The organization of the school was unique. It was of high school grade, and the course of study covered three years and was distributed daily along the following lines: Mathematics, one hour; science, one hour; language and literature, one hour; drawing, one hour; tool work, two hours.

The three academic lessons were to be learned at home. After several years' experience the "hour" was reduced to fifty minutes, and after still more experience the course was extended to four years. The drawing is both free-hand and instrumental. The tool work includes joinery, wood carving, wood turning, pattern making, and molding, forging, and bench and machine work in metals.

THE EXHIBIT.

The exhibit is taken from the regular work of the school. With the exception of one drawing, none of it was made for exhibition.

No attempt is made to exhibit the work in mathematics or language. The exhibit in science is confined to first-year work in botany and zoology.

In drawing, as a rule, the work of four students is exhibited in each grade and kind of work. With one exception, all drawings were made from objects placed before the student or they were conceived in the mind. The exception is that of a pen-and-ink drawing enlarged from a printed cut, the purpose being to illustrate the method of handling material and of producing results. All drawings are arranged chronologically, and as every student takes the complete course the exhibit shows progress from year to year. All the drawing is educational. It does not follow examples set either by art schools or by commercialdrawing rooms.

Tool instruction is given in classes of twenty-four students each. Tools and processes are taken up in regular order, and the class goes over the fundamental principles as logically as in mathematics. The commercial element is completely eliminated, and usual forms of construction are introduced only so far as they illustrate the best methods and general principles. Each kind of shopwork ends in a project which is intended to embody in an interesting way what has been learned. Accordingly the exhibit is chiefly class work, a sufficient number of duplicates being shown to establish the fact that the class and not exceptional individuals have done the work.

Attention is called to the systematic way in which lettering and projection drawing are taught. The succession of steps in one drawing exercise is shown by four sheets, the first being a free-hand drawing, the second a mechanical drawing of the same object, the third a tracing of the drawing, the fourth a blueprint made from the tracing. This work is done by every student in the class. Free-hand drawing of groups of objects occupies but little time in the school, but every student produces a single sheet, and several of these sheets are shown.

In forging, after the typical processes are mastered, every pupil manufactures a set of steel lathe tools, made according to the best design and tempered for their special work; these tools he carries with him into the machine shop during the last year. The wrought-iron work done by the various pupils is well illustrated by the wrought-iron fence, gate, and arches shown around the exhibit.

No castings are shown beyond those in lead, soft alloys, and plaster. The molding and casting is purely educational, and the casting is done only to show the necessary features of the pattern and the method of molding it.

The lessons taught by twenty-four years' experience can not be exhibited at the fair. The fruit of a judicious and logical course of manual training lies wholly in the physical and mental abilities of the students, who acquire a fair mastery of material things and learn to control and utilize material forces.

The habit of mechanical analysis, which separates a complicated process into easy steps and reduces a complex construction to simple parts, cultivates also the habit of careful choice in the sequence of operations and in the selection of materials. All this is of infinite value in real life, and it goes far to produce clear-headed and far-seeing men in any calling. Nothing is more certain than that the fruit of manual training is in the boy and not in the project. In no instance is the finished article" allowed to stand forward so prominently as to appear to be the main result. Our experience teaches that time spent in the shop in thoughtful, logical, exact work is well spent; that manual training stimulates an interest in all other studies; that the progress in mathematics, science, ancient and modern languages, and in English literature is none the less in consequence.

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WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE.

THE EXHIBIT.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass., founded in 1865, is an engineering school for the training of mechanical engineers, civil engineers, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, and students in general science.

A prominent feature in the exhibit of the institute was a collection of 84 large framed photographs showing the buildings with their surroundings and the interiors of the various lecture and recitation rooms, laboratories, and workshops. The relative time put upon different lines of work in the five courses was shown by large comparative charts, designed by the department of drawing.

