1940: Painting And Sculpture

What becomes of art in a world at war is a question to which at least a partial answer has been given in Europe during 1940. The loss to the world of artistic talents destroyed in the actual fighting, the driving of artists into poverty-stricken exile, the destruction of art treasures through the bombing of cities, the necessary removal of the contents of great museums with consequent risk of damage and loss, the looting of art collections in defeated countries — these are some of the tragic events which 1940 brought in Europe.

In America many committees as well as private individuals were extremely active in attempting to aid Europe's war victims, and art played a prominent part in serving as a means to raise money for the benefit of these various causes. A large number of art exhibitions and art sales were organized for war relief, and hundreds of artists donated examples of their work to be auctioned or sold privately for the benefit of various relief organizations.

Refugee artists presented a distressing problem. A number of distinguished modern artists have been able to come to the United States without assistance, among them Fernand Léger, Salvador Dali and Piet Mondrian, but others are helplessly caught in Europe in a situation very unfriendly to modern art. The Emergency Rescue Committee in New York, and many other committees, in the United States, have endeavored to bring such artists into this country. All papers must be cleared through the President's Advisory Committee for Political and Intellectual Refugees. By the end of the year no artists had been brought to the United States through this Committee, chiefly because of delays on the part of our immigration authorities and difficulties of obtaining exit visas in Europe.

Great Britain made a valiant attempt to salvage the talents of her distinguished artists by employing them in an official capacity to record the war both at home and abroad, under the direction of a committee consisting of Sir Kenneth Clark, director of the National Gallery, Sir Walter Russell, Sir Muirhead Bone, and Mr. P. H. Jowett. Paintings and drawings made by the large number of British artists so employed were placed on exhibition in the National Gallery in London, and later a group of the pictures was sent to the United States for exhibition during 1941.

The only notable exhibition of the year in Europe (where formerly so many important exhibitions were annually assembled) was held in Lisbon and consisted of a group of 15th and 16th century Portuguese paintings. Brought together for the first time, these Portuguese primitives surprisingly revealed the existence of a school of painting almost the equal of the Flemish school by which it was strongly influenced.

There are a great many refugee works of art in America, some of which were brought over before the war for exhibition in museums or at the World's Fairs, and some of which are included in important private collections which have been brought here by their owners.

Art at the Fairs.

The Masterpieces of Art exhibition at the New York World's Fair, for the second year sponsored by Art Associates, Inc., was directed by Walter Pach and catalogued 383 notable items. The Contemporary Art Building was allocated to the WPA Art Program and to a changing series of exhibitions contributed by many art societies and institutions, such as the Sculptors' Guild, the American Watercolor Society, the Museum of Modern Art, etc. At San Francisco's Golden Gate International Exposition Walter Heil directed the old master section; Herman More assisted in the selection of the contemporary American show; Dr. Grace McCann Morley selected the Central and South American section.

An interesting feature of both Fairs in both 1939 and 1940 was the artistic role played by the International Business Machines Corporation. In 1939 this corporation bought two groups of 79 paintings each from artists in various European countries and in America, each group being shown in the I.B.M. building at the two Fairs. In 1940 the I.B.M. exhibitions contained 106 paintings by living American artists, purchased by art authorities in each state who had been instructed to buy canvases representative of the art and character of the particular state without restriction as to subject or price. At the close of the Fairs these paintings were shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D. C., and then started on a coast-to-coast tour of American museums.

Museum Exhibitions.

One of the most remarkable exhibitions of the year was the Art of the Middle Ages held at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The two great repositories of medieval art in America, the Morgan Library in New York and the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, provided the backbone of the exhibition, with the addition of loans from 50 other institutions and private collections. Some 320 precious objects were shown, including paintings, stone carvings, manuscripts, tapestries and silks, ivory carvings, mosaics, altar accessories and vestments, jewels and coins. A second outstanding event of the year was the great exhibition of Persian art held in New York, the most important ever assembled in the Western Hemisphere and rivaling the London show of nine years ago. The exhibition, which covered a period of 6,000 years, was sponsored by the American Institute for Iranian Art and was directed by Arthur Upham Pope. Another very large and ambitious exhibition was the Survey of American Painting at Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, covering 260 years of our native art from the series of children's portraits painted in 1670 by an unknown master to the contemporary American world.

