The Importance of Art Museums in Our Smaller Cities BY ROBERT W. DE FOREST, Vice-President and Secretary, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Address at Third Annual Convention of The American Federation of Arts, Washington, D. C., May 9, 1912. Some five years ago I received a letter from Mr. Andrew Carnegie which, as I recall, read somewhat as follows: "DEAR MR. DE FOREST: "I offer a prize for a suggestion of the best philanthropic use to which I can put the sum of $5,000,000-something definite and useful. Will you compete? I am sending a similar letter to several other friends." I ought to say, parenthetically, that I made several suggestions to Mr. Carnegie for the use of that $5,000,000, that none of my suggestions, so far as I know, have ever been carried out, and that I did not receive the prize. I know, however, that my efforts in Mr. Carnegie's behalf, and in behalf of that $5,000,000, were appreciated, because I had a very kind acknowledgment of my letter from him, and I have no doubt that somebody else proposed something which seemed to Mr. Carnegie more useful or more in line with his inclinations. One of my suggestions related to the establishment of small art museums, and here it is just as I wrote it to Mr. Carnegie: "Small art galleries, distinctly intended to remain small art galleries and to perform an educational rather than an æsthetic function in our smaller cities in which the establishment of large art galleries is unlikely and possibly unnecessary. The donor's contribution might be an appropriate building, the cost of which might run anywhere from fifty to one hundred thousand dollars, and an art collection, largely of reproductions and photographs, to cost, say, fifty thousand dollars. The land might be included in the gift or might be exacted as a condition of the gift. "An essential feature of such a plan would be an agreement on the part of the city or of a body of citizens to meet maintenance, which is analogous to the agreement which you have been accustomed to make in the case of libraries. Another essential would be an efficient body of trustees, independent of the city government, but in which the city should be represented ex-officio by its mayor or some other officers. "Many years ago you joined me, if I remember right, in visiting the first small museum of this kind in America, located at Norwich, Connecticut, and there are other small museums in the country but they have usually been evolved out of the private collection of some citizen, who has generally had more money than artistic taste, and they have not as a rule become serious educational factors. Such museums should have an intimate and useful relation to the public schools and educational institutions of the city in which they are located and they should also have an intimate relation to your libraries, as furnishing object lessons and material for object teaching. "Reproductive processes have so far advanced in the last few years that many of the best things in art can be shown in the form of reproductions at modest cost. The bronze reproductions of statuary, Roman implements and the like from the Naples Museum; electrotype reproductions of silverware, jewelry and other forms of art in metal; high grade and large sized permanent photographic reproductions of paintings and drawings, and also reproductions in color of great artistic beauty, can now be obtained; all this quite aside from plaster casts, which we are using at the Metropolitan and which they have used so excellently in Pittsburgh. "I should think, at a maximum initial cost of two hundred thousand dollars apiece, such museums could be established in many American cities and could furnish practical education for artisans as well as æsthetic education for art classes, including the school children. "The industrial arts, so called, should have an equal place with the fine arts, so called, in such museums, particularly where they are located in an industrial community. Such a plan of giving would involve careful advance investigation, because each gift, to be effective, would require sympathetic co-operation with city authori ties and with a small body of citizens, who would have to be selected to administer it." As I read over this proposition after the lapse of several years, it seems to me a good one. I am quite ready to accord it a prize myself, and I offer it now to any philanthropists, of artistic bent, who are ready to invest any sum, whether it be $5,000,000 for many of such museums, or even an humble $100,000 for a single one. I am even ready to go further and suggest that the time is ripe for some missionary effort to spread the true gospel of art education in all the "dark spots" of America by the establishment of such museums. Interest in art and art education has been gradually growing in our country for the last hundred years. It was never so great as now, nor were we ever able to direct it so intelligently as we now are. It is eminently a time for action. This is not mere assertion or mere personal judgment. It is an opinion predicated upon some knowledge of the development of art institutions in America during the last hundred years and of their more rapid development in recent times. I have had the opportunity of looking over some statistics as to the extent of this development, and I have in my hands a list of a number of art museums and like institutions now existent in the United States. It may surprise you to know that the number on my list runs up to 119. Moreover, there are several points of interest brought out by this list, particularly as to the genesis of these institutions, or, as I might call it, the inspiration from which they have sprung. Of these one hundred and nineteen, 42 are directly connected with educational institutions, and of these forty-two, 34 are organically connected with American colleges and universities. In other words, not less than 42 have been directly evolved from educational needs. Not a single one of the 119 is a public institution, state or municipal, as is the case with almost every European art museum. All were established by private initiative, either independently or as an outgrowth of and connected with other institutions like our colleges. None, until recent times, have received any support from moneys raised by taxation, but lately the public interest in such museums has become so great, and their educational value so well recognized, that support has begun to be given to them from public funds, just as it has for a long time been given to our schools and to many of our universities. Of the 119 on my list not less than 24 are now receiving support, to a greater or less extent, from moneys raised by general taxation, be it from municipality or state, or as here in Washington, from the Federal Government, and have thus in a degree become public institutions. While the larger number of these art museums have grown out of the educational needs of colleges and like educational institutions, many of them, by their names, bear the imprint of an individual foundation. Such are the "Corcoran Gallery" in Washington, the "Field Museum" in Chicago, and the "Albright Gallery" in Buffalo. Eighteen on my list carry the names of their original donors. The earliest institution of which I have any record, now possessing an art gallery, dates back to 1804. It is the New York. |