Art: Southwestward Ho

Since art follows money, oil-rich Texas is becoming increasingly rich in oil paintings. To help catch the flow, Houston’s art museum is readying a new wing; in San Antonio a new museum chock-full of French impressionists will open next month. In Dallas, the preview of the art exhibition at the state fair drew 900 people last week—twice as many as ever before. And the next night the spanking new $500,000 art museum opened at Fort Worth.

Guest of honor at the Fort Worth opening was Francis Henry Taylor, director of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum, who went so far as to tell the Texans exactly what they wanted to hear: “The great future of the artistic movement of this country must inevitably take its leadership from the Southwest and Far West . . . Perhaps you here in your part of the country are not aware of . . . how much of a breath of fresh air you are blowing into the stagnant and inconsequential backwaters of the large Eastern cities . . . Make the best of our world and rejoice in it, rather than attempt to transplant a dying Europeanism.”