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A Boston Herald Traveler, Wednesday, May 24, 1972
[[Bust of Charles William Eliot]]
Charles William Eliot By Frank Duveneck
'American Art at Harvard' Exhibit in Fogg Museum By MALCOM PRESTON
When one thinks of art at Harvard the names of the Fogg  or  Busch-Reisinger Museums come quickly to mind, perhaps even the Carpenter Center. And that is as it should be for the first two have rather large and impressive collections and the latter seriously engages students in contemporary practice.
But other parts of the University, too, have their riches, little known and seldom exhibited, particularly in the area of American Art. The Harvard Medical School, the Peabody Museum, the Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Harvard Portrait Collection, all count among their treasures works by such outstanding American artists such as Bingham, Copley, Audubon and Feke.
FOR FOUR CENTURIES the University has been collecting and now the Fogg Museum has mounted a fascinating exhibition entitled "American Art at Harvard" Although the show and the fully illustrated and annotated catalogue  (well worth  its  $12.50  price  tag)   were assembled by a group of graduate students under the guidance and with the encouragement of Prof. Benjamin Rowland Jr. simply to present the breadth of Harvard's collection, it serves as well, as a digest history of art in America. 
Included are 176 paintings, drawing, sculptures and assorted objects. Of these, roughly half are from the Fogg's own storage bins and therefore familiar. The rest, rarely seen by the general public give the exhibition a fullness and scope, seldom seen in a single show of American art. 
From several anonymous portraits of the 17th century to important works such contemporaries as Motherwell and Noland, the show allows us to trace the course of art in America from its Dutch beginnings in unsophisticated hands to its level of independence, even leadership in the Abstract Expressionism of the "School of New York."
OBVIOUSLY IN JUST 176 things, which includes some furniture and silver, there are bound to be omissions, and there was no attempt to do more than organize a show which would demonstrate Harvard's holdings in American art and "to encourage a climate in which further speculation in problems in American art can be carried out." 
Even so, it is possible to follow the course of our art from its provincial beginnings through the somewhat crude but effective style of Badger and Feke to the more sophisticated talents of Copley and West. Vanderlyn, Gilbert Stuart, Allison and Charles Wilson Peale lead us to the 19th century and a host of painters who sought to put on canvas the character of American life. Catlin, Seth Eastman and Carl Wimar give us views of Indian encampments, buffalo hunts and distinguished chiefs, Audubon details our wildlife and Cole, Kensett and Bierstadt shows us the face of our vast landscape. 
And so it goes through Homer, Eakins, Iness and Sargent into the 20th century, to our Impressionlists, our Realists and our Modernists. 
But art history and the wealth of Harvard's collection aside, there are in this exhibition several really unusual, different and unexpected things. Frank Duveneck's marble of Charles William Eliot, for example, was a sur-prise to me. I had always Duveneck with a more or less flamboyant, Munich indebted painterly style. I was unaware that he had done any sculpture, or that he could abandon his slap-dash bravura for realistic and careful carving.
Nor had I seen Charles Sheeler's very Cezanesque drawings, although I knew he owed a debt to the Paris of 1909. And the Harnett drawing, "Head of a Woman," is a rather rare and unusual work from that master of the still life. I was surprised, too, by the Shahn drawing, "Sacco and Vanzetti," dated 1952. Shahn did the original Sacco Vanzetti series in the late 20's and to see the theme done almost a half century later, and in a different style, caught my eye. 
But go to the Fogg yourself. The exhibition will remain on view through June 18.