Viewing page 80 of 196

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

120 East End Avenue
New York City 28
June 23, 1949

Mr. Seligmann, Director
Seligmann Gallery
5 East 57th Street
New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Seligmann:
You may have read of the meeting of the First International Congress of Art Critics which was held in Paris last summer. At its conclusion one of the resolutions was to endeavor to establish an international exchange of exhibition documentation for the benefit of art writer members from different parts of the world. It was planned that catalogues of Paris exhibitions should be sent regularly, for example, to American members of the Association, to English members, Australian members, etc. In return, catalogues from other centers were to be sent to the Secretariat of the Congress in Paris for distribution.

The chairmen of the different national contingents were asked to do what they could toward providing a body of exchange material from their leading art centers. I have been asked to request galleries in New York to help out in this work toward the furtherance of international understanding, and I hope you will be able to see your way to assist me.

Beginning next season we are hoping to be able to send, from New York, 150 copies of the catalogue of all the leading exhibitions in New York. Mr. Georges Wildenstein has agreed to arrange regular shipments of such documents to the Secretariat of the Congress in Paris through Wildenstein & Company, 19 East 64th Street, New York City. If the catalogues can be delivered in advance of the opening of each exhibition to this address, marked for attention Congress of Art Critics, Paris, the rest will be attended to without any further trouble to you.

Also Mr. Raymond Cogniat, Editor of Arts, will make weekly announcements in his publication of New York exhibitions represented by these catalogues, in order to keep his readers in touch.

With many thanks for whatever cooperation you can provide with this project, which I hope is merely the initial gesture toward a much broader program of activities on the part of the Association in the direction of a fuller international understanding in the art field.

Yours sincerely,
[[signature]]
JAMES JOHNSON SWEENEY