1941: Painting And Sculpture

Art and the War.

In the two and a half years since the beginning of the war in September 1939 the Western Hemisphere, which formerly looked respectfully to Europe for leadership, has become virtually the stronghold of world art. Through tragic events in Europe the future of Western art for some years to come undoubtedly rests to a large extent with the 21 American republics. Now, with the entry of the United States into the war, many questions arise. What will America do with this responsibility toward the arts; can we keep our living art alive during years of war; can we care for and use the harvest of artistic talents which has been brought to our shores from Europe?

The destructive effect of total war upon art — both the art of the past and the art of living practising artists — has been illustrated in Europe in the war years, increasingly in 1941. One of the most distressing problems has been that of artists who have had to flee their native lands. The plight of many of the refugee artists who have arrived in the United States has been acute. Others, still attempting to leave Europe, are in serious danger. The President's Advisory Committee for Political and Intellectual Refugees, the Emergency Rescue Committee in New York, and many other committees throughout the country have continued to bring refugees, among them artists, out of Europe. During 1941 the distinguished modern artists, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, André Masson, André Breton, Moise Kisling and Ossip Zadkine, arrived in the United States from France. In France, still awaiting papers and passage to America at the end of the year, were Hans Arp, Pierre Roy, Vassily Kandinsky and Marcel Duchamp. Of other famous French artists Henri Matisse, Aristide Maillol, Charles Despiau, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Jean Lurçat and Raoul Dufy are said to be working quietly in Unoccupied France; while in Paris Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain, Georges Rouault and Maurice de Vlaminck are said to continue active, although many art materials are unobtainable. The well-known Expressionist painters, the German Max Beckmann and the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, are working, respectively, in Amsterdam and London, the latter reportedly seeking passage to the United States.

But in spite of the tragic difficulties of European artists, it must be noted that the major warring countries of Europe, with the possible exception of France, have turned to art, not only for propaganda purposes, but also for morale building and recreational purposes. However, only Great Britain has given the artist the freedom which is a necessary ingredient of great art. The others have imposed censorship and restrictions which go beyond subject matter and ideology and serve seriously to limit the technical and expressive freedom of the artist.

Since 1939 British artists have been employed by the Government to record the war at home and abroad. An exhibition, Britain at War, consisting of paintings and drawings which resulted from this official employment of British artists was sent to the United States for exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Following this it was shown at the National Gallery of Canada at Ottawa and the Art Gallery of Toronto, Canada, and then started a tour of the United States. The British Ministry of Information sent over an exhibition, The Great Fire of London, 1940, consisting of 107 paintings and drawings made by artist-members of the Auxiliary Fire Service. This exhibition opened at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., was shown at the Museum of the City of New York, and then started on a tour of Canada and the United States. Early in 1941 the American British Art Center opened in New York, its stated purpose being to encourage British artists in war time. The Center's initial show included the work of a number of English artists and starred the distinguished older painter, Walter Sickert.

During 1941 England has also been interested in propagandizing American art in England by means of photographs, publications, etc. An unofficial representative of the British Government came to the United States to study and report on the U. S. Government Art Programs.

The present whereabouts of works of art owned by great European museums has in general remained a mystery. The contents of the Louvre and other French museums and of the British museums are supposedly safely stored. There have been many rumors, particularly from the Low Countries, that the contents of Dutch and Belgian museums are appearing in increasing numbers in German public and private collections. It has also been rumored that in spite of the official Nazi ban on 'degenerate art,' a term applied by Hitler to the most creative art movements of the 20th century, German army officers in Paris are showing a paradoxical interest in buying up modern French art.

For some months before the actual outbreak of war between the United States and Japan, American museums officials had been concerned with plans for the protection of the works of art in their custody. Two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor museum directors from a number of cities met in New York to pool their knowledge and formulate a plan for the future of their institutions in war time. At this meeting the directors of six major American museums, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Frick Collection in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the Art Institute of Chicago, signed a statement which emphasized the museums' readiness to meet the situation. 'If, in time of peace, our museums are important to the community, in time of war they are doubly valuable.... Our Allies, Great Britain and her Dominions, under the destructive impact of total war, have already shown that art as an expression of the higher values of life is an undeniable factor in a free people's resistance. Never before has museum attendance been so great in Canada, or in England wherever museums can still function....' The statement contained resolutions that American museums would continue to keep their doors open and would broaden the scope and variety of their work, since 'no better time could be found to make more effective the public services of our museums.'

