Word: flexner
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Institute was born (in 1933) out of the union of one man's mind and another man's money. Comparing the scholarly output of Germany, England, France and the U.S., Abraham Flexner deplored the "wild, uncontrolled and uncritical expansion" in U.S. universities. Newark Merchant Louis Bamberger and his sister Mrs. Felix Fuld gave Flexner $5,000,000 to start a place where a few scholars could just "sit and think." Scientist Vannevar Bush was skeptical: "Well, I can see how you could tell whether they were sitting...
...each year brought a new crop of self-made gentry who wanted pictures of themselves in lace and ruffles to send home to England or to hang in their own parlors as proof of success. They cared more for the lace than for the likeness. Portraiture, wrote James Thomas Flexner in a history of colonial painting (First Flowers of Our Wilderness, Houghton Mifflin; $10) out last week, became "a profession before any other American...
Inevitably, the chief hero of Flexner's book is Boston's John Singleton Copley, who made an art out of the craft. His stepfather died in 1751, and Copley at 13 had somehow to support his mother and infant halfbrother. Though portraiture was built on stylistic tricks and flattering poses of which he knew nothing, young Copley decided that...
...start with, says Flexner, "he read the few books about art available to him, with all the concentration of a virgin deep in tales of love." The books were not much help, so Copley went counter to the conventions and painted as photographically as he knew how. Gradually he evolved a useful and straightforward theory of his own; he concluded that his paintings were "almost always good in proportion to the time I give them, provided I have a subject that is picturesque...
...those enjoyed at most wealthy universities. Archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld got a sunken floor to admit outsize cases for Persian treasures. Paleograplier Elias Avery Lowe won additional windows to help him avert eyestrain while deciphering ancient texts. It was not like this under the tenure of first director Abraham Flexner--in the Institute's three pioneer years--when the Princeton Mathematics Department turned over Fine Hall for the new project...