MONEY GIFTS FILL FOGG ART COFFERS

Money gifts totalling $50,790.44 in addition to many gifts of works of art, were received by the Fogg Art Museum last year, according to the annual report of Edward W. Forbes, Director.

The money gifts were: from the estate of John Wells Morss, $10,000, the bequest of John Wells Morss, "for the benefit of the Fogg Art Museum," $22,572.50 for current expenses and special purposes; $3,321.24 from C. Adrian Rubel '26, for the Rubel Asiatic Research Bureau; $2,154.70 for lectures and publications; $675 to wards the purchase of a ninth-century (B.C) Assyrian relief and for the collection of Islamic Art. Subscriptions to the Museum received from Friends of Art, Archaeology, and Music at Harvard amounted to $12,067.

Among the most important art objects added to the Museum collections were an Assyrian marble bas-relief of the 9th century B.C.; from the Antioch expedition conducted by a group of American universities and museums, a number of mosaics, among them a pool which may be installed in the Museum court; an unfinished painting by Piero di Cosimo, 15th century Florentine master, entitled "The Misfortunes of Silenus;" and a Siamese head of Buddha, in wood, of the 13th or 14th century, from the well-known Eumorfopoulos Collection, in London.

Works by Picasso, Dore

Other art works added to the collections were a Persian ink drawing of the late 16th century; a Persian miniature from a Shah-Namah of the early 15th century; three capitals, five small pieces of sculpture, and eleven small bronzes from the Antioch expedition; two drawings by Picasso; water colors or paintings by Charles H. Woodbury, Stuart Henry and Raymond Breinin; two water colors by Dobujinsky; an album of lithographs by Gustave Dore, "La Menagerie Parisienne," Chinese woodblock prints of the 18th century; a Lydian potter ointment vase of the 6th century; and a silver tablespoon by Zachariah Brigden.

A total of 370 prints were added by gift or purchase to the Museum's Print Collection. The largest gift to this department was a collection of 224 chiaroscuro prints bequeathed by Horace M. Swope '05 of St. Louis.

The European War affected the Museum's program of obtaining X-ray shadowgraph of paintings. An exchange of shadowgraph material arranged with the National Gallery, London, and with the Louvre, Paris, was interrupted and during the past year only nine such prints were received from London, and none from Paris. The Fogg Museum collection of X-rays of paintings now numbers 4,099, Mr. Forbes reported.

Research in the Museum's technical department of conservation continued on "solubility of film materials used in surface coatings of works of art, particularly combinations of oil and resin; prevention of growth of mold and micro-organisms in the paint of pictures and in the supporting materials; response of wood to atmospheric conditions and means for making it less mobile in change temperature and humidity; the relation of paint medium and paint structure to characteristics of handling or execution in pictorial design.