Blue Grotto

"She's in there," pointed one proud Pinkerton. "She's the most magnificent thing I've ever seen." "She" is not Sally Rand; she is Michelangelo's Piet`a, a star attraction at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Despite doomsayers, Michelangelo's Piet`a survived its ocean trip, emerged intact from its elaborate packing cases, and settled proudly atop a pedestal in the Vatican Pavilion.

In a setting conceived by Broadway Stage Designer Jo Mielziner, the alabaster-white, 6,700-lb. sculpture occupies a sort of blue-velours-lined grotto, bathed in the beams of 50 spotlights. Toward the darker wings, 400 hanging half-watt blue lights gently twinkle, serving as automatic votive lamps. Behind the sculpture looms a 25-ft.-high theatrically draped cross, like a pious afterthought, while piped-in Gregorian chants tranquilize the atmosphere.

The Piet`a's flawless marble is shielded from spectators by an almost invisible Lucite sheet that can deflect a .45-cal. bullet. Visitors are drawn past the Piet`a on three tiers of conveyor belts. They have from 60 to 90 seconds to feast on its beauty, unless they take to a fourth, motionless tier 24 feet from the sculpture. Even then, they may not have time to marvel how the Renaissance sculptor made the crucified Christ so anatomically human and so tranquil in following his agonizing death.

Some critics are horrified by the whole thing. Sniffed the New York Times's oft-embattled John Canaday: "The statue looks somehow helpless and cold, as if being subjected to refrigeration." Retorted Mielziner: "I have seen the Piet`a on and off for 22 years, and never have I seen it look better."

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