LAMPOONING ART

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Last Friday night I had the impossibly difficult responsibility of protecting the Busch-Reisinger Museum's priceless artworks from being damaged during an unrestrained Harvard Lampoon dinner party. The other security guards and I saw the Busch-Reisinger resemble a circus or night-club much more than a museum. Clowns juggling. costumed lampooners and rowdy, intoxicated people of all ages, nursed by six open bars did their utmost to make a travesty that I somehow doubt the painters and sculptors intended their works to endure.

Cigarette and cigar smoke filled the galleries so that my eyes watered. Supposedly intelligent and refined adults joined their student associates in throwing food across tables set among the artworks. They deliberately threw plates and glasses upon the floor; some dropped them from the balcony above. Champagne corks popped through the air. Dirty plates, ashtrays, and liquor-filled glasses were repeatedly placed upon fifteenth and sixteenth century iron and wooden chests and tables. I personally broke up a scuffle near intricately carved wooden sculptures that would easily have been destroyed had someone hit them.

Visiting museums where I could appreciate the dignity and beauty of timeless artworks has always been an uplifting emotional experience for me. I have always left museums feeling enriched and proud of what sensitive men and women can create from an empty canvas with paints and a brush, from unformed stone or wood with a chisel.

I left the museum early Saturday morning feeling angry and frustated. I do not object to the Lampoon spending tens of thousands of dollars in celebrating their centennial year. It is their money to spend as they wish. A museum, however, hardly seems the place to hold such a party. I am disillusioned with the curators of the Busch-Reisinger who displayed such poor judgment in authorizing this spectacle.

I wonder how seriously the curators consider their responsibilities to preserve for future generations the artworks in their possession. If the curators plan to hold such events in the future, it is time for the museum's works to be placed in more responsible care. Raymond I. Cal '78