American artists have shown their eagerness to make their special talents available to their government in its war effort. In December 1941 eleven New York artists' societies united under the name of Artists Societies for National Defense and held a mass meeting to discuss the possible usefulness of the artist in national and civilian defense.

American Museum Events.

One of the most impressive events in the history of American art was the opening in March 1941 of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., with a formal dedication and a memorable speech of acceptance by President Roosevelt. The Andrew W. Mellon collection, with provision for a building to house it, was deeded to the nation in 1937. To this was added in 1939 the gift of a large part of his collection by Samuel H. Kress, chain store magnate, and a collection of some 300 fine prints was given by Eilen T. Bullard and three anonymous donors. In 1940 announcement was made by P. A. B. Widener II of the gift to the National Gallery of Philadelphia's famous Widener collection, but the collection was not included when the Gallery opened nor has its presentation date yet been specified.

Italian Renaissance works comprise over five-sixths of the National Gallery collection. The Mellon collection numbers 126 paintings and 26 sculptures, 60 belonging to the Italian schools; the Kress collection of 375 paintings and 18 sculptures, with an additional group of 43 paintings and 22 sculptures on loan, are all Italian. Fine examples of Flemish and Dutch paintings are included in the Mellon collection, and the English 18th century is also represented. Among the Italian masterpieces are the Giotto Madonna and Child, the Duccio Calling of Peter and Andrew, the Sasetta St. Anthony and St. Paul, the Botticelli Adoration of the Magi, St. Jerome by Mantegna, The Crucifixion by Perugino, St. George and the Dragon and the Niccolini-Cowper Madonna by Raphael, the Adoration of the Shepherds by Giorgione, Venus with a Mirror by Titian, and superb sculptures by Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Verrocchio and others. Although the North European Schools are represented by few examples they are of extraordinary quality; chief among them being the Jan van Eyck Annunciation, the Memling Madonna and Child with Angels, the Rogier van der Weyden Portrait of a Lady and Christ Appearing to the Virgin, and the Gerard David Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Vermeer, Holbein, Rembrandt and Rubens are also notably represented.

Late in 1941 the National Gallery announced the loan for an indefinite period of 25 important French paintings from the Chester Dale collection in New York. These 25 canvases were selected to trace briefly the whole development of French painting through the great 19th century, a period scarcely touched upon in the National Gallery collections. Among the artists represented are David, Delacroix, Degas, Corot, Courbet, Manet, Pissarro, Renoir and Cézanne. Another important loan of seven 19th century paintings, further strengthening the French and American sections, came from the Harris Whittemore Collection of Naugatuck, Conn.; namely, two canvases by Degas, two by Renoir, and three by Whistler, including his famous White Girl of 1862. The National Gallery received also a gift from the Duncan Phillips Collection in Washington of Daumier's powerful painting, Advice to a Young Artist.

The National Gallery proved a tremendous popular success, 301,342 visitors entering the $15,000,000 neoclassic building during the first month that it was open.

Second only in prominence to the opening of the National Gallery of Art was the installation in 20 new galleries in the Philadelphia Museum of Art of the justly famous John G. Johnson collection, providing the first opportunity to see this vast collection of nearly 600 works in its entirety. Johnson started collecting in the late 1880's and continued until he died in 1917, leaving his collection to the City of Philadelphia. The extraordinary taste of the great American amateur of early European painting is here revealed, particularly in the field of Flemish and early Italian painting, although the collection extends also to French, English and American works of the 18th and 19th centuries. Two of the greatest Flemish primitives in the world are in the Johnson collection: St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata by Jan van Eyck and the Virgin and St. John by Rogier van der Weyden.

New art museums were opened during the year in Santa Barbara, Calif., and in West Palm Beach, Fla., the latter being a private collection of painting and sculpture with an art gallery and school donated to the town by Ralph H. Norton of Chicago. New York's oldest surviving art institution, though not its first, the National Academy, founded in 1825, acquired its first permanent home in 1941, a Fifth Avenue mansion presented by Archer M. Huntington. The Academy's permanent collection was installed in this building and it was opened to the public.

