To the Editors:
The history of art collecting in the past five centuries should leave no one bemused as to the sort of individuals who trafficked in the sale and purchase of art. Peggy Guggenheim was no exception; for a relatively small amount of money, she acquired holdings now worth millions. She was not guided in this by either taste or understanding. Some collectors are very lucky; Peggy Guggenheim was one of them.

Hilton Kramer’s reflections on Jacqueline Weld’s biography, Peggy: The Wayward Guggenheim, in your April issue gives the impression that Mrs. Weld does little to evaluate the collection. Quite unfairly, he compares this book with Angelica Rudenstine’s catalogue raisonné, a work of first-class documentation, a splendid achievement. However, it is to be remembered that the catalogue—meant for scholars, curators, and sophisticated collectors—will not be available (at $85) to the “common reader.” Mrs. Weld was fully aware of Mrs. Rudenstine’s years of work on the catalogue and was more concerned with describing the personality and activities of a bizarre woman.

Careful reading, however, of Mrs. Weld’s biography would indicate that she was cognizant of every item in the collection. She meticulously records every exhibition, from first to last, as well as who and what was in them. She also does away with the hagiography surrounding Peggy Guggenheim. The party-giving, the socializing, the baroque sex life are scrupulously revealed as facts that cannot be brushed aside if one is to understand the manner in which Peggy