Art: Fairest of the Fair

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Art is apt to be an incidental at world's fairs, where people may be willing to learn about the latest science but otherwise want to play. But at the Seattle World's Fair last week there were six art shows. Two of the shows are spotty catchalls of paintings since 1950. Three others are specialties: the totem poles and sculptures of Pacific Northwest Indians; a show of Oriental jades and porcelains; a small gallery of Seattle Artist Mark Tobey's "white writing" abstractions. Seattle's most ambitious effort is its Masterpieces at the Fair.

To gather them, Seattle engaged the dean of U.S. museum directors, 72-year-old William M. Milliken, who formerly ran the Cleveland Museum of Art. He had no easy job. Traditionally, museums are reluctant to lend to fairs that have nothing to lend back, and fearing loss or damage, they dislike seeing their prized possessions housed in temporary fair structures where adequate police and fire protection is difficult.

Taking off on a grand tour of North American museums, Milliken assured museum directors that their prizes would be safe and laid his request before them: one masterpiece from each. From Washington's National Gallery of Art, he got John Singleton Copley's vibrant portrait of Epes Sargent. From the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City he got Carravaggio's St.John the Baptist: from Toledo, El Greco's The Annunciation: from the National Gallery of Canada, Chardin's La Gouvernante. North Carolina, Connecticut and California sent handsome loans (see color, opposite and overleaf).

"You feel a great pride," says Milliken, "when you find that in Currier Gallery in Manchester, N.H., you have a masterpiece of the abstract period of Picasso. The show lets one realize that throughout the country in so many smaller museums there are masterpieces−the Titian in Omaha, the Delacroix in Chapel Hill, the Terbrugghen from Oberlin."

Searching abroad to fill out his show, Milliken borrowed art from the Louvre, India, Japan and Taiwan. Altogether his catch amounted to 63 paintings, four pieces of sculpture, some goldsmith and enamel work, and a display of manuscripts from the Morgan Library. One of his regrets is that he failed to get a Velasquez, but he took his−chances. "In the museum where they had a Velasquez that I would have liked to borrow, they happened to have an El Greco which I felt was finer."

Milliken's Seattle exhibit, as he intended, does not represent a history of art: but in bringing together 72 works that would be hard or impossible to borrow for a lesser occasion, he has put on a show that is well worth an hour off from the geewhizzery of space and the girlie shows of the Gayway.