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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