CONTEMPORARY ART SOCIETY

Ever since it was founded the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art has performed two distinct functions: it controls the only gallery in New England regularly exhibiting modern art, and it is the only student art club at Harvard. The practical conflicts between these two functions have prevented it becoming a powerful or self-supporting institution. Because of its duty to the public on whom it depends largely for support it can not be directed entirely for the undergraduates; on the other hand it is they who run it, and naturally it expresses their point of view, which has occasionally alienated the public. Indeed many people are not willing to put their contributions in the hands of the students, whom they feel are not competent to spend them wisely. Furthermore, it is located far from Boston, the local center of interest in modern art. There are in fact, many reasons why it should be divided into two organizations, a gallery holding regular exhibitions of contemporary art, and a student's art club.

The gallery should be modelled on a smaller scale, after the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Located at a convenient place in Boston, it would be supported by the public directly and by the museums, and it would be administered by a professional director, competent in the field. Such an organization would have a continued existence and a definite policy guaranteed. In consequence, it would exert a greater influence upon society at large than can the present organization.

The student's art club should be an exclusively Harvard society, and the undergraduates would be able to take more than a slight interest in it. In its own field it might be comparable to the Inquiry, or the political clubs. Perhaps it might be possible to hold exhibitions in the common rooms of the Houses and the Union, an economical scheme that has the further advantage of bringing the residents into closer and more leisured contact with the works on exhibition.

It is only by some such re-organization as this that the Society can become a live and effective force either in greater Boston generally or in College life.