the American Fifth Army on the south bank of the Arno faced the Germans on the north bank. Four shells from an American gun hit the roof of the Campo Santo and fired it, and melted lead and blazing timbers fell all night on the fresco paintings and on the collections of Etruscan, Roman and Medieval sculpture within the building. Even more dreadful damage to the frescoes, however, occurred in the weeks that followed when the strong Italian sun beat down upon what remained of the paintings and robbed them of their color. When the Fifth Army finally captured the north side of Pisa, immediate steps were taken to roof over the building and to protect and salvage what remained of the Campo Santo.

Many towns on the way to Rome, especially Benevento with its great Romanesque church, were terribly hurt. St. Thomas' Cathedral in Ortona was deliberately blown up by the Germans. Certain of the Italian hill towns were miraculously saved. Assisi was one of these. In Perugia the Germans mined the Renaissance bridges but the rest of the town escaped serious damage. At Orvieto the priceless Last Judgment frescoes by Signorelli were intact; and at Arezzo the cathedral church with its great frescoes by Piero della Francesca was unharmed, in spite of bomb damage in the town. Siena was saved any but minor losses. The Germans had mined Siena before withdrawing, but the plan was found and the mines removed in time; and the French general whose troops took the city spared it from artillery fire. San Gimignano was wantonly shelled by the Germans after their withdrawal and there was considerable damage there. The frescoes by Barna da Siena in the Collegiata were hit, but the Ghirlandaio and Benozzo Gozzoli frescoes were not touched; the sculptures by Benedetto da Maiano and Jacopo della Quercia also escaped damage. At Viterbo and Pienza terrible damage was done to churches and other historic buildings.

Except for minor damage to the Church of San Lorenzo, Rome escaped. Great numbers of art treasures from the museums of Venice, Naples, Milan, Urbino and other Italian cities were sent for safekeeping to the Vatican. The presence in Rome of these works of art from various parts of Italy, late in the year, led to an important exhibition, held in response to the requests of Allied troops to be allowed to visit the art galleries in Rome. This special exhibition was organized at the Palazzo Venezia by the Division of Fine Arts of the Allied Military Government. Similar exhibitions for the Allied troops are being planned in Florence and Siena. There is little direct evidence, but there appears to have been extensive German theft of works of art from the collections of the great Italian galleries. German propaganda made much of the fact that the cases containing masterpieces from the Naples National Gallery, which had been stored in the Abbey of Monte Cassino, were turned over to the Vatican by the Germans for safekeeping before the Allied bombings. It was found, however, that 15 of these cases never arrived at the Vatican, and that others had been opened and important contents removed. Among the works of art which disappeared in this way were Titian's Danae and another Titian, a Raphael, a Claude Lorrain and a famous Breughel, The Blind Leading the Blind, all from Naples. A very great loss was the burning of the National Library at Naples. Classical remains in Italy and Sicily suffered less damage than was expected, though at Pompeii the new excavations were seriously hurt. In Greece the Germans carried out extensive archeological excavations.

