Correspondência

CO-587 Dear Mr. Portinari: I feel I must apologize about not having seen you since your arrival in this country. I was away for a week and yesterday when you returned I was in a committee meeting which I could not leave. I want to tell you how happy I am that you have arrived safely and that you do not find New York too distracting and too noisy. I want to explain again why it is that we cannot show as many pictures as we should like to. When I first heard of the possibility of your exhibition last June I did not think we could hold it at all, because we then had no available space. Later in the summer we had to cancel an exhibition so that we were overjoyed to be able to arrange a show of your work. We have, however, only limited space. I wrote to you in Brazil on August 20th: “I am afraid we may not have room for an exhibition of more than fifty or sixty works, although we are cataloging many more”. Fortunately we have been able to arrange more space by taking from another exhibition so that now I think we can show at least eighty works. This does not make so large an exhibition as that of Picasso, but I am sure you will not feel unhappy about this when you remember that Picasso has been painting for forty years. Of Picasso’s work of the past two years we showed only five examples, but of your work we shall show forty or fifty. When you come in the Museum the next time I am sure I shall be free and I look forward with the greatest pleasure to meeting you and Mrs. Portinari. Sincerely, Alfred Barr