The People's Choice

Once again, the experts and the public were weeks apart. The experts still liked what they knew about; the people still favored what they knew they liked.

This year's coveted first prize in the Carnegie Institute's annual painting exhibition went to Yasuo Kuniyoshi, 51-year-old Japanese-born Manhattanite, for his delicate, deft, still-life fantasy. Room no. Last week the votes of the plain gallery-goers were finally added up, revealing as the people's choice a billowing farmscape with a threatening sky. Grey and Gold, by John Rogers Cox, 28-year-old former director of the Swope Gallery at Terre Haute, Ind.

The experts could take some comfort in the closely contested popular vote. For Artist Cox's painting, though conservative and wholly understandable, is done in a subtly stylized manner that is no trite affirmation of standard calendar charms. (At least it was not so realistic as the seascapes by the late Frederick J. Waugh, which the Carnegie public picked for five years running. 1934-38.)

To Kuniyoshi, for pleasing the experts: $1,000. To Cox, for pleasing the public: $200.

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