Several notable old master exhibitions, besides those at the New York and San Francisco Fairs, were held in the United States. Twenty-eight Italian paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance and Baroque periods lent by the Royal Italian Government, which had previously been seen at the Golden Gate Exposition and in Chicago, were exhibited with record-breaking attendance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition, which included Raphael's Madonna of the Chair, Botticelli's Birth of Venus, and a superb group of sculptures by Michelangelo, Donatello, Verrocchio, Pollaiuolo, and others, was accepted by a museum chiefly concerned with 20th century art when it became apparent that otherwise the masterpieces could not be seen in New York at all before their return to Italy (where a law had already been passed forbidding their ever being sent out of the country again). The Newark (N. J.) Museum held a showing of refugee masterpieces, all European owned, which had originally come to the United States for the two 1939 Fairs. A very large exhibition of old and modern masters was assembled and shown at two San Francisco museums, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the M. H. De Young Memorial Museum. Toledo's Museum of Art arranged a fine show of Venetian Art. About 40 Italian and English landscape paintings of the 18th century were shown at the Yale Gallery of Fine Arts. Also of special interest were the following: Night Scenes in 500 years of painting, at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum; and North European Painting of Germany, Holland and Flanders at the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

The 19th century in both American and European art was ably demonstrated in several interesting exhibitions: at Detroit's Institute of Arts in The Age of Impressionism and Objective Realism; at the Baltimore Art Museum in American Romanticism (between 1812 and 1865); and an Impressionist exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum. New York saw two one-man shows of 19th century Americans: at the Brooklyn Museum 100 paintings and drawings by Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), realistic genre and portrait painter whose work seems to have been considerably underestimated in recent years; and at the New York Historical Society, paintings, chiefly portraits, by John Wesley Jarvis (1780-1834).

The major one-man exhibition held in a museum this year was the great Picasso exhibition, which was assembled by the Museum of Modern Art and shown there at the end of 1939, and which then went to the Art Institute of Chicago, joint-sponsor of the exhibition. A large part of the Picasso show was on view thereafter at museums in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and San Francisco.

Another one-man exhibition of importance was the retrospective group of paintings by Georges Rouault, veteran French modernist, assembled by the Boston Institute of Modern Art, and later shown at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D. C. The war cancelled many loans to this show from Europe, but the large number of Rouault paintings owned in this country made possible a distinguished exhibition of about 90 works. Another one-man show was a large group of paintings by Georges Braque, collaborator with Picasso in the early development of Cubism; this was shown at the Phillips Memorial Gallery, at the Arts Club of Chicago and in San Francisco.

The majority of other one-man shows in museums were American and contemporary: Fletcher Martin, rising young Pacific Coast painter, had a show at the Los Angeles Museum; Thomas Benton, at the Dallas Museum; Mahonri Young, sculptor and painter, it the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.; Clarence Carter, at Carnegie Institute; Francis Speight, at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D. C; and Earl Horter (memorial show), at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Columbus, Ohio, arranged at the Gallery of Fine Arts a retrospective exhibition of paintings by its famous native son, the late George Bellows.

Contemporary American art was featured in an ever-increasing number of annual and biennial exhibitions in museums all over the United States. Among these may be mentioned as outstanding those at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Chicago Art Institute; the San Francisco Museum of Art; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and a first Texas annual held at museums in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The Museum of Modern Art in New York showed about 100 distinguished paintings by the younger Americans, chiefly selected from work done under the WPA Art Program. These paintings were presented in the form of three traveling exhibitions, entitled The Face of America, 35 Painters Under 35, and Mystery and Sentiment, first shown in the Museum, then at the New York World's Fair, and then starting a tour of the country. The Whitney Museum held two mural painting exhibitions: a showing of designs for murals and sculpture to decorate Federal buildings, commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts; and an invited membership show of the National Society of Mural Painters.

Exhibitions in Dealers' Galleries.