Museum Exhibitions.

In 1941 there was a dearth of old master exhibitions throughout the United States, the chief opportunities for study in this field being concentrated in the National Gallery of Art and in the Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

French art since the Revolution made several brilliant appearances during the year. A large group of paintings and drawings from the Louvre and other museums in France, which had originally been sent to Argentina for exhibition and safe-keeping in the early months of the war, arrived in the United States. Augmented by the loan of about 50 important works from American collections, this splendid group, chiefly of the 19th century, was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York under the title David to Toulouse-Lautrec. These distinguished refugee pictures from France were also shown in San Francisco at the M. H. De Young Memorial Museum and at the Portland (Ore.) Art Museum, augmented by loans from local sources.

One of the outstanding museum exhibitions of the year was the full-length showing of the work of Goya at the Art Institute of Chicago. The largest and most carefully selected exhibition by the great Spanish painter (1746-1828) ever assembled in America, the show contained 163 paintings, drawings and prints. Rivaling this exhibition in the field of Spanish art was the Toledo Museum's splendid Art of Old Spain, 60 paintings covering a period of six centuries and augmented by a series of rare 12th century frescoes. An ambitious subject was chosen by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in its exhibition, Forty-five Centuries of Portraiture.

One of the season's most distinguished exhibitions was the Renoir centennial (1841-1919) held, not in a museum, but at the New York gallery of an art dealer for the benefit of the Free French Relief Committee. With 86 American-owned canvases included, this was the most extensive Renoir exhibition ever assembled in America, rivaled only by that held in Paris in 1933. The great French impressionist painted through virtually six decades, leaving the richest output of any modern master. The large number of his works in America, among them some superb examples, made possible an impressive gathering. The work of another impressionist painter, the Pittsburgh-born expatriate, Mary Cassatt (1845-1926), who lived most of her life in France, was the subject of an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The Boston Museum exhibited the fruits of a remarkable discovery made in England in 1940 — 29 illustrations for Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, drawn by the English poet-painter, William Blake (1757-1827). The existence of these illustrations was unsuspected by Blake authorities and they were discovered by accident by Geoffrey Keynes in the library of the Marquis of Crewe. The romantic paintings of Thomas Cole (1801-1848), English-born founder of America's Hudson River School, were brought together for the first time at the Albany Institute of History and Art.

The art of the 20th century, both European and American, was vigorously represented in United States museums, both in temporary and in permanent exhibitions. The Museum of Modern Art in New York announced a permanent, though constantly changing, exhibition of modern painting and sculpture from its own collection, unequaled in this field in the United States. Several one-man exhibitions, outstanding for the painstaking care with which they were presented, may be noted. The great Picasso exhibition, assembled and shown by the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago in 1939, and in 1940 sent on a tour of major cities in the United States, was shown in 1941 at the Isaac Delgado Museum, New Orleans, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, N. Y., and Duke University, Durham, N. C. Guernica, Picasso's great painting of 1937, made in outraged protest against the bombing of that Spanish town during the civil war, was included in the first three of these showings, and was then shown alone at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, and at the Columbus (Ohio) Gallery of Fine Art. The retrospective showing of some 80 paintings by Georges Rouault, veteran French modernist, which was organized late in 1940 and shown in Boston and Washington, was shown this year at the San Francisco Museum of Art. A large mural decoration, Composition with Two Parrots (1935-39) by Fernand Léger, noted French painter now living in the United States, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and at the San Francisco Museum of Art. The Museum of Modern Art gave one-man exhibitions to two contemporary Spanish painters, Joan Miro, whose art is fantastic and abstract in character, and Salvador Dali, widely publicized surrealist. This museum also held a memorial exhibition of paintings by the Swiss, Paul Klee, early modernist leader in Germany, who died in 1940; and a show of paintings and drawings by George Grosz, German-American satirist.

The Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., collection of European avant garde painting, sculpture and drawings, chiefly School of Paris and numbering 341 items, was placed on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts at Richmond, and was shown later at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This collection contains about 90 works by Picasso. The Worcester (Mass.) Art Museum arranged a French exhibition called The Art of the Third Republic (1870-1940); and the Los Angeles Museum one entitled Cézanne to Picasso.

Contemporary American art as usual dominated the scene in the museums. Large comprehensive annuals and biennials went on as heretofore at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and at museums and art galleries in Toledo, Los Angeles, Colorado Springs, San Diego, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Richmond and many other cities. Several new annuals appeared upon the scene, among them a show of drawings by American painters at the Albany Institute of History and Art, inaugurating a series devoted to modern drawings. Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, for the second year forced because of the war to abandon its famous international annual, organized Directions in American Painting, an exhibition of 302 paintings chosen by a jury from nearly 5,000 submissions by artists who had never before exhibited at Carnegie. This plan was calculated to tap a wealth of obscure talent among the younger Americans; however, a certain amount of adverse criticism of the undertaking suggested that the jury had not been sufficiently adventurous in its choices. Two stimulating exhibitions held at the Whitney Museum in New York were This Is Our City, the work of New York painters from the 'ash-can school' of The Eight in 1908 through the present day; and Artists under Forty, containing the recent work of painters and sculptors throughout the country. The Riverside Museum in New York gave an opportunity to exhibit to a number of artists' societies, among them the American Abstract Artists, a New York group; the Chicago Society of Artists; and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, a group of New York artists who seceded in 1940 from the American Artists Congress.

Off the beaten track of professional art were two exhibitions held, respectively, at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. These were They Taught Themselves, displaying the work of many of the so-called 'primitives' or naive painters of our day, such as Joseph Pickett, Patrick Sullivan, Morris Hirshfield, Patsy Santo, and John Kane, who have enjoyed much popular favor in the last half-dozen years; and the Art of Children in New York City.

Retrospective one-man shows of character and interest were held at the Boston Institute of Modern Art by Eugene Berman, Russian-born neo-romantic painter who recently became an American citizen; at the Chicago Art Institute, by Peppino Mangravite, well-known American painter and teacher; at the Museum of Non-Objective Art in New York, by Ladislaus Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian painter, constructivist, photographer and theorist now living in the United States. The Whitney Museum held memorial exhibitions for two American painters who died in 1940, Jerome Myers and Emil Ganso.

One of the most significant exhibitions in the field of primitive arts ever held, and surely the most elaborate installation ever accorded this material, was the Indian Art of the United States arranged at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This exhibition, under the direction of René d'Harnoncourt, was the result of a collaboration between the Museum and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the U. S. Department of the Interior. Brilliant insight in the selection of the objects, which represented American Indian culture in every phase from prehistoric times to the present day, as well as the dramatic presentation, served to reveal the true stature of Indian artists and craftsmen who until now have seldom been considered the artistic equal of their kinsmen of Central America. Another splendid undertaking, in a field apparently never before exploited for museum exhibition, was the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Museum's Coptic Art of Egypt. The 1st to the 10th century ad in Egypt was here demonstrated, particularly in sculpture and textiles, but also in paintings and various decorative arts. At the Metropolitan Museum in New York an informative exhibition was arranged around the theme The China Trade and Its Influences. The Baltimore Museum of Art tapped local sources for a varied and stimulating show called A Century of Baltimore Collecting. Two great Baltimore collections formed the backbone of this exhibition, the Walters Art Gallery, one of the richest private collections majoring in medieval art, and the Cone Collection of 20th century art.

The first comprehensive exhibition of Australian art to be seen here opened late in the year at the National Gallery of Art in Washington under the auspices of the Carnegie Corporation. Lent by Australian museums, collectors and artists, the 75 pictures range from aboriginal drawings on bark (of very great interest) to contemporary work. This exhibition was later shown at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and then sent on a tour of Canada and the United States by the Museum of Modern Art. (For Britain at War and additional exhibitions see sections Art and the War and Sculpture.)

Sculpture.

