Inanimate Stepchildren

Imperial Rome was once so full of sculptures that the inanimate population of the city came close to outnumbering the walk & talk variety. The U.S. is contrastingly cold to sculpture; its inanimate population is largely confined to stiff, solitary, pigeon-besmirched, cast-iron characters in parks. Manhattan's 84-man Sculptors Guild has spent 13 years trying to right the situation, and last week the guild tried again with an exhibition of its members' work at the Museum of Natural History.

The chief point of the show was that sculpture can play an integral part in private gardens as well as parks, and in living rooms, theater lobbies, display windows, chapels and airport waiting rooms as well. To sugar its argument, the guild got eight designers and architects to contribute appropriate settings for a number of sculptures, priced some tabletop models as low as $150.

Like the Metropolitan Museum's sculpture survey of last year (TIME, Dec. 17), this one turned out to be largely leaden and sometimes laughable. The unassuming grace of Clara Fasano's small terra cotta Siesta ($450) made it a legitimate standout. But the more typical exhibits, e.g., Maurice Glickman's hard-bitten Struggle ($5,000 in bronze) and Bernard Rosenthal's insectile Accordion Player ($750), were notable mainly for their strangeness. Granting that the nation's demand for sculpture is unfortunately limited, a good deal of the national supply seems to be unhappily misshapen.

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