Million-Dollar Newcomer

This week in Raleigh, N.C. the newest major art museum in the U.S., and the first to have a collection fully subsidized by state funds, opens its doors with more than a million dollars' worth of paintings already hanging on its walls. Aiming for broad representation rather than high-priced rarities, museum officers settled for 200-odd major and minor old masters at an average price of only $4,000. Result: a sampling of eight main schools of Western painting, ranging from Balthazar Van der Ast to Francisco de Zurbaran and including Rubens' Holy Family with Saint Anne, Van Dyck's Duchess of Lennox, Murillo's Esau Selling His Birthright.

The museum began putting its collection together in 1947, when North Carolina Oil Lawyer Robert Lee Humber persuaded the state legislature to appropriate $1,000,000 for the paintings. Spurred on by a promise of another $1,000,000 in paintings yet to come from the Kress Foundation, legislators later turned over a four-story building to house the collection, authorized another $341,000 for renovations. The museum hopes to keep growing with private donations, has already received such gifts as three 16th century tapestries from Tobacco Heiress Doris Duke, two British portraits by Raeburn and Hoppner from John Hay Whitney and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney.

On a preview visit to the museum earlier this year, Art News Editor Alfred Frankfurter pronounced the results to date "the only important public collection south of Richmond and east of the Pacific." Said he: "Those Texans, who boast about giving away Cadillacs as souvenirs at dinner, had better sit up and take notice. They've nothing to match it."

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