The field of sculpture was somewhat less active during 1941 than during the preceding three years when large U. S. Government commissions and the New York and San Francisco expositions provided unusual opportunities for monumental sculpture. Government commissions continued, however, and the WPA Art Program continued to employ sculptors for public work. Major WPA job completed during the year was a monumental series of low reliefs in Indiana limestone, entitled The Legend of California, by Donal Hord, one of the most distinguished sculptors working west of the Rockies. These stone panels are installed on the facade of the high school library at Coronado, Calif.

The major all-sculpture exhibition occurring annually is that held by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and this survey of recent American work was held as usual in 1941. The Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh held a sculpture show representing 81 artists; this was a selection from the vast international sculpture exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art the year before. One-man sculpture exhibitions were rather few both in museums and in dealers' galleries. The comprehensive exhibition of about 30 works by the robust Swedish-American, Carl Milles, organized and shown at the Baltimore Museum late in 1940, went in 1941 to the Boston Institute of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Alfeo Faggi, Italian-born American known particularly for his distinguished treatment of religious subjects, was given a large retrospective exhibition of 37 sculptures and 50 drawings at the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. The following living American sculptors had one-man shows in New York dealers' galleries: Leo Amino, Eleanor Boudin, José de Creeft, William Ehrich, Robert Laurent, Louise Nevelson, John Rood, Fingal Rosenquist, Challis Walker, Nat Werner and Harry Wickey. Europeans who had one-man shows in New York were Henri Laurens, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Aristide Maillol, Carl Milles and Ossip Zadkine. Two general sculpture exhibitions of value were arranged by a New York dealer, From Rodin to Brancusi and American Sculpture Today.

An important collection of early Christian, Romanesque and Gothic art, chiefly sculpture, assembled by the late George Grey Barnard, distinguished American sculptor, was placed on the market, and exhibited at the Old Cloisters in New York, in order to raise funds to finance the Rainbow Arch for which Barnard was designing sculpture at the time of his death. This second group of 262 items was assembled after Barnard's first collection of this material had been purchased for the Metropolitan Museum (now on view at the new Cloisters building in New York).

The Philadelphia sculpture show, mentioned above, was designed to aid in the selection of sculptors to execute commissions for the second series of Fairmount Park monuments comprising the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial. The winners of these coveted commissions were announced in 1941: Erwin F. Frey of Ohio, Henry Kreis of Connecticut, Harry Rosin of Philadelphia, and Wheeler Williams of New York. Carl Milles' first work for a public building in New York was unveiled in 1941 in the lobby of the Time and Life Building in Rockefeller Center. Entitled Man and Nature, it is a wood carving, 11 feet high and placed at considerable height on the wall, representing a woodsman on horseback flanked by figures of a nymph and a faun. Following a precedent set last year at Pennsylvania State College when the Class of 1932 commissioned Henry Varnum Poor to paint frescoes there, the Class of 1940 has commissioned Heinz Warneke, American sculptor, to carve for the college a Lion in Indian limestone. Warneke will work on the campus, as did Poor, where students may study the work in progress.

The most important museum acquisitions in the field of sculpture this year were a Praxitelean Greek head of about 320 bc by the City Art Museum of St. Louis; Maillol's Venus on which the great French artist worked from 1918 to 1933; and a life-size marble group called Youth by William Zorach, leading American sculptor, by the Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Fla.

Exhibitions in Dealers' Galleries.

The magnificent Renoir exhibition already mentioned (see section Museum Exhibitions) was the outstanding dealer show of the year. Also of interest was an El Greco exhibition of 25 paintings, marking the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great Spanish painter and held for the benefit of Greek War Relief. Twentieth century European art as usual was widely exhibited in the galleries; one exhibition to be especially noted was Les Fauves, 31 paintings dating from 1905 to 1908 by the 'wild beasts' Matisse, Dufy, Derain, Friesz, Vlaminck, Braque, van Dongen, Marquet and Manguin.

United States Government Art Programs.

The WPA Art Program and the Section of Fine Arts of the Public Buildings Administration, both of which are under the Federal Works Agency, continued to function during 1941, employing several thousand artists and doing more than any other agency in this country or in the world to support art and bring it to an increasingly large public. These agencies also brought art and art activity to the United States' armed forces to a greater extent than all other agencies combined (see below).