There have been no official reports on the fate of the art of the Low Countries. The director of the Belgian Royal Museum was quoted as believing, at the time of his return to Belgium after its liberation, that Belgian art collections had suffered no more serious loss than had those of France. It is known, however, that the Germans have stolen three of Belgium's greatest treasures, the Virgin and Child by Michelangelo from Bruges, the Louvain altarpiece by Roger van der Weyden, and the Ghent altarpiece by the van Eycks, mentioned above. A chalk cave near Maastricht, The Netherlands has been revealed as the depository for a large number of masterpieces from the great museums of Holland. The great Isenheim altarpiece by Matthias Gruenewald from the Colmar Museum, which was thought looted, was found in a castle near Colmar by an American officer. With the liberation of Paris the American art world received news of the many renowned French artists who with the rest of Paris had been cut off during the four years of German occupation. Pablo Picasso, greatest living figure in the arts, has been prominent in these news stories, and his reputation has been further enhanced by his record during the occupation. In a report on Picasso Alfred H. Barr, Jr., of the Museum of Modern Art, says: "... his position in the Resistance Movement is of unique importance. Though not a Frenchman he stayed in Paris, when a good many leading French artists spent the war working quietly in the provinces, left the country entirely ... or in a few shameful cases remained to collaborate with the Germans. Picasso's presence must have disquieted the Germans for he was conspicuously anathema to Hitler. For many years he had been in Nazi eyes the most formidable master of degenerate art ...; he was said to have Jewish blood; in his Dreams and Lies of Franco he had savagely lampooned Hitler's faithful Spanish ally; he had accepted an official appointment, the directorship of the Prado, from the Spanish Republican government, the first victim of the Axis; and he had painted Guernica. Yet he returned to Paris after the summer of 1940 and lived there for four precarious years under German rule without recantation or compromise and protected only by his greatness as an artist.... Oct. 6 the Salon d'Automne opened. Ordinarily this is the most important of the big annual Paris exhibitions. But the Salon d'Automne of 1944 was uniquely significant. Held just six weeks after Aug. 25, it became the Salon de la Libération, the first great public manifestation of painting in France after four years of German domination. Though organized and controlled by French artists the place of honor was given to the Spaniard, Picasso, who alone had the privilege of a large one-man show — 74 paintings and five pieces of sculpture, all of them done since the occupation of 1940. No greater tribute could be paid the artist who had been for so long a symbol of the Resistance." Other prominent exhibitors in the Salon were Bonnard, Braque, Matisse, Dufy and Lhote; excluded were the distinguished French artists known as "collaborators": Vlaminck, Derain, Friesz, Segonzac and Despiau. Two days after the exhibition opened a demonstration against Picasso's paintings took place in which 15 of his works were torn from the walls. The reasons are not known but it is thought that it may have been done by a group of reactionary young art students. No damage was done. Rouault, Lurcat and other well-known men have carried on in Paris and worked hard. Matisse, who is over 75 years old, is very ill near Nice, but he continues to paint while lying in bed. Pierre Bonnard, 77 years old and living in Cannes, is painting with great vigor and has become the spiritual leader of a younger generation of painters whose work has developed since 1940. Among them are Leon Gischia, Francis Tailleux, Georges Singier, Talcoat, André Fougeron, Robin, and Maurice Estève, and work by some of them has been seen in a color portfolio published during the occupation by Editions du Chêne. Three other portfolios in the series were devoted to the wartime paintings of Picasso, Bonnard and Matisse. number of world-renowned artists died in 1944. Aristide Maillol, possibly the greatest of 20th century sculptors, was killed at the age of 82 in a motor accident near his home at Banyuls, France. Edvard Munch, the great Norwegian forerunner of 20th century Expressionism, died at 80 in Norway. Vassily Kandinsky, Russian painter and theorist, died in Paris at the age of 77. Piet Mondrian, painter of pure abstraction and one of the pioneer spirits of 20th century art, who had lived in New York since 1940, died in New York at 72. The death of Chaim Soutine in France in 1943 was confirmed this year; Maurice Denis also died in 1943. most important activity undertaken by American museums in 1944 concerned the return of major works of art from the storage places in which they had been secreted against possible damage by bombing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made