sketchedinafaintatthegraveunderaneight-column

streamerheadline.
T h e factsfromthehospitalrecordwere
compressed into two brief paragraphs.
Anothercasethatcommandedattentionwasthat
of
Vincent ONedl, Jr., aged 7, of 123 Prospect Street, Somervllle, who wasreported as curedofcongenitalstoneblindness. T h i s is w h a t his fathersaidtomeseveraldayslater:
T h e boyhasnever
been stcneblind.
H e hasano-growth
cataractoverone
eye. T h a t sw h a t D r . Stevenscalls it.
T h e other eye hasperfectvision
Hes beeninschoolright
a neiKhbor
along,ofcnuIse.
H e was takentothegraveby
woman withoutmy Irnowledge. I t didnothingtohim.
I
called up thenen-spapersandtoldthemthefacts.
They
refused to print them. T h e reporterswhovebeenouthere
Tront listentomeIvereceivedalot
of pathetic letters on
:iccount o f this and lots of people have been here at the house
to see Vlncent.Itsterrible

The Boston Trazleler finally

printed M r . OhTellls statement on the second page under a
small head.
Harold Sheehan, :tged 7, of 7 Nonquit Street, Dorchester, was reported as havmg laid aslde the braces from hls two
legsdeformed
by mfantlleparalysisthreeyearsago.
motherfourdayslatertoldme:Harold
dld nottakehis
braces off. I wouldntdalelethim.Imafraid
hed fall
and hurt himself. But on the way home from the cemetery
hekicked hls rlght leg morethanheeverhadbeforesince
he was sick,and I hope it
Improved. I plantotakehim
to the grave many more tlmes. Yes, Im sending him to the
Childrens Hospital right along for treatment.
Ihevve done
wonderfully wlth his left leg.
H e is in the Schooi for CrlppledChlldren.Thatswherehe
is now.

T h e Bostonnewspapers
go onreportingcures.
Jack
Sharkev, aspirant for the heavyweight pugilist championship,
visits the grave with his daughter the day after Mayor-elect
CurleycameHeadlmes
on thefrontplge.
3Irs. Cur,tls
Guild, widow of former Governor Guild, comes. More headlines.
Photographs
unendmg
and
such
photographs!
Ive
sCen some of them bang taken-pitifully crippled youths and
chddren bemg urged to stand xrlthout braces for the cnmelcI
men.
s a w oneboycollapsetwicebeforehecouldget
up
enough strength under the combmed urging
of hisrelatives
and the camera rnrn to stand w t h his le:: brnc-5 ~n111s hands
for a picture.
The Boston .I(uferican includes
large
a rotogr:wure
picture of Father Power in Its Saturday edltmn. It
sells 11ke
hotcakes.Allthenewspaperssell.
Ihere arenewsboysat
t h e cemetery p t e s c r y m x t h e i r wares. And irom the mdlmg
crowd :tbout the grave the reporters hastlly
tclep!lone in t h e
cures day by day to the clty desk. Names, addresses, and the
nature of the aflhdtionsaid to be relieved 0 1 curedgointo
prmt and nut into clrculntlon without any
cenulne effortat
mythmg
approachmg
sclentlfic
ver~fic.~t:on.
The
Hoston
newspapersmennwhlle are t r a d m g on thesincerefaith
of
thelr hundreds of thousands of readers. I t is shameless ~ 3 1 1 1 mercixljournalism
Whetherthechurchintendstogatherproof
of the
reportedcuresandset
up apermanentshrine-thefirst
in
theUnited States-is
notknown.Inanyeventthechurch
moves slo~vly and cautiously in such matters. It will probably be years before anything official is announced, though the
first cure at the grave
reported thirty
ago (when
modern nen-<paper methods were not in vogue).