The WPA Art Program, which since its establishment in August 1935 as the Federal Art Project has employed between 3,000 and 5,500 needy painters, sculptors, art teachers, technical and research workers, model, map and poster makers and camouflage experts for the benefit of the American public, had, during 1941, 44 state-wide art projects in 41 states and the District of Columbia, New York City and Southern California, the last three being separate administrations. The state-wide projects operate under the various state Work Projects Administrations. The national office of the WPA Art Program in Washington, D.C., has been continued under the direction of Holger Cahill, with a National Exhibition Section which selected and sent on tour during 1941 more than 200 exhibitions, a great many of these organized for military camps and industrial defense areas.

Production figures for the WPA Art Program as of October 1941 show that since 1935 it has produced for public tax-supported institutions, such as schools, hospitals, libraries, airports and housing projects, over 2,250 murals including frescoes, mosaics and photomurals. Also completed were over 85,151 paintings which have been allocated on permanent loan to public institutions. Unallocated project work is being circulated by the National Exhibition Section in Washington, D. C. In sculpture some 13,198 works for public buildings have been produced, ranging from small ceramic figures for public schools and libraries to monuments for parks, housing developments and historic battlefields. In the graphic arts a total of 239,727 fine prints from 12,581 original designs have been completed; and over 2,000,000 posters from 30,500 designs have been printed for purposes such as public health and safety campaigns, concerts, art exhibitions, and during 1941 for military and civilian defense activities. Thousands of maps, diagrams, documentary photographs, lantern slides, dioramas and models, and other types of visual aids, and 52,100 crafts objects, all of specific value to educational and other public agencies, have been produced by Art Program employees. In the making of dioramas and models particularly, the Program has created material which would not otherwise have been available to public schools and other educational institutions.

One of the most constructive phases of the Art Program has been the establishment and maintenance, with community support, of a chain of community art centers in parts of the country not already served by museums or other art organizations. This part of the Program was extended in 1940 and 1941 in spite of reduction of funds for the WPA as a whole effected by Congressional action. At the close of 1941, 100 community art centers were in operation in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York City, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming and the District of Columbia. During six years more than 8,000,000 people have participated in the activities promoted by the centers. These activities, all free to both children and adults, stress active participation rather than passive appreciation. They include art exhibitions, art classes, lectures, demonstrations of art processes, and crafts workshops. The fact that American communities feel a strong desire for these activities is evidenced by the extent of popular support. The community art centers have received sponsorship from state and municipal governments, art and educational associations, Chambers of Commerce, Rotary Clubs, women's clubs, the American Legion, and school children. About $1,000,000 has been contributed to these centers by the communities involved during the past six years.

The Index of American Design, the great compendium of documented handmade color plates illustrating with utmost accuracy the history of the decorative arts in America, has continued to be one of the most valuable contributions made by the WPA Art Program. During 1941 the Index was carried on in 32 states. Extensively exhibited throughout the country, Index plates have attracted enthusiastic interest on the part of public and designers. The Index was exhibited in 1941 at the President's Library at Hyde Park, the Worcester Art Museum, Dartmouth College, and many other institutions.

The most important development on the WPA Art Program in 1941 was the organization of its services for national defense. Eighty per cent of the production activities of the Program were devoted to work for the armed services and civilian defense organizations. This work has included such certified projects as the Massachusetts Passive Defense Project, sponsored by the U. S. War Department, which has carried on technical research and experiments relative to camouflage and blackout activity; and the Illinois Project for Technical Training Aids, also sponsored by the War Department, which has prepared diagrammatic charts of airplane motors for use in U. S. Army Air Corps training schools. It has also included such work as the production of posters for air raid precautions, morale building, health and labor relations; the making of scale models, charts, maps, and lantern slides for training purposes; the making of specially constructed articles and equipment for use by the armed forces, such as portable medical cabinets, parachute tables and racks, code practising tables, photograph storage cabinets, portable altars, air raid precaution armbands and other insignia; mural decorations and furnishings for recreation halls and service clubs. The Art Program has also furnished instructors for recreational art classes in camps, one outstanding example being the very successful classes at Fort Custer, Mich. The WPA community art centers, particularly in Florida, Oklahoma and Washington, have been active with recreational programs for service men. Of the several hundred national defense organizations served by the WPA Art Program during the past year a few of the most important are Alameda Naval Air Base, Fort Ord and Daughtery Air Field, Calif.; Fort Logan, Colo.; Camp Blanding and Pensacola Naval Air Base, Fla.; Chanute Field, Ill.; Fort Custer, Mich.; Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; Tongue Point Naval Air Base, Ore.; Indiantown Gap Reservation, Pa.; Fort Douglas, Utah; Fort Belvoir, Va.; Fort Lewis and Sand Point Naval Air Base, Wash.

