Art: It May Be Art But

When Idaho oldtimers last fortnight took a good look at the murals in Boise's new courthouse, they were fit to be tied. The murals, by R. G. Bartlett and Los Angeles WPA workers, showed a cabin on the Oregon Trail—with boarded gables and white New England picket fence; a sissy trapper standing by while an Indian seized his horse. "That may be good art but it isn't true to nature," yelped angry Probate Judge John Jackson. "Any trapper who let an Indian get that close to his horse would be ostracized as unworthy of the guild."

In Amarillo, Tex., similar sounds were...