Record Breakers

Two big traveling art shows prepared to hit the road leaving broken records behind them. At Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum the Van Gogh exhibition (TIME, Oct. 31) closed last week after a three-month stand. The paintings of the lonely Dutchman who sold only two canvases in his lifetime had set an alltime Met record (302,553 at 50-c- a head) for a single exhibition.

In Washington, the $80 million Habsburg collection with its rich Titians, Rubenses and Velasquezes (TIME, Dec. 5) had drawn more than 800,000, admission free, in 40 days. Though short of the 964,970 who piled in to see the touring Berlin museum masterpieces in the spring of 1948, the show had broken all winter attendance records at the National Gallery.

Next stops for the Habsburgs: Manhattan, Chicago and San Francisco; for the Van Goghs: Chicago.

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