Hands Across the Gulf

Ever since the U. S. Government, goaded by Nazi rivalry, began courting Latin America, cultural and educational institutions on both sides of the Rio Grande have run a low fever of Pan-American good will. One result: an unprecedented exchange of Latin-American and U. S. art. Two months ago three Western Hemisphere cultural capitals--New Orleans, Guatemala City and San Salvador--started to do some handshaking on their own. The idea for this hands-across-the-Gulf was thought up by a New Orleans art patron, Doris Stone, whose father, big, angular Shipping Tycoon Samuel Zemurray, runs the ships of his United Fruit Co. to & from the ports of many a banana republic.

Mrs. Stone, a director of New Orleans' Arts & Crafts Club, invited El Salvador and Guatemala to send their best art for an exhibition in New Orleans' Royal Street Gallery, put up a $50 prize for the best painting from each country. Most of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan art looked about as Latin as a Saturday Evening Post cover. Prizes went to Guatemalan Jaime Arimany (for a tropical mountain scene), and Salvadoran Jose Media Vides (for a bevy of dark-skinned bathers--see cut}. Critics were politely rhapsodic.

Last week New Orleans returned the call with an exhibition of Southern U. S. art at the cheerful new International Club Salon in palm-shaded San Salvador. At the show's formal opening, U. S. Minister Robert Frazer, International Railways of Central America Manager Herbert Wilson and a swarm of Cabinet Ministers and bank presidents elbowed some 500 of El Salvador's other leading citizens for a look. Curiously, the most striking items of Southern U. S. art in the show (example: The Red Mill by New Orleans Painter Caroline Wogan Durieux) looked more Latin than any of the Latin-American art that El Salvador and Guatemala had sent to the U. S.

Salvadoran critics outdid the critics of New Orleans in politeness. Said Critic Salvador Salazar Arrue: "The exposition is of great transcendence to Salvadoran art. . . . The social importance these cultural manifestations exercise on life will be clearly seen."

Next week the show will move to Guatemala City, later to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, for further handclasps.

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