Of greatest interest and significance among the exhibitions arranged by art dealers in 1940 were a number of one-man shows held in New York. The first exhibition in America of works by the great 17th century French painter, Poussin, consisted of eleven oil paintings, nine of them never before shown in New York. Thirty years ago not a single painting by Poussin was owned in America; today the great interest in him on the part of both artists and collectors is reflected in the number of important works now owned in this country. Paintings by Alessandro Magnasco, 18th century Milanese painter of the Baroque tradition, were also assembled for the first time here. This exhibition of 19 paintings included several examples recently acquired by eastern museums. The first comprehensive exhibition of paintings by Jacob Jordaens, 17th century contemporary of Rubens and Van Dyck, was also held in New York. The New York public saw paintings and drawings by the great French classicists of the 19th century, Jacques Louis David and I. A. D. Ingres; and 25 paintings by Gustave Courbet, the later 19th century French realist. Other noteworthy showings included 25 Italian Renaissance portraits; and 35 self portraits by the old masters, covering three centuries, from the Baroque period to Impressionism, in eight countries. In the contemporary field there were many group exhibitions, among which may be mentioned Landmarks of Modern German Art, and American Abstract Art, representing 23 artists.

The following living Americans, some of whom were already known for their appearance in recent group exhibitions and others of whom were making an initial appearance in New York, had their first one-man shows in dealers' galleries this year: Darrel Austin, Rainey Bennett, Charles Campbell, Jo Cantine, Lucille Corcos, Lewis Daniel, Gladys Rockmore Davis, Karl Fortess, Emil J. Kosa, Jr., Paul Lantz, Fletcher Martin, Roderick Mead, Bruce Mitchell, Helen Sawyer, Mitchell Siporin, and Richard Sussman.

The following living Americans, well known to all who follow contemporary trends in this country, had one-man exhibitions in New York: Annot, Revington Arthur, Milton Avery, A. S. Baylinson, Arnold Blanch, Louis Bouché, Robert Brackman, Ann Brockman, David Burliuk, John Carroll, James Chapin, Jean Charlot, Nicolai Cikovsky, Jon Corbino, Bernadine Custer, Julio De Diego, Adolf Dehn, Walt Dehner, Joseph De Martini, Edwin Dickinson, Frank Di Gioia, Nathaniel Dirk, Lamar Dodd, Paul Dougherty, Arthur G. Dove, Stephen Etnier, Emlen Etting, Philip Evergood, Ernest Fiene, Arnold Friedman, Adolf Gottlieb, Harry Gottlieb, Donald Greason, William Gropper, Maurice Grosser, Marsden Hartley, John Edward Heliker, Victor Higgins, Alexander James, Mervin Jules, Morris Kantor, Walt Kuhn, Lawrence Lebduska, Julian Levi, Loren Maclver, Jennie and Ethel Magafan, John Marin, Reginald Marsh, William Meyerowitz, B. J. O. Nordfeldt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Philipp, Joseph Pollet, Henry Varnum Poor, Edna Reindel, Boardman Robinson, Andrée Ruellan, Henry Schnakenberg, Manfred Schwartz, Zoltan Sepeshy, Ben Shahn, Charles Sheeler, Joseph Solman, Moses Soyer, Chuzu Tamotzu, Frederic Taubes, Byron Thomas, Tromka, Nahum Tschacbasov, Frede Vidar, Carol Weinstock, Harold Weston, John Whorf, and Sol Wilson. 'Primitive' or naive artists continued to receive attention. The following had one-man exhibitions of their work in New York, all of them making first appearances: Anna M. R. Moses, Horace Pippin, Patsy Santo, and William Aiken Walker.

Among 20th century European painters who had solo exhibitions in New York galleries were Max Beckmann, Arbit Blatas, Marc Chagall, Giorgio de Chirico, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Jean Hélion, Ferdinand Hodler, Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Klee, Ernst Leyden, Franz Marc, Joan Miro, Amedeo Modigliani, Georges Rouault, Chaim Soutine, Maurice Utrillo, and Maurice Vlaminck. Possibly the most important of these was the memorial exhibition of 100 pictures by Paul Klee, who died in the summer of 1940. The oriental painter, Yun Gee, had a one-man exhibition.

Sculpture.

