1930
During its first season the Museum of Mod¬ern Art observes a careful balance between foreign artists and American artists. The public finds its way to the museum in in¬creasing numbers. It is hard to know whether the visitors realize what gives the galleries a feeling of novelty and freshness. The walls are faced with monk’s cloth of a neutral though warm beige. The pictures are hung much lower than in any museum or commercial gallery, approximately fifty inches from the floor to the center of the picture. The paintings are not hung according to the strict laws of symmetry; in other words, they are not arranged with a horizontal in the center, two verticals at the sides, and smaller pictures at either end. The old-fashioned sys¬tem of “skying”—hanging pictures one above the other—is nefarious. The visitor must see the works clearly and as much as possible at eye level. Sometimes the pictures are hung in groupings for reasons of affinity or contrast, not unlike stamps in a stamp album.
The impression of the galleries is of some¬thing new. On the floor there are pale gray rugs and a couch or two in the main gallery. Admission is free. The public comes and goes by elevator and in less than two years the Heckscher Building will no longer be able to handle the traffic.

January-May
Once or twice Philip Johnson comes down from Harvard, where he is a senior at the age of twenty-four after years of residence abroad.