Grant Reynard's Inside Manhattan A MONA Moment By Ron Roth Director Museum of Nebraska Art

A new ARTreach traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of Nebraska Art features original illustrations by Nebraska native Grant Reynard executed over the period of World War 11. Reynard created most of the illustrations between 1944 and 1946. They are, for the most part, the original art work for Inside Manhattan, an illustrated column he produced for the New York newspaper, P.M. Reynard also wrote the copy for these columns. His writing is light hearted and wry, cut along the lines of the Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker Magazine. Let's switch from the visual arts to the literary for a moment and enjoy a few of these columns. Here is one titled The Dali of the Knife Grinders.

Walking west on 47th street over toward Seventh Ave., I heard a great racket, the ring of metal mixed with lusty singing. The hubbub was made by a short stocky Italian who ground knives and shouted Verdi arias while the sparks flew from his emery wheels. Two sailors very much on shore leave were watching this operatic gentleman, Mike Trzano. He thoroughly believed in advertising. His traveling shop carried a pole on which hung flowers, ferns and various vegetables, including long Italian squash all topped by the American flag.

Mike moved briskly and I kept on his trail for several blocks down and across Broadway. In front of the Astor he stopped suddenly and pointed violently toward heaven, while waiting at a traffic light. Everyone, including myself, thought a flock of bombers must be over the city, but Mike was just putting on a show, attracting attention. He started again with sparkling decision and breadth of gesture and sang his way west, coming to a busy stop on Eighth Avenue. There he brandished a shining and wicked sample knife the size of a meat cleaver as he swept in and out of doughnut counters and lunch places. I suspected intimidation as he came out laden with cutting tools of all shapes and sizes.

Returning a handful of bright cutlery he passed through a beanery door in which I was standing and took a look at my drawing. Up to that point I had kept in the effacing shadows of handy doorways and behind signs, but now his wrinkled grin told me that everything was Jake with Mike and art, so we had a brief visit during which he produced a printed bill-head with his name and address. He calls himself the New York Grinding Service and has been in business more than 30 years.

Here is his observation of the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art.

You will find little tables. . in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art. On pleasant Fall afternoons you may have tea, or whatever, in case you don't go for tea. You take it easy on a bench or wander amongst the trees and sculpture. Girl's and service men squint and shuffle around the statues and argue about the art in war or the war in art at the cozy tables under the trees and gay umbrellas. Those I met tip with may not have agreed on the second front or what makes art art, but they seemed to be getting along swell with one another. Don't let the word Modern get in your way. There is art here for almost every taste. If you don't like the Recumbent Figure by Henry Moore (left) or the Figure by Lipschitz (right), you will surely be persuaded that the Action in Chains by Aristide Maillol in another part of the garden is certainly a vigorous image of a lady. However, if you want to be absolutely positive about the type of women you look at, you better bring your own along.

Here is an excerpt from an Inside Manhattan column titled The Train Leaves at Four-thirty.

Three Quarters of an hour before a train snakes off through the station' tunnels you will find little groups gathering before the gates at Grand Central. They turn suitcases into benches, and little Johnnies and Eddies sit envying the sailors who are going straight off to sink the Japanese. Drawing a group like this, you long for a little movie camera in each eye. A waiting crowd is always active. Johnny rests a moment on the baggage, then is up and away and worrying his mother. An enlisted man coos and clucks entertainment for his baby son. Babies are a great relief, far out of proportion to their size, when dads are soon to be gobbled by long steel trains. One little mother parks with her baby on a large suitcase while her sailor mate works at unscrambling a timetable.

The clean white bonnet of a Sister of St. Vincent de Paul, an odd sense off-light about it, flares a poem of neatness above the other headgear. An ocean of had compared with the out-of-press white circle on the back of the sailor's head in the foreground. He is out of press all around, responsive to, then bored with the fare wells he is getting, a full half-hour before train time.

Later this early group swells out into the great hive of the station. Family parties and solders and sailors and gals hurry from coffee and doughnut counters and from quick drinks in the little eating places down the corridors. After the gates open, the swankier, nattier officers and their girls come from the cafes in the Commodore. Through the arch and vanishing down the long cement platforms go the boys.

The last all aboard is called and the train glides silently away down the dark track. Nothing could be so dead as the space left between platforms by a vanished train. The little sailor's wife hugs her baby close and walks slowly toward the Lexington Avenue exit.