Haven't seen the Paley exhibit? When the week's out, it is, too

Abstract

Happy side effects The Alliance Museum Shop literally doubled its business in October and both museum restaurants have been booked to capacity throughout the exhibition.

SALLY FALK NANCREDE

The William S. Paley Collection

Artists: 19th- and 20th-century European and American masters.

Location: Indianapolis Museum of Art.

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and

Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: $3, call [phone].

This is the final week to see the William S. Paley Collection

Exhibition _ the magnificent collection of the late founder of CBS

Inc. _ at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the only Midwest stop on

its first national tour.

The exhibit of 70 paintings, sculptures and drawings by some of

the world's finest artists of the past century closes at 5 p.m.

Sunday.

Bringing it to the Indianapolis museum was a coup of

considerable proportions. And attendance so far has been nearly

double the projections.

As of last Friday, 44,618 people had seen the exhibit, reports

Mary T. Bergerson, IMA director of marketing, communications,

development and membership.

"Interest continues to build, and we feel that by the end of

the exhibition, we will come very close to 60,000. We had a number

of people do projections and they clustered around 30,000 to

40,000, and so we've nearly doubled the projections.

Some tickets left

"We're about as pleased as we could be, to put it mildly," she

says.

Tickets are still available, but "are selling like mad" for the

final weekend, she says.

Tickets are sold on a timed system to allow about 100 people to

enter the gallery every half hour. To avoid waiting, Bergerson

reports, the best time to attend is mid- to late-afternoon

weekdays.

"We've had people from Korea, Argentina, Canada, France, Spain,

England, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Brazil and Peru. We've had

unprecedented interest in it from organized tour groups, and they

have literally come from all over the Midwest."

More than 10,000 Indiana students have seen the exhibit. The

museum has opened at 9:30 some mornings to accommodate school

groups.

"We have had people who I know had not been to this museum

before in great numbers, first-time visitors to the IMA," says

Bergerson.

Happy side effects

"The Alliance Museum Shop literally doubled its business in

October and both museum restaurants have been booked to capacity

throughout the exhibition.

"This is an exhibition we felt had a lot of popular appeal and

would draw people who usually don't frequent this museum because of

the big-name appeal _ Matisse, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas,

Cezanne."

Paley, for decades a trustee, president and finally chairman of

the board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, bequeathed

the masterworks to it. To celebrate that gift, the Museum of Modern

Art organized most of the collection into this first national tour.

Illustration

Caption: Toulouse-Lautrec's oil-and-gouache classic M. de Lauradour is part of the exhibit.