(The CRIMSON invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

I have heard that a few people take exception to the pamphlet recently issued by the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard, entitled "The Fine Arts in a Laboratory", which states that the case system is being used in teaching the Fine Arts here in this University. The objectors seem to feel that studying Fine Arts in this way is too mechanical a method and that it follows that we are studying matter instead of mind, technique instead of spirit. We here in the Department do not agree with this criticism and feel that it is based on lack of understanding of the facts.

If a man wants to understand the game of football, assuming that he cannot be a player himself, he had better go to see a football game rather than read a volume about football and look at photographs of great football games or players. In like manner we believe that if a man is to have a real enthusiasm about painting, he must see great paintings. It is not sufficient to read books about them and study the subject of art wholly by means of photographic reproduction. It has certainly been our experience here that as we get more and better pictures at Harvard, the students flock more to the Museum and are increasingly enthusiastic. The students are not taught here that the art died with Giotto or even with Turner. On the contrary there are several pictures by Sargent, Willslow Homer, Dodge Macknight and other modern Americans in the Museum.

But the most important field for a University Museum is the field of the great classical schools of the past. Anyone who is interested in art in these days can see plenty of modern pictures in large city museums, in the temporary exhibitions which are taking place all the time in various galleries in the large cities, and many collectors all over the country are securing modern works of art.

But valuable as the best of these pictures are in exemplifying the art of painting, the great classical schools of art, for instance Greek sculpture. Italian Renaissance painting, and paintings of Flemish, German, Spanish, Dutch, French and English schools fit in better with the type of instruction in a University.

We should welcome most gladly a room in the Fogg Museum which could be used for special exhibitions but with our present facilities this is almost impossible. In the past when the Museum was less crowded we have had exhibitions of artists, both ancient and modern.

So that the case system in a laboratory means that we are selecting a few choice masterpieces of different countries and centuries to stimulate the mass of the students, and in addition we are giving specialized technical training for those who wish to become teachers of Fine Arts, or Museum officials. EDWARD W. FORBES,   Director of the Fogg Art Museum.