Belated Award

Last February the Treasury Department announced a national competition for a 24-ft. mural for the Department of the Interior's new auditorium. The competition closed April 30 with 310 entries. The judges conferred briefly, then voted unanimously for one design.

Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes does not like to delegate authority. To his desk the jury's award went for confirmation, and on his desk it lay for a full five weeks while newshawks waited patiently and 310 artists, many of them nationally prominent, nervously bit their nails. Fortnight ago somebody jogged Secretary Ickes' elbow and the jury's award was approved without comment. The mural contract, a $5,500 job to be completed within a year, went to Manhattan-born Muralist Louis Bouche.

Chunky, ruddy-faced Artist Bouche looks far more like a fox hunter than a painter but betrays his ancestry by a fondness for good food and French poodles. As an additional distinction he is a member of the only firm of mural painters in the U. S.: Bouche, Saalburg & Henry. However, Partners Allen Saalburg (Central Park's Tavern on the Green) and Everett Henry (Ford Building, San Diego Fair) had no part in this prize-winning mural.

"In the central panel, fairly near the centre," said Artist Bouche, "are three deer and they are just grazing and standing around. I just painted them because they are so sweet." The right and left panels, which must stand alone since the central section will often be covered by a cinema screen, show an Indian and a surveyor gazing at the landscape and cowboys rounding up buffalo.

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