Co-operative Selling

To those people who hang their walls with mechanical reproductions of the old masters, art galleries are frigid, prices of paintings and etchings are frightening, art itself is mystifying.

To the struggling artist, the world is even less happy. He has few ways to show his products, less chance to sell them.

To John H. Weaver, student of art and capable Manhattan businessman came a few months ago a happy thought. Why not teach the public to buy real paintings instead of reproductions by showing them the capable work of artists they can afford to buy? After consultations with artists famed and otherwise, the Artists' Cooperative was formed.

Last week it gave its first exhibit at B. Altman & Co., Manhattan department store. Scores of shoppers found paintings reasonable, pleasing, heard their merits and defects explained in understandable terms. Some of the shoppers went away with as much as $1,000 worth in a single day.

Soon exhibits will be placed in the stores of other cities, permanent exhibits placed in leading department stores.

The scheme: The artist pays $5 into the general fund for the privilege of exhibiting his first picture, $1 for each exhibition thereafter. To the department store he gives 35% of the purchase price, as commission. The organization makes no profits, spends the enrollment fee to advertise the exhibit. Thus the artist gets his market, the public its paintings.