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This house can be built for $3500. It was designed by the Minnesota Art Commission 



What Home Builders Really Want 



Taking the Advice of Plain People 



By Maurice Invin Flagg 



IT is hard to imagine art as a business 

 l)iiii(lcr for tlie farmer of Minnesota, 

 or in fact of any other state. Most 

 art programs shoot into space. They 

 over-reach the mark, with the result that 

 art, instead of Ijccoming a common pos- 

 session of the common people, is a pas- 

 time or pleasure and the plaything of the 

 wealthy. 



The Minnesota State Art Commission 

 is a department of the state government. 

 It was created by an act of the legisla- 



ture some fourteen years ago. It has 

 been slowly but productively tilling a 

 virgin field which is now bearing crops 

 far beyond the hopeful anticipations of 

 those who were responsible for the com- 

 mission's inception. The farmers in 

 Alinnesota are walking arm in arm with 

 the art commission. The people of the 

 small cities and villages consult the com- 

 mission upon all sorts of questions. 

 If the chimney smokes or the plumbing 

 balks or the furnace fumes, the people 



317 



