Art: New Wing for the Phoenix

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The 1,400-mile stretch between Los Angeles and Kansas City was until recently fairly much an artistic dust bowl as far as museums are concerned. Not until 1959 did Phoenix, a man-made oasis in the red, rubble-strewn desert, get its first honest-to-goodness art museum, with a collection valued at $2.6 million.

In fact, as Director Forest Melick Hinkhouse points out, before Phoenix had a museum, "the majority of the inhabitants of the state had never entered a museum or had anything other than a superficial awareness of the visual arts." What was lacking was not the will but the opportunity to view works of art. So enthusiastic was the response that the Phoenix Art Museum last week dedicated a new $1,000,000 wing, which tripled its existing space.

Rather than providing a show-off gallery for spectacular single works, the new quarters allow a historical layout of period rooms, include an education department, a 200-seat auditorium, a junior museum and a 2,500-volume art library. For the new sculpture court, Sir Jacob Epstein's widow gave six of his busts, including one of Somerset Maugham. Soon the Far Eastern gallery will put on display a distinguished collection of Han-dynasty pottery, on extended loan. Donald DeCoursey Harrington, a gas and oil investor living in Texas, has donated 47 paintings from Boudin to Vuillard that make the museum's survey of French art its most vital collection.

Quantity may substitute for uniform quality at present, but the museum is already a well-honed teaching tool. "We need art to look at," says Director Hinkhouse. "A properly arranged quantity of good art works which present history with taste is a start. That is the only way a museum can become a magnet for excellences, a watering hole for art."