CONTEMPORARY ART

The steady growth of undergraduate interest in Fine Arts is again shown in the organization of the "Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, Incorporated," an undergraduate society formed in order to show and sell contemporary works of art in every field.

The formation of such a society would be of little interest if there were any place in Cambridge, or even in Boston, which filled such a position, but with none in existence it opens and entirely new sphere of activity. There was a time when men concentrating in Fine Arts might complete a course of undergraduate study without opportunity for seeing any large number of original works. That time has passed with two of the best permanent collections in the country situated in Boston, and with the growth of the Fogg Art Museum, but in the field of contemporary work the student must travel to New York in order to see any number of works large enough to be representative of current artistic endeavor. Monthly exhibitions which will attempt at least to touch on every field of contemporary work should in a large part fill this need.

The Fogg Art Museum has found it impossible to offer exhibits of every type of contemporary artistic production due to the fact that by doing so it more or less endorses the works which it would show. With the natural center for such activity eliminated the existence of this new organization is even more completely justified.

In its larger implications the organization may be of even greater importance. No country can sustain an artistic development unless there is some patronage of living artists. With the tendency in the United States towards the complete subservience of current creation to admiration for works of the past, a complete artist stagnation is not beyond the range of possibility. The growth of such a society as the "Harvard Society for Contemporary Art" will do much to make such a condition impossible.