What's in a Picture? Tragedy in Bar Harbor T HE dark-clad and tormented figure of Medea stands astride wooden folding chairs amid the semicircle indicates that a good the lower step, stretching one long, pale arm in appeal toward number of the other well-to-do vacationers on Mount Desert Island the unlistening figure of her unfaithful husband, Jason. on this glorious August afternoon preferred to take part in the more Behind the desperate pair, marble columns soar upward in stark usual pursuits of sailing, attending extravagant lawn parties, and Ionic splendor. It's a scene straight out of classical Greece. Well, overseeing construction of palatial summer "cottages," each new almost, if one overlooks the classical Roman clothing. Here, how- one more extraordinary than the last. It's a good bet, nevertheless, ever, Euripedes' tragedy from fourth-century Greece has been that at least a few of the same culturally oriented spectators shown transplanted to 1920s Bar Harbor - August, 21, 1920, to be exact here might also have been present thirteen years earlier, when this - and one wonders if the audience of some forty Bar Harbor grand Building of the Arts, built with the support of such well- summercators have even noticed the anachronistic attire. Most of known summer names in Bar Harbor as Mrs. Robert Abbe, the onlookers are arrayed in clothing suitable to their own time George Dorr, and George Vanderbilt, had been officially opened and place: dark suits for the men, matched with summery Panama by a concert featuring world-famous opera diva Emma Eames, her- hats (although one daring soul appears in white flannel pants and self a native of Bath. Alas, the glory days of this grandiose Greek in white buckskin shoes) and a full array of fashionable, wide temple, like those of the mournful Medea, were doomed to end Gainsborough-brimmed hats for the ladies. In strict accordance with center of culture, the Building of Arts went up in flames in 1947, tragedy. Always more a monumental curiosity than a renowned the U.S. Plummage Acts of 1913, none of these millinery creations along with a great many of the island summer homes - including bear egrets or birds of paradise; lacking that, many have been adorned with almost whole gardens of posies. The onlookers are probably a few belonging to those seated here twenty-seven years - -Ellen MacDonald Ward earlier. clearly here for a summer dose of culture, although a few empty 114 DOWN EAST Auq'03