Harriman Exhibition

Mrs. E. H. Harriman is a very generous and discerning patron of the arts. She recently organized an exhibition of French, English and American art, which she has already exhibited in London and Paris. Last week the Grand Central Art Galleries announced that the trinational show will be presented there in April.

Critics noted that the work of many artists who are members of the Grand Central Galleries Association has been pointedly omitted from Mrs. Harriman's exhibition. So has that of a good many famed Englishmen and Frenchmen. But although the omissions in this, as in every other international exhibition, will lead to discussion, possibly even to ill-feeling, not even the disgruntled artists themselves could question the patrician disinterestedness of a lady who is one of the most noted sponsors of good art in this country. She was helped in choosing the American artists by Marius de Zayas, art dealer; the English by Ambrose McEvoy and Augustus E. John; the French by Camille Mauclair, critic. At the time of the death of her husband, the late Edward H. Harriman, Mrs. Harriman was called "the richest and most important business woman in the world. In one of the briefest wills ever filed, he made her sole executrix of $140,000,000. None of the five Harriman children received a penny. Mrs. Harriman was careful in the education of the children. She had them taught to ride as soon as they could toddle, and never let them understand, until they reached years of discretion, that their father was more than ordinarily rich.

Mrs. Harriman is tall, slender, grave. Because she likes trees, she gave $80,000 to found a chair of Forestry at Yale; because she likes music, she is the founder and main support of the American Orchestral Society; because she appreciates art, she is planning to hold her trinational exhibition annually.