High under the eaves of Manhattan's Whitney Museum of American Art an exciting room was opened last week: a reference library with walls decorated by Thomas Benton in tempera on specially prepared gesso panels of his own invention. If not the best. Artist Benton is certainly the most striking muralist in the U. S. His vibrant, squirming panels in the New School for Social Research (TIME, Jan. 5, 1931) still arouse agitated cluckings from the critics. The Whitney Museum panels depict the usual Benton subjects: crap shooters, burlesque queens, revivalists, mechanics, farm...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