The field of sculpture continued during 1940 to attract the very real talents of a considerable group of young American artists. Although the splendid opportunities for sculpture on a monumental scale provided in the past year by the San Francisco and New York Fairs were lacking in 1940, the very sound revival of interest and activity in the art of sculpture continued to boom. Evidence of this was to be found in the ever-increasing number of notable one-man and group exhibitions of sculpture held. Young Americans of great promise, and in some cases of real achievement, who had one-man shows in or near New York were: Mary Ogden Abbott, Leo Amino, David Burliuk, Jr., Doris Caesar, Alexander Calder, Cornelia Van A. Chapin, Robert Cronbach, Louis Dlugosz, Eugenie Gershoy, Marianne Gold, Milton Hebald, John Hovannes, Silvia Shaw Judson, Frederic Littman, John Rood, David Smith, Challis Walker, Anita Weschler, and Agnes Yarnall. Among the older men who held exhibitions were José de Creeft, Jo Davidson, Carl Milles, Wheeler Williams, and Mahonri Young. At dealers' galleries in New York several interesting group shows of American sculpture included many of the sculptors named above, and, in addition, Harold Ambellan, Alexander Archipenko, Rhys Caparn, Jean De Marco, Herzl Emanuel, Franc Epping, Clara Fasano, Herbert Ferber, John B. Flannagan, Helen Gaulois, Minna Harkavy, Wiliard Hirsch, Paul Huyn, Nathaniel Kaz, Henry Kreis, Simon Moselsio, Hugo Robus, Heinz Warneke, Arline Wingate, Warren Wheelock, Beverly Woodner, and two English sculptors living in the United States, Dorothy Simmons and Oliver O'Connor Barrett.

The Sculptors' Guild, well known American society founded in 1937 to further the interests of sculpture, held its annual membership exhibition this year in the Contemporary Arts Building at the New York World's Fair. The Guild also organized its first traveling exhibition, consisting of 56 pieces of sculpture, which had its first showing at the Labor Building in Washington, D. C.

The most ambitions museum exhibition of sculpture during the year was that staged by the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a means of surveying the contemporary field to select six sculptors for six $10,000 commissions for Fairmount Park monuments. This exhibition was international in scope and contained 412 works by 215 Americans and 30 foreign sculptors. The commissions, to be executed for the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial in this city park, will constitute the second of a series begun in 1933 when Philadelphia held another huge sculpture international. At that time commissions were awarded to Maurice Sterne, Robert Laurent, J. Wallace Kelly, John B. Flannagan, Helene Sardeau and Heinz Warneke. The winners of this year's commissions have not yet been announced. (For other sculpture commissions, see section United States Government Art Program.)

The Museum of Modern Art had on view during much of the year, both in its specially designed sculpture galleries and its out-of-door sculpture garden, the outstanding collection of modern European sculpture in America. This collection was augmented by an important gift of 36 modern sculptures, which included works by Maillol, Despiau, Lehmbruck, Kolbe, Lachaise, and others, who were allotted a special exhibition. The Art Institute of Chicago exhibited 92 pieces of sculpture by 60 Chicago artists. The Whitney Museum in New York invited a membership exhibition of the National Sculpture Society, the first showing of this mainly conservative group since 1929 in San Francisco. The Baltimore Museum of Art arranged the largest exhibition ever held in this country of the work of the Swedish-American sculptor, Carl Milles. At the Columbus (Ohio) Gallery of Fine Art, Erwin Frey of Ohio was accorded a one-man showing of his sculpture. In New York the 10 ton stainless steel sculpture in high relief, commissioned from the Japanese-American Isamu Noguchi, was installed over the entrance to the Associated Press Building in Rockefeller Center. A seven-foot pink alabaster figure of Adam, the latest controversial work of Jacob Epstein, American-born sculptor who has lived most of his life in England, was exhibited for commercial purposes in New York without the authorization of the sculptor.

A few sculpture exhibitions outside the contemporary field may be mentioned. The Metropolitan Museum in New York arranged Heads in Sculpture, an enlightening comparison of a single problem in sculpture as treated in a great number of different periods. The Metropolitan also showed sculptures and watercolors by the famous 19th century French sculptor of animals, Antoine Barye. A famous collection of French 18th century sculpture, including Houdon, Clodion, Pigalle, Coysevox, and others, was shown at a New York gallery. Another gallery showed a unique set of 20 extraordinary life masks of American patriots, presidents, and statesmen, made by John H. I. Browere (1792-1834). This show was sponsored by the New York State Historical Society of Cooperstown, which later received the whole group of heads as a gift to its collection.

