NEW ACQUISITIONS

MOST of the nation's art museums are less than half a century old, but they have shot up fast. This week the Minneapolis Institute of Arts celebrated its 40th anniversary with an exhibition of 40 masterpieces culled from its collection of some 25,000 art objects. The museum's latest acquisition, a Chardin (opposite), is perhaps the most brilliant painting in the show.

Chardin was in his honored 60s when he painted the picture, and living contentedly as a "King's Pensioner" in the Louvre. When first displayed in 1769 (three years after it was finished), his canvas drew a parade of exclamation points from Encyclopedist Diderot, one of Paris' first professional art critics: "Everyone sees nature; but Chardin sees it profoundly and exhausts himself in rendering it as he sees it; his work on The Attributes of the Arts is proof of this. How perfectly the perspective is observed! How the objects reflect each other! How the masses are handled! One can't decide wherein lies the enchantment, because it is everywhere."

To celebrate its Golden Anniversary, Buffalo's Albright Art Gallery plans to amass some new treasures this year. First purchase: the Tamayo opposite.

Tamayo, a Zapotec Indian, likes to repeat: "My feeling is Mexican, my color is Mexican, my shapes are Mexican." Then he adds, "But my thinking is a mixture." His thoughts about art are cosmopolitan and drawn more from the school of Paris than from the militantly proletarian school of his countrymen Rivera and Siqueiros. At 54 Tamayo has come a long way from the Mexico City fruit markets where he grew up, has become one of the Western Hemisphere's most sought-after painters. Contrasted with Chardin's chill but solid mastery, Tamayo's Fruit Vendors looks ungainly in drawing and uncertain in composition. The colors, which glow hot and cold through a spreading stain of shadows, enforce the ambiguous mood. And the mood, which might be that of a romantic summer night or of a nightmare, carries the picture.

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