WOMAN IN ART
portunity for artists of advancing merit, such exhibits having been worldwide in their invitation and encouragement.
As we enter the second quarter of the twentieth century, which in its record of the arts will seemingly pass more rapidly than the first, we already have the consciousness of unprecedented progress in the fine arts, especially of woman's achievements in that progress and development. Subtract woman with her arts and influence, and progress would be materially retarded.
Primary art in public schools and advanced art-schools is annually graduating thousands of embryo artists. Art clubs are springing up almost like spring flowers; seen or unseen, they come in response to the innate desire for truth and beauty of expression in all things. It requires a whole generation, yes, two generations, to make a marked change in any line of art, and even then the new expression is influenced more or less by the thought that has dominated the passing epoch, by minds that have left color, form, and power to oncoming periods of art, in proportion as they have exerted a world influence. The thing that is strongest and truest in their art augments the fresh, the naive impulse, in the rising army of art. Time sifts the arts; not alone does it rest with the fancy of man, for truth and beauty, strength and majesty will outlive centuries—if man halts in his vandalism.
Of all the thousands that yearly enter the field of art in all its ramifications, a gifted few will overcarry the struggling majority. It is the law of nature: all the highways through the centuries prove it.
A few who helped toward the ultimate of the Women's Building, in so doing discovered themselves, and from that impetus have added to the growth of American Art.
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