Art: Many Ways

Alfred Stieglitz was the best photographer ever to come down the pike. Until he died in 1946, the spindly, black-caped little man was also a prophetic educator in the cause of modern art. His widow, Painter Georgia O’Keeffe, has carried on his educational work as executrix of his will by dividing Stieglitz’ brilliant art collection and his own even more brilliant photographs among six widely spaced institutions: Manhattan’s Metropolitan, Chicago’s Art Institute, Washington’s National Gallery, the Library of Congress, the Philadelphia Museum and Fisk University (for Negroes) in Tennessee. To house its share (101 modern paintings, Stieglitz photographs and African sculptures), Fisk remodeled its old gymnasium into a gallery at a cost of $25,000 and named it for a longtime friend of the university, Author Carl Van Vechten (Nigger Heaven, The Tattooed Countess). Last week 900 people got together to celebrate the new gallery’s opening.

Georgia O’Keeffe, a plain-spoken lady who looks as severe as her own paintings, played a modest part in the festivities. She stood up when called upon and said: ”This is a gift from Stieglitz. It is for the students of this university. I hope you will go and look at these paintings more than once.”

That was that. But the catalogue of the new gallery contained a one-paragraph foreword written by O’Keeffe which told something more about the Stieglitz approach to art education. The collection had been given to Fisk, she wrote, “with the hope that it may show that there are many ways of seeing and thinking, and possibly, through showing that there are many ways, give someone confidence in his own way . . .”