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The fusion of art and politics: Events shaping the public-private venture to take American art abroad

Hanzal, Carla M., M.A.

The American University, 1990

Copyright ©1990 by Hanzal, Carla M. All rights reserved.

UMI 300N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. THE FUSION OF ART AND POLITICS:

EVENTS SHAPING THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE VENTURE

TO TAKE AMERICAN ART ABROAD

by

Carla M. Hanzal

submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in

Arts Management

Signatures of Committee:

Chair:

D§ari of phe'College

August 31, 1990 Date

1990 The American University 7/03 Washington, DC 20016

THE AMERICA!! UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 0 COPYRIGHT by

CARLA M. HANZAL

1990

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE FUSION OF ART AND POLITICS:

EVENTS SHAPING THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE VENTURE

TO TAKE AMERICAN ART ABROAD

BY

Carla M. Hanzal

ABSTRACT

During this century the visual arts in the United

States came to be recognized as a medium of influence and as

a mode of communication. The fusion of art and politics

resulted in a new form of diplomacy. This thesis examines

the public and private influences shaping cultural diplo­

macy. It explores how we as a nation devised a cultural

image to be presented abroad and how that image reflected

political and ideological trends.

Both primary and secondary resources were utilized to

follow the mazelike path of government-private sector col­

laborations to promote the cause of American art. With the

formation of the Art in Embassies Program (AIEP) in 1964,

the United States government successfully formalized a pro­

gram of cultural diplomacy. Though modest in scope, the

AIEP is one of the most enduring collaborative initiatives

to establish an American cultural presence abroad through

the visual arts.

ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my

advisor, my committee, and to all those who gave of their

time and expertise in helping me with this paper.

I would like to give special thanks to Naima Prevots

of the Department of Performing Arts, whose enthusiasm and

encouragement was constant throughout, and to Gary 0. Larson

of the National Endowment for the Arts for his insightful

critiques.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my

family and friends who were there to cheer me on.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Chapter

1. AMERICA— ARTISTIC PROGRESSION AND INTERNATIONALISM ...... 3

The Ashcan School ...... 5 The 1913 International Exhibition of Art: The Armory S h o w ...... 10 Critical Reception and Impact ...... 15

2. CULTURAL RELATIONS AND POWER DIPLOMACY ...... 22

Power Diplomacy...... 25 Buenos Aires Convention ...... 27 The Division of Cultural Relations (RC) .... 28 Cultural Relations Conferences ...... 31 Office of the Coordinator of Inter- American A f f a i r s ...... 36 Art Programs ...... 38 Postwar Globalization ...... 49

3. ADVANCING AMERICAN ART: ONE STEP FORWARD, THREE STEPS B A C K ...... 55

Advancing American Art: A Step Forward .... 62 Three Steps Back— Not American, Not Traditional, Not G o o d ...... 67 Retrenchment ...... 75 The A t t a c k ...... 76 Modern Art Controversy in the Postwar Climate . 82

4. A TURNING POINT: THE ERA OF CONFRONTATION .... 85

Chronology— A Turning Point ...... 87 Competitive Coexistence ...... 94 International Council— Museum of Modern Art . . 100 The Woodward Foundation ...... 112

iv

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5. ART IN EMBASSIES 118

National Accessions Committee ...... 128 Stephen Munsing— Educating People ...... 139 Jane Thompson...... 142 Lee Kimche M c G r a t h ...... 147 C o n c l u s i o n ...... 151

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 155

V

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION

During this century the visual arts in the United

States were recognized by government as a medium of

influence and as a mode of communication. The fusion of art

and politics resulted in a new form of diplomacy. This

thesis will examine how we as a nation arrive at a cultural

image to be projected abroad and how this image is related

to political and ideological trends.

Like many other cultural initiatives by government,

the major groundwork for cultural diplomacy was forged

through the philanthropic-cultural initiatives of the pri­

vate sector. Government's first initiative to use the

visual arts as a tool of diplomacy arose from Roosevelt's

"Good Neighbor" policy of the 1930s. Recognizing that the

political, economic, and cultural relations with other

nations are inextricably linked together, the Division of

Cultural Relations was created in 1938 under the purview of

the State Department. According to Assistant Secretary of

State William Benton, the program would demonstrate "to all

those abroad who thought of the United States as a nation of

materialists, that the same country which produces brilliant

1

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. scientists and engineers also produces creative artists."1

Following World War II, the Department of State, as

part of a broader program in cultural affairs, began to

sponsor exhibitions of American art abroad as a major ploy

in the Cold War battle. As a means of cultural diplomacy,

these works of art had the potential to communicate in ways

that transcended linguistic barriers. That we are a nation

with a tradition of diversity; that we allow freedom of

expression; and that we are a country with a rich artistic

legacy in our own right is conveyed, perhaps most suc­

cinctly, through the creative endeavors of American artists.

It is for symbolic purposes such as these that collections

of American art work are displayed in foreign posts.

Although international exchange of the visual arts

suffered various setbacks during the "Red Scare" of the

McCarthy era in the 1940s and 1950s, it was again a national

focus during the time of Kennedy's New Frontier administra­

tion in the 1960s. With the formation of the Art in Embas­

sies Program in 1964, the U.S. government formalized the

government-private sector collaboration to promote the cause

of American art abroad. Though modest in scope, the Art in

Embassies Program is one of the most enduring formalized

efforts to establish a cultural presence abroad through the

visual arts.

1Gary O. Larson, The Reluctant Patron: The United States Government and the Arts. 1943-1965 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 23.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1

AMERICA— ARTISTIC PROGRESSION AND INTERNATIONALISM

The first decade of the twentieth century marks a time

when American artists began to sever their ties from the

conservative tastes of the National Academy of Design, which

favored prescribed formulas of rendering objects. The

National Academy of Design had reigned for over seventy-five

years as the most conspicuous and prestigious place for art­

ists to exhibit and sell their work.1 The "official art"

of the Academy was backward-looking. It idealizing a more

sedentary way of life and endorsed pseudo-classicism based

on European models. Progressive art, according the Academy

was that which was an extension of the past.2 It was this

conservatism that Robert Henri and the group of New York

realist painters, known as the Ashcan School, challenged at

the turn of the century. They brought art back into touch

with the changing realities of the twentieth century and

rejected the genteel tradition of the Academy. Robert

Henri, the leader of the Ashcan School, remarked in 1910:

Bussell Lyons, "1902," Art News 11 (November 1987): 156.

2Constance H. Schwartz, The Shock of Modernism in America: The Eight and Artists of the Armory Show (New York: Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, 1984), 9.

3

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As I see it, there is only one reason for the develop­ ment of art in America and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time and in their own land. In this century we have no need of art as a culture; no need of art for poetry's sake, or any of these things for their own sake. What we do need is art that expresses the spirit of the people of today.3

A style more indigenous to our soil began to evolve

out of a need to record a rapidly changing America in which

industrialization and immigration had created a dichotomous

society. The urban realities of overcrowding and poverty,

and the influx of immigrants from both the farms and foreign

countries contrasted with the nineteenth-century rural

homogeneity and relative economic stability. Artists

attempted to record these realities, and a different

aesthetic was born. It was raw life on canvas, the complete

opposite of the staid and stylized subjects represented by

the National Academy of Design in New York. This forging of

a new identity in art was a first, important step in the

crusade against academic isolation. This less prescribed

and less Eurocentric identity was to become a major factor

in our involvement in artistic internationalism and cultural

diplomacy.

The significance of this situation to intercultural

exchange is that before we could showcase American art

abroad, we first had to create an autonomous cultural image.

This meant that American artists had to forge an art that

3New York Sun. 1 April 1910, quoted in Schwartz, 52.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5

made a clear contemporary American statement; that an art

market had to be developed for contemporary American work;

that dealers had to see and sell the work; that critics had

to evaluate the work; and that artists had to obtain gallery

space and have their works shown and sold. Until these

events could happen, American art was doomed to the conser­

vative provincialism of the establishment art.

The Ashcan School

Between 1900 and 1905 Robert Henri and five artists—

George Luks, Eugene Glackens, John Sloan, George Bellows,

and Everette Shinn— formed the core of a new artistic move­

ment that would challenge the hegemony of the Academy. All

had been newspaper illustrators who were skilled at accu­

rately capturing situations in a rapid-sketch technique.

Everyday life for these artists became rich and viable sub­

ject material. They had all studied at the Philadelphia

Academy of Fine Art, an institution directed for many years

by Thomas Eakins. Eakins urged his students to forge a new

American image, "to peer deeper into the heart of American

life. . . . Only by doing this will we create a great and

distinctly American art."4

With that charge, Henri, Luks, Glackens, Sloan, and

Shinn, known collectively as the Ashcan School, began to

record slices of the life experienced by common people.

4Bernard B. Perlman, The Immortal Eight (West Port, CT: Northlight, 1967), quoted in Schwartz, 14.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6

Self-ascribed as men "who think, who are academic, and who

believe above all that art of any kind is an expression of

individual ideas of life," the members of the Ashcan School

were motivated to paint "the misery of life, the seamy

side."5 They painted the commonplace rituals of ordinary

people rather than the gilded existence of sophisticated

gentility, an image based on courtly European models. For

example, after going to the fights, George Bellows went back

to the studio recorded with broad strokes of paint the pow­

erful momentum of the boxers. His composition froze an

instant and transformed the banal into a monumental scene.

John Sloan similarly recorded specific moments of life. In

one painting he captured the quiet interaction of three

women on a rooftop, drying their hair in the intense, late

Sunday morning sun— a weekly ritual on their only day off

from the factories.

Paintings such as these introduced a healthy vitality

into American art. They showed its independence from

academy-endorsed styles and raised the possibility of

rejecting certain European models. However, at the turn of

the century there were few venues where these "new" American

paintings could be shown.

In Pioneers of Modern Art. Lloyd Goodrich discusses

the powerful position of the Academy and how conservative

preferences of the juries pervaded the artistic environment:

5New York Sun. 15 May 1907, quoted in Schwartz, 49.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7

The United States' phenomenal material growth had not been matched by artistic growth. The art world was com­ pletely conservative. For us today it is hard to real­ ize conditions [at that time]. The few dealers inter­ ested in American art were committed to the academ­ icians. For a young or unknown artist, the only way to reach the public was through the big annual exhibitions of museums and artist's societies, controlled by conser­ vative juries who excluded the non-conformist. Accep­ tance or rejection by these shows could mean artistic survival or failure.5

In response to this situation artists began to take

individual action against the tyranny of the National Acad­

emy of Design. About 1905, the Ashcan School enlarged its

core as the five became allied with three other liberal,

though quite different, painters: Arthur B. Davies, Ernest

Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast. Collectively known as "The

Eight," these men planned an aesthetic coup d'etat. When

three members— Luks, Shinn, and Glackens— were blackballed

from the 1907 Spring Exhibition of the Academy, it became

obvious that change would have to come through the efforts

of individual artists. To this end, group exhibitions

became the platform for these vital and innovative American

artists. This maverick approach helped to establish a new

set of standards for selection and exhibition of art by art­

ists who rejected the academic formula of the Academy.

