"What a Pastime"

Most U. S. schoolboys have goggled at museum collections of armor, swords, muskets, pistols. Few museum arms displays are calculated to stir the imaginations of adults. But last week, Leslie Cheek, imaginative director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, put on a vivid show called "Again: Arms & Armor."

The Baltimore Museum blacked out its galleries, turned eerie-colored spotlights on its displays. They were borrowed not only from other museums and private collections but from the U. S. Army and Navy. The exhibit tried to show "what a pastime of man this has been," how it developed, what art went into it. It traced the course from slingshots and clubs through policemen's billies to the butt end of a rifle; from Roman helmets through medieval to modern Italian; from crossbow to a model of a railroad gun--which could shoot a real .22 bullet.

Stephen V. Grancsay, curator of arms & armor at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum (which has the biggest U. S. public collection), helped Director Cheek install his show. To the press, Armor-Lover Grancsay declared that body armor for civilians was the coming thing. (On exhibit was a contemporary armor suit, apparently not yet in use.) Said he: "Mass production could turn them out at less than $100. Just figure up what it now costs the Government to provide hospital care for the thousands who are injured. Armor would be less expensive." Curator Grancsay recalled that Cellini, da Vinci, Duerer designed many a handsome suit. "It was . . . beautiful because it was structurally correct, the same way a structurally perfect bridge is beautiful."

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