The Section of Fine Arts of the Public Buildings Administration has continued its program, under the direction of Edward Bruce, of commissioning artists to decorate Federal buildings with mural paintings and sculpture. Figures given at the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 1941, show that since October 1934 the section has held 166 competitions, and has commissioned 1,057 mural and sculpture decorations which have been completed in 903 cities at a total cost of $1,377,812. Many other commissions, as yet uncompleted, have been given out. The majority of the competitions held have been restricted to artists living in the state in which the building to be decorated is located, but for exceptionally important projects such as new Federal buildings in the District of Columbia and the St. Louis and San Francisco Post Offices, the competitions have been national in scope. Largest commission in 1941, and second largest ever given by the Section, was won by Anton Refregier of New York through national competition: $26,000 for 27 mural panels for the Rincon Annex of the San Francisco Post Office.

In addition to its program of decorating Federal buildings, the Section of Fine Arts has held several competitions for the purchase of watercolors and drawings for use by various Government agencies. In December 1941, after Pearl Harbor, the Office for Emergency Management in collaboration with the Section of Fine Arts, initiated a national competition for pictures which would inform the public about war and defense activities. The sum of $2,400 will be spent to purchase about 100 watercolors, drawings and prints from the competition, which then will be exhibited throughout the country.

Cultural Relations with Latin America.

During the past three years the United States Government has indicated its belief that one way of furthering accord in the Western Hemisphere is by bringing before the public of both North and South America the cultural achievements of the 21 American republics. The President's Office of Emergency Management, through the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (Nelson A. Rockefeller), has been concerned for the past two years with this interchange of culture between the United States and Latin America. In October 1941 the Department of State announced that the President had approved the appointment of an Advisory Committee on Art, to advise the Department of State through the Division of Cultural Relations regarding the stimulation of artistic interchange among the American republics and the coordination of activities in this country which concern inter-American art.

One of the largest cultural projects carried out during 1941, through the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs with the cooperation of five New York museums, was the organization of three large exhibitions of contemporary American paintings to tour South and Central America for six months. The cooperating museums, from whose collections the exhibitions were in large part selected, were the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. The three exhibitions opened in June in Mexico City, Bogota and Buenos Aires, and were shown later in Havana, Caracas, Quito, Lima, Santiago, Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro. A handsome illustrated catalogue in three languages accompanied the exhibitions, which in general were favorably received. In the spring of 1941 another large exhibition from the United States started a tour of 16 cities in South and Central America, opening in Rio de Janeiro. This was called Contemporary Art of the Western Hemisphere, the International Business Machines Corporation's collection of paintings and prints, representing every nation of the Hemisphere, which had been shown at the San Francisco and New York expositions.

Among the larger exhibitions of Latin American art held in American museums was that at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, arranged in cooperation with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. This was America South of the Border, an important showing of colonial and folk art from all the Latin American countries. The Boston Institute of Modern Art organized an exhibition called Modern Mexican Painters, to be shown also at the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, and museums in Cleveland, Portland (Ore.), San Francisco and Santa Barbara. This exhibition emphasized younger artists and should do much to counteract the impression that monumental fresco is the sum total of the Mexican painter's achievement. Maria Martins, well known Brazilian sculptor, was given a one-man show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, and one of her works was later acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. New York art dealers gave one-man shows to Max Jimenez of Costa Rica, Federico Cantu of Mexico and Mario Carreño of Cuba. A gallery called Norte, devoted to the exhibition and sale of Latin American painting and sculpture, opened in New York but unfortunately was financially unable to continue.

