VISUAL ARTS CENTER

To the Editors of the Crimson:

I should like to dispel certain misunderstandings which may arise as a result of the Crimson's reporting that the new Visual Arts Center is "to exclude students' art projects."

In a recent statement to the Committee on Educational Policy introducing an outline of the center's program for next year I wrote, among other things: "The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts has to perform an educational task as its foremost obligation.... All that needs to be done is to have visual experience, visual exploration and visual creation share in education a revelant place with verbal experience, investigation and creation .... Backbone of the program is what has been designated the core course together with workshops. In addition there will be advanced workshops, seminars and special projects. Extracurricular activity will be sponsored in the Center and, continuing an existing tradition, in the individual Harvard Houses. Exhibitions will be shown throughout the year and it is hoped to invite as teachers distinguished guests from many disciplines that have a bearing on visual studies: artists and scientists, film-makers and photographers, designers and critics...."

At this moment when the whole program is under discussion by the Faculty it is not the time to make any definite pronouncements about arrangements in detail, but undergraduates should feel assured that in due time the doors of the Center will be wide open to them for any reasonable creative project that meets certain obvious standards of seriousness and quality. Eduard F. Sekler   Professor of Architecture   Member, Committee on the Practice   of the Visual Arts