A N o b l e an d S y m m e t r i c a l C o n c e p t i o n o f L i f e
106
sought to radically expand these connections by working with Daniel Catton Rich, the director of the Art Institute, to propose the creation of a center for art studies in Chicago. The center would have essentially merged many functions of the department with the institute into one powerful educational and research venture located near the Art Institute’s main building on Michigan Avenue, much like the German institute system that Middeldorf came from. The new center would have its own building and provide classroom and library facilities for both academic instruction and scholarly research, and faculty and curatorial staff would be pooled into one common body, some members of which would have joint appointments in both institutions.171 The project went though several drafts, but ultimately foundered on the opposition of Dean Richard McKeon, who feared that such a union would pull the department away from the intellectual life of the University and “court the danger of running into a technical vocationalism,” and by Robert Hutchins, who in his ineffably forthright way, told his colleagues that “this program is nuts.”172 Facing resistance from the University leaders at a time when other budgetary priorities loomed more immediately on the horizon, Rich refused to engage in less ambitious forms of partnership and the project was stillborn.173 Subsequent attempts to organize such a center with the moral blessing of the University, but without its financial 171. “A Proposal for the Establishment of a Center for Art Studies in the City of Chicago,” Hutchins Administration, Box 19, folder 2. 172. McKeon, “Considerations concerning a curriculum in Art as it bears on the problem of cooperation between the Art Institute and the University of Chicago,” June 22, 1945, p. 4; memo of Ernest C. Colwell to Robert M. Hutchins, June 19, 1945, Hutchins Administration, Box 19, folder 5. 173. Rich to Colwell, November 12, 1947, Hutchins Administration, Box 19, folder 2.