Group's Brief Lists Cost of Fine Art Plans

The Overseer's Committee to Visit the Department of Fine Arts and the Fogg Museum issued an annual report last week that points toward a large scale reorganization in the University's facilities for the study of art.

Included in the report were listings of the estimated funds needed by the Fogg Museum and the proposed Design Center. Immediate improvements at Fogg Museum, the report said, require $100,000, while an additional long term endowment of $1,350,000 is needed to provide for the costs of additional maintenance and increased staff for the Museum and the Department of the History of Art.

A total of $3,350,000, the Overseers estimated, is needed for the construction and operation of the Design Center and $1,850,000 more for a new theatre, in line with recommendations made last year by another special committee headed by John Nicholas Brown '22. Expansion costs for the area of the Visual Arts would approximate $6,650,000.

Within the Faculty, the Overseers' report continued, there has been criticism of the Brown committee's recommendations for faculty and departmental mergers. "If some of this criticism has been slightly vitriolic, that is evidence that at least some of those who are in, or close to the Fine Arts are far from sissies."

The Overseers, under the chairmanship of Harrison Tweed '07, said that "it is a fact that neither the philosophy nor any of the recommendations in the (Brown) Report have been accepted by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences or the Corporation."

Instead, the Overseers continued, quoting Dean Bundy, "the Report should be regarded as an overture and not as a final act."