Fogg, Child Among Museums, Is Art Leader

At The Fogg where is treasured a secret as valuable as any the military might be keeping, they no longer like to discuss with outsiders the closer-to-home possibilities of the war. But war has come to The Fogg Art Museum, making itself felt in every department and function. Any conception the undergraduate might have of the "ivory tower" on Quincy Street would be shattered if he knew of the realistic defense measures taken by Director Edward W. Forbes and his staff.

The story no one at The Fogg dares tell these days is where the large irreplacable portion of its $5,000,000 collection has been hidden for the duration. All of the most precious works usually in the Fogg galleries have been whisked away to safer storage "in the country". Officials do admit, however, that none is with the exhibits from the National Gallery now in Colorado.

But the all-over picture of the Fogg Art Museum's stake in the wartime preservation of art must include a full consideration of its ranking position among art museums of the nation. A good portion of the responsibility for guiding the preparations of other art institutions has fallen to The Fogg. In March representatives of 15 museums and galleries throughout the country were welcomed here by Director Forbes to study the protection of works of art in wartime. Discussion ranged from how to safeguard against diseases affecting paper and linen in a new location, and the shattering of glass after bombing, to the effects of changes in temperature and light. At the same time, Professor Paul J. Sachs' museum course has devoted more of its study to wartime art problems. Each year the members of this course design and prepare an exhibition of loan material, and this spring they have devoted their project to the portrayal of "Suggestions for Wartime Exhibitions", including the dramatic side in war posters of this conflict and the World War, and the humorous in contemporary cartoons.

For a museum the size of The Fogg, its influence on American collecting, exhibiting, and research has been tremendous. This effect, highlighted by the world crisis, has been the result of two factors: the men The Fogg has produced and the men that have produced The Fogg. Through it courses, facilities, and above all its connection with the Harvard student body, The Fogg has been able to develop a host of professional and amateur experts who have been playing a vital role in art in America for the last quarter of a century.

Almost 200 museum posts are now held by men who have studied at Fogg with Professor Forbes, or who have taken Professor Sachs' famous museum course as graduate students. This number includes the directors of 29 museums, such as the New York Museum of Modern Art, and others in cities like Chicago, Cincinnatti, Buffalo, and San Francisco. The former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is also a Harvard alumnus.

While the list of Fogg's children is long and noteworthy, its guardians are even more impressive. Rulers of the roost and general patron saints are the members of the Visiting Committee appointed annually by the Board of Overseers. Chaired by Winthrop Aldrich, president of the Chase National Bank, the committee this year consists of the usual variety of collectors and scholars, including such notables as Robert Woods Bliss, former ambassador to Argentina; David E. Finley, director of the National Gallery; Everett V. Meeks, chairman of the Fine Arts Department at Yale; and Charles R. Morey, chairman of the same department at Princeton. The main duty of this group, besides keeping an eye on the museum, is to attend an annual banquet usually given in Warburg Hall at Fogg but this spring held at Winthrop Aldrich's home in New York.

Directors Run the Show

The Visiting Committee may be the nominal head of The Fogg, but it is the staff of 92 which makes the intricate and highly specialized plant run. Keystones in the entire hierarchy are Director Edward W. Forbes and Associate Director Sachs. Forbes, a grandson of Emerson from whom he takes his middle name, Waldo, has headed the Fogg staff since 1909, when the galleries were housed in the Old Museum now known as Hunt Hall. In 1915 Sachs joined him and the two opened an era of expansion in plant, collections, and funds.

During and before the World War, The Fogg ran on an annual budget of $3,000 above the $5,000 the University contributed for teachers and maintenance. The two partners did much to keep their charge out of deep water during those years and added to the collections already valued at two millions.

Beneath the directors, who also run the Germanic Museum, the Semitic Museum and affiliated Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, D. C., The Fogg branches into a network of specialized divisions. The Department of Conservation is probably the most fascinating with its tasks of detecting art fakes and of restoring damaged works. Under George L. Stout, who spends part of his time at Boston's Gardner Museum, is arrayed a staff of six specialists in this line.

