School for Scandal

For a struggling young artist, Mexico's Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes had a good deal to offer. Housed in an ancient convent in the sunny, spired old town of San Miguel de Allende, 150 miles northwest of Mexico City, its cheap, comfortable living and picturesque setting got it wide publicity as a G.I. students' paradise (TIME, March 29, 1948). Over 100 U.S. veterans have flocked south to enroll. But during the past year, San Miguel's sleepy decorum has been shattered by one ruckus after another. Last week the school had more trouble than it could handle.

Fighting Painter. To begin with, Director Alfredo Campanella (who bought the school as part of a deal for a nearby ranch) had got himself embroiled in a row with terrible-tempered Painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. Maestro Siqueiros had come to San Miguel for a lecture series, then returned for one week each month to direct the students' work on a new mural. Increasingly excited over the project, Siqueiros wanted to work full time to complete it. Campanella, anxious to prolong the publicity the Maestro's presence was bringing his school, balked.

Finally, three weeks ago, Lawyer Campanella drew up a contract to let Siqueiros do the job. The painter took one look at its provisions, pronounced them insulting, shoved Campanella and his brother down a flight of stairs.

All of Campanella's students and most of his faculty sided with Siqueiros. When Campanella announced that he had banned the Maestro from the premises, they offered their resignations. In Mexico City, Siqueiros roared that Campanella was a "gangster" whose "frauds . . . are now a criminal matter." Diego Rivera and 40-odd other topflight Mexican painters got off a fire-breathing manifesto charging Campanella with breach of contract, and declared a boycott against the school.

Sleeping Couple. Last week, as the government's Institute Nacional de Bellas Artes (which owns the convent) was investigating Siqueiros' charges, new and more serious trouble struck San Miguel. In the course of a drunken party, Mrs. Joan McHugh, a 23-year old student from Pittsburgh, accused Leonard Zurnis, a Brooklyn ex-G.L, of trying to seduce her. Later in the evening Mrs. McHugh passed out. When her husband Daniel entered the room a few minutes later, he found Zurnis asleep beside her. A brawl began; Zurnis ended up with a broken nose and fractured skull, died soon afterward.

At week's end, McHugh was being held for questioning. The U.S. Embassy was quietly looking into both the Siqueiros affair and the Zurnis death; if it decided to recommend revocation of the school's G.I. accreditation, San Miguel would be finished.

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