Art: At Springfield

For more than 100 years dying men all over the world have known the busy little city of Springfield, Mass, for one kind of thing: the muskets, horse pistols, breech loaders and magazine rifles successively manufactured there in the U. S. Government arsenal. Last week Springfield received a gentler distinction by joining the mounting list of U. S. cities that boast a modern, endowed Art Museum.

Springfield’s new building, a cautiously modern limestone block with a facade studded with decorative medallions, was designed by the late Edward Lippincott Tilton and Alfred Morton Githens. Besides its 14 exhibition galleries, its classrooms and offices, the museum boasts a fully equipped stage. On view in its permanent collection last week was a small but extremely well chosen group of those 18th Century portraitists that tycoons loved to collect before Depression: Gainsborough. Lawrence, Raeburn, Reynolds, Romney and Benjamin West, besides Canaletto, Guardi and Goya.

As gentle propaganda for Springfield citizens and the conservative trustees who must approve his every purchase Director Josiah P. Marvel also borrowed for his opening from dealers, private collectors and the College Art Association a fine group of paintings and drawings by U. S. and European modernists.