public the fact that its most valuable paintings had been stored at Whitemarsh Hall, Whitemarsh, Pa. The gradual return of these works of art to the Metropolitan was begun in the early spring and the painting galleries of the museum, completely redecorated, were opened to the public in May. At this time the Metropolitan also installed the Jules S. Bache collection. Early in 1944 announcement was made that the trustees of the Bache Foundation planned to make the Metropolitan the permanent home of this noted art collection. The National Gallery of Art in Washington also began to return to its walls major paintings from the Mellon and Kress collections which had been stored at the start of the war in Biltmore House, Biltmore, N. C. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, New York's Morgan Library, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Historical Society and the Museum of the City of New York likewise removed their most valued possessions from war storage and placed them again on exhibition. Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which in 1943 became a part of the Metropolitan Museum by action of the trustees of both institutions, reopened its building in September with the announcement of a program of exhibitions carrying through the season until June 1945. Announcement was made in 1944 that the Museum of Costume Art, founded in New York in 1937 by the late Irene Lewisohn, had been incorporated into the Metropolitan Museum. The collection of the Museum of Costume Art, comprising some 7,000 items, will eventually be installed in the Metropolitan with its own collections of dress and textiles. The American Museum of Natural History completed an elaborate reorganization of its hall of Mexican and Central-American Archeology. This new installation is most welcome not only to archeologists but to art lovers, since this Pre-Columbian collection contains some superb examples of Mayan and Aztec sculpture, undoubtedly one of the great artistic traditions of the world. The Museum of Modern Art in New York established a Department of Manual Industry, which will parallel the museum's Department of Industrial Design established in 1940 to cover the field of mass-produced objects. The National Gallery of Art in Washington established an Inter-American Office, created by a grant-in-aid from the Department of State, to act as the Government's official clearing-house for the exchange of information concerning art activities in the American Republics. The Museum of Non-Objective Art in New York announced that it would erect a building to be designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Museum of Modern Art announced that, during the fiscal year July 1, 1943-June 30, 1944, it had circulated 131 exhibitions to 622 institutions in 235 cities. It also prepared at the request of U.S. Government agencies two exhibitions for London, one for Sydney, Australia, one for Cairo, one for Stockholm, and two for South America. Museums throughout the country have been active in using their resources to further the war effort. The Museums Council of New York City had set up in 1943 a Committee on Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation, composed of Richard F. Bach of the Metropolitan Museum, Charles Russell of the American Museum of Natural History, and James T. Soby of the Museum of Modern Art, to study the methods by which museums can assist, by extra-mural and intra-mural work, in the greatly increasing activity in the field of occupational therapy. American museums have also cooperated very extensively with the Arts and Skills Unit of the American Red Cross, which was organized in 1942 to supply craftsmen and artists on a volunteer basis to act as instructors in therapy for recreational purposes in military hospitals. The museums, particularly in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, have helped supply artist personnel for the Arts and Skills Unit, and have provided advisory committees, meeting rooms, and art materials; and, as in the case of the Chicago Art Institute, have established recreational therapy centers in the hospitals. The Museum of Modern Art set up in 1944 a War Veterans' Art Center, providing day and evening classes in the arts and crafts for recreational and pre-vocational training. Certain museums have been able to supply special information and services for war use. The American Museum of Natural History has written sections of military handbooks dealing with the natives and geography in war areas, and has made a great many portable exhibits for the Army dealing with racial identification. The Metropolitan Museum has supplied thousands of color reproductions and prints to hospitals. Many museums have presented shows dealing with the arts in therapy, to inform the public of work in this field. museums maintained active and varied exhibition programs in spite of transportation problems and the difficulty of obtaining loans of works of art. In the