The Great Churchill Debate

In his first public one-man show, Painter Winston Churchill last week scored a smash hit. On the day the show opened in Kansas City, Mo., 5,427 people* crowded into the Nelson Gallery of Art, setting a new one-day record. By the time the Kansas City showing closes this week, some 20,000 will have seen Sir Winston's impressionist-style canvases, ranging from a wartime scene of Flanders' "Plug Street" (Ploegsteert, Belgium, as translated by World War I Tommies), painted in 1916, down to last year's landscape of the French Riviera seen from Villa La Pausa.

Behind the scenes, the Churchill exhibition had set off a seething debate among museum directors. The issues: Is Churchill's artwork worthy of a place in first-rank museums? Or should museums show it as a part of history? Or to increase public interest in art? Or to encourage Sunday painters? By week's end the controversy had reached a point at which some museum directors were barely speaking to old friends.

A Hoax? The very origins of the show had one museum director crying that it was a "public-relations hoax." Sponsor of the show is Kansas City's Joyce C. Hall, president of Hallmark Cards, Inc., which has used Churchill paintings for its greeting cards. Hall first approached Churchill through his actress daughter Sarah (who has been sponsored on TV by Hallmark). Churchill refused. Then Hall went to England armed with a letter from Painter Dwight Eisenhower urging Churchill to permit a U.S. exhibition. Sir Winston thought it over, sent Hall a one-word cable: "Okay."

After Washington's Smithsonian Institution agreed to schedule and route the exhibit, museums in Kansas City, Detroit, New York, Toronto, Dallas and Los Angeles signed up. But several museums politely turned down the show, and the argument was on. Said Pittsburgh's assistant director of the Carnegie Institute, Leon A. Arkus: "I understand Mr. Churchill is a terrific bricklayer too, but nobody is exhibiting bricks this season." Cincinnati Art Museum Director Philip R. Adams added: "Such exhibits throw off the whole public approach to art. This is 'Churchill art,' not just art. We have to defend art itself. Our interest, as a museum's should be, is in art, not history." Mused another leading museum director: "What we should do is send President Eisenhower's paintings to be exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London."

Like Alfred the Great? Museum directors who booked the show were delighted that they had a hold on a gallery-packing attraction, only now and then seemed to be on the defensive. "We are representing another side of one of the greatest personalities of our time," said Laurence Sickman, director of Kansas City's Nelson Gallery. "Frankly, we welcomed the opportunity." Detroit Institute of Arts Director Edgar P. Richardson was equally pleased, said, "Our aim is to give the people a chance to observe the pageant of arts in our time, and certainly this is part of that pageant."

Perhaps the strongest voice on the pro-Churchill side was that of James Rorimer. director of Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art, who broke his museum's general policy against one-man shows to schedule the exhibition. Writes Rorimer in his museum bulletin: "Think how eager we would be to see the paintings of an Alfred the Great, were they to be discovered tomorrow.'

*Among them: Harry S. Truman, who, when asked if he thought Churchill is as great a painter as a statesman, snapped: "Impossible. He would have to be a Rembrandt."

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