Oct. 2 – Mon. – Oct. 5 Thursday
Metropolitan jury at N.Y.
Oct. a bad night on the train. Train an hour late so forced to eat breakfast on the train. A club car with only a few tables – crowded; only one waiter, everyone intolerable. In the middle of the meal they ran out of eggs + toast!
Checked in at Barbizon Plaza then to museum. Late, all there but me. The jury – Ogden Pleessner, Leon Kroll, Paul Sample, Kuniyoshi and Vaclav Vytlacil. Over 4000 pictures, - of which we kept 425. The jury worked smoothly except for Vytlacil’s unfounded worry that the Avant garde would not be given a fair hearing.
I disgraced myself the first day by falling asleep several times.
Monday – evening – short visit at the gallery and dinner with F.R. [Frank Rehn] at a sea foods place on Lexington. So tired I left him at 8:45 + went to bed.
Tuesday evening – Dinner in Greenwich Village with Bob Olafson + the Kuniyoshis.
Wednesday evening. Dinner with Dr. + Mrs. Bisharet at “L’Aiglon” rest. He brought some of his work along which we looked at afterwards in my room. He returned the little picture of Berthas and bought “Along the Fence in July” – He gave me a check for the balance ($150) dated ahead to Nov. 30!
We finished up at 12:15 – and I took a plane back home. Beautiful “flying weather” – a few flat top clouds just below us – the sun shone on them + and made them [word unintelligible] like water. At times the sun reflected a pool. A short trip (3:45 to 5:10). Taxi home – it was good to be back.
Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, October 2-5, 1950