Art: Chrysler in Richmond

Thirty-one-year-old, wavy-haired Walter P. Chrysler Jr., scion of Chrysler Motors, has collected paintings since he was 14. He probably owns more modern French art than any U. S. collector except Philadelphia’s terrible-tempered Albert (“Argyrol”) Barnes. Up to last week, Collector Chrysler had never showed the public how much he had.

But last week young Mr. Chrysler got his chance. Richmond’s five-year-old Virginia Museum of Fine Arts put the whole Chrysler collection on exhibition, and 989 art lovers including Richmond’s floweriest socialites went to look. To do right by the occasion, Collector Chrysler chartered a private railroad car, arrived in Richmond with 58 convivial friends. While a 15-piece orchestra played waltzes by Johann Strauss, Mr. Chrysler and friends leaped joyfully up the Museum’s wide staircases to his very own art show.

Insured for $1,019,000, Chrysler’s art show contained 89 Picassos, 31 Légers, 15 Braques, 13 Hans Arps, enough Derains, Matisses, de Chiricos and Rouaults to fill several galleries. It was the biggest and Bourbonniest modern art show Virginia had ever seen, and many a colonel and drawling belle murmured soft but outspoken remarks like “baffling,” “Don’t see why it’s art anyway,” “Goddamndest thing I ever saw.” Only artist present who was represented in the show was greying, thickset Fernand Léger, who couldn’t be lionized because almost nobody spoke French, but who stood defiantly in the middle of the gallery where his 31 pictures were hung, waved his hands and muttered: “Tout ça, c’est à moi!”

The Museum’s Director Thomas Colt Jr. thought the show would “liberate some people’s ideas of what art is,” thought it might even result in a Virginia branch of the Society for Sanity in Art. Said he: “I hope there will be a few healthy fights down here.” Meanwhile Walter P. Chrysler Jr. beamed, sipped punch, talked with strained, avid interest to Richmond’s white-haired matrons. Said he: “Art is always the vanguard of civilization.”