Collectors: Back to Market

"I've had a bellyful of this mess. I'm fed up to the top of my head," says Texas Oil Millionaire Algur H. Meadows, still smarting under the allegation by Manhattan's Art Dealers Association of America that his personal collection of French moderns may contain as many as 44 fakes (TIME, May 19). But this has not kept Meadows from plunging again. Last week he announced that he had bought 13 more paintings, mainly by Spanish masters, valued at $2,000,000 and destined for Southern Methodist University. This time when Meadows went to market, however, it was with a difference. Rather than put his trust in itinerant art dealers, he bought from Manhattan's top galleries. And to advise him he had at his elbow Dallas Museum of Fine Arts Director Merrill C. Rueppel. Said Meadows: "I am convinced that I am now getting the best advice on art. I am absolutely certain that I am in good hands."

Several of Meadows' newest purchases—including a Cézanne, a Renoir and a Bonnard—are intended for his personal collection in Dallas. There they will help to fill the gaps left on the walls by the suspect paintings, now being examined in Paris. A $150,000 Jackson Pollock will go to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. But the lion's share, ten paintings bought from Wildenstein & Co.—including four Goyas, three Murillos, a Zurbarán, a Juan de Sedilla and a José Leonardo—will go directly to S.M.U., to become part of a collection that includes some 300 other Spanish paintings and drawings, valued at $3,000,000, given by Meadows in recent years.

Some of Meadows' bad luck was still trailing along with him. About 18 of the works earlier donated by him to S.M.U., including three attributed to El Greco and two each to Rubens and Van Dyck, may have to have their name tags changed, according to S.M.U. Dean of Arts Kermit Hunter. Meadows is content to let the experts thrash it out. Nothing, he feels, must stand in the way of satisfying the "ever-increasing need to expand the cultural resources of the Southwest—to go hand in hand with the vast technical and industrial development of the area." In his latest haul, he is certain that he has netted at least two beauties: Zurbarán's Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine ("It gives you a feeling of serenity") and Goya's Man on Horseback ("It's fabulous—a joyful painting!").