His first one-person exhibition, Paintings by William Brice, Los Angeles, opened on November 16 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The show received lengthy and glowing reviews in the Santa Barbara press.
After the conservative, Los Angeles County Museum board members rejected the Arensberg collection of avant-garde, 20th Century art, Fanny, her daughter-in-law, Shirley Brice, and Hollywood notables such as Fanny’s friends actors Vincent Price, and Edward G. Robinson; playwright/screenwriter, Clifford Odets; agent/producer Leland Hayward; Mildred Jaffe, wife of agent/producer, Sam Jaffe; writer/philosopher, Aldous Huxley; celebrity industrial designer, Henry Dreyfuss; and the Arensbergs themselves founded the Modern Institute of Art in Beverly Hills in an attempt to keep the collection in Los Angeles. Ultimately, the collection moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. However, with others, the Brice family’s interest in developing Los Angeles’ culture and its appreciation for Modern Art had begun.
top: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
bottom: Fanny Brice enjoying Rouault painting at a Frank Perls Gallery exhibition, Beverly Hills, California, 1947. Time/Life