Thank You from Harvard

To tap the traditions and rummage through the holdings of Harvard Uni- versity and come up with a concise sampling of memorabilia would be cause for head scratching under nearly any circumstances. Yet "Introducing Harvard University" an exhibit opening this week in Tokyo's Isetan department store, will try--through a scant 1741tems--to portray one of the nation's oldest and most respected institutions to the Japanese.

Culled mostly from Harvard's three art museums, the Museum of Compara- ative Zoology and the John F. Kennedy Institute, the potpourri includes three priceless glass flowers that have not left Harvard since 1892, an 80-in. stuffed sailfish, a water pump bought by the university after a disastrous fire in 1764 and assorted Crimson football banners.

There is even a trace of institutional chauvinism among the numerous Kennedy curios: a black wooden chair that was in the White House during the Kennedy presidency bears the wry inscription "The only proper seat of government is the Harvard chair."

The Japanese government and several big Japanese companies have each donated $1 million to Harvard during the past two years, and in a sense the exhibit is a thank-you from Cambridge. But assembling the artifacts has been so fascinating to the exhibit's organizers that on its return to the U.S., they hope to open it at another site where interest in the school's 337-year history also runs high: Harvard University.

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