Collecting in Wyoming

A happier town last week was Rock Springs (pop. 11,500), Wyo. No casual visitor would ever catalogue it as an art center. Union Pacific streamliners rumble through its heart, the streets are lined with 26 busy bars, and the town's big preoccupations are railroads and coal. But Rock Springs owns one of the liveliest collections of contemporary American art in the Rockies--some 275 paintings, lithographs and etchings by such artists as Frederic Taubes, Aaron Bohrod and Grandma Moses. And Rock Springs is busy collecting more.

Most of the credit goes to Rock Springs' children and to a high-school teacher named Elmer Halseth. In 1939, Halseth begged part of a touring exhibit to show to his classes. The youngsters agreed with Halseth that the high school should own one of the paintings. They collected $50 in nickels and dimes for Shack Alley by Chicago's Henrietta Wood.

Each succeeding class has added to the collection. When scrap iron was scarce during the war, students rounded up 300 tons of the stuff. With the proceeds, Rock Springs bought paintings by Manhattan's Raphael Soyer, New Jersey's James Chapin and Connecticut's Ernest Fiene; with a bit left over, Halseth started a fund to buy Grandma Moses' $400 oil, Staunton, Virginia, The kids put on dances, stage shows, wastepaper campaigns, badgered their parents for contributions. People as far away as Manhattan heard about Rock Springs' art craze, wrote advice on what to buy, sometimes even donated paintings. Once, Halseth read that Thomas J. Watson, board chairman of International Business Machines, had commissioned some paintings. "I got out my Who's Who and looked up Watson's address and asked him for one," says Halseth. Businessman Watson obliged with a Still Life by Francis Chapin.

Last week Teacher Halseth and his youngsters had their sights set higher than ever: they wanted an honest-to-goodness French master, a Renoir or possibly a Picasso. To help raise the money, Rock Springs went to a carnival at the high school, watched a water show, played bingo and had its fortune told. The party netted $1,000. With $400 already in the kitty, Halseth and Rock Springs now expect to go shopping. Says Halseth: "People here used to say 'get a photograph' the way they said 'get a horse,' when cars came out. They couldn't understand spending money for pictures. But now the paintings are there, and the kids can look at them and realize there's another world, outside Rock Springs."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.