Art over the Counter

Has art appreciation in the U.S. reached the stage at which originals by well-known artists can be sold along with paint or pantie girdles? Many retailers seem to think so, and they are opening more and more art departments. Sears, Roebuck has been selling originals through its stores and catalogues for two years, has run up enough sales to make art a permanent Sears feature. E. J. Korvette Inc., the East's most energetic discounter, is about to try an art gallery in one of its Long Island stores, and such department stores as Washington's Hecht Co., Detroit's J. L. Hudson and The May Co. of Los Angeles are joining the ranks of big retailers that now sell original art. Many of them already enable the impulse shopper to buy art with his charge card.

This week the giant F. W. Woolworth Co. (2,106 stores) follows the trend with one of the most ambitious projects yet. Buoyed by a two-week tryout in a New Jersey branch, where it sold dime-store buyers 450 art works priced from $17.50 to $2,000, Woolworth will open a permanent art gallery on the second floor of its Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan. The gallery will emphasize contemporary art, will open with an 800-work, $750,000 collection that includes etchings, engravings, lithographs and woodcuts by Braque, Chagall, Miro and Luigini. In their three-month search through Europe and the U.S. to assemble the collection, Woolworth's buyers also picked up Salvador Dali's $30,000 Triumph of the Sea, and a $24,000 Gainsborough called Dr. Pulteney. Anyone who does not have that kind of cash, of course, will still be able to enter almost any Woolworth store and buy, from the chain's collection of reproductions, Gainsborough's Blue Boy for just $6.88.

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