A Museum of Modern Art

By LLOYD GOODRICH

HE youngest of N e w Eorks artmuseumshasjust

made its bow to the publlc. The Rfuseum

of Modern Art, the creation
of agroup of prominentcollectors and amateurs, has opened its doors in the Heckscher
Building on FifthAvenueatFifty-seventhStreet.Justas
the great Armory show of 1913 was the opening gun in the
long,bitterstruggleformodernartinthiscountry,
so the
foundation of thenewmuseummarksthefinalapotheosis
of modernism and its acceptance by respectable society.
As itsnameindicates,thenewinstitution
is to be devoted primarily to the work of living artists and their immediatepredecessors.Wiselyenough,
its organizers plan to go
slowly in the beginning and restrict its actlvities for the first
two years to loan exhibitions; after that,
if all goes well, the
museum will begin to form a permanent collection.
Thus, through private initiative,
New York has taken
a step that was taken long ago
by the other great cities
of
the world. PanshasitsLuxembourg,LondonitsTate
Gallery, Berlin its Kronprinzen Palast, and even the smaller
German cities can point to their excellent modern collections;
but New York, the most modern of cities and the undisputed
art center of America,has been inthestrangeposition
of
possessingnosingleinstitutioninwhichonecould
see a
really representative collection of contemporary art.

T h e factthatthehletropolitanMuseumdoesnotin
any senseadequatelyrepresentpresent-dayart
toowell
by
knowntoneedrepeatmg.Thosewhodefendthispollcy
the argument that the proper function of a museum watchful waiting, overlook two facts: first, that most
of the great
museums of the world are supplemented by institutlons whlch
collectonlycontemporaryartandthusactasfeedersfor
them; and secondly that the Metropolitan, as far as concerns
American panting, is not watchfully wnlting but on the contrary is busilybuyingalargeamount
of singularly llfeless
of the
academicart.
T h e question of theadminlstration
illetropolltansHearnfund
for thepurchase of American
pictures, and the relation to it
of the officials of the National
Academy is too long and devious and probably too familiala taletotellhere.
It is enoughtosaythatpresent-day
Americanpamting of a radical or evenaliberaltendenm
has no more chance under present conditions
of being purchased by thebletropolltanthanthecamelhas
of gnmg
throughtheeye
of aneedle.
New York also lacks any large annual exhibition of the
type of the Carnegie International at Pittsburgh, furnishing
a faircross-section of the painting of today. And while the
American shows at the Art Institute of Chicago have in the
past few years included liberals as
~ ~ as 1conservatives,
1
and

December 4. 19291

T h e Nation

even the Pennsylvania Academy and the Corcoran Gallery in

Washingtonhaveletdownthebars
a notch or two, New
YorksvenerableNationalAcademyhasevidentlydecided
t o dle but never to surrender.
O n the other hand the Independents and the Salons
of America, those great democratic
festivals in which anyone can evhlbit who can raise the
five
or ten dollars entrance fee, while infinitely more lively than
the Academy, are n o more truly representative of present-day
Americanart,sinceforonereason
or anothermany of our
leading artists have stopped taklng part in them. Thus, even
inthefield
of contemporaryAmericanart,NewYorkhas
lacked a really representative Institution.
It the dealers galleries which have best supplied the
demandformodernart.Forthepersonwiseenoughto
know where and when to go, there has never
been any lack
of opportunity to see contemporary work In N e w Y o r k . R u t
thenewmuseumbyItsverynaturecanaccomplishmore
than the individual gallery.
T h e average dealer is restricted
to a certain small group of artlsts, but the museum can take
the best fromeverygroupandbyshowingthemtogether
exert x healthyInfluencetow-nrdthebreakingup
of cliques
and the creation of new comparisons and new alignments.
It
canstagemoreambitlousand
stimulating exhibitions,in
larger, finer settings, than any single dealer. It can concentrate on some particular phase or school and give it the most
completepossibleshowing,
o r holdretrospectiveexhlbltions
presenting the whole developmentof an indlvidual or a group.
With its backlnc and prestige it can borrow the finest works
fromprivatecollections
or othermuseums.
T o o oftenthe
masterpieces of modernart pass unseen by thepubllcfrom
the dealer to the collector.
T h e establlshment of a gallery in
which they can occasionally be seen
by artlsts and all others
interested is so obviouslyagoodideathatitseemsstrange
that
it
has
never
been
carrled
out
before.
Even
if the
museum were never to acquire
a single work for its permanentcollection-which
of course will be its most important
duty-themereact
of holdmgloanexhibitions
of masterpieces from our extraordinarily rich private collections would
be sufficient Justification for its existence.
B u t besides thesepracticalfunctionsthereareother
lesstangiblebut
no lessessentialservicesthatthemuseum
canperform.Seldomhastherebeensuchacryingneedin
the world of art for standards to correct certain popular tendencies T h e modernFrenchschool,afteryearsofbitter
controversy, has conquered this country as it has evely other.
Whiletherewould
be littledissentfromtheopinionthat
the art of France leads the world today as it has for the past
century or more, it 1s also incontestable that we have carried
ouradmirationforittoabsurdlengths,acceptingalmost
withoutquestionanythingwhlchbearsthe
of Paris,
exalting
certain
distinctly
second-rate
artists
far
beyond
theirdeserts,and
in the processneglectingtheart
of every
othercountry and to a certainextentour
own. W a v i n g
a busmessin
a r t asin
theflag is as futileanddangerous
politics, hut the time has unquestionably arlived for
a more
drastically critlcalattitudetowardmodernFrenchartand
a more strenuous effort to separate the wheat from the
chaff.
In thisthenewmuseumcanhelpbyshowingtheart
of othercountries.Forexample,
our publichashardly any
conception of modernGermanpainting.Oneortwocourageousdealers,interestedmoreinpioneeringthan
in their
pocket-books,havesporadicallyexhibitedGermanwork,but

