Art: The Affectionate Critic

"Criticism is the art of affection," says James Thrall Soby, and he has made himself a leading U.S. art critic by writing 31 affectionate books about painters he admires. As chairman of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art's department of painting and sculpture exhibitions, he is equally in the public eye. But only his friends have known that Soby, while helping guide the museum's buying. >has for years been assembling a collection of his own, using the fortune he inherited from his family's interests in Connecticut shade-tobacco growing and pay-telephone manufacturing. Last week 57th...