Acquisitions in sculpture by American museums were not particularly numerous but were of excellent quality. Two Italian Renaissance works of outstanding importance entered the Detroit Institute of Arts, a terra cotta Virgin and Child by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) and a St. John by Jacopo della Quercia (c.1371-1438). Two rare Renaissance bronzes from the Clendenin Ryan collection entered museums, St. Sebastian by Alessandro Vittoria (1525-1608) going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an allegorical figure representing Architecture by Gian Bologna (1524-1608) to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Metropolitan Museum also acquired two important French Gothic pieces of the 13th century — statues of King Clovis and King Clothar. In the modern field, examples by Lehmbruck and Barlach were acquired by the Chicago Art Institute, and a Lehmbruck by the Portland (Ore.) Museum. The acquisition of 36 fine modern sculptures by the Museum of Modern Art has been mentioned. In addition the Museum of Modern Act acquired sculpture by Barlach, Lipchitz and Henry Moore, and by the Americans José de Creeft, Hugo Robus and Louis Dlugosz.

United States Government Art Program.

Both the WPA Art Program and the Section of Fine Arts of the Public Buildings Administration (formerly the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the Treasury Department) continued to function during 1940, employing several thousand artists and playing a more important part than any other agency in the country, and probably in the world, to bring art to an increasingly large public.

The WPA Art Program.

The WPA Art Program, which since its inception in 1935 has employed between 3,000 and 5,500 needy painters and sculptors, art teachers, technical and research workers, model, map and poster makers, etc, for the benefit of the public, had, during 1940, 41 statewide art projects in 41 states, as well as the District of Columbia, New York City and Southern California. States which have not had art projects are Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina, the reason for this being that in those states personnel certified for relief in the art field has heretofore not been found in numbers sufficient to justify the setting up of art projects. The national office of the WPA Art Program has been continued under the direction of Holger Cahill, with an exhibition center which selected and sent on tour several hundred traveling shows to community art centers and other organizations throughout the country.

For several years one of the most constructive phases of the Art Program has been the establishment and maintenance, with community guidance and support, of the community art centers in parts of the country not already served by museums or other art organizations. This part of the program was extended still further in 1940, the number of these community art centers having been increased from 72 to 84, in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia. The amount contributed to these art centers by the communities involved rose in 1940 from $500,000 to $850,000. Attendance at the centers has averaged some 350,000 a month, and another 400,000 persons have seen art and handicraft exhibitions arranged by the WPA Art Program aside from those held in the art centers.

Production figures for the WPA Art Program show that since its inception in 1935 it has produced and allocated to public tax-supported institutions, such as schools, libraries, hospitals and court houses, approximately 1,550 murals, 52,000 oil and watercolor paintings, 95,000 fine prints from 4,000 original designs, and 4,200 sculptures. These figures are significant when it is recalled that among the artists who produced the work were the winners of most of the prominent mural and sculpture competitions of the past year, including the first three places in the competition for murals for the Social Security Building and for the St. Louis Post Office Building. These WPA artists have repeatedly won commissions in competition with the leading artists of America. One of the major mural jobs completed under the WPA in 1940 was the decoration by Edward Laning of large wall spaces in the New York Public Library at 42nd Street, an important commission which has been awaiting the selection of an artist for many years.

The WPA's outstanding exhibition of the year was held at the New York World's Fair. Mayor LaGuardia and the World's Fair Corporation contributed the Contemporary Arts Building for the purpose, making it possible for new and larger audiences to study the scope of the Government's art patronage. Actually the public had a share in selecting the work shown in this exhibition, in that a large proportion of it was borrowed back from schools, libraries, colleges, and museums which had selected it from the production of the Art Program.

The Index of American Design.

The Index of American Design, the huge compendium of carefully drawn and documented color plates illustrating the history of the decorative arts in America, has continued to be one of the most valuable phases of the work of the WPA Art Program. The Index plates have been extensively exhibited all over the country during the year, attracting wide interest and enthusiasm. To make this valuable body of material usable for the American public, publication of the Index in a series of color portfolios is desirable, but efforts to interest publishers in risking large sums of money in such publication have so far not succeeded. To meet this need the art projects themselves have begun work on a series of portfolios reproducing by the silk screen process some of the basic elements of design from the Index for use in schools, museums, libraries, etc.

