worth $2,500; has fitted up an art-school with all necessary appliances, and will open early in 1874. Through the influence of the French consul, the French government presented to the association a most valuable collection of casts from the antique marbles in the Louvre, numbering fifty-four pieces of sculpture. The first Napoleon made a similar gift to the Academy of Fine Arts of Philadelphia. The association supplemented this collection by additional casts of material suitable for models in the School of Design, purchased by the Italian sculptor, Mezzara, acting as their agent. The casts imported cost $2,264.76; the other expenses connected with fitting up the art-school were $2,209.34. The collection of casts, numbering 159, was opened to the public at their last exhibition; there was also a loan-collection of 131 paintings. The prospects of the success of the art-school are promising. The history of the enterprise is a most encouraging example for other communities, as showing how much can be accomplished with small means if the will exists. The Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Brooklyn Art-Association, the Boston Art-Museum, the Corcoran Art-Gallery, and the Art-Association of San Francisco are admirable instances of the methods with which communities and individuals in this country voluntarily provide those institutions for which, in other lands, the government alone is looked to. SUMMARY OF THE PRESENT CONDITION IN THE UNITED STATES OF EDUCA. TION AS RELATING TO ART. It is only necessary for the American people to be convinced that a want exists to cause them to supply it. Believing the lack of provision for industrialand general-art-training in our present system of public education to be such a want, I have sought to show First, the need of preliminary instruction in drawing, its utility, and the practicability of its introduction into all grades of the public schools; Secondly, what steps have been taken towards introducing it and how it can best be done; Thirdly, the present condition of the means for industrial-art-training in technical schools, including the schools of science; Fourthly, the means possessed by our higher institutions of learning for giving general knowledge of art; Fifthly, the special schools existing for training professional artists; and, Sixthly, the steps that have been taken for founding great art-museums in connection with art-training schools. We find that in one State, Massachusetts, drawing has been by law introduced into all the public schools and a State Normal Art-School established; that, in many cities and towns in other States, drawing has been more or less taught in the public schools; that, in all the "schools of science" where engineering is taught, mechanical drawing is of necessity taught. SCHOOLS OF DESIGN. In schools for the practical teaching of art as applied to industry and manufactures, the Free Industrial Classes for Adults in Massachusetts, the Lowell Free School of Industrial Design at the Boston Institute of Technology, the schools of Cooper Union, the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and the School of Design of the University of Cincinnati complete the short list. SCHOOLS OF ART. For the special training of artists we have the schools of the National Academy of Design, New York; the Yale School of Fine Arts, New Haven; and the new College of Fine Arts in the Syracuse University, which comprise all at present existing. The San Francisco school is soon to open. The school of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts will resume active operations on the completion of the new building. ART-DEPARTMENTS IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. Of the colleges possessing any special collections or facilities for giving any instruction in art, even the most general, we find, excepting Yale and Syracuse, with their special art-departments, only Harvard, University of Michigan, Cornell, Rochester University, the College of Notre Dame, and Vassar College, out of the hundreds of colleges of the country, that either give any art-training or possess any art-collections, however small or incomplete. PUBLIC ART-MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES. There remain, then, but the public art-institutions which we have already described; there are four of these in the whole land: at Boston, New York, Washington, and San Francisco. An important means of art-culture, and the only one which has appealed to the general public, is found in the public art-exhibitions. To those of the Metropolitan Museum, National Academy, the Boston Athenæum, the Yale Art-School, the San Francisco Art-Association, and the permanent exhibitions of the Corcoran Art-Gallery, I have already referred. THE BROOKLYN ART-ASSOCIATION. The Brooklyn Art-Association, succeeding the old Brooklyn Academy of Design, instituted January 5, 1861, and incorporated 1864, possesses a fine building, which adjoins the Brooklyn Academy of Music, with which it connects, affording special facilities for the grand opening receptions of its annual exhibitions. These receptions are thronged and the exhibitions of fresh modern pictures are largely attended during their continuance. In the spring of 1872, a notable chronological exhibition of American art was held, in which Allston, Cole, Copley, Leslie, Morse, Peale, Stuart, Sully, Trumbull, and West were each represented by several paintings; while, in the collection of 117 pictures, their successors and the leading artists of the present day were also well represented. "The object of the Brooklyn Art-Association shall be the encouragement and promotion of art by the reunion of the members; by providing for the exhibition of paintings, statuary, and other works of art; by an inauguration of one or more annual exhibitions; by the establishment of a permanent gallery; and by such other means as the trustees may adopt." (Extract from the by-laws, article I, section 1.) There are probably similar associations for the holding of annual art-exhibitions in other cities of which authentic data are not possessed by this Bureau. LOAN-EXHIBITIONS. It would not be difficult to obtain collections of fresh works of the artists for exhibition and sale in connection with the loan-exhibitions of works of art belonging to citizens that have been already suggested. The popularity of exhibitions of good pictures, as attested by the throngs of visitors that attend them and the crowds that visit the saloons of the leading picture-dealers in the large cities, who hold perpetual exhibitions in a small way, sufficiently shows the public interest in art. Indeed, with the multiplicity of American tourists in Europe in these days, it would be strange if the love was not awakened. There are quite a number of well-known private art-collections in the leading cities, which, separately, would make a desirable public gallery, and from which, as the Metropolitan Museum has shown, a loan-collection of rare works can be made for public exhibition. While I have recorded the paucity of institutions capable of giving a thorough art-training and the few public art-collections now in this country, it is, nevertheless, apparent that there already exists, in all the leading cities, the material, which needs only to be made available, to afford all necessary facilities for general- and technical-art-training; and, if it shall be undertaken in earnest, there is possible in this country a development, both in industrial art and in what are called the higher branches of art, which, at the end of twenty-five years, will render obsolete the verdict passed upon us at the World's Fair in 1851, and never yet reversed. Here there is opened a field of honorable rivalry between the several States, cities, and towns of the Union. What England has done in this direction we can do; and the more readily, that we have the advantage of her experience. No time or force need be wasted. We have but to adopt and modify the methods so thoroughly tested there to the different conditions that may exist in our several communities. I commend this subject of the relation of art to education to the consideration not only of all educators but to all who are interested in the varied manufacturing-industries of our many States. Skill is the modern secret of success. Science becomes ever more certainly the measure of prosperity. Science underlies and must precede art; it is the strong substructure upon whose fixed foundations she builds her palace-walls. In the common schools, the children of America must be trained to draw if her artisans are to hold their own in the world's contest and if her artists are to enshrine her history. If they but will it, the "republic of the people" shall become the home of an art as noble and as enduring as that which glorified the "republic of princes," whose palaces for so many centuries have lifted their stately walls above the waves, guarding for mankind, not the trophies of her warriors nor the wealth of her merchants, but the priceless work of her humbler artists. Tintoretto, Titian, and Veronese are still fresh in men's memories, though the names of doge and patrician have faded from recollection. [The following are the statistics to which reference is made on page 24.] Statistics of museums of art and archæology for 1873; from replies to inquiries by the United States Bureau of Education. Statistics of museums of art and archæology for 1873-Continued. 5 Peabody Museum of American .do 6 New Hampshire Philomathic Contocook, N. H. 7 Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, N. Y. 2 National Academy of Design. 11 The Historical Society of 12 Park Gallery of Art. 13 Corcoran Art-Gallery. |