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May 20th, 1950 OPEN LETTER TO ROLAND L. REDMOND President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Dear Sir: The undersigned painters reject the monster national exhibition to be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art next December, and will not submit work to its jury. The organization of the exhibition and the choice of the jurors by Francis Henry Taylor and Robert Beverly Hale, the Metropolitan's Director and the Associate Curator of American Art, does not warrant any hope that a just proportion of advanced art will be included. We draw to the attention of those gentlemen the historical fact that, for roughly a hundred years, only advanced art has made any consequential contribution to civilization. Mr. Taylor on more than one occasion has publicly declared his contempt for modern painting; Mr. Hale, in accepting a jury notoriously hostile to advanced art, takes his place beside Mr. Taylor. We believe that all the advanced artists of America will joins us in our stand. Jimmy Ernst Ad Reinhardt Adolph Gottlieb Jackson Pollock Robert Motherwell Mark Rothko William Baziotes Bradley Walker Tomlin Hans Hofmann William de Kooning Barnett Newman Hedda Sterne Clyfford Still James Brooks Richard Pousette-Dart Weldon Kees Theodoros Stamos Fritz Bultman The following sculptures support this stand. Herbert Ferber Seymour Lipton David Smith Peter Grippe Ibram Lassaw Theodore Roszak Mary Callery David Hare Day Schnabel Louise Bourgeois