6Under the juried show system, a sponsoring organiza­ tion requested entries from artists. The artists would submit their works to be reviewed by a committee (jury) that would then make final selections for the show. A nonjuried show, advocated by the Eight, was arranged by artists— participating artists chose both their colleagues and the works to be shown. See Lloyd Goodrich, Pioneers of Modern Art in America: The Decade of the Armory Show. 1910-1920 (New York: Whitney Museum of Art, Praeger, 1963), 16.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8

In 1908, William MacBeth, a gallery owner in New York,

empathetic with the needs of these independent artists,

agreed to lend the Eight his gallery for a two-week exhibi­

tion. The unjuried exhibition opened on February 3, 1908.

"Over 300 people per hour crowded into the MacBeth Gallery,"

according to Constance Schwartz in The Shock of Modernism,

and, "every day from 9:00 to 6:00 p.m. until February 15 the

same phenomenon occurred."7 Seven paintings were sold.

Four were purchased by artist and art patron Gertrude

Vanderbilt Whitney and became permanent in the collection of

the Whitney Museum.8

Based on the success of the 1908 exhibition, in 1910

the Eight worked toward establishing a gallery that could

display at least 200 works by independent American artists.

Scheduled to open on April 1, 1910, the show would be in

direct competition with the opening of the Academy's annual

spring exhibition. Robert Henri and John Sloan, together

with William MacBeth and artist Walt Kuhn, planned the exhi­

bition and rented a vacant building at West 35th Street.

The resulting exhibition was an unprecedented success— one

thousand people jammed into the building on the opening day

while fifteen hundred were waiting on line.9

7Schwartz, 9.

8Ibid.

9Ibid., 52.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Concurrent with the 1910 Independent Exhibition, on

April 1, 1910, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen mounted

the first collective show of modernist American and European

artists in the Photo-Session Gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue.

Works of art by Henri Mattise, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cezanne,

Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Constance Brancusi, and Gino

Serverini were shown together with American artists, notably

Max Weber, Alfred Maurer, John Marin, Marsden Hartley,

Arthur Dove, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright.10 Stieglitz made

it his goal to present European avant garde, and also to

show the innovative work of American artists.11 From 1908

to 1913, Gallery 291 exhibited and introduced many of the

French modernists, including Rodin, Mattise, Toulouse-

Lautrec, Rousseau, and Cezanne.12

The exhibits at both Gallery 291 and at West 35th

Street indicated fundamental needs: the need for American

independent artists to exhibit their work in a serious

10Ian Dunlop, The Shock of the New (London: Weinfeld & Nicholson, 1972), 167.

1;LThe relationship between Stieglitz and Henri was somewhat adversarial— Henri represented "democratic egali­ tarian art," while Stieglitz represented the "progressive avant-garde." The individual differences between Henri and Stieglitz marked the larger controversy of style. Although both styles were antiofficial and nonacademic art, the mod­ ernist avant-garde and the socially oriented, realist move­ ments were more or less in opposition to one another until the second World War. For further discussion, see Barbara Rose, American Art Since 1900: A Critical History (New York: Praeger, 1967), 75.

12Ibid, 53.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10

context; the need for a comprehensive exhibition that would

reveal the development of modern art since impressionism;

and the need for American and European public and artists to

make strides toward cultural exchange and understanding.

The strides made by Henri and Stieglitz served as sig­

nificant precursors to the 1913 International Exhibition of

Modern Art— an event that was to seal the declining control

of the Academy and allow American artists to become active

participants in the international arena.

The 1913 International Exhibition of Art: The Armory Show

The Armory Show was initially conceived as a continua­

tion of the independent exhibitions begun by revolutionary

artists against what they perceived as tyrannical policies

of the National Academy. Toward the end of 1911, the Asso­

ciation of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) was

created to exhibit works by American and foreign painters,

and to provide a venue for work that had been neglected.

The National Academy had always controlled major exhibi­

tions— and thus the sale— of paintings and sculpture in

America, enjoying a monopoly that the Association hoped to

break. The intent of organizing the group was also

didactic— to inform the public, through exhibitions, of

recent developments both here and abroad. These artists

hoped to raise the consciousness of the American public,

making them aware that the art of this country had merit and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11

should be displayed and collected with the same enthusiasm

as European works of art.

The early members of the Association of American

Painters and Sculptors were Arthur B. Davies, Gutzon

Borglum, Putnam Brinkley, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson,

George Luks, John Mowbray-Clarke, and Leon Dabo. They col­

lectively established the Association with the purpose of

"developing a broad interest in American Art activities, by

holding exhibitions of the best contemporary work that can

be secured, representative of American and foreign art."13

The 1913 Armory Show project was initially planned without

juries or prizes, to include primarily American art and a

few things from abroad. While many of the members were

still thinking in terms of another American exhibition,

Davies advocated that the exhibit should give a firsthand

view of European modern art. The organization worked on a

shoestring budget, and rented the 69th Regiment Armory at

Lexington Avenue and 25th Street.

Preparation for the 1913 Armory Show was a major

volunteer effort. Numerous individuals assisted in nearly

every way imaginable, from locating works from abroad to

ghost-writing stories about the show in popular magazines to

arouse the public's curiosity.

Davies was chairperson for finding works to be

exhibited from abroad. During the summer of 1912 he read an

13Dunlop, 167.

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account of the Cologne Sonderband show which was organized

around a historical account to provide "a conspectus of the

movement which has been termed Expressionism.1,14 This

method of presenting the evolution of a modern movement

served as. a pattern for what Davis hoped to accomplish with

the organization of the Armory Show.

In the fall of 1912, Davis and Kuhn went to Paris,

where they met with Walter Pach, an artist and critic who

introduced them to many avant-garde figures. Although Kuhn

and Davies had only ten days to make their selections,

despite the rush, they established the backbone of foreign

selections and secured works from such notables of the Paris

avant-garde movement as Marcel Duchamp, Paul Cezanne, Odilon

Redon, and Henri Matisse.15

The selection task before the domestic committee,

chaired by Glackens, was more formidable— originally the

show was to be unjuried and artists could participate "by

invitation only," but many unsolicited artists submitted

works, and a small jury had to be arranged to choose among

these works. Out of many possibilities they selected

Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, and Joseph Stella, among

others, all of whom became prominent artists in the follow­

ing decades.

14Ibid., 171. 15Ibid., 173.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Armory Show opened on February 17, 1913, and ran

until March 15, 1913.16 A condensed version of the exhibit

subsequently traveled to the Art Institute in Chicago (March

24-April 16, 1913) and to Copley Hall in Boston (April 28-

May 19, 1913). It was a notable public success: "300,000

visitors paid to see the exhibition and perhaps as many

without paying."17 The Armory Show was massive— comprising

approximately 1,600 entries, roughly 700 American works and

500 European works. Almost two shows in one, the show

attempted to give a historical survey of American works

paralleling European art and its evolution over the years.

It put into context the development of contemporary art,

including cubism, fauvism and the various expressionist

styles by tracing their roots to more familiar classical,

romantic, and realistic styles.18

Seen in America for the first time in a large-scale

exhibition were the works of artists such as Cezanne,

Picasso, Braque, Gauguin, Derain, and Kandinsky. They were

to be displayed to an audience that was, for the most part,

totally unfamiliar with them. Public taste had been

primarily molded by the conventional and sentimental

aesthetics of the National Academy of Design. What the

16Harold Osborne, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth- Century Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 153.

17Ibid., 154.

18Martin Green. The Armory Show and the Patterson Strike Pageant (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 173.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14

organizers of the show attempted was to shake this tradition

and to bring new ideas to American art. Stieglitz, one of

the show's promoters, and an advocate of modernistic Amer­

ican art, wrote in the New York American; "The dry bones of

a dead art are rattling as they never rattled before."19

Besides the massive attendance at the show, it was a

market success in the sale of art work: 174 works were

sold, including 51 American works, which for that time was

extraordinary.20 Lillie P. Bliss, Arthur Jerome Eddy,

Katherine Drier, and A. E. Gallatin, among others, purchased

paintings and developed some of the earliest substantial

American collections of contemporary art. Many of these

collections subsequently formed the backbone of modern col­

lections in institutions. For example, the Bliss collection

provided the nucleus of the Museum of Modern Art, founded in

1929; the Eddy collection is now part of the Chicago Art

Institute; Katherine Drier with the assistance of Man Ray / and Marcel Duchamp founded the Societe Anonyme in 1920— the

first modern art museum in America; and A. E. Gallatin

created the "Gallery of Living Art" at New York University

in 1927.21

19New York American. 26 January 1913, quoted in Martin Green, New York 1913 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988), 184.

200sborne, 156.

2■'•Barbara Rose, American Art Since 1900 (New York: Praeger, 1967), 79.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15

Critical Reception and Impact

The Armory Show catalog stated that it was "an

opportunity for the country to see influences in other coun­

tries so the intelligent can judge for themselves, by them­

selves. 1,22

Through this firsthand exposure to European and Amer­

ican contemporary art, the show fostered much debate about

the visual content of art works. The reactions of the

majority of the American public, press, and critics was gen­

erally puritanical, ranging from indignant outrage, to

horror, to jovial mockery. The greatest controversy came

from Marcel Duchamp's painting Nude Descending a Staircase.

No. 2 . In efforts to describe the work, journalists and

critics devised such descriptions as, "An explosion in a

shingle factory," "A pack of brown cards in a nightmare,"

and a witty pun: "A staircase descending a nude."23

Picasso's cubist Demoiselles d' Avignon and Manet's

Deieuner sur l'herbe were great favorites, largely because

they aroused a great deal of curiosity.24 Matisse's work,

on the other hand, often drove the critics to anger. One

critic for the New York Times bluntly put it: "We may as

well say in the first place that his pictures are ugly, that

they are coarse, that they are narrow, that to us they are

22Milton Brown, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 57

23Ibid. 24Ibid.

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revolting in their inhumanity."25 At the Chicago Art

Institute, an effigy of Matisse's Blue Nude was burned by

art students.26 To quell the public's curiosity about what

they perceived to be the mad Matisse, a journalist for the

New York Times interviewed him and to the journalist's sur­

prise found him to be "a 'normal' person . . ., a fresh,

healthy, robust blonde gentleman, who looked more German

than French and whose simple and unaffected cordiality put

me directly at ease."27

The works of art included in the Armory Show served as

a means of comparison between American and European artistic

developments. Martin Green discerns some of these patterns

in his book New York 1913;

John Sloan's Sunday Women Drying their Hair (1912) makes a sharp contrast with Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase of the same year. This was a contrast between New York Realism, which had been the avant-garde of American art, and the School of Paris. . . . Sloan's women are completely and immediately recognizable as women of a certain physical type and as belonging to certain social and geographical and age groups; their belonging together, and the painter's seeing them together, is an event, and the time and place of the event could not be clearer . . . whereas Duchamp's nude is abstracted from time and space and sex and even physique; the image is robotic, both in movement and in color. The painter insists on how far he is from flesh and blood.28

25New York Times. 23 February 1913, quoted in Brown, 57.

26Brown, 57.

27Ibid., 189.

28Green, New York 1913. 175-76.

