Art: Medalist

He revived the original plan for the City of Washington.

He wrote the bill creating a U. S. Commission of Fine Arts.

He is a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He is a Founder and honorary president of the American Federation of Arts.

Thus last week amid gala ceremony in Manhattan’s Fine Arts Building did Architect Cass Gilbert enumerate the services to Art of 84-year-old Statesman Elihu Root and present him with the “President’s Medal” of the National Academy of Design. It was the first awarding of the medal, to be given hereafter to other men of distinguished esthetic service. Architect Gilbert read laudatory letters from President Hoover, Chief Justice Taft, onetime French Ambassador Jules Jusserand. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon and Secretary of State Stimson both spoke glowingly of the venerable medalist.

Like many a statesman, Elihu Root has his hobby. He does not fish (Coolidge), nor fiddle (Dawes), nor shoulder hunting rifles (Roosevelt), nor build tiny dams (Hoover). When he has spare time Elihu Root spends it at his ancestral farm at Clinton, N. Y., and plants trees, shrubs—his hobby is landscape gardening. It was this that made him, as Secretary of War under McKinley, so vigorous a champion of the city plan draughted for Washington by famed French architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant in 1791. President Washington enthusiastically endorsed this plan for its wide avenues, spacious parks and organic logic. Work was begun, but in the crude century that followed the first enthusiasm wore off. Under Secretary Root the plan was revived and revised, again adopted. The Mall, the Lincoln Memorial and Washington’s newest public buildings are the partial result.

Last week was the first time Statesman Root, often decorated and honored, had had his artistic concerns formally recognized. Falteringly he accepted the medal, with gratitude but “not with the garlands . . . showered upon me tonight.” He declared that the U. S. common people, now elevated from “hopeless poverty,” must be taught the proper use of their leisure. Ever anecdotal, he told of a mine prospector who struck gold and “. . . wanted to celebrate . . . but had so acquired the habit of work that he knew nothing of recreation or how to celebrate properly. So he ordered another 100 pounds of beans.”

Museum

Last year 1,000,000 people wandered through Philadelphia’s new Pennsylvania Museum of Art. Museum officials pondered. Who were these people ? Why did they go to the Museum? What did they look at, what prefer? A quiz was conducted with 1,000 visitors, the results tabulated in terms of 1,000,000.

The Museum discovered that most visitors were housewives, that more stenographers visited than artists, that 28,000 arrived by private car, 32,000 by taxi. The majority came because “someone told them about it.” The favorite room in the Museum was the Pennsylvania German* Hall and next the German bedroom. English paintings attracted 79.000; only 10,000 got any reaction from Oriental rugs.

Dividing the people into vocational groups, it appeared that farmers, bankers, housewives and architects preferred the period rooms. Buyers and salesmen, on the other hand, preferred paintings as did factory workers and doctors.

Other conclusions:

The Museum appealed to all.

What people were familiar with, they liked best.

The public, when shown the best, liked the best.

Current with the Philadelphia Museum report was an article in December Atlantic Monthly by Frank Jewett Mather Jr., onetime editorial writer and art critic (New York Evening Post), Professor of Art at Princeton University. Pleading for smaller museums, he tilted at the enormous Metropolitan (Manhattan) and the Pennsylvania Museums of Art. He advocated decentralization of big U. S. museums into smaller museums each covering a special phase of art. He explained:

“Is it not the moment to inquire whether this (the recent rapid expansion of large museums) is a wholesome . . . growth; or whether it tends to that form of national elephantiasis . . . designated . . . jumboism? . . . It may be maintained that for the special student it is actually an advantage to make . . . comparisons . . . under one roof. . . . There is really very little in the plea. The specialist is . . . the last man to make comparisons. . . . You are doing him no favor to bring tha art of the world into unnatural . . . juxtaposition . . . you are doing the simple art-lover a great disservice.

“In general, the surplusage and consequent confusion of our great . . . art museums is a matter of daily and just comment. Moreover, the prevalent jumboism encourages capricious, ill advised exhibition . . . to adorn . . . great spaces. . . . When I first saw the Pennsylvania Museum, it contained the queerest hall I ever visited. . . . The hall of small personal bequests . . . filled with small showcases of … uniform size each containing the artistic remains of some patrician lady of Philadelphia … a cashmere shawl or a Spanish mantilla … a pooi filigree box from Genoa, a bad Indian bronze or two..a few mediocre miniatures … an enameled snuffbox of doubtful period. . . . This case is a parable. . . .”

Helium Horseplay

Many a time has Captain Katzenjammer* famed obese comic-strip caperer, deceived his frau by making a balloon facsimile of himself, painting his vapid likeness on it, stuffing it into bed. Last week a helium-inflated Captain 50 feet tall floated off over Long Island. Fashioned by Tony Sarg, Manhattan marionetteer, the Captain, Hans und Fritz, Herr Inspektor & Frau Katzenjammer together with gargantuan balloon animals of indeterminate breed and sex, had bobbled down Broadway. An admiring crowd had watched their maudlin progress to the front of the R. H. Macy’s (department store)—which they were advertising. There the ropes were cut and the Katzenjammers soared off into the sky followed by the vague animals. Herr Inspektor, loath to soar, ogled into office windows until 20 feet had been cut off his traditional whiskers.

Annually the Macy’s stages this grotesque parade to inveigle children and parents into its Christmas Toy Department. If a balloon is found the finder who sends it back gets a $50 prize. Last week’s balloons, including a 168-ft. Krazy Kat-faced dragon, a 30-ft whale, went toward the Atlantic Ocean.

*Inaccurately called Pennsylvania “Dutch.”

*Katzenjammer: “cat-lament” in German.