Art: Hail to the Chief

In dusty, wind-blown Abilene, Kans. (pop. 5,922) one day last week, some 2.000 Midwesterners gathered to pay homage to a President of the U.S. who has become a legend in his own time. The occasion was the unveiling of 14 murals covering 1,100 sq. ft. of, lobby walls in the boxy, limestone Eisenhower Museum. Financed by a grant of $50,000 from the National Academy of Design, the murals were the product of two years' work by Iowa-born Ross Moffett and New York-born Louis Bouché. Between them, they succeeded in pointing up the historical fact that great men are often commemorated in mediocre painting.

Selecting typical scenes from Dwight Eisenhower's life, e.g., Ike picking vegetables, Ike and Mamie at their wedding, Painter Moffett, 68, produced twelve thinly painted and stiffly rendered murals that lack an illustrator's slickness without even achieving the impact of an impassioned Sunday painter's best. Painter Bouché, 60, widely known for his murals in railroad club cars, turned to the President's military career, turned out two tired montages cluttered with uninspiring military scenes (see cut). It can be said, however, that in all of Ross Moffett's panels the face of Dwight Eisenhower, from baby on his mother's knee to his atoms-for-peace speech before the U.N. in 1953, is plainly recognizable. And in Louis Bouché's huge (24 ft. by 12 ft.) murals, the uniforms are all correct.