Who's On First?

The sight of the newly arrived American tourist rushing to Paris' Louvre or Florence's Uffizi is as familiar as Mona Lisa's smile. A far more recent phenomenon is the ceremonial trip to U.S. museums. So much topflight art has funneled into U.S. collections in recent years that today a tour of major U.S. museums has become a must on the agenda of many a foreign visitor, including Britain's Queen Mother Elizabeth. Japan's ex-Premier Yoshida. Austria's Chancellor Julius Raab. Arriving in Washington on state business. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer went to the National Gallery of Art for his fourth visit in three U.S. trips.

In a Tizzy. In New York City last week, another joined that distinguished parade of art lovers. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov, just in on the Queen Elisabeth, sent the huge Metropolitan Museum into a tizzy by showing up at the information desk and requesting a guided tour. Trailed by a small Soviet retinue and reporters, including the New York Times's Russian-speaking Reporter Harrison E. Salisbury, longtime (1949-54) Moscow correspondent. Molotov spun through 40 rooms of art in an hour, suggesting by changes in his usually granite features that he was taken by Rubens and Tintoretto, curious about an obscure painting of J. P. Morgan-by Carlos Baca-Flor, disdainful of Salvador Dali's recent The Crucifixion. After seeing the best of the Met's European works, Molotov asked to see some American paintings.

Though the American room was closed for refurbishing, and in a plaster-splashed state of disarray, Molotov got a good look at contemporary American abstractions, the kind of thing condemned in the periodic Soviet blasts at "bourgeois, formalist art." Molotov came to a full halt before a painting called The Flying Box.

Confusion. Here, as recorded by Reporter Salisbury, the tour produced the neatest bit of confusion since Lou Costello asked Bud Abbott, "Who's on first?" The Met's American Gallery Curator Robert B. Hale explained to Molotov's interpreter, Oleg Troyanovsky, that The Flying Box was the work of 27-year-old John Hultberg (TIME, May 2), an "expressionist-abstractionist." The painter, Hale added, was once a guard at the Metropolitan. Troyanovsky translated to Molotov: "He was formerly of the avant-garde."

Puzzled, Molotov asked: "If he is only 27 and is 'formerly' of the avantgarde, how old must a man be to be in the avant-garde?"

Mr. Hultberg, replied Hale, was a museum guard at the age of 21. "He was a member of the avant-garde at the age of 21," Troyanovsky translated to Molotov. Molotov shrugged his shoulders and gave up.

His tour completed, the visitor was asked by reporters what he had liked best. "The Americans." said Diplomat Molotov. Some reporters were incredulous. "That's what he says," said Interpreter Troyanovsky with a big smile.

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