April 29, 1994

ARTISTS may moan that theirs is a lonely profession. But the people who make the international art world move -- the dealers, collectors and auction-house experts -- tend to travel in packs. And their destination, for the next two weeks anyway, is New York City. Art shows are happening all over Manhattan during this period, at conventional spots like galleries and the Seventh Regiment Armory and at more offbeat sites like a ship terminal and a hotel off Gramercy Park. Each show has been timed to coincide with the spring sales of contemporary, Impressionist and modern art that start at Christie's and Sotheby's on Tuesday evening. (The public viewings of the art that will be auctioned begin this weekend at the two houses.)

I HAVE never had the discipline or concentration to collect anything in depth, so I would not characterize myself as a collector in the truest sense of the word; a more accurate description would be an accumulator of mini-collections. But the acquisition of objects has filled part of the void I experienced as a child for esthetic things. My earliest exposure to collecting came in the early 1950's, when I was escorted through Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin East studio near my birthplace, Spring Green, Wis. My uncle, who was then a stone mason for Wright, led me past endless Oriental Buddhas, Japanese screens and ceramics. The culmination of the tour was our arrival at the office vault, which was stacked with Wright's Japanese prints. This was a real eye-opener for a boy growing up in a home where the only works of artistic merit were reproductions of Gainsborough and Holbein paintings, and some illustrated fairy tale books by the Brothers Grimm.

With auto sales booming in North and South America and strengthening in Europe, the General Motors Corporation reported today that its first-quarter profits jumped 66.5 percent from a year earlier, to $854 million. The robust earnings, which at 81 cents a share exceeded the expectations of automotive securities analysts, came despite a previously announced $758 million charge G.M. took to account for benefits for some former employees. Without the charge, G.M., the world's largest auto maker, earned $1.6 billion.

Companies Prudential Insurance conceded that a whistle-blower it fought in court and then dismissed from his job was correct that the values of certain properties in two real estate funds for institutional investors had been inflated by the company. [ Page A1. ]

The Walt Disney Studios, which has long had one of Hollywood's most stable management teams, was thrown into turmoil today with the promotion of David Hoberman, the president of Disney's Touchstone Pictures unit, to a new job in charge of all motion pictures produced by Disney. The appointment includes responsibility for pictures made by all three arms of the Walt Disney Company's principal movie-making operation: Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures. It also signaled a shift from the kinds of films Disney has released in recent years.