Art: Sinking Hearts

Never an admirer of modern art, Mrs. Frank G. Logan, wife of the honorary president of the Chicago Art Institute and since 1917 donor (with her husband) of the Institute’s most important prize, has sat quietly by for years while judges awarded her money to one modern artist after another. This year’s Art Institute show has been damned by every first-string critic in Chicago (TIME, Nov. 4). The Logan Prize ($500) was awarded to a sort of comic valentine of U. S. farm life by Doris Lee entitled Thanksgiving. Last week Mrs. Logan wrapped herself in her silver foxes and spoke her mind:

“Until about 1928 we were content with the disposition of our prizes and medals.

But since then, with few exceptions, our hearts have sunk when we have viewed the atrocities that have taken not only our prizes but those of other organizations. I defy any one to show me more than six normal paintings in this entire show. Last year was just as bad. They gave our prize to a pink house that was on the bias.” Leveling a disdainful forefinger at Thanksgiving, Mrs. Logan went on: “Fancy giving a $500 prize for an awful thing like that, especially when there were other pictures, really good pictures, such as Frederick Waugh’s Morning Tide, for example, to which the award could have been made.* The most pathetic part of all is that we cannot possibly withdraw the award. I am so steeped in art that I feel this would not be the thing to do.” More violent than Mrs. Logan was Mrs. Scott Durand of Crab Tree Farm, Lake Bluff, Ill. Said she: “I have added a codicil to mv will rescinding my legacy to be paid the Art Institute upon my death, as long as the trustees have no better sense. . . . The exhibition should be closed to the public!”

Soothed Vice President Chauncey McCormick of the Art Institute:

“We are merely trying to let the public see what is being painted in the United States today. A newspaper doesn’t endorse murder when it prints the news of a murder.”

*Like all Artist Waugh’s pictures. Morning Tide was a careful, unimaginative study of sea, surf, rocks. Generally ignored by art critics, Waugh seascapes sell well, are often voted the most popular pictures in museum shows (TIME, Dec. 17).