old-master field there were no loan exhibitions of major importance. Apart from new installations in large Eastern museums of their masterpieces brought back from war storage, the most important exhibition of the art of the past held during 1944 was that of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts collection of Chinese painting, shown as a whole for the first time. This collection was formed from about 1890 on under the scholarly direction of the late Ernest Fenellosa and the late Denman Ross, and ranks as one of the most important in the Asiatic field. The Baltimore Museum of Art organized an exhibition of unusual interest, which was also shown at the St. Louis City Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Art. This comprised the works available in American collections by three late Baroque masters, Strozzi, Crespi and Piazzetta. The Art Institute of Chicago assembled a large group of paintings, sculpture, ceramics, and other objects of art dating from Assyrian to modern times, under the banner Art of the United Nations. Toledo's Museum of Art showed 16 old masters from the celebrated Cook collection of England, which had been sent to the United States for safe storage during the war. Museum of Modern Art celebrated its 15th anniversary with an exhibition of broad scope covering every phase of this museum's interest: the art of the late 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and America, modern architecture, industrial design, photography, films and theatre design. This museum also arranged an exhibition of Modern Drawings, bringing together over 300 excellent examples from the 19th and 20th centuries. In San Francisco the California Palace of the Legion of Honor marked its 20th anniversary with a Renoir exhibition, Sculpture by Rodin was assembled at the Columbus (Ohio) Gallery of Fine Arts. The Philadelphia Museum placed on exhibition an extended loan of some 300 items from the collection of Alfred Stieglitz, dean of American photographers. These paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and fine photographs, acquired over a long period, serve to sum up the career and ideas of a man who has had great influence in the American art world. The Cincinnati Art Museum attempted to reassemble the works of art which made up the celebrated Armory Show of 1913, the most famous exhibition of modern art ever held in America. While many works from the Armory Show are still well-known, a large number of them could not be traced. Both the Dayton (Ohio) Art Institute and the Boston Institute of Modern Art organized exhibitions on the theme of Religious Art Today. art of the 19th century received considerable attention in museum exhibitions. The Philadelphia Museum of Art did honor to that city's most distinguished painter, Thomas Eakins, in a large show marking the centennial of his birth. The National Gallery of Art held a loan show called American Battle Art in which paintings and drawings of American war subjects from the Revolution to World War I were assembled for the first time. This was later shown in part at the Museum of Modern Art. A correlated exhibition of prints, maps and political cartoons was held at the Library of Congress. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston organized an exhibition, largely of 19th century work, around the theme Sport in American Art. Some 65 of Winslow Homer's less familiar oils and watercolors were assembled at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, as a sequel to the larger Homer exhibition there in 1936. The Philadelphia Art Alliance showed the work of the 19th century American painter, Eastman Johnson. art had several notable showings in the United States in 1944. The Art Institute of Chicago brought to this country a comprehensive exhibition, organized in 1943 by the Mexican government, of the work of José Guadelupe Posada (1852-1913), the great printmaker to the Mexican people and forerunner of Mexico's revolutionary art. Following the showing in Chicago, this exhibition was seen at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Another, completely different forerunner of the modern Mexican school, José María Velasco (1840-1912), was the subject of a comprehensive exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum, which was also later shown at Brooklyn. Velasco was the outstanding landscape painter of the 19th century in Mexico but his work has been neglected here. At the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876 a large landscape by Velasco won first prize, and at the Paris World's Fair of 1889 he showed 68 paintings. Modern painting in Cuba, where very lively developments are taking place in the arts, was introduced in the United States by the Museum of Modern Art in a showing in New York, followed by a tour of museums in other cities. leading American painters were given comprehensive one-man retrospectives in museums: at the Museum of Modern Art, the late Marsden Hartley, who developed a personal kind