Magnificent Monastery

On the high bank of the Hudson River near the braced, tremendous span of the George Washington Bridge, the City of New York owns 56 acres of rock ledge and greenery called Fort Tryon Park. There last week the mayor, the park commissioner, the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the world's greatest philanthropist dedicated a magnificent museum of medieval art. Named "The Cloisters," this finely-proportioned granite building with red tiled roofs lacks nothing but a chapter of Benedictines to be one of the most beautiful monasteries in the world.

The Cloisters would never have been built but for the acquisitive energy of the late Sculptor George Grey Barnard (TIME, May 2). In France before the War, Sculptor Barnard kept his eye peeled for fine examples of Gothic stone work. He brought back to the U. S. large sections of the cloisters of four great, abandoned monasteries, installed them with other medievaluables in a gallery next to his studio. In 1925 John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought this collection for $600,000, presented it to the Metropolitan Museum, added gifts of his own. When he gave Fort Tryon Park to the City in 1930, he reserved a site for the new $2,500,000 museum.

At the opening last week, President George Blumenthal of the Metropolitan solemnly thanked Mr. Rockefeller, and Park Commissioner Robert Moses pointed out his princeliness in buying eleven miles of Palisades across the river to keep the "backdrop" forever virginal. The good, grey donor, however, insisted that his contribution, "being largely financial," was "relatively unimportant."

Designed with notable-sanity by Boston Architect Charles Collens, The Cloisters escapes the clutter of ornate neoGothic, spaciously integrates a whole 12th-Century chapter house, three open cloisters, Romanesque and Gothic chapels, a refectory and several long galleries of superb sculpture and tapestries. First visitors last week could trace, in an hour's attentive ramble, the progress of medieval art from the devout symbolism of the 11th Century to the tender realism of the 15th. Biggest & best show piece: the unsurpassed Flemish tapestries of the Unicorn Hunt which Collector Rockefeller bought in 1923 for a reported $1,100,000.

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