Word: artful
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Thus a bold onset was followed by adroit changes of pace. Director Barr, whose fragile look is deceptive, stopped short at no dilettantism, worked like hell. Stage designing, posters, industrial design, children's art illustration and many an-other branch of art came in for special exhibitions, each worked up by the Museum's characteristic method: thorough research, orderly classification of the work shown, equal respect for every experimental artist whether probably great or palpably minor, explanatory notes for the public. Not all the Museum's shows have been revelations, some have been merely precious...
...thermolux (a translucent sandwich made of spun glass insulator between two sheets of plate glass), galleries with collapsible walls, library, auditorium, projection rooms and roof terrace. The chairs and desks which furnish it (by van der Rohe, Breuer, Aalto, et al.) are in themselves a show of industrial fine art...
Cynics might view the Museum's work as an esthete's dream-fostered by dilettantes and benefactors of great wealth-with only superficial relation to the broad life of the U. S. But Alfred Barr comes nearer home when he says, "The Museum of Modern Art is a laboratory; in its experiments the public is invited to participate." And the cynical view will not stand up very well in the presence of the Museum's new president...
Mother's Son. When, in speaking of art, Nelson Rockefeller's tongue slips and he says "geology" for "morphology," he says he wishes he could get the oil business out of his head for a minute. He is director of Creole Petroleum Corp., a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey with properties in Venezuela. He is also (since a year ago) prince and president of the huge landlording enterprise of Rockefeller Center. Nelson's actual function in both offices is under reasonable public suspicion, but it is, increasingly, that of director and president indeed...
...great mural was destroyed-for the public reason that it contained a portrait of Lenin-the Rockefeller family suffered once more in the eyes of liberals, and Nelson, naturally, took the rap. At first he was strong for showing the mural, sins and all, at the Museum of Modern Art. Then he came around to his father's view that the less said and seen, the better...