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The 1913 Armory Show reflected the state of nonaca­

demic art in this country. It allowed American independents

for the first time to take stock of themselves in comparison

with the European vanguard. "Their reaction [to the show]

was not self-congratulatory,11 according to Lloyd Goodrich,

former director of the Whitney. He went on to quote the

journalist Frederic J. Gregg, who at the time said, "The

vast majority of the American works exhibited represented

simply arrested development.1,29

However, over the course of time the positive impact

of the show had the most lasting effect. The Armory Show

was a real touchstone event both in terms of breaking away

from the established tradition of the Academy and in think­

ing of our new aesthetic identity in an international con­

text. Mabel Dodge, a sponsor and honorary vice president of

the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, wrote to

Gertrude Stein in Paris and revealed the invigorating impact

of intercultural exchange on American art:

It seems as though everywhere, in that year 1913 bar­ riers went down and people reached each other who had never been in touch before; there were all sorts of new ways to communicate, as well as new communications. The new spirit was abroad and swept us together.30

29Goodrich, 30.

30Lois Palken Rudnick, Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman. New World (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1944), 77, quoting Dodge to Gertrude Stein [April? 1913].

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18

The Armory Show brought into relief certain assumptions,

both by the statements of its organizers and by the people

who mocked the show, about art and culture in America.

To the organizers, the show was a symbol of the Amer­

ican ideal of individualism; they were seeking freedom and

"independence" from the controlling artistic institutions of

the time. They created the show out of a real spirit of

experimentation. Organized independently from institutions

such as the National Academy of Design, the show, in

essence, challenged the monopolistic process of selection.

The Armory Show was an attempt to legitimatize revolu­

tionary art. Having no tradition of radical art at that

time in America, the idea was presented in the context of

radical politics. The adopted motto of the show was "The

New Spirit," and the emblem was a flag with an uprooted

pinetree— the Tree of Liberty, the same emblem on the flag

of Massachusetts during the American Revolution.31 The show

marked one of the first times that individuals considered

modern art to be associated with radical and threatening

politics. The day after the show closed an editorial

appeared in the New York Times that labeled the modernists

"cousins to the anarchists in politics."32 Thus, unrest in

art was equated with unrest in politics. Concomitantly, the

31Goodrich, 26.

32New York Times. 16 March 1913, quoted in Rose, 76.

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diverse developments in American art especially could be

seen as reflecting the changing political, social, and

industrial context of the nation. In 1913 Henry Hapgood

wrote in the Globe:

We are living at a most interesting moment in the art development of America. It is no mere accident that we are also living at a most interesting moment in the political, industrial, and social development of Amer­ ica. What we call our "unrest" is the condition of vital growth, and this beneficent agitation is as noticeable in art and the woman's movement as it is in politics and industry.33

Thus, the new American aesthetic that was evolving

reflected political and ideological trends of the day. The

impact upon American artists was that many continued to

experiment with the new styles seen at the Armory Show— and

from this time "abstraction became a promising force in

American art."34 The impression that the show made upon

several American artists is notable: "Before 1913 Joseph

Stella, Arthur C. Dove, Kuhn and Epstein— and among the

younger painters, Dasburg and Davies— had all been realists,

in one sense or another, and after the show they were mod­

ernists."35 The show affected Sloan, one of the New York

realists. He talked about the effect of Picasso's work in

the Gist of Art:

When I saw his work in the Armory Show, along with that of Cezanne and the other great ultra-moderns, it opened

33Globe, 17 May 1913, quoted in Rose, 76.

34Rose, 78.

35Green, The Armory Show. 189.

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my eyes to a fresh way of seeing the art of all time. I lost some of the "blinders" of prejudice about subject- matters. . . . Henri had stressed the painting of con­ temporary life, perhaps so much that some of us didn't realize how many Renaissance and Romanesque paintings or sculptures were really based on the contemporary scenes of the times.36

The show also helped to dispel some of the suspicion of the

legitimacy of modernism by showing it as a natural histori­

cal progression of art rooted in more traditional, familiar

forms.

The show, however, was received with mixed response.

While some found the content threatening, proponents of the

show argued that the values asserted by contemporary art

were the basic American values— freedom and individualism.

America, at the time of the Armory Show, was also assimilat­

ing millions of new immigrants. The threat posed by the

invasion of foreigners was often expressed in contempt for

foreign art. Even rejecting modern art because it was

"European" reflected the cultural isolation of the time.

The show was a celebration of difference, and indicated a

need for communication, so that new ideas could be brought

to American art.

The Armory Show was in effect a Trojan Horse, unleash­

ing a band of invaders. Compared to the fully realized

developments of European modern art, American art in many

respects looked plain and tentative. The Armory Show indi­

cated how far we had come and how far we had yet to go. It

36Ibid.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. served to cultivate a group of enlightened patrons, who in

addition to buying the works of European modernists, sup­

ported the work of American artists. Through the collec­

tions of these people, which often formed the nucleus of

modern collections in museums, modern art became firmly

established as a component of American culture. Established

artistic values were shaken and from that time modern art

was a living issue in the United States.37

The 1913 Armory Show was an important first step in

the realization that art could play a role in breaking down

barriers between countries and that American art could pos­

sibly play a part in the process. With the decline of the

Academy, a new system of galleries and museums was estab­

lished to exhibit the works of contemporary artists. With

the establishment of these systems, the Armory Show marked

the beginning of artists entering the international realm—

* conceptualizing that American art could have international

significance.

370sborne, 167.

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CULTURAL RELATIONS AND POWER DIPLOMACY

Just as a rather informal platform of support for

American art was being created in the United States, the

infrastructure for intercultural exchange was being put in

place by private philanthropic initiatives. At the turn of

the century private foundations began establishing the

bureaucratic and philosophical models that furthered cul­

tural initiatives in the international realm.

The three oldest philanthropic foundations, Carnegie,

established in 1911; Rockefeller, dating from 1913; and

Russel Sage, founded in 1907, were established primarily to

alleviate some of the problems of rapid urban expansion.1

While industrial and scientific knowledge was expanding,

American society was beset with widespread poverty and

ignorance. The top priority these wealthy industrialists

was to set about trying to fix some of the political, social

and economic injustices in society and consequently most of

their early projects were for scientific and medical work.

However, some initiatives extended into the international

lMGrantmakers in the Art Conference Summary," Philanthropy; Leadership in the 1990s. Fifth Annual Confer­ ence (Chicago: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Founda­ tion, 1989), 78.

22

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realm as a means of fostering better relations among

nations.

In 1910, at the same time the Ashcan School had its

independent exhibition, Andrew Carnegie made a move to pro­

mote international understanding by furthering intellectual

and cultural exchange. He felt that “international con­

flicts were caused by diplomatic misunderstandings."2 To

foster an environment in which diplomats could exchange

ideas in a nonpressured environment he created the Carnegie

Endowment for International Peace and supported the con­

struction of the Pan American Union.3

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

attempted to create cordial relationships between national

elites. Interchange was based on the presumption that diplo­

matic misunderstanding was a misunderstanding among individ­

uals, and given the opportunity, those individuals could

reach an agreeable solution. Exchange of ideas through the

translation of books, instruction in English, and inter­

change among leaders served to diminish certain stereotypes.

This person-to-person exchange of ideas created a more

accurate, real-world reference for key policy-makers. The

intent of the Endowment was to "make possible full partici­

pation in an increasingly coordinated and interdependent,

2Frank A. Ninkovitch, Diplomacy of Ideas; U.S. Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations. 1938-1950 (New York: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1981), 8.

3Ibid.

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yet informal system of transnational intellectual coopera­

tion. 1,4

From the mid-teens through the later nineteen twenties

there was a groundswell of philanthropic initiatives of

exchange. In part, World War I was responsible for the

explosion of interest in cultural relations. Many of the

projects were conducted by universities or other private

agencies, and often projects were initiated for educational

or humanitarian causes rather than exclusively for cultural

relations.

Among the more formalized initiatives that came about

was the founding of the Institute of International Education

in 1919, the first body devoted to the systematization of

cultural relations; the Committee on Intellectual Coopera­

tion of the League of Nations, founded in 1922; and the Gug­

genheim Fellowships, initiated in 1925.

These initiatives, above all, allowed for the free

movement of ideas. Individual projects were independently

carried out through the various channels of the organiza­

tions. A voluntarist approach was taken in almost every

instance because these early pioneers of cultural exchange

were suspicious of the coordinated European exchange

technique— centralized nationalism. Projects were conceived

with a decidedly antigovernmental bias on the premise that

political editorializing would endanger the commerce of

4lbid., 22.

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intellect. In Diplomacy of Ideas. Frank A. Ninkovitch, an

expert on diplomatic history, characterizes these exchanges

as being "dependent not so much on the expansionist dynamics

of capitalism" but rather "on the common properties of human

intelligence." 5

These days of blissful uncharted cultural interchange

among nations were short lived. Trouble both domestically

and internationally loomed on the horizon. By the 1930s the

U.S. was experiencing an unprecedented depression and the

First World War placed the United States into a heightened

international awareness.

Power Diplomacy

By the mid-1930s America realized the importance of

cultivating and maintaining friendly relationships with our

neighbors to the south. Totalitarian nations utilized

propaganda and exchanges in the American republics, and,

although there may not have been an immediate threat, it

caused the United States to reconsider the "voluntarist"

approach it had taken in cultural exchanges.

World War I changed America's relationship with

Europe, and during the years following the war there were

increasing worldwide social tensions and unrest. Frank

Ninkovitch comments on the increasingly international

environment of the 1930s, observing that "the statist

5Ibid.

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policies of the USSR, Germany, Italy, and Japan were

reflected not only in their military, economic policies, and

ruthless statecraft," but, he maintains, they also adopted

"cultural diplomacy as an explicit weapon in the arsenal of

national power.1'5

Of greatest concern to the United States was the

threat of Axis power Nazi Germany. South and Central Amer­

ica were strategically important, both because of their

proximity to the United States and because of their capacity

to produce many raw materials needed for armament. Axis

tactics of involvement in Latin America began in the 1930s

when large quantities of commodities were bought at block

sums, monopolizing the trade of the area to the Nazi econ­

omy. Additionally, this economic penetration was inter­

locked with propaganda programs designed to arouse antago­

nism against the United States. In response to the escalat­

ing threat, we entered the realm of "power diplomacy" rather

than "cultural laissez faire."7

Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles became one

of the first government officials to define the importance

of cultural relations in the context of foreign policy. In

1935, Welles spoke before various educational groups,

stressing the interrelatedness of economic, political and

cultural interests. He presented cultural relations as an

extension of Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy, and indicated

°Ibid., 23. 7Ibid., 26.

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that our political, economic, and cultural relations were

"inextricably linked together" and that the "breaking of

barriers" constituted the "major problem in foreign rela­

tions. "8

Cultural relations were seen as one lasting way of

establishing ties with foreign countries in a nonthreatening

way. Other attempts would appear to be self-interested and

motivated by materialism. Cultural exchange would clearly

be less threatening and would highlight similarities as well

as differences among the United States and the American

republics.

