Refugee Art

Busiest museum director in the U.S. last week was smiling, 220-lb. Paul Parker, who runs the trim, modern Fine Art Center Museum in the small (pop. 37,000) Rocky Mountain resort of Colorado Springs. Priceless masterpieces from famous museums all over the U.S. were arriving at his back door by the truckload. Spouting South Dakota cuss words at a crew of workmen, Director Parker carefully unloaded the valuable arrivals, stored them away in a basement maze of gigantic vertical steel racks. By last week the number of arrivals, including top-flight Cezannes, Daumiers, Goyas and Van Dycks, had reached 59, topped an aggregate value of $1,000,000.

Remote from both eastern and western U.S. seacoasts, sheltered by the loftiest of U.S. mountain ranges, Colorado Springs is one of the least bombable of U.S. cities. Its Fine Art Center, providently built six years ago with lavish backing by Art Patroness Alice Bemis Taylor, contains ample storage space for 2,000 paintings, is honeycombed with strong-walled concrete galleries, corridors and sub-basements. Last week, masterpieces from San Francisco, San Diego and Washington, D.C. were making for that bombproof shelter at the rate of six a day.

Because paintings deteriorate when stored permanently in dark cellars and storerooms, Director Parker will keep his newly acquired masterpieces rotating through the galleries of his museum. Result: for the duration Colorado Springs art-lovers will see more masterpieces than gallery-goers in many a far larger U.S. city.

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