The material prepared by the mechanical engineering department included various articles manufactured in the shops by the students. For example, from the woodworking department various pattern and core boxes; from the forge shop, specimens showing shaping and welding of iron, lathe tools, and work in tempering; from the foundry, a collection of castings illustrating the regular line of student work; from the machine shop, a large number of specimens, mounted in a glass cabinet made in the shops, illustrating plain and taper turning, spur, bevel, and worm-gear cutting, spindle for sensitive drilling, squarethread cutting, and inside threading, tool making, including construction of reamers, milling cutters, and standard gauges, parts of a regular speed lathe, and a complete bench-drill grinder. The mechanical engineering laboratories exhibited various broken specimens of steel, wrought iron, and bronze, illustrating strength of materials in tension, compression, and torsion. Metallography was illustrated by four groups of micro-photographs of cast iron, wrought iron, and steel. Practice in drawing was represented by the drawing-board work of the free-hand, mechanical, machine-drawing, and descriptive geometry courses, illustrating the training of the imaginative faculty as applied to designing, the acquisition of correct ideas of form, and the solution of engineering problems. That portion of the student's work in the department of civil engineering for which drawings are required was represented by examples of topographical maps, railroad maps and profiles, stress sheets for roofs and bridges, and designs of masonry, wood, and steel structures.

The chemical department displayed 24 beautifully crystallized specimens of pure chemicals, put up in 2-pound bottles. These chemicals were prepared in the laboratory of industrial chemistry from crude materials and waste products from the laboratories and various industrial processes. Accompanying these

specimens were bound copies of student reports, showing that in the manufacture of these chemicals the processes are conducted with as strict adherence as possible to the methods employed in commercial plants and that the cost element is carefully considered. The department of physics was represented by a new and, for the most part, original set of models recently designed and constructed by the department to illustrate a unique set of exercises for a laboratory course, which is intended to replace the somewhat unsatisfactory lecture and recitation course in elementary college physics.

THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO.

BY W. M. R. FRENCH, DIRECTOR.

THE EXHIBIT.

The exhibit of the school of instruction of the Art Institute of Chicago embraces, in brief, work from departments of drawing, painting, sculpture, decorative designing, architecture, illustration, normal instruction, and, in a limited degree, applied arts, pottery, ceramics, and metal work. It includes a representation of evening and juvenile classes. The academic drawing and painting are illustrated by original studies from the cast, from objects, and from life (the last portrait, nude, and costumed), accompanied by exercises in artistic anatomy, pictorial composition, illustration, and other studies appropriate to the artist. A frieze representing children at play, painted by the students for a public school in Chicago, crowns this part of the exhibit. The department of decoration is shown by original designs and exercises of many kinds; that of sculpture, by a few busts and figures, but more fully by photography.

The exhibit is much amplified by drawings and photographs exhibited in large bound volumes. It is in these books that the work of the normal department and of the juvenile classes is found.

The great Saturday juvenile classes, numbering about 300, are a peculiar feature of the school, and it is from this school that the colored-chalk drawing from objects on gray paper, so much used in the public schools of Chicago and now adopted elsewhere, originated. The normal work resembles closely that of the other well-known normal art schools, but the close association with an academic art school of the first class is reckoned a great advantage, since one of the best qualifications of a teacher of drawing is to be able to draw. It is in connection with the normal work that the applied arts find their chief use.

The sculpture department claims to be the most thorough and practical in the whole country. The students not only follow the usual routine of academic modeling of head and figure, and the composition of small groups, but compose and model draped figures, set up their own armatures, execute large figures, cut marble, and, in general, perform the practical work of the studio. The importance of the work executed is shown by the photographs. The academic drawing, in charcoal from cast and life, is believed to be unsurpassed by students of like experience.

The best claim of the art institute, perhaps, is its comprehensiveness. The various departments react favorably upon each other, and the collateral privileges, such as the art library, the permanent collections, the various and extended lecture courses, the successive passing exhibitions, create an atmosphere inost favorable to the development of the student.

MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL ART SCHOOL.

THE EXHIBIT.

