Out of Hock

President Roosevelt last week took a personal hand in one of the knottiest problems that had ever plagued a bequest-hungry U.S. art museum. He asked Congress for $195,000 so that Washington's palatial new National Gallery could get its latest rich bequest--that of Philadelphia's late Peter Arrell Brown Widener--out of hock. The money was owed for a Pennsylvania gift tax which the Widener will laid on the beneficiary.

The greatest remaining private art hoard in the U.S. (valued up to $50,000,000), the Widener collection was a plum fit to water directorial mouths in any museum in the world. No private collection has matched its set of 14 Rembrandts, few its Raphael Madonna (one of the few genuine Raphaels in the U.S.), its magnificent Titians and Van Dycks.

Two years ago (TIME, Oct. 28, 1940) P. A. B. Widener's son, Joseph Early, ailing at 68, announced that it was to go intact to the National Gallery. Catch was that the art-rich National Gallery was short of cash. When the Pennsylvania Legislature last year tried to waive the gift tax, jealous Philadelphians, who wanted the Widener hoard for their own Museum of Art, slapped down that gesture in short order.

Last week the National Gallery hopefully readied its empty space, happy at last that it might soon send its trucks to remove the vast Widener collection from the pedimented Widener mansion in Philadelphia's suburban Elkins Park.

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