An important experiment known as National Art Week was carried on in 1940, initiated and in great part organized by the WPA Art Program. National Art Week was proclaimed by President Roosevelt and took place at the end of November. Its purpose was to stimulate the sale of American art through sales exhibitions to be held in great numbers in communities throughout the whole country. In his letter inviting Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to act as national chairman, the President stated: 'It is evident that we must find ways of translating our interest in American creative expression into active popular support expressed in terms of purchase.' Some 6,000 prominent citizens accepted membership on national, state and local councils in the 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Hawaii, to carry out the program of National Art Week. Artists and craftsmen entered approximately 130,000 works in the 1,641 sales exhibitions held. Although the results in actual sales were not as impressive as had been hoped, art authorities agreed that the experiment had been decidedly worth while and that National Art Week should be made an annual event, with the necessary time for preparation which had been seriously lacking in 1940.

The Section of Fine Arts of the Public Buildings Administration, Federal Works Agency, continued to use 1 per cent of the cost of Federal buildings for mural paintings and sculpture to decorate these buildings. A number of competitions were held, as in years past, and commissions carried out by the winners. Among the largest commissions given were $19,980 to the painter Ben Shahn for a mural for the new Social Security Building, $16,000 to the sculptor Robert Cronbach to decorate the same building, and $9,000 to the sculptor Henry Kreis for three sculptures for the new War Department Building. Thirty-two living rooms in the 16 buildings of the Marine Hospital in Louisiana, housing 400 lepers, were decorated, at a cost of $9,000, with 300 watercolors which were selected by a jury under the direction of the Section of Fine Arts from submissions sent in by artists all over the country. The year's major exhibition of work done under the Section of Fine Arts was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and consisted of winning competition models and studies for murals and sculpture.

Art in National Defense.

One of the important new orientations during the past year has been that of the use of the artist in the national defense program. The WPA Art Program has a passive defense project certified by the War Department to carry on highly technical research in camouflage. Art projects as well as private organizations in all parts of the country are working toward this end; for instance, the Kansas City Art Institute has set up classes in camouflage for artists. The WPA Program in every state is making plans for extensive services both for military and civilian defense. These activities will take such forms as camouflage, map-making for instruction and for range finding, drawings for instruction of various kinds such as for the illustration of the Manual of Arms and for lecture purposes, photography, cultural recreational activities for the army in art centers, decoration of cantonments, especially hostess houses, and cultural recreation for civilian morale.

Cultural Relations with Latin America.

President Roosevelt's appointment of Nelson A. Rockefeller to the Council of National Defense as Coordinator of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics, focused attention on one phase of the U. S. State Department's broad program for promoting closer inter-American relations. It is probable that art and other cultural interests in the United States will be extensively used in this program. Plans are now being made for organizing a number of exhibitions illustrating American art and life to be sent on tour through Central and South America.

Already during 1939 and 1940 the large number of art exhibitions brought from the other Americas to the United States has indicated a strong tendency in the direction of an exchange of cultural ideas. Most impressive of the Latin American art exhibitions of the year was the Central and South American section at the Golden Gate International Exhibition in 1940, assembled by Dr. Grace McCann Morley, who spent several weeks selecting 80 contemporary paintings in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador and Costa Rica. Another large undertaking was the Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art, a huge exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York under the sponsorship of the Mexican government. At the San Francisco Exposition Diego Rivera, famous Mexican mural painter, painted an enormous fresco as a public demonstration; while José Clemente Orozco, equally famous Mexican mural painter, demonstrated his technique in fresco painting as part of the Mexican exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. The Riverside Museum in New York, which has recently had several exhibitions of Latin American art, showed this year 209 works from Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela. The Los Angeles Museum showed Pre-Columbian Art of the Americas. Argentine art was shown in an exhibition of 236 paintings, sculptures and prints by 76 living artists at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, and later toured the country under the auspices of the American Federation of Arts.

