Jo Davidson Didn’t Hide in City Hall, He Says

Jo Davidson, the sculptor, did not pop into Mayor Laguardia’s offices in City Hall and hide in closets in an attempt to make a bust of the busy Mayor, as reported in the papers.

Mr. Davidson denied the story explicitly to the Jewish Daily Bulletin. “People don’t butt in like that,” he said. “Of course Mayor LaGuardia expected me. The fact that he didn’t do any sitting for me is true, but Mr. LaGuardia knew about the project in the sense that he agreed to undergo the ‘ordeal.'”

Since his arrival in the United States early last December, Mr. Davidson said, he has made busts of President Franklin D.Roosevelt, Nicholas Murray, Butler of Columbia University, and Professor Albert Einstein. These works will be exhibited at the Municipal Art Exhibition, scheduled to open at Rockefeller Center of February 28.

Discussing the current controlversy about the exhibition from which several artists have threatened to withdraw their exhibits because Rockefeller destroyed the Diego Rivera murals, Mr. Davidson declared that he was in sympathy with those who were against the destruction of any work of art.

“A work of art,” he said,”belongs to the people, and not to the person who pays for it. No one has the right to destroy any work of art. The only real judge of ari is time. We are not able to judge a work of art at the moment it is produced.” It the exhibition were moved to some other building, the sculptor suggested, all the complaining exhibitors might be mollified.

His bust of Roosevelt will b on display at the National Academy of Design, 215 West 57th street, about the middle of next month, and then will be sent to Chicago to be shown at the 1934 Century of Progress Exhibition.

Mr. Davidson is leaving for California within a few weeks to join friends there.