Publisher’s Letter, Dec. 17, 1956

Dear TIME-Reader:

IN THE six years since TIME began publishing full-color reproductions each week in the Art section, the editors have been struck time and again by the strength and vitality of native U.S. art. Along with the foreign painting, sculpture and architecture, from the ancient Egyptians and Etruscans to the latest sculpture from Paris, TIME has recorded the history and day-to-day ferment of American paintings, from the untutored journeyman portraitists of colonial days to the explosive abstract expressionists. Among the almost 700 full-color reproductions printed since 1951, some 200 were of American paintings, the most extensive color survey of U.S. art now available.

The two editors most concerned with the subject are Associate Editors Alexander Eliot and Cranston Jones. Eliot, a onetime painter himself, who had his first show when he was 17 and directed a

Boston gallery at 20, began to write Art for TIME in 1945. Jones came to the section two years ago, after assignments as a TIME correspondent in San Francisco, London, Paris and Rio.

The result of their efforts, as one TIME reader puts it, has been to establish “a museum of the mind, where feet never grow tired and the light is always just right.”

Says Editor Eliot: “American art has been shaped by American forces. Its viewpoints and subject matter are its own, and they open a thousand windows on our heritage. By reproducing these works, TIME has added an American wing to our ‘museum of the mind.’ “

Next week, in the Christmas issue, TIME will open another gallery in that American wing with a special eight-page color portfolio of works by American artists, from John Singleton Copley and the painting Peale family (see cut) to Edward Hopper.

Cordially yours,