Buenos Aires Convention

World events continued to threaten peace in the mid-

1930s, and it became an important national interest to

create and maintain hemispheric solidarity through

"intellectual cooperation." To that purpose, on December

23, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt arranged a special

Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace in

Buenos Aires "to determine how the maintenance of peace

among the American republics may best be safeguarded."9 The

1936 Buenos Aires Convention for the Promotion of Inter-

American Cultural Relations, which was the key agreement to

emerge from the conference, broke the ground for government

to become committed to the policy of official sponsorship of

8Ibid., 24. 9Ibid.

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educational and cultural exchange. The program was modest

in scope and consisted mostly of reciprocal exchanges of

students and professors among the American nations. Never­

theless, it was a significant step in initiating govern­

ment's formal involvement in cultural diplomacy, and marked

the first step toward the creation of a more institutional­

ized program. The State Department began cultivating a pro­

gram of cultural interchange with Latin America as a means

of creating better relations— taking an offensive rather

than defensive stance.

The Division of Cultural Relations (RC)

In 1938, the creation of the Division of Cultural

Relations within the Department of State, and the Inter­

departmental Committee on Cooperation with the American

Republics, marked the United States' formal entrance into

the field of cultural diplomacy.10 The initiative was con­

ceived in response to the State Department's intent to

encourage inter-American solidarity. It was largely the

result of private momentum, as foundation leaders spear­

headed the drive for international perspective and implemen­

tation of the recommendations of the Buenos Aires Confer­

ence. Programs of cultural exchange were envisioned to help

10Gary 0. Larson, "From WPA to NEA: Fighting Culture with Culture," in Art. Ideology and Politics, ed. Margaret Jane Wyszomirski and Judith H. Balfe (New York: Praeger, 1983), 296.

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counter the Axis policies that were also being carried out

in the American republics.

Secretary of State Cordell Hull appointed Ben

Cherrington to be the first chief of the new division in

June 1938.11 "We do not establish strong ties with others

by exchanging culture in general," according to Cherrington,

"but rather by some interest or activity which has rich

meaning for each of us."12 Here Cherrington had a clear

idea of the content and method that must be employed for

successful cultural exchange and cooperation between the

United States and our neighbors.

To achieve this, Cherrington established an advisory

committee from governmental and private sources to institute

the program and exchanges carried out through the Office of

Education. The Cultural Relations division served primarily

as a clearinghouse to stimulate and coordinate private

efforts, a continuation of the machinery to carry out

exchanges under the Buenos Aires Convention.13

The program was limited by budgetary restrictions as

well as ideology. The initial budget was small. Congress

11J. Manuel Espinosa, Inter-American Beginnings of U.S. Cultural Diplomacy. 1936-1948. vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 1976), 112.

12Ibid., 113, quoting speech delivered by Ben Cher­ rington 19 April 1940 before the National Convention of the Daughters of the American Republic.

13Espinosa, 90.

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allocated only $75,000 and restricted spending to the

exchange program.14 Another inhibiting factor was the tra­

dition of noninterference by the federal government in cul­

tural matters. The State Department envisioned that this

program would be distinctly different from European cultural

efforts that were blatantly propagandistic in nature.

Cherrington summarized the Division's basic philosophy

at an address given to the National Education Association in

San Francisco on July 6, 1938. He maintained the program

"is not a propaganda agency" that would carry the implica­

tions of "penetration, imposition, and unilateralism."15

Rather, he emphasized that the program was designed to

facilitate understanding between the people of the United

States and those of other nations. To avoid any pretense of

propaganda, Cherrington felt that the goals could best be

achieved through an organization that was "definitely educa­

tional in character and which emphasizes the essential

reciprocity in cultural relations."16

Assistant Under Secretary Sumner Welles underscored

this role while addressing a large group of educators on

November 9, 1938, indicating that the scope of the program

was limited to being "essentially a clearinghouse, a coor­

dinating agency, whose purpose it is to collaborate in every

14Irwin Gelman, Good Neighbor Diplomacy: U.S. Policies in Latin America. 1933-1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1979), 146.

15Espinosa, 140. 16Ibid.

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appropriate way without trespassing upon and much less sup­

planting activities.,l17

There was a clear definition of domains between the

public and private sectors. Government was not at the

center of activities, but rather was a junior partner help­

ing to coordinate official "contacts" necessary for private

initiatives to be carried out. Furthermore, the majority of

the funding for the projects would come through private

initiatives. Assistant Under Secretary Welles hoped to

designate foreign officers to direct these cultural matters,

including the administration of the exchange program and the

coordination of other projects inside and outside of the

government.

Cultural Relations Conferences

A cultural agenda was developed by the Division of

Cultural Relations after a series of conferences held in

Washington, D.C., in 1939. At these conferences experts in

the fields of education, art, publications, libraries, and

music met to discuss how to organize cultural relations. In

most cases the participants recommended an expansion of pri­

vate cultural initiatives while the newly established divi­

sion would provide some overall guiding framework.18

17Ibid., 141.

18Ninkovitch, Diplomacy of Ideas. 33.

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The main projects under the purview of the CU were

exchange of scholars, interchange of books and translations,

exportation of motion pictures and radio broadcasts, and

presentation of visual and performing arts. Although the

visual and performing arts were viewed as marginal activi­

ties, in this context they were seen as activities that

needed to be thoroughly explored. The tentative position

the division devised pertaining to art and music established

certain criterion for excellence:

There is no doubt that only finest representation of the United States should be encouraged to tour the other American republics, and that only such talent should receive the attention of the Division. It is also felt that outstanding talent of the other American republics should be encouraged to come to the United States and that the Division should seek to enlist the participa­ tion of private agencies in this respect.19

The continued interest of private organizations such

as the Carnegie Endowment, the Rockefeller Foundation, the

Guggenheim Foundation, and the Institute of International

Education (among others) allowed exchange projects to come

to fruition.

Approximately 130 people in the field of art attended

the conference, including publishers, artists, art critics,

and museum professionals. They collectively agreed to

assist with exchanges under the purview of private initia­

tives and they advocated that artists, art historians, and

art research workers be included in exchanges.20 Likewise,

19Espinosa, 128. 20Ibid., 148.

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nearly 125 people participated in the conference on music.

They presented projects for exchange in music, including

exchange of musicians, composers, and music scores. They

even outlined a place for an Inter-American Music Center as

a permanent division of the Pan American Union.21

Under the auspices of the State Department, exhibi­

tions of paintings were circulated in cities throughout the

United States representing Latin American countries, notably

Argentina and Mexico. This was a collaborative effort of

U.S. museums, the Pan American Union, and the Hispanic Foun­

dation of the Library of Congress.22 The NBC Orchestra, the

Yale Glee Club, and individual musicians, such as pianist

Elizabeth Travis and orchestral conductor George Hoyan,

toured South America in 1940.23

Additional projects included Spanish translations of

North American publications. The long-range projects of the

RC included the establishment of libraries in Latin America

not only to lend books, but also to provide a place to hold

lectures and art exhibitions. The first important United

States library abroad, the Benjamin Franklin Library, opened

in Mexico City during April 1942, and several more followed

in other American republics.24

21Ibid. 22Ibid.

23Ibid., 149. 24Ibid., 147.

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Despite these initiatives, the program was still

viewed with some suspicion by many governmental officials.

They feared that it was a matter of time before this active

attempt by government at neutralizing Axis propaganda would

adopt similar propaganda tactics to achieve its goals. One

department officer argued that there was "scant logic in

proposing opposition to European propaganda by substituting

our own domestic brand."25

"Restraint" was the dynamic of the Division of Cul­

tural Relations until late 1939, when war broke out in

Europe. By June 1940, with the fall of France, the world

seemed to be heading for debacle. As a result of this

cataclysmic event, there was the growing conviction that the

United States needed to mobilize on all fronts, including

cultural relations.

With the outbreak of war there was the need to reach a

broader range of people. The lack of funding and somewhat

cautious planning for RC retarded the potential of the pro­

gram to address the crisis. The creation of a new agency

was prompted by the suggestions of Nelson Rockefeller, who

at the age of thirty-two had traveled extensively in Latin

America surveying his family's interests in Standard Oil

company's Venezuelan subsidiary, the Creol Petrolium Corpo­

ration. At that time Rockefeller was already president of

25Ninkovitch, Diplomacy of Ideas. 217.

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the Museum of Modern Art, which his mother helped establish

in 1929.26

It was at Rockefeller's request that President

Roosevelt prepared an address in honor of the dedication of

the new building for the Museum of Modern Art opening May

1939. The address was broadcasted over the radio for the

ceremony. He began, "We are dedicating this building to the

cause of peace and to the pursuits of peace," and continued:

The arts that noble and refine life flourish only in the atmosphere of peace. . . . For we know that only where men are free can the arts flourish and the civilization of national culture reach full flower. The arts cannot thrive except where men are free to be themselves and to be in charge of the discipline of their own energies and ardors. The conditions for demo­ cracy and for art are one in the same.27

Roosevelt's statement indicated that freedom of artistic

expression was beginning to be perceived as being inherently

tied to the ideals of democracy. One year later, in 1940,

Nelson Rockefeller spoke with some of Roosevelt's aides

about the possibility of starting an inter-American program

in which government and private business would partici­

pate.28 In response to the war emergency in Europe, he

wrote to presidential confidante Harry Hopkins to suggest

26Russell Lyons, Good Old Modern: An Intimate Portrait of the Museum of Modern Art (New York: Praeger, 1973), 157.

27Ibid., 206, quoting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's radio address on 10 May 1939.

28U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs, 1947 History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs, 1947), 9.

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the formation of an agency that would "provide greater eco­

nomic cooperation and closer cultural, scientific and educa­

tional ties."29

The proposal came to President Roosevelt's attention.

The president found it had merit and asked Secretary of

State Cordell Hull to respond to the proposal at the next

cabinet meeting. Although Hull did not attend the meeting,

Assistant Secretary Sumner Welles did, and argued adamantly

against the establishment of any new agency outside of the

State Department's control. Roosevelt, however, was already

committed to the idea of creating an inter-American office

and appointed James Forrestal, an administrative assistant

on inter-American Affairs, to formulate a program based on

Rockefeller's recommendations. However, Forrestal received

an appointment to become Undersecretary of the Navy in July.

Roosevelt then called Rockefeller to Washington and asked

him to direct the effort.

Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs

The Office for Commercial and Cultural Relations

between the American Republics (later known as the Office of

the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, OCIAA) was

formally created on August 16, 1940. It was formed by an

executive order within the president's burgeoning Office for

29Gelman, 148.

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Emergency Management, and was under the jurisdiction of the

Council of National Defense.30

Toward the end of the war the name was changed to the

Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA). The scope of the

OCIAA1s activities were focused in three fields: economic

cooperation, cultural matters, and information. "By effec­

tive use of government and private facilities in such fields

as arts and sciences, education and travel, the radio, press

and cinema," the OCIAA would facilitate "national defense

and strengthen the bonds between nations of the Western

Hemisphere.1,31 During its first year of operation, the ini­

tial grant of $3.5 million was allocated from the Presi­

dent's Emergency Fund. By 1944 the funds increased to more

than $30 million, and nearly 10 percent was expended for

cultural activities.32

The generous allotment of funds allowed the Coordina­

tor's Office to underwrite within a very short time many of

the educational and cultural exchange projects that had been

formulated at the 1939 conferences. Rockefeller drew upon

his intimate connection with the philanthropic and artistic

communities, contributing to the success of the program,

which in turn had a multiplying effect on foundation

30Frank A. Ninkovitch, "Currents of Cultural Diplo­ macy: Art and the State Department, 1935-1947," Diplomatic History 1 (July 1977): 218.