Candido Portinari, Brazilian painter better known in the United States than any other South American artist, whose work toured American museums last year, completed four mural panels in the Hispanic Foundation of the Library of Congress, Washington. Portinari received this commission through a project sponsored by the governments of Brazil and the United States. Jo Davidson, American sculptor, toured South America to make a series of 12 busts of South American presidents.

National Art Week.

The largest art fair ever held was initiated in 1940 by President Roosevelt and carried on its second annual program in November 1941. The national chairman appointed by the President was Thomas J. Watson, head of the International Business Machines Corporation; Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was honorary chairman. A national council and state and local chairmen in every part of the country were appointed by Mr. Watson. One feature of this year's organization of Art Week was the setting up of business men's committees in every state to collaborate with art committees which consisted of museum directors, artists and other professional people. As in 1940 a major part of the organizational work of Art Week was carried on by the WPA Art Program.

Final sales returns for National Art Week in 1940 were announced in June 1941. Sales amounted to $100,018.45 for the sale of 13,717 items, average selling price being a little over $7.00 for each item. This would seem to indicate that a large new art-buying public in the low-priced brackets was being reached. Preliminary sales reports for 1941 indicated that approximately 17,000 items were sold for a total of $136,177. A considerable part of this increase was accounted for by the purchase made by the national chairman, Mr. Watson, who bought a watercolor and a sculpture in every state. However, there is no question that, apart from this, there was an advance in sales over 1940.

Museum Acquisitions.

The war has noticeably cut down the number of acquisitions which museums have been able to make in the past year. However, the following notable additions to museum collections were made: Rubens' Head of Cyrus Brought to Queen Tamyris, painted about 1622-23; John Singleton Copley's portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Winslow; and A La Mie, of 1891, by Toulouse-Lautrec, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Christ and the Woman of Samaria by Veronese, and The Castaways by Magnasco, to the City Art Museum of St. Louis; a Velasquez portrait of the Infanta Margarita Maria, daughter of Philip IV, to the Fine Arts Society of San Diego; Sir Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of the Duchess of Hamilton and Argyll, to the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco. The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco acquired a Spanish monastery consisting of a church, a cloister and a number of other buildings dating from the year 1185 through the 16th century. The monastery was purchased some years ago by William Randolph Hearst and brought to this country in 11 shiploads; it will be set up in Golden Gate Park. The Metropolitan Museum in New York received from the collection of the late Felix Warburg 228 prints including a splendid group of 44 Rembrandt etchings. Late in December the National Gallery of London announced the acquisition for £20,000 ($80,000) of a late masterpiece by Rembrandt, a woman's portrait of 1661, from the estate of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres.

The Museum of Modern Art acquired a great picture by Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night of 1889, first van Gogh to enter a New York museum. This museum also acquired Baron James Ensor's Temptations of St. Anthony of 1887, and canvases by Picasso, Matisse, Rouault, Bonnard, and a number of Americans. A pioneer collection of 20th century art formed by the Société Anonyme, which was founded in 1920 by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Katherine S. Dreier, was presented by Miss Dreier to Yale University. Consisting of some 450 paintings, sculptures and constructions representative of modern art in many phases from about 1910 to the present, the collection will be catalogued and in large part placed on permanent exhibition in the Yale University Art Gallery. A large number of United States museums purchased the work of contemporary American artists. (See also Sculpture.)

Art Sales.

In 1940 parts of the William Randolph Hearst collection were placed in St. Louis and Seattle department stores, making an unexpected number of sales. At the end of 1940 extensive lots of this collection were put on sale at Gimbel Brothers in New York. This was an innovation in art selling, which proved so successful that it may revolutionize art dealing. After sensational success with the Hearst collection Gimbel's became agent for the famous Clarence Mackay collection, six English collections sent over by the British Government, and the Warner S. McCall collection of St. Louis. The sale of 15,000 items took place in three months at Gimbel's; at a three-day sale of the Mackay collection $175,000 worth of items were disposed of.

America's largest art auction firm, the Parke-Bernet Galleries, reported an unusually active market in 1940-41, with the largest sales total since 1929. Top prices brought at the end of the year were $39,000 and $31,000 for two Romney portraits and $30,000 for a Hobbema landscape, all in the B. F. Jones sale.