665

lackingtheorganized
publicity that is behindtheFrench
schoolitcreatedscarcely
a ripple. T h e samethingapplies
to
the
contemporarv
English,
Italian,
Spanish,
Belgian,
Dutch,Russian,andhlesican
schools. T h e museums opportunities In this dlrection ale almost endless
I n t h e field of Amerlcan art it has an equJly important
functiontoperfolln.
O u r arttodayhasplenty
of vitalitv,
itsgreatestlack
is self-confidence. O u r relativeaesthetic
Immaturityhasmadetheaverageartlsttoosensltivetothe
dictates of Paris, in s p t e of the manifest fact that the Ereatest American artists have
been quite independent of French
influence. If the n c w Institutioncanhelpustoacquire
a
clearer consc~ousness of our own particular genius and more
courage to speak our own artlxtic l a n p u q e w i t h o u t f e a r of
breakmg the rules of ;:rammar Itwillindeed
be performing
an Invaluablefunction. B u t if It ~ h o ma
of sympathy
01 understandingforAmerlcnnart,allitspresentation
of
forelgnart will donomorethanencour.qe
o u r tendencv
toward an artistic inferiority complex.
Illodernism today has reached a st;lKe much more subtle
and dlfficult than in the old crusading days when black
was
black and whlte was white. Rlost of Its leaders are no longer
youngandtheircontrlbutionstothegeneralstock
of ideas
have been awmdatedandinmany
cases alreadyoutmoded
Of recentyearsfewnewfigures
of any importance have
emerged. The movement as such has more
or lessceased t c ~
move; what seems to be t a k l n g p l x e n o w , as In impressionIsm a generation ago, is development along individual rather
thancollectivelines.hlost
of thetheories
so confidently
enunciated at the beginnlng of the movement no longer seem
tenable; for example, the superiority of abstract to representatlonalart,theunimportance
of thesubject,thecubistic
formula,thepreferenceforprimitweovermorehiqhlydeveloped art, the value of the naive and childlike vision.All
these ideas,whileinteresting
as manifestations of the
g e l s t , haveproved of onlytemporarysignificance
W e have
reached a stage where me should
he prepared to throw overboard all these dogmas Inherited from the early days
of modernismand see t h i n g sv i t hn e w
ryes.Someonehascalculated that a n e w movement in art appears every generation;
perhaps our present state
of mind is the premonition of another such upheaval.
I n this process of feeling our way through difficult and
uncharted seas the new museum can play an important part
No instltutlon can of course create a r t , but it can make the
process of growth less difficult. If themuseummerelydoes
the obvious, fashionable thing that has
been done a hundred
timesbeforeit
will serve 110 usefulpurpose.
B u t if it is
genuinely courageous and far-sighted,if it really tries to show
the best that is being done in the modern world irrespective
of whathappensto
be infashion,ithasachancetohelp
create new standards.
I n its future exhibitions the museum plans to alternate
betweenAmericanandforeignart
T h e secondeventwill
he paintings by fifteen or twentyleadmgAmericans,an2
the third a correspondingshowing of contemporarv French
artborrowedfromAmericancollections.Thiswill
be followed by the work of three painters who may he said to be
of modern
American
painting-Winslow
the
ancestors
Homer, Thomas Eakins, and AlbertP. Ryder ; and after that
will come a retrospective exhibition of the work of Honor6
Daumier.