Prix de Rome

In 1923 a trim, black-haired youth waited in line two days to register for a general commerce course in Notre Dame University. By the time he reached the registrar's desk a friend had persuaded him to switch to an architectural course. After one year at Notre Dame, he went to Catholic University in Washington, D. C. from which he graduated in 1929. During the next five years he taught as part-time instructor at Catholic University, worked in architects' offices in Washington and Manhattan, once won a Beaux Arts prize but was too hard up to go to Paris and accept the year's free tuition it represented. Lately, under PWA, he designed officers' quarters and army buildings. Last week, one of 130 contestants, Robert Arthur Weppner Jr., of Lakewood, Ohio, won the coveted Prix de Rome fellowship in architecture.

Prix de Rome competitions are open only to "unmarried men, citizens of the U. S., not over 30 years of age." Architect Weppner, 27, will go to Rome in October, study two years at the American Academy. The cash value of his award is estimated at $4,000. Proud of his achievement was his teacher, Frederick Vernon Murphy, another of whose students is George H. Nelson, Prix de Rome winner in 1932.

Problem for the contestants this year was an imaginary memorial in Washington to the founders of the Republic. Jurors Chester H. Aldrich, Louis Ayres, William Mitchell Kendall, John Russell Pope and James Kellum Smith liked Architect Weppner's classical, colonnaded solution best.

Music. Deadline for submitting compositions for the Prix de Rome music fellowship was March 1. But the jurors, receiving no compositions they deemed worthy, last week extended the time limit to Oct. 1.

Sculpture. For the front half of a monumental centaur Reuben Robert Kramer, 24, was awarded the sculpture fellowship. So large was Fellow Kramer's centaur that he kept the rear part in Baltimore, showed it only by photographs.

Painting. Of the 42 paintings which went to Manhattan's Grand Central Art Galleries, some arrived still wet from anxious last-minute daubs. Yale, as usual, scored again with a prize-winning oil by 21-year-old Gilbert Banever showing a white-suited Mexican with water jug.

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