[This school made two exhibits-one of its general course of instruction in art, the other of the work of those pupils in the school who are preparing themselves for teaching or supervision. The former exhibit was placed, with those of other art schools, in the southwest corner of the Education building, and was composed of some 300 drawings and paintings from objects, from casts, from the antique, and from the human figure, with numerous busts from the class in sculpture, and objects of interest and beauty from the "arts and crafts" class. Of the second exhibit the principal, Mr. George II. Bartlett, writes as follows.]

The exhibition of the public school class of the Massachusetts Normal Art School represents but a small part of the year's work, and yet it is the expres sion of the thought of the whole year.

On entering this class the pupil has had a thorough technical art training of three years (as shown in the exhibit of the academic work of the school), during which time he has labored from the standpoint of the pupil. Now he is to become a teacher. His first effort is to get in touch with the principles of teaching.

To learn how to teach, how to select from the great storehouse of art that which is best to teach and to adapt this to the various grades from the kindergarten through the high school, become his especial study for the year.

To teach the pupil to think definitely and to broaden his understanding of the subject, he is given the problem of planning and of illustrating a limited number of lessons, adapting the thought and the rendering to the grade under consideration. The graded illustrative work seen in the exhibition is the direct result of this effort, the exercises being the ordinary certificate work of the students and not made especially for an exhibit. Simple practical lessons in the various branches of art are here shown, each subject being traced in a sequence of steps from the lowest to the highest grades.

To one familiar with drawing in the public schools it is apparent that skill in the use of the pencil and of the brush in water color is most essential to the drawing teacher. To further this end throughout the year emphasis is laid on work especially in these two mediums, and as much time as possible is given to secure good simple pencil rendering with an appreciation of values, and in water color to secure pure color and direct handling.

Another essential in the education of a drawing teacher is skill in blackboard drawing, and practice in this mode of expression is given throughout the course commensurate with its importance.

The suggestions for high school lessons in the exhibit show advanced work in the various modes of rendering, yet an especial effort has been made to so closely connect the first-year lessons with those of the highest grammar grade that no break should be made, but that the work in the high school should begin on the old familiar lines.

In the apportionment of subjects the thought throughout has been to make a well-balanced whole, giving sufficient place to those subjects which, though not so attractive, are necessary to general knowledge, yet recognizing the fact that the greater interest a subject possesses the greater is its capability for developing power.

THE MINNEAPOLIS SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS.

BY ROBERT KOEHLER, DIRECTOR.

THE SCHOOL.

The school at present embraces two departments, the academical and the practical design.

The first includes preparatory and advanced antique, sketch, still life, portrait, and life classes, in session five days each week during the winter term of eight months. On Saturday forenoon there is a special class for children. The school is open to beginners and advanced students. No time limit is set for the course of study and no diplomas are issued in this department. There is also a regular summer term of two months' duration.

Work in the design department constitutes a course of three years and embraces the study of plant forms, historic ornament, and lettering, and their adaptation to practical purposes in the design of furniture, interior decoration, textiles, book illustration, embroidery, etc.

Advanced students desiring to qualify as teachers are given an opportunity to gain experience as assistants to the director in various classes.

THE EXHIBIT,

The exhibit was selected with the object of demonstrating the general character of the work performed.

The work displayed showed a great variety of treatment, the result of the policy pursued to encourage the development of individuality in the pupils. With correctness and simplicity in drawing as fundamental principles, students are given every encouragement to follow out methods of treatment of their own. Likewise in composition, the practice of which is required from the beginning, students are given the widest scope for expressing their ideas.

It is claimed that the advantages offered to art students by a smaller school are easily apparent, and that a thoroughly sound foundation for the study of art is more readily obtainable in such a school, where personal interest in his pupils on the part of the instructor is one of the important factors.

SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, MASS.

BY THOMAS ALLEN, CHAIRMAN OF COUNCIL.

HISTORY AND WORK.

Founded in 1876 as an appendage to and occupying rooms in the museum for the purpose of encouraging education in the fine arts, the school maintained a separate existence until 1902, when it was incorporated as part of the Museum of Fine Arts. It is administered by a council of fifteen members, which is composed of representatives of the trustees of the museum, artists, and art workers. Under a competent corps of instructors the school offers instruction in draw