Forgeries Not Made Public

Functioning with medical preciseness, the unique technical department has an elaborate system for inspection, diagnosis, and treatment of paintings acquired by the museum or sent in by private owners for a check-up. If a forgery is revealed in a work not belonging to The Fogg, it is always kept secret for "diplomatic" reasons.

Several years back a painting, supposedly by a famous Renaissance artist of about 1510, arrived in New York but its owner could find no purchaser. It was sent to The Fogg for inspection with complete data on its history of being stolen from a European collection and smuggled into the country. It was certified by two German and one French expert, but preliminary examination by Stout's department showed immediately that all was not right. When the glue was finally tested, it was quickly seen that the picture could not possibly have been painted before 1820. The owner was informed quietly of the true situation and the picture returned to him.

Most of the department's work, however, deals with the less spectacular, if more exacting, work of restoring masterpieces as nearly as possible to their original condition. Where the original work of the artist has been painted over, these reworkings are detected by X-ray, ultraviolet, and infra-red rays in Alan Burrough's Department of X-Ray and are removed and the blank spaces carefully filled in to resemble the original. Actual paint, however, is never retouched or covered with new work. Perhaps the most ticklish job of this type was done in 1923, although not by the Fogg technical department, on a Fogg picture now exhibited in a second-floor gallery. Purchased in Italy by a collector, the Crespi Madonna was severely damaged when the ship caught fire. The Fogg directors bought the damaged picture, blistered and flaked as it was. At the Boston Museum of Fine Arts all the remaining paint was transferred to an aluminum panel and the missing portions restored.

New Works Follow Routine

When a new work of art is brought into the museum, it first passes through the domain of Superintendent Milton Worthley where it is unpacked by Elmer Heaps, former Gloucester sailmaker who is now The Fogg's carpenter. Then the work is sent through a fixed routine from the registrar to photographers to technical department and finally to a gallery or the storeroom. This latter, a spacious hall in the basement, already contains hundreds of miscellaneous items from the chair President Conant sits in at Commencement and the University's Great Salt to a bottle with Dean Swift's seal on it and the mace from the Irish parliament, which has been stored there since the World's Fair.

Also in Superintendent Worthley's charge is the protection of the building and its valuables. In the daytime it is a fairly simple matter with all exits carefully watched and all galleries patroled. At night Rex of Gainwell takes over this responsibility. This eight-year-old German shepherd leaves his house on the back porch each evening to make the rounds with the night watchman, as did his father before him.

The Fogg's collected treasures have the dual purpose of serving as common museum exhibits and as laboratory specimens for student study. No artistic work will be accepted on the condition that it be constantly on display, and the contents of the galleries are changed periodically with the aid of a clever measuring device which allows one man alone to hang a painting exactly 62 inches from the floor. For paintings which are needed for study but which can find no place in the galleries there is the Picture Study Room, consisting of 22 rolling screens for these exhibits.

Additional features of the building include the Print Room under Curator Jakob Rosenburg, specialist on Rembrandt, who has accumulated the most widely representative collection of modern prints to date. Drawings are under the care of Agnes Mongan, who with Professor Sachs wrote "Drawings in the Fogg Art Museum," a Fine Arts best seller.

Radcliffe Given Equal Rights

The Fogg's library and photograph collection are unique for their lack of discrimination against Radcliffe students. In addition to the three-story library of stacks and reading room which is solely a convenient branch of Widener, there is a collection of 55,000 slides for class use and 147,000 photographs including a Spanish collection more extensive than anything elsewhere accumulated, even in Spain.

To all these highly-skilled, seemingly out-of-the-world departments war has come with shocking brutality. The librarian has had to answer pleas of a soldier in Florida for information on Egyptian archaeology, the maintenance department has had to pack and supervise the departure of innumerable treasures to their secret shelter for the duration, and teachers have had to stress timely notes in Fine Arts to hold their students' interest. Perhaps even the conspicuous sign. "Students are requested not to use this elevator . . . It is intended only for the use of the Faculty, staff, and guests," may disappear, and undergraduates may find that The Fogg offers something to those who want it.