Art: Apex Prize

Two years ago a young sculptor named Michael Francis Lantz made himself a “very satisfactory” studio in New Rochelle, N. Y. He built a skylight into an abandoned pumping station, for which he paid $10 rent a month. Last week Sculptor Lantz was afraid his rent was going to be raised, because he had just won the biggest commission ever awarded by the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting & Sculpture —$45,600 for two heroic stone figures to be placed on the terrace of Washington’s new “Apex” building, into which the Federal Trade Commission will move in May. Big and simple, Sculptor Lantz’s designs, each of a gigantic work horse held in control by a powerful man, were adjudged the best of 247 entrants by a jury uniquely chosen by ballot among the competitors. The Treasury announced that guesses were free as to what the figures symbolized. Said Pudgy Sculptor Lantz: “I’m no Michelangelo. I feel lucky.”