Art: In Chicago

Three o'clock in the afternoon, tea tables gorgeously bedight with flowers and silver—bedight but quite deserted—an orchestra crooning overhead—and a great crowd of women seizing catalogs surged ahead into the east wing of the Art Institute in Chicago to the opening of the 38th annual exhibit of American painting and sculpture. On the walls of the great chain of rooms hung 110 portrait and figure pieces, 91 landscapes, 18 marines, 16 still life paintings, and here and there on pedestals were scattered 58 pieces of sculpture—exhibits chosen from 1,200 items submitted. The women...