Art & Justice

Federal Judge Guy L. Fake of New Jersey has a judicial eye for art. Last year he banished from his court a female figure of Justice minus not only the necessary scales but the even more necessary heavy draperies. Last week he disapproved another work of art.

Ready for mounting in Courtroom No. 4 of the Federal court & postoffice building at Newark. N. J. was a two-panel mural by 26-year-old Artist Tanner M. Clark of Somerville. N. J.. who devoted two and one-half years and 500 egg yolks* to depicting the role of courts in protecting children. One of his panels portrayed happy schoolboys at play; the other, a factory machine slicing off a working girl's hand (see cut, p. 11).

Said the Judge in a terse memorandum explaining his protest to the U. S. Treasury (which had paid Artist Clark $800 of $2,000 due him): "The work ... is exceptionally well done and there are many appropriate places where such murals might be displayed. . . . [But] jurors should not have their minds affected by exhibits not legally admitted in evidence. . . . The mural depicting the injury . . . would be referred to by counsel [in accident cases] ... as depicting pain, anguish and sorrow. . . ."

*Used in tempera painting for "binding" pigments to retain brilliance and purity of color.

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