Director of Fogg Art Museum Receives Threatening Letters Denouncing Late Purchase of Painting--Suspect Black Hand

That officials of the Fogg Art Museum had received threatening letters from supposed black hand or communist sources as a result of the expenditure of a sum of $50,000 for a painting recently acquired by the museum was revealed yesterday when it was learned that E. W. Forbes '95, lecturer in the Fine Arts Department and one of the directors of the Museum had recently been the recipient of threatening letters after the published announcement last month of the purchase of the rare painting by Botticelli.

Mr. Forbes, on whose desk the letter was laid by a secretary when it was received addressed to "Fogg Museum, Harvard College," fails to take its contents seriously and prefers to ascribe it to "some crank or mentally unbalance person." It was nevertheless, turned over to Charles Apted, chief of the Harvard Yard police, in case, said Mr. Fobes, "its recipient might incite other persons of unsound mind to annoy the Fogg officials of cause damage to University property."

"I really cannot take the letter seriously," declared Mr. Forbes, "since it contained nothing that could be actually construed as a threat of violence. I suppose it came from some person of unsound mind who read about the purchase of the painting by the Museum and resented that so much money should be spent on anyone or anything but himself. I merely turned it over to the Harvard police to clear myself of any responsibility in the matter. I do not think that anyone in their right mind could resent the legitimate purchase of a priceless work of art by a great university whose only object in acquiring it was its preservation as part of our artistic heritage from the past."

Mr. Forbes declined to make public the precise contents of the letter but it is understood to have contained caustic comment on the expenditure of so large a sum of money by Harvard for a work of art in the face of the prevailing unemployment, and to have suggested that the equivalent of the sum could have been more profitably employed in alleviating suffering among the laboring classes. Mr. Forbes would not declare whether or not the letter was signed.