A Cousin Arrives

Into a remodeled brownstone in Manhattan last week swarmed 6.400 people interested in a plain cousin of the fine arts. The converted brownstone, on 53rd Street just off Fifth Avenue and hard by the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, houses the new $400,000 Museum of Contemporary Crafts, the first museum in the U.S. devoted entirely to handicrafts.

Prime mover behind the new museum is the recently widowed Mrs. Vanderbilt Webb, 64, who thought that the first week's warm reception was a good indication of "what a big need the museum is going to fill." Richly endowed with cash* and energy. Craftswoman Webb started her crusade for handicrafts back in the Depression '305 as a home-based relief project, later founded the nonprofit American Craftsmen's Council, which started its own craft training school (now part of Rochester Institute of Technology), its own magazine (Craft Horizons; circ. 15,000), and Manhattan's America House, Ltd., devoted to selling U.S. craft products.

For its opening exhibit the craft museum chose to show a 314-item cross section of new trends, ranging from Potter Peter Voulkos' hefty vase to SculptorWelder Harry Bertoia's rod and slab screen in bronze and chrome. Pointing out that the exhibit will travel, Aileen Osborn Webb said that she does not "think of the museum as a New York activity." By sending shows on tour she hopes to raise standards and open new horizons for creative craftsmen all over the U.S.

* Her husband and her father were both topflight Wall Street attorneys.

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