James Dempsey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049267
- eISBN:
- 9780813050096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049267.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Chapter 1 introduces us to Scofield Thayer in the following anecdote. In 1924, a nationally know portrait artist visited Worcester, Massachusetts, to paint the portrait of a college president. ...
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Chapter 1 introduces us to Scofield Thayer in the following anecdote. In 1924, a nationally know portrait artist visited Worcester, Massachusetts, to paint the portrait of a college president. Interviewed by the local newspaper, he called Thayer's The Dial “an intellectual sewer,” not realizing that Worcester is Thayer's hometown. Thayer responded in a Dial article that describes the very different views of art that existed between the traditionalists and the avant-garde of the time. Soon after this response, Thayer drew up his will, leaving his art collection the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City rather than his hometown's Worcester Art Museum, where his large collection ended up on loan. At Thayer's death, the Worcester museum would be dealt a huge blow when the heart of its collection was moved to New York.Less
Chapter 1 introduces us to Scofield Thayer in the following anecdote. In 1924, a nationally know portrait artist visited Worcester, Massachusetts, to paint the portrait of a college president. Interviewed by the local newspaper, he called Thayer's The Dial “an intellectual sewer,” not realizing that Worcester is Thayer's hometown. Thayer responded in a Dial article that describes the very different views of art that existed between the traditionalists and the avant-garde of the time. Soon after this response, Thayer drew up his will, leaving his art collection the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City rather than his hometown's Worcester Art Museum, where his large collection ended up on loan. At Thayer's death, the Worcester museum would be dealt a huge blow when the heart of its collection was moved to New York.
