A Letter From The Publisher: Jan. 31, 1983

TIME was just two months old in May 1923 when the first Frenchman, former Premier Rene Viviani, appeared on its cover. Since then, there have been 105 other cover stories devoted to French individuals or events. Last week, inaugurating TIME's 60th anniversary, all those covers went on exhibit at Paris' Georges Pompidou Center. Titled "America Looks at France, TIME 1923-1983," the exposition not only chronicles 20th century Gallic history, but also documents TIME's interest in the personalities and preoccupations of the French.

In an introduction to the exhibit, Time Inc. Editor in Chief Henry Grunwald wrote: "The covers represent only a fraction of TIME's coverage of French affairs. But they outline the changes both in the American view of France and in the institution known as the newsmagazine." Stanley Hoffmann, professor of French civilization at Harvard, who supplied the accompanying first commentary, noted, "While the French have long thought that Americans had an image of France that was simultaneously archaic, sentimental and condescending, this is not the image that emerges from TIME's covers." Hoffmann counted 73 covers on political and military figures, dominated, of course, by Charles de Gaulle, who appeared on 14 covers and was TIME's Man of the Year for 1958. Concurring with Hoffmann's opinion, the French press praised TIME's serious approach to French affairs. The daily Le Quotidien de Paris said, "This invaluable vision is, for distant America, what France is all about."

The gala reception marking the show's opening took place not at the Pompidou Center, where a strike had delayed the hanging of the artwork, but at a nearby unfinished restaurant.

Among the 400 guests were numerous cover subjects or members of their families, including Georges Clemenceau, grandson and namesake of the French Premier who appeared on the cover in 1926; Genevieve de Gaulle, niece of General De Gaulle; and the widow of President Georges Pompidou, a cover subject in 1969, 1971, 1973 and 1974. Present, too, were former Premier Edgar Faure (1955), former Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville (1964) and Actress Jeanne Moreau (1965).

Commented Jacques Soustelle, former Governor-General of Algeria and a 1959 cover subject: "These magazine covers are a textbook of French history of the past 60 years." TIME is proud to be celebrating those 60 years of French history with 60 years of its own.