31U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs, 8.

32Espinosa, 162.

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contributions and on the initiatives of educational and

professional organizations.33

Art Programs

The first major cultural project funded and organized

under contractual basis was an exhibition tour of contempo­

rary American paintings throughout Latin America in 1941. A

total of 178 oils and 109 watercolors were selected by a

consortium of five New York City museums and organized into

three separate collections for simultaneous showings in dif­

ferent regions of Latin America.34

The plan for "Exposicion de Pintura Contemporanea

North Americana" was conceived in November 1940 by the Com­

mittee on Art of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-

American Affairs. The advisory committee on the arts

included John Abbott, executive vice president of MOMA;

Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress (and future

33Among the foundations, the most notable work was that of the Carnegie Endowment, Rockefeller Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and Carnegie Institu­ tion in Washington; see Espinosa, 178. The Museum of Modern Art's role remained central to the coordinator's cultural activities: It sponsored, in conjunction with the OCIAA, an Inter-American House, an Industrial Design Contest, a Latin American Art Survey, National Fairs traveling exhibitions of Latin American Art, and a Hemispheric Solidarity Poster Con­ test. "Projects Undertaken by the Museum of Modern Art— 1941-1942," in Record Group 229, Box 367, Records of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, National Archives (hereafter RG 229, Box #, Records of OCIAA, NA).

34"Summary Report on the Exhibition of Contemporary Art, 1941," by the OCIAA and MOMA, RG 229, Box 366, Records of OCIAA, National Archives.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39

assistant secretary of state for cultural and public

affairs); Henry Allen Moe, director of the Guggenheim Foun­

dation; and William Benton, then vice president of the Uni­

versity of Chicago and subsequently MacLeish's successor as

assistant secretary of state for cultural and public

affairs.35

John E. Abbott, chair of the advisory committee, dis­

cussed the proposal for this exhibit at the committee meet­

ing on November 7, 1940. In a memorandum to Robert Cald­

well, the director of the OCIAA's Cultural Relations Pro­

gram, he urged that the Coordinator's Office consider this

large-scale exhibit. The stated purpose of the exhibition,

he described, "would be to strengthen the bonds between the

nations of the Americas by their joining in a cooperative

and united effort to interpret the development of the art

and culture of the Western Hemisphere . . . depicted in a

broad front, tracing though the pre-European, Colonial and

Modern eras, the historical development in painting, sculp­

ture, architecture, folk arts, graphic arts, and art in

relation to industry."36

In the spring of 1942, Dr. Grace McCarsi Morley, a con­

sultant to the committee and director of the San Francisco

Museum of Art, tested the waters by visiting the capitals of

35Espinosa, 172.

36Letter to Robert C. Caldwell from John Abbott, 8 November 1940, RG 229, Box 367, Records of the OCIAA, NA.

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ten Latin American countries (Columbia, Ecuador, Peru,

Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, and

Cuba). She reported that the project was considered "highly

desirable by most of the authorities, artists, educators,

and laymen interested in art of the various South American

republics.1,37 A committee comprised of museum officials was

appointed to select paintings and to organize an exhibit for

the following year. They were representatives from five

museums, including John I. Baur of the Brooklyn Museum,

Lloyd Goodrich and Herman More of the Whitney Museum,

Dorothy C. Miller of the Museum of Modern Art, Herman W.

Williams of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Dr. George

C. Vaillant of the American Museum of Natural History.38

Paintings were contributed by individuals, galleries, and

museums. Although the majority of the works came from New

York, there were also paintings from California, Colorado,

the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New

Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas.39

The show, divided into three sections, simultaneously

circulated on the east, west, and north coasts of South

America. The Museum of Modern Art was responsible for

orchestrating the tour, and an individual accompanied each

of the three exhibitions to coordinate, with the authorities

37"Summary Report," 2.

38Ibid. 39Ibid.

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of the various countries, the actual presentation of the

exhibition.

Before circulating in Latin America the paintings were

shown from April 19-27, 1941, at the Metropolitan Museum in

New York. The New York Times commented that "upon the

whole," it is "an extremely well balanced representative

group of pictures, nearly 300 in number."40

The exhibition constituted a broad survey of American

artistic developments, ranging from the "more academic to

the more radical."41 The task before the organizers was to

discriminate "with a real appreciation of what is best cal­

culated to give those unfamiliar with American art a clear,

rounded impression.1,42 Although the intent for the exhibi­

tion was to be a survey of American works, the New York

Times article stated that the "contemporary aspect is

stressed.1,43 The show included a number of works by artists

who had participated in the Armory Show, including John

Sloan, William J. Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks,

Maurice Prendergast, and George Bellows. Additional artists

were also included— Walt Kuhn, Reginald Marsh, William

Gropper, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Arshile Gorky, among others,

showing that the intent of the exhibit was to be as

40New York Times. 19 April 1941.

41Ibid. 42Ibid.

43Ibid.

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comprehensive as possible.44 Ironically, this show fore­

shadowed a more controversial State Department exhibition

that went abroad in 1947, when William Benton was assistant

secretary of state for cultural and public affairs.

Although the works by many of the same artists were shown,

the 1947 show was perceived as more political volatile.

Catalogs as well as fifty-three complementary art

books for the library of the country's choice supplemented

the exhibition— thus providing more than an impression of

American culture. The impact of these simultaneous exhibi­

tions was notable. They were displayed for one month in

each location and were viewed by more than 218,000 people in

Latin America.45

This show acted as a catalyst to initiate a similar

exhibition of Latin American art work in the United States

the following year. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

prepared this exhibition intended to take place in the fall

and spring of 1942. The Museum of Modern Art was respon­

sible for circulating the exhibition. It too was divided

into an Eastern circuit, a Western circuit and a Central

state circuit and showed a variety of developments in Latin

44Ibid. It is interesting to note the article's bias— it did not discuss the content of the modern works, only the more familiar works of the Ashcan School.

45"Summary Report," 7.

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American art, ranging from pre-Columbian to contemporary art

work.46

As the study book that accompanied the exhibition

stated, the show's intent was to provide a "general survey

of typical art developments in Latin American countries

. . . not an exhaustive review of the diverse movements in

twenty very different countries.1,47 Although not comprehen­

sive in scope, it was hoped that the exhibition would be "an

avenue of approach to international understanding for the

intelligent spectator."48 This project created reciprocity

where none had previously existed. It was an attempt to

create unity by highlighting the similarities between our

cultures. According to the Study Book that accompanied the

exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Art,

Art is a useful interpreter. . . . Human beings every­ where feel and see much alike. The language of art expression— color, form, design— is a universal lan­ guage. Here the essential quality of typical countries and regions has been isolated for quicker apprehension by sensitive eyes and sympathized among our own people. . . . It is a thoughtfully presented introduction, selected and prepared to give a foundation for under­ standing for the many exhibitions of art from our southern neighbors.49

The show was primarily exhibited in university galleries,

arts societies and museums around the three regions of the

country for approximately one month in each venue.

46Ibid.

47"Study Book," 4, RG 229, Box 366, Records of the OCIAA, NA.

48Ibid. 49Ibid.

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The Museum of Modern Art was an active participant and

contributed many projects to the OIAA; notably, it fulfilled

38 contracts during this period.50 In June of 1941, MOMA

sponsored "Organic Design"— an industrial design competi­

tion, including the works of Latin American designers.

Opening on June 17, 1941, the works of the winning designers

were exhibited. Julio Villalobos, of Buenos Aires; Bernardo

Rudofsky, of Sao Paulo; Xevier Guerrero, of Mexico City; and

Roman Fresnedo, of Montevido, all received recognition for

their accomplishment in furniture design using natural

materials from their countries. The fifth winner in the

competition was a collaborative project by the design firm

Domus, of Mexico City— the designers were Michael van

Beuren, Klaus Grabe, and Morley Webb. Their winning design

indicated that the influence of the Bauhaus was already at

our back door— a symptom of how well integrated at this time

was the cultural influence of Germany in Latin America.51

A project specifically catered to a country was

initiated in 1942. At President Roosevelt's suggestion, Jo

Davidson, who had just returned from visiting ten South

American republics, created eleven bronze portrait busts of

Latin American presidents. Under the auspice of the Office

of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, he made the

50"Summary of Projects Completed by the Museum of Modern Art, n.d., RG 229. Box 367, Papers of the OCIAA.

51New York Times. 17 June 1941.

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preliminary studies of the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia,

Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay,

and Venezuela. The State Department presented the govern­

ments of the ten republics the completed bronze sculptures.

For a brief time they were on exhibit at the National

Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (June 27-July 19, 1942),

and more recently in the early 1980s at the National

Portrait Gallery.52

Other projects included the exhibition of paintings

done by school children from across the United States.

Among other locations, works were collected from the Los

Angeles public schools, from the Washington Children's Art

Center in D.C., and from schools in Colorado Springs.53

By 1942 a network of Latin American art projects

toured the United States sponsored by various organizations

subsidized by the OCIAA. For example, the American Feder­

ation of Arts had available for touring twenty-two wood and

terra cotta sculptures by Bolivian artist Marina Nunez and

52Received in unpublished document from NGA, 10. Included were busts of Roberto M. Ortiz, Argentina; Enrique Panaranda, Bolivia; Gefulio Vargas, Brazil; Pedro Aquirre Cerda, Chile; Edwardo Santos, Columbia; Carlos Arroyo del Rio, Ecuador; Higinio Morinigo, Paraguay; Manuel Prado Ugarteche, Peru; and Isaias Medira Angarita and Elezar Lopez Contreas, Venezuela. RG 229, Box 368, Records of the OCIAA, NA.

53December 1, 1942, correspondence with Jessie Miles Lewis, Head Supervisor, Art Section, Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles, from Olive M. Lyford, Executive Secretary, Art Section, RG 229, Box, 367, Records of the OCIAA, NA.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Mayan paintings by Joseph Lindon Smith; the Pan American

Union had an exhibition of paintings by children in Argen­

tina; the Philadelphia Museum of Art had a photography

exhibit, "Peoples of Pan America"; and IBM had four exhibi­

tions of Latin American prints and paintings. The Western

Association of Art Museum Directors in Seattle, Washington,

had twenty-two framed drawings by Mexican artist Diego

Rivera and an exhibit of Guatamalan Textiles. In addition

to exhibits, art films were also available on diverse topics

from Latin American flora and fauna to Mexican fiestas.54

Despite the reciprocal nature of these efforts, the

program was not without its critics. Although there were

claims that the visual arts had a capacity to reach a

broader section of the public than other mediums, the State

Department clearly seemed to be interested in reaching the

Latin elites. The most potent argument to ensure the pro­

gram's survival was that the art program was, in effect, a

psychological antidote to Axis propaganda, which contended

that Americans were "cultural Bolshevists.1155 Art programs

were put into the context of national defense, to serve as a

public opinion device to counter the negative image of Amer­

ica as a nation of materialistic barbarians. The form that

art policy took was shaped to some extent by wartime

54"Traveling Exhibitions of Latin American Art in the United States," 15 March 1942, RG 229, Box 367, Records of the OCIAA, NA.