of expressionism in his paintings of the sea coast and mountains of his native Maine; and Lyonel Feininger, who lived abroad for nearly 50 years, and who expressed his romantic love for the sea and for the old Gothic towns and churches of Germany in an art stemming mainly from cubism. The Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, N. Y., arranged the most comprehensive showing yet seen of Charles Burchfield's paintings with their nostalgic interpretation of the American scene. An outstanding survey of American art in the 19th and 20th centuries was placed on exhibition by the Newark (N. J.) Museum to celebrate its 35th anniversary. All of the 275 paintings and sculptures shown belong to its own collection. The Metropolitan Museum gave exhibition space to a contemporary American show, entitled Portrait of America (see Artists and American Business). The Detroit Institute of Arts chose 21 artists for an exhibition called Advance Trends in Contemporary American Art. One hundred American artists contributed portraits of one man, the painter Abraham Walkowitz, to an exhibition held at the Brooklyn Museum. American museums continued to hold their annuals of contemporary American art, although wartime shipping problems have transformed them from jury shows to "invitation" shows. Notable among the large annuals in 1944 were those at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Dallas Art Museum, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. the field of graphic arts, the Posada show at Chicago and the exhibition Hayter and Studio 17 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York were the major museum presentations. Studio 17 was started in Paris in 1927 by a young Englishman, Stanley William Hayter, whose brilliant technical experimentation and revival of the neglected art of line engraving brought many distinguished artists to his workshop. During 13 years in Paris such men as Chagall, Picasso, Lipchitz, Miro, Ernst and Calder worked with Hayter in some of the most vital researches in 20th century graphic art. In 1940 Studio 17 was transplanted to the New School for Social Research in New York, where many well-known American artists have been working with Hayter, along with an interesting group of younger talents. H. Kress further enriched the collection of the National Gallery in Washington by a gift of 71 Italian Renaissance paintings and 26 pieces of sculpture. Included in the group are Raphael's Bindo Altoviti; St. John in the Desert by Domenico Veneziano; a rare painting, Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape (1514) by Dosso Dossi; and works by Botticelli, Filippino Lippi and Giovanni Bellini. (See also Sculpture, below.) Mr. Kress also gave the National Gallery nine important French paintings of the 18th century, including the great Watteau Italian Comedians, and works by Fragonard, Boucher, Drouais and others. The Metropolitan Museum has added to its painting galleries the noted Bache collection of old masters, which is to become the permanent property of the museum. Outstanding acquisitions made by the Metropolitan were Rubens' Atalanta and Meleager; and an English picture of exceptional quality, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Sir John Harrington, painted by an unknown master in 1603. The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery in Kansas City added to its collection an important Madonna and Child Enthroned by Memling painted about 1450-60. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts acquired an early Claude Lorrain, The Mill, of 1631; and a Rubens landscape. The Frick Collection in New York acquired an outstanding portrait by Goya, The Duke of Osuna; an important Gothic bronze (see Sculpture, below); and works by Constable, Rembrandt, Reynolds and Greuze. Other old masters which were acquired during the year were: a Corneille de Lyon and a Hobbema from the Morgan collection, by the John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis; the Elizabeth Prentiss collection of over 130 items, including Lancret's Declaration of Love and paintings by French, Italian and English masters, by the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Rubens Tribute Money, by the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Jacques Louis David's Portrait of Pierre Desmaison, by the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, N. Y.; a Veronese, Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, a Rubens, and a Jacob Cornelisz, by the Detroit Institute of Arts; paintings by the Baroque masters, Strozzi and Crespi, by the City Art Museum of St. Louis, a Madonna and Child by Francesco Pesellino, by the Toledo Museum of Art, a Cosimo Tura and a Jacopo Bellini, by the San Diego Gallery of Fine Arts; the Balch collection including works by Petrus Christus, Terborch, Pieter de Hooch, and other Dutch and Flemish masters, by the Los Angeles County Museum; and the Crozier collection of Chinese art, by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. American 