Four prominent United States museums gave one-man exhibitions to Latin American artists. The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Modern Art brought before the American public the paintings of Brazil's outstanding artist, Candido Portinari; and both museums bought examples of his work. This painter had already become known in the United States through his handsome mural decorations in Brazil's pavilion at the New York World's Fair. The San Francisco Museum of Art showed the paintings of Roberto Berdecio of Bolivia, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. showed work by the Cuban painter, Esteban Valderrama.

In addition to these artists who were given museum showings, the following artists had one-man shows in New York dealers' galleries: Federico Cantu (Mexican), Ricardo Gomez Campuzano (Colombia), Max Jiminez (Costa Rica), Lasar Segall (Brazil), Daniel Serra (Cuba), David Alfaro Siqueiros (Mexicoan), and Rufino Tamayo (Mexican Indian).

Museum Acquisitions.

When the new National Gallery in Washington, D. C., opens in March, 1941, it will contain the cream of three great American art collections, the Mellon, the Kress, and the Widener. Most important news of the year in the museum field was the announcement of the gift of the Widener collection to the National Gallery. Famous for three generations, this collection contains over 100 important paintings, as well as Renaissance sculpture, the celebrated Mazarin tapestry, porcelains, jewels and other objects of art. Announcement of the gift was made by Peter A. B. Widener II, grandson of the founder of the collection, Peter A. B. Widener, whose son Joseph weeded the collection from some 400 items to its present highly selective content. In the collection are 13 Rembrandts, including The Mill; The Small Cowper Madonna of Raphael; Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Mantegna; Vermeer's Woman Weighing Pearls; The Feast of the Gods by Giovanni Bellini; Donatello's marble David; and splendid works by Rubens, Van Dyck, El Greco, Titian, Veronese, and many others.

Assurance that the National Gallery will also contain a section devoted to American art was given when the Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust announced the gift to the institution of 11 famous paintings by early American artists, namely Gilbert Stuart (five examples), John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, John Trumbull, Edward Savage, Mather Brown and Chester Harding.

In the old-master field other notable museum acquisitions during the year were: Tintoretto's Finding of Moses, a superb mid-16th century painting from the collection of the 19th century English academician, Richard Westall, by the Metropolitan Museum in New York; by the City Art Museum of St. Louis a Madonna and Child with the Saints Peter, John, Dominic and Nicholas, painted about 1490-1500 by Piero di Cosimo; and by the same museum a Crucifixion by Tiepolo; this museum also received a bequest of the Horace M. Swope collection of 712 fine prints. An important early Italian painting of the Madonna and Child by Lorenzo Monaca entered the collection of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City; the Penitent St. Peter by El Greco was acquired by the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, and also the Portrait of Paola Morosini by Giovanni Bellini, and Van Dyck's Queen Henrietta Maria; the Detroit Institute of Arts added to one of the finest collections of Dutch paintings in America the Jan Steen Fair at Oegstgeest, which had been shown at the New York World's Fair. The recent wealth of examples by the great 17th century master, Poussin, in American collections was augmented by the acquisitions of two museums: the Venus and Adonis, by the Smith College Museum of Art, and Mars and Venus by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Boston also acquired a lost Rubens portrait of a 16th century Berber prince, Mulay Ahmad, a Portrait of a Lady by Piero della Francesca, and a 1794 portrait of Huldah Bradley by the American, Ralph Earl. The Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D. C., acquired a Hogarth, The Singing Party; and the Worcester Art Museum the bequest of the Mary G. Ellis collection of European and American paintings. The Art Institute of Chicago acquired a portrait by the 19th century American, Thomas Eakins. To colonial Williamsburg Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. gave her pioneer collection of 250 early American folk paintings and sculptures, assembled over a period of nine years, which has since 1935 been on exhibition at Williamsburg in the Ludwell-Paradise House.

In the field of modern art the Phillips Memorial Gallery purchased a great Matisse of 1916, The Studio. Another great modern canvas, The Old King by Georges Rouault, entered the collection of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. The Frick Collection in New York, continuing its policy initiated last year with the purchase of a Cézanne, added two more works of modern art to its collection of old masters, an early Cézanne, Uncle Dominic as a Monk, and a Tahitian Landscape by Paul Gauguin. The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired a famous canvas of 1897, The Sleeping Gypsy, by Henri Rousseau; notable paintings by James Ensor, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, and other Europeans; and a large collection of modern prints, drawings and watercolors.

