Art: Three Rivers

In nearly every Carnegie International Exhibition since 1910 has appeared a painting from the determined brush of Mrs. Johanna K. Woodwell Hailman, one of Pittsburgh’s own artists. In her huge old mansion on Penn Avenue, rich, widowed Mrs. Hailman almost single-handed keeps up a neighborhood where the Carnegies, Fricks, Heinzes and Mellons built their first palaces, only to move later to more fashionable fields. Socialite but steadfastly Edwardian, Mrs. Hailman dominates the city park system, has a tart tongue for politicians and a tender spot for fellow artists. Several months ago she commissioned young Pittsburgh Sculptor George M. Koren to do a group for her garden. Sculptor Koren produced three earth-spurning, wind-blown nudes symbolizing Pittsburgh’s three rivers: the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio. To his delight Three Rivers won the $2,000 Prix de Rome in sculpture last spring.

But what pleased the Prix de Rome jury did not entirely please Mrs. Hailman. Sculptor Keren’s classic nudes, she thought, could not gracefully wear those Indian names. So last week before he departed for Rome young Sculptor Koren gave his figures something else to wear. In plaster he added breech clouts to each, crowned each with a feather headdress. Said he:

“After all, there would be no art without patrons.”

Said Mrs. Hailman: “The changes are just the ordinary kind.”