A miniature building combines a straw-roofed hut with a modern glass-and-metal structure on one planted base.

Original artwork, not a still

Pictures from an Institution • 1954

Randall Jarrell

Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and spoken for the other.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The campus is described as divided between two named points of reference. The next contrast concerns how each half was obtained: one endowed, the other associated with smiling, sweating and speaking. The wording reads as a dry joke about the conspicuous effort behind acquiring institutional resources.

Context reviewed

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