19th century paintings entering museum collections were Thomas Eakins' The Dean's Roll Call, for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; two examples by Washington Allston, for the Detroit Institute of Arts; Winslow Homer's Girl with Lobster, for the Cleveland Museum of Art; two paintings by George Caleb Bingham, The County Election and The Jolly Flatboatmen, for the City Art Museum of St. Louis; examples by Doughty, Whittredge, Bierstadt and others, for the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.; and works by Gilbert Stuart, Rembrandt Peale, Inness, and Robert L. Newman, for the Virginia Museum, Richmond. In the French 19th century field Cleveland got Gauguin's L'Appel; the Joslyn Memorial in Omaha, Neb., Renoir's Two Young Girls at the Piano, of 1883; the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, a Renoir landscape; the Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design, examples by Géricault, Manet and Cézanne; the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, a Vuillard, and the Springfield (Mass.) Museum of Fine Arts, a Monet and a Carrière. The National Gallery received from Chester Dale two paintings by George Bellows, his best (though not his most famous) prize fight, Both Members of This Club, and his portrait of Mrs. Dale. of the great collections of 20th century art, formed over a quarter of a century by the poet and scholar, Walter Conrad Arensberg of Hollywood, Calif., will pass to the University of California in Los Angeles. This collection of over 1,200 items boasts fine examples by the leaders of contemporary European art, as well as many Americans, and a recently added group of Pre-Columbian sculptures from Central America, including the famous Stone of Chiapas. Especially notable is the group of 15 sculptures by Brancusi, and the celebrated "shocker" of the Armory Show of 1913, the Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp. The University will build a modern museum to house the Arensberg collection after the war. The Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the City Art Museum of St. Louis, and others made acquisitions in 20th century European art. Contemporary American art offered the most fertile field for museum acquisition this year. Among institutions which added extensively to their American collections were the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Newark Museum; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; the Baltimore Art Museum; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond; and the New Britain (Conn.) Institute. Artists whose work was acquired by these institutions include Max Weber, Marsden Hartley, Lyonel Feininger, Karl Zerbe, George Bellows, Charles Burchfield, Charles Sheeler, Milton Avery, Peppino Mangravite, Walter Stuempfig, Jack Levine, William Gropper, Ben Shahn, Edward Hopper, Franklin Watkins, Stuart Davis, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jacob Lawrence, and Alexander Calder. foregoing lists are far from complete but give an indication of the broad scope of American museum acquisitions during this war year. In England museums also enriched their collections in spite of the war. The Tate Gallery in London toward the end of the year held an exhibition of nearly 100 of its wartime acquisitions, the second such exhibition since the outbreak of war. The National Gallery in London purchased four panels by Giovanni di Paolo from the J. P. Morgan collection in England. The Glasgow Art Gallery received the gift of the great Burrell Collection, consisting of some 4,000 items and including Degas' Portrait of Duranty and Daumier's Le Meunier, Son Fils et L'Ane. Constable's Vale of Dedham was purchased from the Neeld Collection for the National Gallery of Scotland for £20,000. America entered the war the activities of artist societies have been united in one organization known as Artists for Victory, Inc. In 1944 Artists for Victory organized a "good will" exhibition of contemporary American art to be sent to England and Scotland. It opened at the National Academy in Edinburgh, where it had 4,000 visitors in the first two days. London's Central Institute of Art and Design in turn sent to the United States an exhibition of contemporary British art, which was shown first at the National Academy in New York and then started a tour. Through the U.S. Office of War Information and the War Artists' Advisory Committee of Britain, exhibitions of war paintings by artists of the two countries were exchanged. To date, the work produced by British artists under the sponsorship of the War, Navy and Air Ministries seems far superior as artistic expression to the more reportorial work of the American artist-correspondents. New York artist societies which held their annual membership exhibitions in 1944 were the National Academy, the Society of Independent Artists, the Sculptors' Guild, An American Group and the American Abstract Artists. increasingly intelligent and successful