Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/131

Rh modern paintings the ones which will be considered worthy of a place in a museum fifty years hence is extreme. It is unfortunate that we are biased in our views by temperament and by fashion. It is impossible to say in what fashion consists, and why we idolize an artist to-day whom we shall have forgotten after a generation. At the time that Whistler's portrait of his mother was exhibited in Paris, the picture received little commendation, and now the picture which won first prize in the Salon that year is considered a worthless daub in comparison. When we look back over the pictures that have made a great success and have been much talked about during the last twenty-five years, we are amazed to find how few of them we to-day consider worthy of a place in a museum. Examples could be multiplied indefinitely. The most popular picture at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, "Breaking Home Ties," hardly won a glance at the San Francisco exhibition in 191 5. Some one has well said that the buying of modern pictures for exhibition in a museum is gambling with public funds. It is a hazard which the museum director need not take, as a collection of paintings can be rapidly built up by gift and bequest, and the wise director will therefore spend his available funds on old and well-tried masters. But if the