55Ninkovitch, "Currents of Cultural Diplomacy," 218.

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pressures; and inevitably, a facet of these initiatives

became propagandistic, even though this had been adamantly

rejected in prewar policy debates.56

In 1941, the Coordinator's Office spent approximately

$800,000 for cultural activities. This, combined with the

amount spent by the Division of Cultural Relations, which

was nearly $200,000, brought the total expenditures of the

two agencies to a little over $1 million.57

The coordinator's relationship with the State Depart­

ment was, however, somewhat adversarial in nature. Clearly,

the OCIAA appeared to be the favored child, with a budget

that was more than three times the size of the Cultural

Relations Division. Because of its greater resources it

initiated more activities in the cultural field. Further,

Rockefeller's organization could act directly through the

White House for clearance and initially did not require dip­

lomatic approval for its projects.

Although OIAA regularly consulted foreign service per­

sonnel, Secretary Hull demanded greater control, and by late

April 1941, Roosevelt ordered Rockefeller to clear his

projects through diplomatic channels. This ultimately sig­

nified that in the area of cultural relations, the OIAA

handled the short-range, while the long-range initiatives

56Ibid., 219.

57Espinosa, 179.

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were assumed by the State Department.58

A joint committee was devised to coordinate the

activities of the two programs and to approve all projects

sponsored by the coordinator's office. The members of the

committee included Charles Thompson, chief of the Division

of Cultural Relations; a representative from the OCIAA—

usually Wallace K. Harrison or Kenneth Holland; and Waldo G.

Leland, director of the American Council of Learned

Societies.59

This coordination seemed to decrease some of the

bureaucratic rivalry. Both agencies began to move toward a

merger. In 1943 Allied victories overseas eased war emer­

gency considerations, and the OCIAA's art and music projects

were transferred to the State Department's Division of Cul­

tural Relations. The transfer of funds from the Office of

the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and from the Pres­

ident's Emergency Fund allowed the State Department to

expand both programs and personnel. In 1943 the Department

of State created an Advisory Committee on Art, which was to

stimulate artistic interchange among the American republics.

In January 1944 the Division of Cultural Relations was

reorganized into two divisions: the Science, Education and

Art Division (with a staff of 66 persons including 35

officers), and the Motion Picture and Radio Division (with a

58Ibid., 151. 59Ibid., 160.

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staff of 31 persons including 13 officers).60 In light of

its new responsibilities, the State Department, in late

1944, created the position of assistant secretary of cul­

tural and public affairs. Archibald MacLeish was the first

person to fill this position.61 Once the war emergency was

over, the activities of the OIAA were greatly reduced. The

dismemberment of OIAA had been planned from the organiza­

tion's inception. Rockefeller, though seeing the importance

of cultural interchange, had, after all, conceived of a pro­

gram that was to act as an instrument of national defense.

The OIAA and the now obsolete Office of War Information were

officially disbanded on May 20, 1946.62

Postwar Globalization

World War II produced a greater tolerance of the idea

that cultural policy could be a direct instrument of foreign

policy. Exchange of culture represented that America was a

free country that allowed the arts to flourish and that it

was a nation that valued human creativity in ideas, both

educational and artistic. The postwar period forced America

to consider its global mission. Given the new scope of

America's postwar responsibilities and the complexity of

60Ibid., 226.

61MacLeish relinquished his position before the end of 1945— see Espinosa, 154.

62U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs, 54.

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cultural relations as one form of policy, the State Depart­

ment came increasingly to recognize the need to formulate

rational policies of "controlled interchange."63

With Rockefeller's transfer of the OIAA's cultural

programs into the Department of State, by the war's end the

State Department held the reins of cultural policy. And

after the war the scope of cultural programs began to

include Europe and Asia.

As a matter of policy and for reasons of efficiency,

the State Department "farmed out" its cultural operations.

The agency was to act as the "official clearing-house for

the exchange of information concerning art activities in the

American republics."64 The National Gallery of Art in Wash­

ington, D.C., became inheritor of the legacy of arts

exchanges and circulating exhibitions. The Inter-American

Office of the National Gallery of Art was created by a

grant-in-aid from the State Department in March 1944.65

Porter McCray, who had worked closely with the Coordinator

of Inter-American Affairs, was appointed chief of the office

and the program based its policies on the recommendations of

the State Department's Advisory Committee on the Arts.

63Espinosa, 154.

64News Release, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 11 March 1944, National Gallery Archives.

65Ibid.

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The basic understanding that the State Department was

to have control of political concerns while the National

Gallery controlled matters of artistic judgment simply did

not hold up in practice. Because it was difficult to

maintain a distinction in functions, the State Department

had little control over the activities of the Inter-American

Office, and as a result, some activities were coming to be

viewed as "extremely unsatisfactory." The National Gallery

was criticized for being too conservative by both Richard

Heindel, chief of the Division of Libraries and Institutes,

overseeing the art program, and J. LeRoy Davidson, the

department's art specialist and former director of the

Walker Art Center. Both men wrote in official department

memoranda that the National Gallery of Art's Inter-American

program held "a somewhat limited conception of the breadth

conceived to be necessary in a government program of art."56

The department had some aesthetic qualms about gallery-

managed projects that did not show American works of art

exclusively, but rather took on the more cosmopolitan

approach of touring French prints from the Rosenwald collec­

tion and exhibiting lithographs by the French artist

Daumier.67 Officials at the State Department observed that

these exhibits "had done practically nothing to show

66Ninkovitch, "Currents of Cultural Diplomacy," 225.

67Ibid.

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American art in the American republics.1,68 The relationship

between the National Gallery and the State Department became

increasingly strained. Finally, the National Gallery gave

an all-or-nothing ultimatum, asking for autonomy, to which

the State Department responded by completely severing its

ties to the National Gallery in mid-1946.69

The resolution of the skirmish between the National

Gallery of Art and the State Department was a victory for

the presentation of American culture. This new orientation

indicated an "informational" element to cultural programs—

we wanted to show and to promote to other countries our cul­

tural achievements.

Although the distinction between informational and

cultural programs had been blurred by wartime conditions to

the extent that they seemed to be equally useful mechanisms

of achieving the same ideological objectives, a fine line

nevertheless had to be drawn after the war between informa­

tional and cultural exchange programs. Frank Ninkovitch

describes two developing mechanisms and contrasts their

effectiveness, saying, "Information gave off an aroma of

unilateralism and propaganda"; cultural exchange, on the

68Ibid., quoting from J. LeRoy Davidson to Heindel, 29 March 1946.

69Ninkovitch, "Currents of Cultural Diplomacy," 225.

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other hand, "appeared to have reciprocity built into [their]

multilateral mechanism."70

The efforts of the State Department to make long-range

plans were hindered by congressional hesitation to pass

legislation that would provide a statutory basis for global

operation of information and cultural programs. Only Latin

American cultural operations had been authorized on a

permanent basis, and by the end of the war, this limited

scope was outmoded.

In June of 1944, Assistant Secretary MacLeish

announced a bill that was intended "to extend to the rest of

the world its cultural activities as developed in South

America and to adopt those activities to the needs of the

postwar situation.1,71 Although the bill, the Smith-Mundt

Act, was not passed by Congress until 1948, the initiative

in effect showed how cultural relations had matured in the

political realm.72

70Ibid.

71Espinosa, 155.

720ne of the major pieces of legislation was the Ful- bright Act, introduced by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. It was passed on August 1, 1946 (Public Law 584, 79th Congress), and was intended to promote international understanding by sponsoring binationally administered pro­ grams of academic exchanges, especially with countries ravaged during the war. The law allowed foreign currencies accruing from the sale of war surplus goods to be used for the exchange of students, professors, and teachers within the United States. It was a humanitarian project that reflected the postwar climate of what appeared to be an era of peace.

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The exchange efforts in Latin America were, in fact, a

test for future exchanges that were conducted with European

countries during the Cold War. The tangible evidence of our

culture that was sent forth presented the diversity of cul­

tural activities in the United States. These early

exchanges were also a means of creating bridges among

nations by highlighting similarities between our cultural

expression utilizing the "universal" language of art.

The cultural unit of the State Department was soon to

play a major role in the nation's ideological battle with

the Soviet Union. In response to the Cold War situation,

cultural materials were involved in the numerous ideological

skirmishes. And typically, federal sponsorship of such cul­

tural projects provoked controversy— as poignantly demon­

strated by the 1947 Advancing American Art Exhibition dis­

cussed in the next chapter.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3

ADVANCING AMERICAN ART: ONE STEP

FORWARD, THREE STEPS BACK

During the period after the second World War, the

United States was adapting to its new role in the changing

world order. Dean Acheson, former secretary of state,

assessed the situation, observing that the United States was

"still at an adolescent stage of emotional development, yet

burdened with vast adult responsibilities of global

reconstruction and leadership."1 The United States had

emerged physically and economically unscathed after the war,

in direct contrast to our foreign allies, who were trauma­

tized. Consequently, the United States had become the vir­

tual inheritor of European civilization. With these new­

found responsibilities it was as though after the war the

country entered an awkward "adolescence" period, tenuously

walking onto the international stage with a mixture of

trepidation and confidence. The vacillation between the two

played itself out in the arts-politics nexus. Inter-

cultural relations after World War II became more extensive

1Max Kozloff, "American Painting During the Cold War," Artforum 9 (May 1973): 44, quoting from a personal interview Kozloff conducted with Acheson.

55

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and diverse. Art and politics became more visibly inter­

twined, often forming a precarious, if not volatile,

alliance.

Many cultural programs initiated during the war were

maintained, though they were integrated into other organiza­

tions and were intended to further peace efforts. The cul­

tural approach to foreign policy (exchange of persons,

books, and exhibits) focused on influencing the elites of

foreign countries and were seen as a means to an end of

establishing long-term, rather than short-term, cultural

readj ustments.

As early as 1943, Assistant Secretary of State William

Benton stated that we needed to demonstrate "to all those

who thought of the United States as a nation of material­

ists, that the same country which produces brilliant

scientists and engineers also produces creative artists."2

Leaders such as Acheson felt that we needed to make an

impact internationally by showing examples of our cultural

achievements, to prove that we were not materialists run

afoul.

Thus, the arts began to play an important part in the

political marketplace. Cultural exchange programs became a

"means of winning friends for America abroad," according to

2Larson, The Reluctant Patron. 24.

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Gary O. Larson in The Reluctant Patron, and "as the Cold War

intensified, the value of this argument rose accordingly."3

Cultural diplomacy programs were centralized in the

State Department— an unanticipated consequence of the war.