use of art in American advertising has been an interesting development of the last two or three years. In 1944 such firms as Standard Oil, Abbott Laboratories, American Locomotive, Shell Oil, Container Corporation of America and others have given a great many commissions to artists well-known in the museum world. magazine continued to send artist-correspondents into battle areas in Europe and the East to record the war for its pages. Of the many artists so employed for Life, the 30-year-old David Fredenthal produced by all odds the most vital work of the year. Fortune magazine, Colliers and others also gave commissions to artists. Standard Oil of New Jersey commissioned four painters, Adolf Dehn, David Fredenthal, Reginald Marsh and Millard Sheets, to paint pictures illustrating the role played by oil in the war. These were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum. The Metropolitan Museum showed Naval Aviation in the Pacific, a group of paintings by seven artists commissioned by the Abbott Laboratories in 1943 and donated to the Navy. Pepsi-Cola Company achieved prominence in art circles this year by inaugurating a nation-wide competition for 12 paintings to be reproduced in color on the pages of a calendar which they will issue in 500,000 copies for free distribution. Pepsi-Cola offered $11,000 in prizes and Artists for Victory, Inc. sponsored and ran the competition. Some 3,000 American artists responded with 5,000 submissions of paintings. A jury of artists selected 150 paintings from these for an exhibition called Portrait of America at the Metropolitan Museum, and a separate jury selected the 12 prize-winners for the calendar. The winners of these handsome prizes were Waldo Peirce, Philip Evergood, Louis Bosa, Joseph de Martini ($2,500 to $1,000), and Vincent Spagna, Sol Wilson, Arthur Osver, Lucille Corcos, Xavier Gonzales, Louis Guglielmi, Stuart Davis and Philip Reisman ($500 each). The first four prize-winning pictures, and later 14 other pictures, were purchased by the Pepsi-Cola Company for its permanent collection of American art. A total of $34,535 worth of pictures, which includes the Company's purchases, was sold during the showing at the Metropolitan. The exhibition will tour the museums of Springfield, Mass., Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas and Kansas City. The Pepsi-Cola Company, following up the publicity it received as an art patron, has announced even bigger plans for next year's Portrait of America competition. has been aroused also in the collection of 20th century American art which has been formed during 1944 by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The collection now numbers 116 paintings and more are to be added. It will be shown early in 1945 at the Art Institute of Chicago and will tour other museums. most important of these presentations during the year was that of the paintings and drawings of the great French Romantic, Eugène Delacroix. This was shown in New York. No comparable exhibition of Delacroix' work has been held in the United States. American painting of the 19th century enjoyed a great revival of interest and was shown repeatedly in New York galleries and purchased by museums and private collectors. Forgotten paintings are being brought to light and many neglected reputations have become the object of research, all of which will be of genuine value in rounding out and strengthening the American tradition in the arts. A group of paintings by Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910), shown by a dealer, were of interest in this connection. Among other exhibitions of note in dealers' galleries were Five Centuries of Ballet, Abstract and Surrealist Art in America, The Blue Four, Four Hundred Years of French Drawings, Thomas Eakins, and The Imagery of Chess, all held in New York; The Peales of Philadelphia, held in a Philadelphia gallery; and Contemporary Negro Art, organized by a Washington, D. C. gallery and shown also at the Baltimore Museum and Hampton Institute. work of the following modern European painters was shown in one-man exhibitions in New York: Hans Arp, Marc Chagall,* Raoul Dufy, James Ensor, Max Ernst,* Juan Gris,* Jean Hélion,* Fernand Léger,* André Masson,* Edvard Munch, Chaim Soutine and John Tunnard. All except Gris, Munch and Soutine are living; those starred (*) are at present living in the United States. The usual large number of American exhibitors crowded the dealers' galleries in New York with one-man showings, among them some interesting new-comers. Most successful shows were those of John Atherton, Milton Avery, William Baziotes, Louis Bouché, David Burliuk, Arthur B. Carles, Nicolai Cikovsky, Julio de Diego, Arthur G. Dove, Philip Evergood, Lyonel Feininger, Ernest Fiene, David Fredenthal, William Gropper, Morris Hirshfield, Hans Hofmann, Carl Holty, Walter Houmère, Peter Hurd, Frank Kleinholz, Karl Knaths, Walt Kuhn, Peppino Mangravite, Jan Matulka, George L. K. Morris, Robert Motherwell, Georgia O'Keeffe, Waldo