COLOURS IN BUILDINGS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 133, 2 December 1935, Page 12

COLOURS IN BUILDINGS

AND PERIOD ROOMS

AMERICAN EXAMPLES

Critics of the new1 coloured buildings in Wellington would be interested to know of the Philadelphia Art Gallery and the Californian War Museum, said Mr. J. Barr, Chief Librarian, Auckland, in an address to members of Wellington library staffs at the Tumbull Library on Saturday evening.

Mr. Barr went on to describe these outstanding modern buildings, and said that the use of coloured marble was not unkown to the ancient Greeks in the classic age.

Specialisation in the museums resulted in period rooms, each completely segregated from its neighbour; and decorated harmoniously and authentically; the rooms themselves being in chronological sequence. At St. Louis in the art gallery each room was an example of the decoration in a particular state at a particular era. The Huntington Gallery was one of the few places where modern British art was fully represented, but Continental schools of art were very well represented everywhere. American art was, of course, well represented, and the Frere Gallery in particular contained an exceptional collection of Whistler paintings.

These galleries were not "dead galleries." Courses of lectures and instruction were regularly given and enthusiastically received. Art education extened pven to children's museums. AMERICAN LIBRARIES. Speaking of American libraries and library achitecture, .Mr. Ban* said that the Library of Congress, possessing several million books, was the best administered library in the world, and had recently taken its. place among the finest book rarity libraries by an acquisition which included a great deal of incunabula and one of the very few original Gutenberg Bibles.

The Boston Public Library was one of the earliest of America's great libraries, and was magnificently decorated inside, with splendid bronze doors and mural paintings. It was a replica of a medieval Venetian cardinal's palace.

From the Cleveland Public Library 1477 distributing points were administered, an indication of the enormous dimensions of the huge departmentalised libraries. Baltimore possessed one of the finest new libraries in the States, and the University libraries, Yale, Harvard, etc., were magnificent and efficient. Some of the private collections, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, and the Pierpont Morgan Library, were also remarkably fine. The Folger Library, a marble neo-classic building which cost two million dollars, was an architectural gem containing a Shakespearean Theatre.

The Pierpont Morgan Library contained one of the most magnificent bindings it had ever been his lot to behold, said Mr. Barr, a gold binding, studded with gems, very magnificent— but everything a binding should not be.

Mr. E. J. Bell, librarian of the Canterbury Public Library, added some experiences of his own travels abroad, including an interview with the American bibliophile, Dr. Rosenbach. This was at Philadelphia. At Kansas City there was a 7,000,000-dollar art gallery built by a newspaper man. It had only been opened three dys when he arrived, and he was particularly struck with the period rooms which had been referred to by Mr. Barr.