The second major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art was Dan Flavin’s Pink and “Gold.” The reception which it received in this city was a mixed one and in this respect it paralleled the varied and mixed attitudes which have greeted the new museum and its program.

Flavin’s show epitomized the paradoxical—a quality which has not always found favor in art. The placing of the fluorescent tubes in an arithmetical progression (one which contradicted the illusion of visual perspective) was impersonal, cool (as “cool” as the light which they radiated) and yet it became a uniquely personal idea.

In conjunction with the Museum of Primitive Art, Allan Wardwell, Curator of Primitive Art at the Art Institute of Chicago organized an exhibition of the Sculpture of Polynesia.

Although the exhibition was handsome it was limited and restricted by the subject matter. Certain significant examples were not included, e.g. some of the more exuberant carvings from New Zealand; indicative examples of Hawaiian material such as the war god and, for an exhibition devoted to a definitive survey of the subject, one of the stone heads from Easter Island that are now in museum collections would.have seemed

In December the University of Chicago dedicated the large Henry Moore sculpture, Nuclear Energy. Erected on the site of the first nuclear chain reaction the setting has yet to be completed and the interaction between the piece and its surroundings has yet to be determined. Although not overlarge in size (its 12-foot height being about one quarter that of the Picasso Head at the Civic Center) it is monumental in scale like so many of Moore’s works and appears to be a major sculpture in the artist’s oeuvre.

Erecting sculptural monuments which are intended to commemorate historic events has become

Thomas Kapsalis showed what was almost a retrospective group of paintings at the Evanston Library during the month of December. Although some works were done (at least they were begun) a decade or more ago it must be conceded that no single date can be given to most of his paintings since they are often worked and reworked. This is typical of Kapsalis’s way of painting and the textures, and the surfaces, the colors and even the forms themselves do not remain stable but are “worried” into their present (not always finished) state. This may be an advantage in achieving his highly personal style