Page:The Carnegie institute and library of Pittsburgh (1916).djvu/18

 is a great figurative representation of the city as a mailed knight rising triumphant out of vaporous clouds of smoke and steam. The series is not yet complete.

The chief activity of the Department of Fine Arts, of which Mr. John W. Beatty is Director, is the annual exhibition of paintings held in the months of May and June. As this is the only competitive international exhibition presented in the country, it seems hardly an undue assumption to call it the American Salon. The scheme of administration raises the exhibition above local standards and gives it prestige in Europe. There are Foreign Advisory Committees in London, Paris, Munich, and The Hague, which pass judgment upon the works of foreign artists. The Jury of Award, meeting in Pittsburgh, is elected by vote of the exhibitors; it consequently expresses as nearly as possible the opinions and verdict of the competing artists themselves. That any suspicion of provincialism or partisanship in the final judgment may be avoided, it is required that two members of the Jury be residents of Europe. While in Pittsburgh the Jury are guests of the Institute, by which all traveling and hotel expenses are defrayed.

Three medals, carrying with them respectively awards of $1,500, $1,000, and $500, are offered yearly, without regard to the painters' nationality. The prizes of the late exhibition, in 1908, were conferred upon Thomas W. Dewing, of New York, Henri Eugène Le Sidaner, of Paris, and Emil Carlsen, of New York.

This system naturally brings here some of the best work of European painters. Pittsburgh cannot lay claim to any distinctive art atmosphere as yet, but once a year it has its moment of exotic bloom, which gives it a part in the uni-