Art: Here: Now

The 16 paintings on the next eight pages of this issue of TIME are part of a collection of 102 that perform a rare service. They strikingly catch a moment in the development of U.S. art—and the moment they catch is now. Only nine of the 102 were painted before 1959; all but one of the artists represented are living. Most of the names in the "dream list"—from Adler to Zerbe—are to be found in the catalogues of the best art museums in the U.S.

Not a temporary roundup of pictures borrowed for a single showing, "Art: USA: Now" is the collection bought last spring by waxmakers S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc. This month the firm will launch the $750,000 show on what promises to be one of the longest and farthest-flung tours in the history of painting. Says Company Chairman Herbert F. Johnson: "Our interest in this project might be described as a sort of act of faith in American art." American Express. After its opening at the Milwaukee Art Center on Sept. 21, the show will make a second debut in Vienna in January. The proposed itinerary from then on reads like something out of an American Express folder: Belgrade, Athens, Rome, Monaco, Berlin, Stockholm, Brussels, London, Dublin, Paris, Munich. Overseas booking agent for the show will be the U.S. Information Agency,* chosen because some European museums insist on operating exclusively on the government level.

After 18 months in Europe, the show will come home and set out on a tour of the U.S. that will last indefinitely; already there have been 132 requests for it from U.S. museums.

Dream Commission. The collection was chosen by Manhattan Art Dealer Lee Nordness, who was given his commission after delivering a lecture at the Johnson Foundation in Racine, Wis., last winter. Acting as cautiously as if he were setting out to steal the Mono, Lisa, Nordness began to round up the paintings, and being a dealer himself was able to get them for his "anonymous client'' at realistic prices.

The most costly item in the collection is Andrew Wyeth's The Scarecrow, which Nordness got at the bargain price of $50,000. Wyeth, who paints only two pictures a year, currently commands twice that figure, and his 1962 output had already been spoken for. By a lucky break, the 1947 Scarecrow turned up at a dealer.

Says Nordness: "Wyeth is painting today just as he did then; so The Scarecrow is an honest representation of his present style. I let this criterion be my guide on all the pre-1959 paintings by other artists I bought." New Comprehensibility. What kind of impact will "Art: USA: Now" have in Europe? The best prediction can be made by comparing the new show to a big collection called "The New American Painting" which toured Europe in 1958 under the sponsorship of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. By then, the U.S. abstract-expressionist movement of the '40s had vastly influenced European painters, and today Jackson Pollocks are in many of the well-known collections abroad. Nonetheless, the show's uncompromising abstractions left all but Europe's most sophisticated critics baffled.