Pratt Institute - Prattonia Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

Page 16 text:

The Guggenheim, the Modern Museum, the Met- ropolitan, the Museum of Primitive Art, the Whitney, the Museum of Natural History, the Public Library, the Opera, the theaters, the gal- leries, the City Center, the Medical center, Rockefeller Center, the projected Lincoln Cen- ter are a grand nucleus of all the best and time- less in man surrounded by a gleaming sinewy network of thousands of miles-the very streets of New York pulsing with the flow of ideas and the collision of concepts, the shifting popula- tions, the trundle of commerce, the zest of a hundred modes of living—-the heart-fire of man in his metropolis. Kaleidoscope, mind, Pratt Institute. Where is the unifying element, the connecting link among

Page 15 text:

of its cultural riches are perpetually astonish- ing, almost beyond belief, even to the most knowing. Other schools situated in large cities, have rightly or wrongly, claimed for their cam- puses their urban surroundings, but Pratt’s re- lationship to New York City is always ‘in the process of being re-discovered. No one imagines that tall buildings inspire high purposes or that wide avenues induce breadth of mind. But the elan of a world capital is pervasive, and none are more responsive to its calls than the mem- bers of the Pratt community.

Page 17 text:

these three? In each case, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The kaleidoscope by providing fanciful esthetic stimuli is greater than a collection of mirrors and bits of glass might ever suggest. The mind by the creative reach and the boundless range of its works is greater than any estimate that can be placed on its organic components. Pratt Institute pro- vides young men and women who leaven the dough of commerce and industry by the yeast of their cultural resources is greater than the sum of its parts. Investigating the kaleidoscope (the mirrors and glass) is needless. Investigat- ing the mind is impossible. But we can look long and well at the parts of Pratt Institute and come to some comprehension of our concept: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.