Peirce, I. Rice Pereira, Horace Pippin, Hobson Pittman, Henry Varnum Poor, Ben Shahn, Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, Harold Sterner, Byron Thomas, Mark Tobey, Albert Urban and Max Weber. Noteworthy among Latin-American exhibitors in the galleries were Mario Carreño and Wilfredo Lam (Cuba), Maria (Brazil) and Carlos Merida (Mexico).of the most ambitious sculptures of our times reached completion in New York in 1944. This is the great Prometheus which the Brazilian Government commissioned of the distinguished French-Lithuanian sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, who has been living and working in the United States since 1941. The sculpture represents Prometheus struggling with the vulture, and it will decorate an immense exterior wall of the Ministry of Education in Rio de Janeiro, a building designed by Oscar Niemeyer which has been called the most advanced public architecture in the world. Lipchitz worked out the conception in a model seven feet high, then cast it in plaster for shipment to Brazil, where, under his supervision, it will be enlarged to 20 feet and cast in bronze. general there was little activity in the field of sculpture in the United States, and a notable absence of important private commissions, government-sponsored decoration of public buildings, and large museum exhibitions. That American sculptors continued to work, however, was proved by the usual number of one-man exhibitions held in dealers' galleries during 1944. The exhibitors in New York were Alexander Archipenko, Alexander Calder, Mary Callery, Rhys Caparn, José de Creeft, Wharton Esherick, Alfeo Faggi, Peter Grippe, David Hare, Maria, Louise Nevelson, John Rood, Sally Ryan, Hélène Sardeau, Mitzi Solomon, Turku Trajan, Nat Werner, and Ossip Zadkine.
only large sculpture exhibitions were the Whitney Museum's annual event, in which chiefly New York sculptors were represented. The Sculptors' Guild, which has a membership made up almost entirely of New Yorkers, also held its annual exhibition, considerably smaller than in previous years. splendid group of 26 Italian Renaissance sculptures, with works by Donatello, Verrocchio, Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia, Benedetto da Maiano, Antonio Rossellino, Pollaiuolo, Desiderio and others, was included in the impressive collection of Italian art given to the National Gallery in Washington this year by Samuel H. Kress. Two exceedingly rare Greek marble sculptures of the late 4th or early 3rd century BC and showing the influence of Praxiteles were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most important single sculpture acquisition made this year was the Frick Collection's purchase of the late 15th century Gothic bronze known as L'Ange de Lude by Jean Barbet de Lyon, from the J. P. Morgan collection. Until the time of the French Revolution this sculpture formed a pinnacle of the Ste.-Chapelle in Paris. Important modern sculpture by Archipenko, Brancusi, Calder, Despiau and Lipchitz was added to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. The Arensberg collection, which has been given to the University of California in Los Angeles, is rich in sculpture, both modern and ancient (see Museum Acquisitions, above). year 1944 was a big one in New York galleries. The auction firm of Parke-Bernet reported at the end of June 1944 an unprecedented total of $6,156,632 for the year's sales; this nearly doubled the total for the preceding year, which in turn was the second highest in 10 years past. Gimbel Brothers announced that the combined sales of the Hearst collection and the Kende auction galleries had totalled $4,100,000. Prices in general showed an increase of 30 per cent to 50 per cent over the season before. Highest price paid for a painting at auction was $127,000 for the Frans Hals Merry Lute Player from the John R. Thompson collection. The dealers' art galleries reported a very lively season with many new collectors buying.
stir was caused by the decision of three prominent museums to sell at auction certain works of art from their collections in order to raise funds for future purchases. The museums which carried through this plan were the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an unnamed "midwestern educational institution" and the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, N. Y. (The M. H. De Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco had the year before sold unneeded items from its collection and purchased a Rubens with the proceeds; in the past several large museums have disposed of works which were outmoded or which duplicated others in its collection.) The sale held by the Museum of Modern Art included works by Cézanne, Seurat, Matisse, Derain, Despiau; the "midwestern institution" sold chiefly works of the French Impressionists. The Albright Gallery was bitterly blamed in the press for selling at a fraction of their former value certain unfashionable pictures by American painters who were still alive.