Word: museumful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Today, amid new awareness that gardens form an integral part of architecture, the influence of Japanese garden design is growing. The 1954 exhibition of a Japanese house and garden at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art still holds the record as the museum's most heavily attended architectural show. Last week the same display was being reconstructed in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. Books on Japanese gardens (most recent: Gardens of Japan by the late Tetsuro Yoshida, famed Japanese architect) have become a must for the modern architect's library. After 14 centuries the art form started...
...Hoax? The very origins of the show had one museum director crying that it was a "public-relations hoax." Sponsor of the show is Kansas City's Joyce C. Hall, president of Hallmark Cards, Inc., which has used Churchill paintings for its greeting cards. Hall first approached Churchill through his actress daughter Sarah (who has been sponsored on TV by Hallmark). Churchill refused. Then Hall went to England armed with a letter from Painter Dwight Eisenhower urging Churchill to permit a U.S. exhibition. Sir Winston thought it over, sent Hall a one-word cable: "Okay...
After Washington's Smithsonian Institution agreed to schedule and route the exhibit, museums in Kansas City, Detroit, New York, Toronto, Dallas and Los Angeles signed up. But several museums politely turned down the show, and the argument was on. Said Pittsburgh's assistant director of the Carnegie Institute, Leon A. Arkus: "I understand Mr. Churchill is a terrific bricklayer too, but nobody is exhibiting bricks this season." Cincinnati Art Museum Director Philip R. Adams added: "Such exhibits throw off the whole public approach to art. This is 'Churchill art,' not just art. We have to defend...
Like Alfred the Great? Museum directors who booked the show were delighted that they had a hold on a gallery-packing attraction, only now and then seemed to be on the defensive. "We are representing another side of one of the greatest personalities of our time," said Laurence Sickman, director of Kansas City's Nelson Gallery. "Frankly, we welcomed the opportunity." Detroit Institute of Arts Director Edgar P. Richardson was equally pleased, said, "Our aim is to give the people a chance to observe the pageant of arts in our time, and certainly this is part of that pageant...
Perhaps the strongest voice on the pro-Churchill side was that of James Rorimer. director of Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art, who broke his museum's general policy against one-man shows to schedule the exhibition. Writes Rorimer in his museum bulletin: "Think how eager we would be to see the paintings of an Alfred the Great, were they to be discovered tomorrow...