One grievance the younger artists did have. There was no place where they could exhibit their work. In harmony with Gutzon’s desire to establish a fairly representative American art was his crusade to obtain a fair deal for young American artists. In 1912 he helped organize a new Association of American Painters and Sculptors which would provide exhibition space for new and unknown youngsters. A novel feature of the constitution of the new society was that it declared against juries. Every member was entitled to exhibit; only the amount was to be decided by a committee. A certain amount of space was reserved to invited work and no work not invited might be shown. Should any member wish to invite the work of a nonmember and fail to get the approval of the committee, he was permitted to give up some of his own space to the stranger. Gutzon was delegated to publish this statement of the principles of the organization: We have joined together for the purpose of holding exhibitions of our own work and the best procurable examples of contemporary art, without relation to school, size, medium or nationality. We shall make our exhibitions as interesting as they will be representative of American and European Art activities. We have no canons but honesty and ability to express one’s self. We do not believe that any artist has ever discovered or will discover the only way to create beauty. Unfortunately, at its first exhibit the association was split on the very rock that was to have been its bulwark--the representative quality of the work. This was the exhibition, at the Armory, made famous by the “Nude Descending a Staircase,” in which neither the nude nor the staircase made much difference. The painting was an orgy of color and distortion. Gutzon had no quarrel with that. He lived by Voltaire’s principle: “Sir, I absolutely deny the truth of your statement, but I shall defend to the death your right to make it.” What hurt and angered him was that, by election, he was responsible for the exhibit, and that the committee had rejected work which he had approved and had accepted work that he had not even seen. Their excuse was, “We don’t care about the constitution. We are trying to get up an exhibition.” Sadly the sculptor resigned saying that no other course remained to him. He came home to Stamford profoundly dejected. After a silent dinner he remarked: “I wish I had a million dollars in cash.” “What in the world for?” Mrs. Borglum inquired. “I’d shut all those struggling young painters in a room and throw it at them,” he replied. “It would keep them while they were hunting up something to do besides art.” He told of some of the studios he had visited while organizing the new association and of the hard time some of the students were having. Nearly all successful artists have been through such trials but not many of them remember.