The New York World's Fair in 1940 announced the purchase of works by 31 living Americans from the exhibition of 1939, American Art Today, and the donation of the works to museums throughout the country. The artists were: Ethel Magafan of Colorado; Walt Killam of Connecticut; Norman MacLeish of Illinois; Jack Levine of Massachusetts; Sydney Fossum of Minnesota; Joseph Meert of Missouri; Patrocino Barela of New Mexico; Harry Dix, Anton Refregier, Robert Ryman and Meyer Wolfe of New York; Marie Delleney, William Lester and Florence McClung of Texas; Edmund Lewandowski of Wisconsin; and a number of printmakers.

Henry Varnum Poor, well known American mural painter, received a $4,500 commission to paint a mural in fresco at Penn State College, in the town of State College, Pa., as a gift of the class of 1932. This was an interesting and significant variation of the usual type of class gift such as sundials, bird baths, trees, or memorial plaques, especially since the artist was asked to paint the fresco while the college was in session so that the students might observe the actual work in progress. A similarly enlightened aesthetic attitude led the graduating class at Southern Methodist University in Texas to start a collection of regional art with a gift of four canvases by Everett Spruce, William Lester, Jerry Bywaters and Otis Dozier, all of Texas. (See also museum acquisitions under the section Sculpture.)

Art and Business.

One of the healthiest developments to be noted recently in the American art world is the use of the work of the artist (not the commercial artist) by industry and business. In the spring of 1940 New York's new daily newspaper, PM, proposed to use illustrations drawn or painted by artists to an extent equal to its use of photography, that is, to stimulate a return to the use of art to illustrate the news which has been so largely replaced by photo-engraving. In a search for artists who could report the news with brush or pen, PM ran a competition, sponsored and conducted by the Museum of Modern Art. Nearly 2,000 entries were received and the 22 prize-winning drawings and a large group of others selected by a jury were exhibited in the Museum. Subsequently, PM has made considerable use of artists, although possibly not to such an extent as had been hoped.

Steuben Glass, Inc., commissioned a distinguished group of 27 of the best-known painters and sculptors of America, France and England to make pictures to be engraved on fine glass vases, bowls, etc. The finished pieces were exhibited in the Steuben New York showrooms.

The advertising agency, N. W. Ayer & Son of Philadelphia, has been responsible for the employment of leading artists for advertising purposes by a number of business organizations. De Beers, the diamond firm, has employed well-known artists for a series of drawings used in its advertising. The Dole Pineapple Company has sent several distinguished artists to Hawaii to paint studies of the local landscape and flora, to be used in advertising. Georgia O'Keeffe received this commission in 1940.

Several notable commissions were given to artists by private individuals. Rainey Bennett, young Chicago watercolorist, was sent to Venezuela to record aspects of the country and its industry. Nine painters were commissioned by a motion picture director to record scenes of the making of the film version of Eugene O'Neill's The Long Voyage Home; this $50,000 commission was one of the largest given to American art. A New York night-club owner employed a well known painter, Anton Refregier, to take complete charge of the decoration of his club, as well as to paint murals in it, the result being an extremely handsome modern interior.

Sales.

To judge from the annual end-of-season report of a large auction gallery in New York, the buying public has displayed no reluctance to purchase art. Even the catastrophe of the war in Europe has failed to shake to any great extent the stability of the art market. Well known art collections dispersed at auction in New York City were the Clendenin J. Ryan collection, realizing $369,447, and the Samuel Untermyer estate, realizing $186,341. High prices paid in the Ryan sale were $14,000 for a 10 by 13-inch 15th century Burgundian portrait; $16,000 for a portrait by Andrea Solario; $10,000 for Tiepolo's Crucifixion; and $40,500 for a set of 20 famous etched portraits by Van Dyck. In the Untermyer sale $18,000 was paid for Rubens' Feast of the River Gods; $11,750 for Benvenuto Celiini's bronze Jupiter; and $7,000 for Whistler's celebrated Nocturne in Black and Gold; Falling Rocket, once called by John Ruskin 'a pot of paint flung in the public's face.' The William Randolph Hearst collection continued to be dispersed gradually by the International Studio Art Corporation; sections of it were offered for sale in department stores in Seattle, St. Louis, and New York.