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Up to modern times there was no plastic art among the Jews. In modern times, however, there have been a small but perhaps a proportionately adequate number of Jewish masters in painting, sculpture, & architecture. Furthermore, in the present generation, among the very large number of respectable talents in modern art, Jews are probably more than proportionately represented. How is this to be explained? The former Jewish absence from the plastic arts is attributable in part to a philosophic att, to exclusion from the guilds of artisans, from not belonging enough to a countryside or community to absorb its scenery or to decorate it. Modern plastic art, however, has been for the last 1.5 cent an avant-garde art. It comes into being when the community & its standards do not really satisfy, when there is a conflict of values underneath, & yet there is enough wealth & safety for exp'tion. In the architectural avant-garde of the present cent there are many Jews among the disciples & a few among the leaders. In this generation particularly there have been changes in the field of architecture itself that have made it receptive to the entry of Jews: changes in the building trades, in the status of the architect, in the idea of community, in real estate, & in the modern esthetic. The absence of a native, traditional plastic art among pre-Emancipation Jews explains their slow start in architecture & the fine arts in the 19th cent as compared with their rapid strides in sci, law, literature, & music. If Jews go on to develop a characteristic architectural style in US or in Israel it will spring from the needs & functions of relatively stable Jewish communities. J. A Fishman.