John White Alexander: Public Service

"Study of a Man (with Moustache)"
by John White Alexander

"During John White Alexander's latter years, a great deal of his time was taken away from his painting and given to public service. Toward leadership he gravitated inevitably, and in it he established himself solidly, using the experience of one official position to affirm that of another, touching the circle of the Arts at many points of its circumference. 

In this synthesizing he worked first, say, as a member of the Board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at increasing and caring for the museum's treasures. Next as an officer of the School Art League he worked to provide intelligent appreciation of those treasures, appreciation planted in the minds of the children of the city to grow till it should reward the museum's effort with understanding adults - and trained. And he did not leave it there, but after showing art objects of many kinds to these young seekers, he followed them to their East Side clubs and schools and catechized them, and when he noted what they had best remembered, he encouraged them to try experiments of their own in painting and modeling and stimulated them by prizes which he judged.

To such an instinctive maker of pictures as he, it was an easy progression for him from his canvases to the moving pictures of a pageant or a play. Of course, the organizers of charity bazaars sought Alexander as arranger of tableaux. 'If you have a frame and some gauze,' he would say, 'you have no idea how much you can do in a moment with a few colored rags.' He was so smiling and kindly that one sometimes did not realize how much his ready service must often have tired him.

He was either officer or member of twenty different art societies. Of many of these he was president: of the National Academy of Design, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the School Art League of New York, the National Academy Association and the MacDowell Club. The list could go on and on."

To be continued

(From the Smithsonian Archives of American Art: https://www.aaa.si.edu/.../john.../series-1/box-1-folder-1 )