Viewing page 4 of 14

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Hirshhorn Museum to Open on Friday

BY HENRY J. SELDIS
Times Art Critic

Illustrated on Page 1

WASHINGTON--All the controversy over the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, its donor and its architect, Gordon Bunshaft, ought to evaporate during the invitational events preceding its public opening Friday.
Some 800 works out of 4,000 paintings and 2,000 sculptures were given to the nation at President Johnson's behest by the Lithuanian-born collector, an avid art patron for more than 40 years.
On the eve of the invitation openings which have brought the international art world together here just days before the public opening, S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution announced that Hirshhorn had added two major sculptures by Reuben Nakian, one magnificent recent piece by Henry Moore and Kenneth Snelson's 60-foot-high "Needle Tower" to his already munificent gift.
It is hard to absorb the total impact of the content of this astonishing complex at first sight as one encounters clusters of top works by Rodin, Daumier, Degas, Duchamp, Cornell, Giacometti and Duchamp-Villon when it comes to sculpture.  No less impressive are the multiple examples shown in the opening exhibitions by major painters of the past 100 years from Eakins to Warhol.
Californians prominently displayed in the inaugural exhibition include Sam Francis, Richard Diebenkorn, Jack Zajack, Ed Ruscha, Morris Broderson, Elmer Bischoff, Irving Block, Tony deLap, Max Finkelstein, Nathan Oliveira, Charles White and Gabriel Kohn.
Although the Smithsonian will administer the museum, directed by Abram Lerner, it has its own trustees headed by U.S. Ambassador to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Please turn to Pg. 4, Col. 7