Page 12 - David Bermant Foundation

February 17, 1970Dr. F.S.C. Northrop245 Whitney Avenue New Haven, ConnecticutDear Dr. Northrop,I am hopeful that you remember me as one of your former students, upon whom you made an enor- mous impression. To aid your memory, I took your basic logic course in my freshman year, and then your philosophy of science course, which you only spent six months teaching us, as you went on a sabbatical.I have been an avid, although not always understanding, reader of everything you have published since my days at Yale, and quite frankly, I continue to base my philosophy of life around the tenets which I intuitively gathered from you. I say “intuitive’, because I sometimes doubt the ability of my intellect to com- prehend some of your thoughts, but I think I get them nevertheless.Since my days at Yale and service in the Army, I have been developing shopping centers in different parts of the United States, including Hamden Plaza, which I hope you and your family occasionally patronize in Hamden (if your wife shops at Richard Thomas in that center, tell her to mention my name to Mr. Thomas, and she’ll get very special treatment).At the present time, I am building enclosed mall centers of much greater size than the Hamden Plaza, and I am decorating the interiors of the centers with examples of contemporary art, rather than the usual landscaping and fountains employed by my competition. In order to have a meaningful representation of contemporary art, I have chosen to concentrate a selection of works, so that they represent one facet of the many trends now evident in today’s art. The facet I have chosen is that of “technological art”, which in simple terms, is the use of today’s scientific discoveries – be they materials, relations or principles – to pro- duce objects of art.My art consultant, Dr. William Seitz, Director of Rose Museum at Brandeis University, and formerly Curator of Painting and Sculpture of the Museum of Modern Art of New York, and I have been engaged in a vigorous intellectual debate over the validity of the types of works that I insist upon collecting. This letter to you, therefore, is to request your assistance in aiding me to present to Dr. Seitz the arguments that I know you made to me and your other students concerning the function of art in its time, and its relationship to the science of its day. I don’t recall whether I got these impressions from your lectures, or from one of your books, and I have reviewed without success almost all the books that you have had published – including the original text of the Philosophy of Science you used in your class (much of which is way beyond me today).Please excuse the length of this letter, but I felt I should give you the background as fully as possible.If it does not inconvenience you, the next time I am in New Haven I would like to take the opportu- nity to call upon you and say hello. In the meantime, I do hope that this letter finds you in the best of health.Sincerely,David W. Bermant (1940) PresidentNational Shopping Centers11