The Mail BLAND PHILISTINISM-TOTAL IGNORANCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I was saddened to learn from The CRIMSON (May 29) that the exhibition of paintings by Arnold Trachtman had been turned away from the Modern Language Center at Boylston Hall because it was considered "politically controversial." Reactions to art are notoriously variable; for whatever another opinion may be worth, I was myself impressed by the works in question; and it is some attestation of their intellectual interest and artistic merit that they are now to be shown by the Graduate School of Design. Since I had some responsibility for planning the Center, as Chairman of the Division of Modern Language a decade ago, perhaps I may add that this kind of decision is utterly repugnant to the liberal and international spirit in which the Ticknor Library was planned. You quote Mr. B. A. Humphrey, who cannot speak for any of the departments housed in the building, as stating that "It is the desire of the Center to offend nobody." Personally I find this statement highly offensive, insofar as its bland philistinism reveals a total ignorance of the nature of art.