CWArtists

Almost lost among the horde of New- Dealers who overrun Washington is a retired Manhattan lawyer named Edward Bruce. He holds no important portfolio, has no mouth-filling title, draws no fancy salary. Yet he works well and hard for his friend in the White House by giving special advice to the State and Treasury Departments. As an expert on silver, he accompanied the U. S. delegation to the ill-starred London Economic Conference last June.

But Edward Bruce is more notable as a landscape and mural artist than as a second-string New Dealer. While in Lon don he gave a one-man show at the swank Leicester Galleries which attracted more attention than the dreamy goings-on of the Conference in the Geological Museum (TIME, June 19). Last week Artist Bruce found himself in the happy position of being able to do something for other artists less well off than himself. When the scrabble for Civil Works Ad ministration money started in Washington Mr. Bruce went to President Roosevelt with the suggestion that some of it be earmarked for new works of art. The President was interested. He turned the matter over approvingly to Lawrence Wood Robert Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Public Works. Mr. Bruce was made secretary of an advisory committee on Fine Arts. In Washington last week a meeting of that committee was held at Artist Bruce's home. On hand in addition to Messrs. Robert and Bruce were Art Critic Forbes Watson as technical director, President Roosevelt's Uncle Frederic Adrian Delano, Braintruster Rexford Tugwell, CWAdministrator Harry L. Hopkins. The Com mittee was given $3.000.000 to provide work for 2.500 artists decorating public buildings at the flat rate of $35 per week. It was announced that not only strictly Federal buildings would be decorated by CWArtists but also any or all buildings into which Federal dollars were to be invested. The work need not be limited to murals. Easel paintings, statues, friezes, memorial tablets, prints, drinking fountains, even such a utilitarian idea as a new design for linoleum is permissible. Regional committees were appointed whose jobs would be to select artists actually in need, choose the buildings to receive their attentions, commission, inspect and approve preliminary sketches. The regional committee chairmen appointed last week were:

New York: Director Juliana Force of the Whitney Museum.

New England: Director Francis Henry Taylor of the Worcester Museum.

Philadelphia: Director Fiske Kimball of the Pennsylvania Museum.

Maryland: Director Roland Joseph McKinney of the Baltimore Museum.

Pittsburgh: Director Homer Schiff Saint-Gaudens of the Carnegie Institute.

Cleveland: Director William Mathewson Milliken of the Cleveland Museum.

St. Louis: President Louis La Beaume of the City Art Museum.

New Orleans: Director Ellsworth Woodward of the Izaac Delgado Museum of Art.

Washington: Director Duncan Phillips of the Phillips Memorial Gallery.

Atlanta: President J. J. Haverty of the High Museum.

Still to be chosen were committees for Chicago, Detroit, Santa Fe, California. No sooner had the list been published than a resounding howl arose from academicians, long used to a monopoly of government decoration. Museum directors in every case headed the committees, but in those cities that had many museums the chairmanship seemed to fall to the curator who had the greatest sympathy for modernists. The New York Committee, which in the nature of things will have the greatest number of indigent artists to provide for, was viewed with greatest alarm. Smart Mrs. Juliana Force is the widow of a Manhattan dentist and longtime friend of Art Patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. As one of the first members of the Whitney Studio Club and Director of the Whitney Museum she probably knows as many U. S. painters as anyone in the country. During the past two years she has done much practical charity by tactfully buying a great many more pictures than the Whitney Museum has any immediate use for. On occasion her tongue can be as sharp as one of her late husband's drills. Faced by the protests of the conservatives, she snapped: "This is a relief measure. We are interested in knowing only one thing about any artist--is he in need of employment? My instructions from the Government are to relieve artists in distress, not to promote any particular kind of art. ... I will work to the limit but I won't waste my time fighting." Neither a member of a committee nor in immediate want, Artist John Sloan who three weeks ago took over the pupils of the late great George Luks (TIME, Dec. 11), enjoyed the row hugely. 'The trouble is," said he, "the natural result of throwing corn in the chicken coop. There are bound to be feathers flying."

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