Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1891 — American Art. [ARTICLE]

American Art.

Vice President Frank Millet, of the National Academy, has an article on the “Outlook for Art in America,” in the Century, from which we quote: “Within the past few years also there has arisen here a coterie of picturebuyers who make a point of purchasing none but works by American artists, thus stimulating home production, softening the harshness of foreign competition, and gathering together, as is amply proven by occasional exhibitions; most interesting and choice collections of contemporary art. which are revelations even to the most hopeful and enthusiastic friends of our artists. In various institutions there have been established funds for the purchase of works of art for permanent public exhibition. The library building of the city of Pittsburg, given to the city by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, has, with equally unparalleled generosity, been endowed by him with a fund the annual income of which —fifty thousand dollars—is to be expended in the purchase of works of art for the permanent collection, and at least ninety per cent, of this sum is, by the terms of the endowment, to be spent for the productions of American artists. The extent of this gift is scarcely to be realized at first sight. What a museum of art will in a few years he built up by this fifty thousand per annum in perpetuo! The income from the fund of the Chantrey bequest in England for the purchase of modern pictures is but twenty thousand dollars a year, and, so far as is known, was, up to the date of Mr. Carnegie’s endowment, the largest sum in the hands of any institution for such a purpose. What a stimulus to production this fund in Pittsburg will become and what a power iu the hands of the committee to urge our artists to turn from the tentative to the genuine accomplishment! The prospect is as encouraging as it is novel, and as bewildering in its possibilities as it is encouraging, for the Carnegie fund is doubtless, the precursor of other similar endowments in different cities, and almost before we are aware of it we shall find this new factor one of the most important ones in our artistic development. ”