When President Truman signed an executive order on August

31, 1945, the postwar remnants of OWI, the programs of CIAA,

and the office of Public Information were merged into a new

Interim Information Service at the State Department. With

this official merger, cultural programs became an integral

part of foreign policy. In 1944 Archibald MacLeish was

named the first assistant secretary for public and cultural

affairs. He oversaw the newly created program, which

broadened public information to also include cultural

affairs through the Office of International Information.

MacLeish believed that cultural relations could make a last­

ing impact toward peace efforts. "If people of the world

know the facts about each other," MacLeish told the conser­

vative Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, "peace will be

maintained." With this conviction, he argued that "the cul­

tural relations of the government are its most important

foreign relations."4

William Benton succeeded MacLeish as assistant

3Ibid., 6.

4Ninkovitch, Diplomacy of Ideas. 116.

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secretary in September 1945.5 He was equally adamant about

the potential contribution of cultural relations. Benton

was well suited to take the helm of this new program and

provided a line of continuity at a time when institutional

memory was very short and when the perception of the impact

of cultural programs was fragmented by myriad cultural and

informational activities. Benton was directly involved with

Nelson Rockefeller's CIAA, and in 1940 he served on the

policy committee that was instrumental in charting the

course of CIAA's cultural program. A successful business­

man, Benton had established a major advertising agency and

was the vice president of the University of Chicago. He

collected modern art, and was perhaps the first to suggest

governmentally subsidized tours of collections of modern

American painting.6 Benton saw the task before the Office

of International Information and Cultural Affairs as "the

promotion of America to the world."7

In the summer of 1946 the opportunity arose for the

promotion of America to the world. The U.S. was invited to

participate in the "Societe des Amis d'Art," an interna­

tional exhibition in Cairo, Egypt. Following the familiar

pattern of borrowing works from the private sector, the

State Department looked to IBM to supply some examples of

5Ibid., 117. 6Ibid., 118-19.

7Ibid., 120.

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nineteenth- and twentieth-century American paintings.8 The

resulting show, "Sixty Americans Since 1800," was assembled

by J. LeRoy Davidson, the visual arts specialist in the

Division of Libraries and Institutes.9

The show opened in December 1946 and was a rather

pedestrian overview of many nonradical paintings. The exhi­

bition featured paintings from the "canon" of American

masters, including the vast landscapes of Thomas Cole and

the works of Asher B. Durand and Samuel F. B. Morse in addi­

tion to more recently recognized American painters, includ­

ing George Luks, Edward Hopper, and Grant Wood— notable

American scene painters who portrayed the American experi­

ence in explicit, commonly recognizable images.10 The exhi­

bition showed some of the diversity of American paintings,

but it was by no means exemplary of the progress that had

been made artistically in the United States during the

twentieth century. Following the exhibition in Cairo,

8IBM had begun its art collection in the 1930s with the acquisition of paintings from each of the 79 countries in which it did business at the time. Thomas J. Watson, IBM president, had purchased in excess of 30,000 art items for the corporate collection from 1936 to 1946. Dick Bergman, director of cultural programs, IBM, Interview by Douglas Greenwood, 10 March 1989, New York, NY.

9Margaret Lynne Ausfeld and Virginia M. Mecklenburg, Advancing American Art: 1946-1948 Politics and Aesthetics in the State Department Exhibition (Montgomery, AL: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1978), 37.

10Alfred M. Frankfurter, "Sixty Americans Since 1800," Art News 45 (December 1946): 30-39.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Davidson expanded the show to include paintings from other

corporate collections, including works from the corporate

collections of Standard Oil of New Jersey, Pepsi Cola, and

the Container Corporation of America, with the intention of

sending it throughout Europe.11 The content of this show,

"American Industry Sponsors Art," was similar to the earlier

version and highlighted two important spheres of American

life: its business and the world of culture contained in

corporate collections. This show was seen as an example of

the cultural commitment of capitalist corporations. In

essence it was a type of international salesmanship about

the virtues of the capitalist system.

Taking an uncustomary entrepreneurial leap, the State

Department purchased a collection of decidedly modernist

paintings for the next exhibition, scheduled for October

1947. This collection, the "Advancing American Art" exhibi­

tion, was to demonstrate in one broad stroke the State

Department's independence from the National Gallery program

and to break the pattern of conservatism in official art

exhibitions. Further, it was a departure from the State

Department's traditional role of "coordinating" efforts of

the private sector. In this instance the State Department

was to be the impresario. The goal of its organizers,

J. LeRoy Davidson and Richard Heindel, was to show the world

1;1Larson, The Reluctant Patron. 24.

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some of the most innovative examples of American contempo­

rary art. The exhibition, consisting of seventy-nine oils

and seventy-three watercolors, was purchased using funds

from the department's Office of International Information

and Cultural Affairs.12

With the Advancing American Art exhibition, audiences

overseas would have the opportunity to see some of the most

vanguard art works from America instead of the traditional

styles that they had come to expect from "officially"

sponsored exhibitions. This show was testimony of America's

progressive and liberal trends as exemplified in its con­

temporary art work. The exhibition was to underscore that

America's cultural sphere was advancing, keeping pace with

the scientific and industrial spheres that were making

quantum leaps.

The collection of 152 paintings formed a core of works

from which Davidson could select exhibitions for travel in

both hemispheres over an intended five-year period. The

paintings showed a wide array of nonmainstream modern

aesthetic perspectives that had evolved by the 1940s. Among

the artists chosen to participate were established individu­

als in the world of American art, including Georgia

O'Keeffe, John Marin, and Arthur Dove.13 Also, the works of

12Ibid.

13William Hauptman, "The Suppression of Art in the McCarthy Decade," Artforum 12 (October 1973): 48.

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the next generation of artists were selected for exhibition

in Europe, including Mardsen Hartley, Philip Guston, Milton

Avery, Loren Maclver, William Gropper, Abraham Rattner, Hugo

Weber, Reginald Marsh, Stuart Davis, Jack Levine, Yasuo

Kuniyoshi, Adolph Gottleib, and Ben Shahn among others.14

The exhibition provided a venue to showing how some American

artists were emerging from stagnant conventional realism

into dynamic and incisive modernism.

Advancing American Art: A Step Forward

As mentioned in the previous chapter, prior to the

mid-1940s most of the traveling exhibitions were compiled by

the National Gallery's Inter-American Office. The Advancing

American Art show evolved as the State Department's Inter-

American Office broke its ties with the National Gallery,

whose non-American exhibitions did little for establishing a

positive cultural image of the U.S. abroad. The State

Department's Division of Libraries and Institutes, a branch

of the Division of International Information and Cultural

Affairs, was essentially a postwar reincarnation of the

Division of Cultural Relations. Richard Heindel was chief

of the Division, and the art program was directed by J.

LeRoy Davidson, formerly the assistant director of the

Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

14Ibid.

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Heindel and Davidson were visionaries, and in planning

the Advancing American Art exhibition they were courageous

in selecting progressive paintings. Both were familiar with

the developments in modern art. Heindel had many connec­

tions with prominent people in the art world who assisted

with the project, including his close friend Francis Henry

Taylor, who was the director of the Metropolitan Museum.

Davidson, a Harvard-educated art historian, had an active

interest in the development of modern art.15 Davidson

arranged to purchase a collection of contemporary American

paintings, and he was able to acquire an exemplary collec­

tion for $49,000. He stretched the rather limited budget by

appealing to the patriotism of the contributing artists,

persuading some to sell their works at less than market

value.

In memoranda, Davidson revealed that in his estimation

the art program was "not a mass program, but a medium

directed toward a small but powerful segment of opinion

forming groups."16 Forgoing the traditional advisory panel,

the selection of art work was made exclusively by Davidson.

His selection was limited by what was available, but because

of his knowledge of contemporary works, he was able to

assemble a collection that responded to the requests made by

15Heindel to Benton, 6 October 1946, RG Benton, Art, Box 7, NA.

16Ninkovitch, "Currents of Cultural Diplomacy," 225.

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American outposts abroad for examples of contemporary works.

Heindel wrote a letter to his superior, Assistant Secretary

of State for Public Affairs William Benton, and praised the

collection as being "excellent and courageous."17 He also

predicted controversy, forecasting that the department would

receive "both bricks and bouquets."18

At the preliminary showing of the Advancing American

Art exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October

1946, critics and the New York-centered artistic community

responded favorably to Davidson's collection. In The

Nation. Clement Greenberg, noted art critic, accessed the

collection:

Mr. Davidson's exhibition does not make the point of being advanced merely for the sake of being so; in pro­ portion, there is almost as much bad advanced or abstract painting as there is any other kind. Mr. Davidson also has a taste, a personal and definite one, that accords the line he took. Though he shows many bad pictures by poor artists, he shows enough good pictures, even by mediocre artists, to more than make up for them. And at least there is some relation to be discerned between the bad and the good; they are not thrown together helter-skelter by a jury the only connection between whose members is one of time and place; they have an organic relation to each other that is enlightening in itself. Mr. Davidson's exhibition is in a way a remarkable accomplishment, and its moral should be taken to heart by others who control the public destiny of art in our country.19

17Ibid., 226. 18Ibid.

19Clement Greenberg, The Nation. 23 November 1946, quoted in Jim O'Brian, ed., Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 2, Arrogant Purpose (1945-1949) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 114.

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Lloyd Goodrich, the Director of the Whitney Museum

considered the Advancing American Art exhibition to be a

"remarkably fine collection considering the amount of money

spent."20 To the supporters of the exhibition it exempli­

fied a mixture of national pride with international purpose,

indicating that America was no longer second-rate in its

cultural achievements.

From both foreign audiences and American diplomatic

officials, the Advancing American Art exhibition also

received nearly unanimous plaudits. It was divided into two

sections: One was to tour in Latin America, the other in

Europe. Thirty oil paintings were selected to be sent first

to Cuba, then to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.21 The European col­

lection consisted of forty-nine oils and thirty-five water-

colors, which were first shown in Paris as part of the Amer­

ican contribution to a festival marking the first UNESCO

conference held in France.22 The Parisian reaction to the

collection was said to be uniformly favorable, a watershed

reaction of a notably skeptical audience. By exhibiting a

variety of modern aesthetic perspectives, the vitality and

creativity of American civilization was finally represented

abroad.

20Jane DeHart Mathews, "Art and Politics in Cold War America," American Historical Review 81 (October 1976): 765.

21Ausfeld and Mecklenburg, 17.

22Ibid.

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After closing in Paris in late December 1946, the col­

lection was sent to Prague, Czechoslovakia, and officially

opened on March 6, 1947.23 It was a highly successful

exhibition— more than eight thousand people attended during

the twenty-day showing.24 On March 25, 1947, the president

of Czechoslovakia, Edward Benes, and his wife, Madame Benes,

extended their ceremonial visit for more than an hour and a

half. He studied the paintings and saw them as evidence of

the U.S. interest in establishing closer cooperation with

Europe. The exhibition was a joint venture with the Czecho­

slovakian government, which contributed $6,000 for printing

a catalog of the exhibition in Prague, Brno, and Brati­

slava.25

In the most influential cultural paper in Czechoslova­

kia, Svobodne Noviny. there was a comparison of this show

with an exhibition of Soviet paintings that was subsequently

exhibited in Prague. The paper compared the exhibits, stat­

ing that "the two could not be spoken of in the same

breath," and that "the American [exhibit] was obviously the

product of genuine artistic creative ability while the other

portrayed 'popular state art.1"26 In Latin America, the

show received similar laurels, as indicated by an article in

the Santiago newspaper Libertad, which stated that the

23Ibid., 18. 24Ibid.

