Hopis & Zunis in Venice

Down the Grand Canal, under the Rialto past the columns of San Marco and the gilded lady on the customs house, went an Italian fire boat last week, spouting high in the air. After it came a gaudy gilded gondola-of-state. Seated in the stern sheets were small King Victor Emmanuel and large Queen Elena of Italy, swathed in pearls. Other gondolas, other barges followed, carrying Princess Maria of Italy, Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark and other notables. The whole procession debarked at Venice's public gardens to open the 18th Biennial International Art Exhibition and inspect the U. S. building where Ambassador & Mrs. John Work Garrett were waiting to receive.

For Venice's art exhibitions 15 nations have put up small buildings. All but the U. S. building belong to their respective governments. The latter, designed by Manhattan Architects Delano & Aldrich, was built two years ago by the Grand Central Art Galleries with money donated by George Dwight Pratt. Not unnaturally most of the pictures chosen were of the Grand Central type of art. They were ferried over to Europe gratis by the American Export Lines, will be ferried back.

Big-boned Queen Elena was the daughter of lusty, barrel-shaped Nicholas I, peasant King of Montenegro. Roman gossips have always insisted that the marriage was arranged to rejuvenate the inbred House of Savoy. Peasant Queen Elena's appreciation of art is elementary. Scholars of the American Academy in Rome still remember the occasion two years ago when she paused uncertainly before a stylized picture of a nude Europa balanced on the back of a swimming bull and demanded in her booming voice, "Why is de cow sticking out de tongue?" With her hands folded over her stomach, she moved last week through the four galleries of the U. S. building, gravely inspected one room full of the tenuous, romantic nudes of the late great Arthur B. Davies, stood silent in front of George Wesley Bellows' famed Dempsey-Firpo Fight. Finally she entered a gallery of Amerindian primitive art chosen by John Sloan. There she listened attentively while fluttering Mrs. Garrett delivered a lecture on the differences between the Hopis of Arizona and the Zunis of New Mexico, the relative merits of such artists as Ma-Pe-We, Awa Tsireh, Oqua Pi, and that talented squaw, plump Quah Ah, otherwise known in Santa Fe as Tonita Pena.

Humbler Venetians passed the U. S. building by, rushed to see what was on view this year in the German Gallery. Two years ago the German nudes exhibited were so very specific that Pietro Cardinal La Fontaine, Patriarch of Venice, forbade the devout to enter the unhallowed spot.

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