25Ibid., 17.

26New York Times. 15 June 1947.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. exhibition of American paintings clearly demonstrates that

the United States "is able to contribute to the spiritual

riches of man in general in the same way in which its

machinery, its railroads, its refrigerators, and its radio

have contributed to enrich and to make more comfortable the

life of the common man."27

The reaction to the show on either side of the Atlan­

tic could not have contrasted more dramatically. While the

Advancing American Art show was receiving "bouguets" from

abroad, conservative artists and congressmen alike had their

bricks poised, ready to throw.

Early in 1947 the exhibit became the object of

ridicule and a national embarrassment to the State Depart­

ment. What began simply as a voiced righteous indignation

by excluded artists escalated into a full-fledged outcry

from conservative press and politicians. While plans were

being made in Prague for the Czech government to pay for the

cost of extending the exhibition, the crisis of the collec­

tion's future was in its final stages at home.

Three Steps Back— Not American. Not Traditional. Not Good

To the artists whose works were not included in the

collection, the greatest issue of contention was that the

government had purchased rather than borrowed the collection

and that it almost exclusively included modern works. The

27Ibid.

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American Artists Professional League, which was a coalition

of conservative artists groups (including the Society of

Illustrators, the National Academy of Design, and the

Salimagundi Club), filed a formal complaint to the secretary

of state in November of 1947. This was reinforced by a

letter-writing campaign to senators and congressmen. The

primary complaint of these artists was that the collection

was one-sided (clearly modernist in slant), that the

selected work appeared to be "strongly marked with the radi­

calism of the new trends in European art," and that this "is

not indigenous to our soil."28 To them, the State Depart­

ment's Advancing American Art exhibition indicated that

modern art was officially endorsed while their more academic

style was being overlooked and underappreciated.

It was not long before the press discovered this dis­

pute. Once the controversy was discovered by the Hearst

syndicate, with its thirty-six papers published throughout

the United States, the exhibition was subjected to full-

fledged caterwauling. Throughout the month of November the

paper devoted an entire page to lambasting the collection.

Reproductions of works from the exhibition were published

with pointed and derogatory captions. The coinciding com­

mentary was even less complimentary and often verged on

yellow journalism. For example, one sarcastic commentary

28Albert T. Reid, "League Protests to the Department of State," Art Digest 15 (November 1946): 32.

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about 0. Louis Guglielmi's Tenements stated,

If you contemplate adding to the suicide rate, we recom­ mend this picture for the guest room. . . . A modern artist doesn't paint what he sees, but what he thinks he ought to see before he sees it.29

The effect of these articles was to arouse the

hostility of the public toward these "leftist paintings."

The article published in February 1947 by Look magazine was

even more volatile and aroused intensive public scrutiny

with the loaded caption, "Your Money Bought These Paint­

ings." This was the beginning of the charge that public

money had been wasted in purchasing the collection. The

atmosphere of criticism and ridicule began to escalate.

Radio commentary about the collection coincided with the

Look article. Fulton Lewis, a Mutual Broadcasting com­

mentator, referred to the exhibition as

excellent examples of the very worst and most terrible phase of the WPA art project junk in its very worst manifestation. . . . They're grotesque, disproportion­ ate, totally artless and in some cases downright vulgar. . . . If that be American Art . . ., God save us.30

It seemed that the aesthetic virtue of many of the

paintings was evaluated by the link to the political or

philosophic idea they contained; if the art work was not

about "truth, goodness, or beauty," its artistic merit was

29"Debunking State Department's Art," New York Journal-American. 19 November 1946, quoted in Ausfeld and Mecklenburg, 19.

30Quoted by Ausfeld and Mecklenburg from transcripts, Fulton Lewis's broadcasts, February 5 and 7, 1947, RG, Benton, Art, Box 7, NA.

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nullified. This reaction was founded in the assertion by

some that American painting should reflect a positive view

of American life.

Many were of the opinion that art work sent abroad

should contain traditional concepts of beauty— whether shown

by the technical skill of the artist or by an idealized

portrayal of the American condition. American art should

show what is good about America. Further, some of the

paintings were not viewed as an independent entity, but were

viewed as works created by people with "questionable"

political affiliations, or as simply negative political

propaganda. Consequently, letters poured into Congress and

the State Department that chronicled the public's dis­

satisfaction with the collection.

Some of the paintings included in the exhibition

clearly suggested flaws within American society. Paintings

by social realists frequently depicted society in terms of

its injustices to the working class— the result, as the

artist saw it, of capitalist exploitation. Because of the

critical content of their paintings these artists were

labeled as undemocratic. Ben Shahn's paintings Hunger and

The Clinic rendered some of the more disturbing problems of

modern social inequality. The perspectives of these paint­

ings were distorted, heightening the viewer's confrontation

with the subject. Hunger depicted an emaciated young boy

with noticeably sunken eyes and outstretched hand. Even

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more pointedly critical was The Clinic, a depiction of two

despondent pregnant women in a doctor's office. This paint­

ing was about the controversial issue of public health pro­

grams for the needy and was interpreted by some as both

critical of American society and supportive of socialist

welfare. Shahn's paintings as well as Guglielmi's Tene­

ments . which drew a parallel between poor housing conditions

and death, presented the most cutting social comments, crit­

icizing both the social and economic establishment. Over­

all, however, Davidson's collection showed a concern for

humankind and a real confrontation rather than escape from

troubling issues of contemporary society.

Some works were a solemn reminder of the devastation

of the war, and they indicated a need for peace and renewal.

William Gropper's two paintings selected for the collection

made a strong statement about his hatred of war. The

landscape They Fought to the Last Man. showed a rocky hill

scattered with the bodies of men in a pyramid of death. In

Prev vultures are depicted descending upon the aftermath of

a violent battle. Gropper articulated through these paint­

ings the brutality, futility, and senselessness of combat.

These paintings selected by Davidson were as much about the

traumas of war as they were about the challenges of recon­

struction and the shared dilemmas of modern society— one

being the quest for economic and social justice.

Although these paintings were confrontational, it was

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Gropper's supposed Marxist affiliation that drew the most

criticism. Artists were criticized for their alleged

political views. Gropper, Stuart Davis, and Ben Shahn had

been members of the American Artist's Congress, an organiza­

tion established in 1936 to oppose fascism and war, and some

of its members, including Davis, were active political Marx­

ists.31 The intent of this organization was not to devise

Communist plots against democracy, but rather to advocate

that democratic principles become available equally to

all.32

The Advancing American Art exhibition presented a

viewpoint that underscored a new internationalism in Amer­

ican Art. The message that Davidson appeared to be sending

with the exhibition was that America is not utopia but is an

unprejudiced place where artists are free to portray social

problems and pursue freedom of expression.

However, this was not the general perception of the

show. By winter, the exhibition had become politically

heated issue. The Republican National Committee issued a

denunciation of the exhibit in its weekly news bulletin.33

The chairman of the House Appropriation Committee, John

Tabor, called the Advancing American Art exhibition a "trav­

esty upon art" and insinuated that the purse strings would

31Ausfeld and Mecklenburg, 63.

32Ibid, 42.

33Ninkovitch, "Currents of Public Diplomacy," 227.

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be drawn— no more funds would be forthcoming for art. Con­

gressmen complained that they could no longer justify to

their constituents the continuation of the art exchange pro­

gram. Their objections were both to the negative view of

America represented by the modernist aesthetic and to the

alleged leftist affiliation of some of the artists.

The crisis over the fate of the collection escalated

when, much to the State Department's embarrassment, one of

the most vocal opponents of the exhibition turned out to be

President Truman. At a press conference, Truman critiqued

Circus Girl Resting, a modernist painting by Yasuo Kuniyoshi

of a robust, seminude circus girl. President Truman com­

mented that "the artist must have stood off from the canvas

and thrown paint at it." He added, "If that's art, I'm a

Hottentot.1,34 Although Truman's caustic remarks were comi­

cal and made excellent copy, in letters to Assistant Secre­

tary of State William Benton he expressed a more deeply

rooted concern that modern art was symptomatic of a weaken­

ing of American society:

I am of the opinion that so-called modern art is merely the vaporings of half-baked lazy people. An artistic production is one which shows infinite ability for taking pains and if any of these so-called modern paint­ ings show any such infinite ability I am very much mis­ taken. Until we get back to the idea that the job and its accomplishment is more important than the pay, we

34Ausfeld and Mecklenburg, 20-21.

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will continue to have half-baked artists and half­ efficient people in every other line of work.35

In these terms, modern art appeared to be a departure

from the work ethic. Behind this controversy there was a

strong nativist bias. Artists whose works were included in

the collection had distinctively foreign-sounding names—

Shahn, Zerbe, Kuniyoshi, and Guglielmi. A parallel could be

drawn between these "un-American" artists and their creation

of anti-American paintings. This foreign-inspired art could

easily be identified with radical or conspiratorial move­

ments, and on May 13, 1947, the House Committee on Un-

American Activities investigated the artists whose works

were in the collection and revealed a number of them to be

Communists.36

Inclusion of art work that appeared to be "un-

American" combined with the questionable political affilia­

tions of some of the artists whose work was exhibited added

fuel to the heated dispute. In Congress this debate was

orchestrated by George Dondero, a Republican congressman

from Michigan. Dondero subscribed to the same Communist-

infiltration theory that fueled the McCarthy red hunt. In a

reaction to the Advancing American Art exhibition, Dondero

asserted that major twentieth-century styles were vehicles

35Ibid., quoting letter from Truman to Benton, 2 April 1947, RG PPF-45, Harry S. Truman Archives, Independence Mis­ souri .

36Ninkovitch, "Currents of Cultural Diplomacy, 230.

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for destruction. In a congressional speech delivered on

August 16, 1947, Dondero revealed what he perceived to be

the heinous qualities of modern art:

Cubism aims to destroy by disorder Futurism aims to destroy by the machine myth Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule Expressionism aims to destroy by aping the primitive and the insane Abstractionism aims to destroy by the creation of brainstorms Surrealism aims to destroy by the denial of reason.37

He asserted that these "isms" were un-American because they

originated in Europe. In the New York World Telegram, he

summarized his views:

Modern art is Communist because it is distorted and ugly, because it does not glorify our beautiful country, our cheerful and smiling people, and our material prog­ ress. Art which does not glorify our beautiful country in plain, simple terms that everyone can understand breeds dissatisfaction. It is therefore opposed to our government, and those who create and promote it our enemies.38

Retrenchment

Dondero's anti-Communist rhetoric may have been a

guise for puritanical objections to modern art. While

Europe had been so deeply demoralized by the war, the United

States alone seemed to be a safe garden— an environment that

some hoped to maintain in relative solitude. Perhaps some

were not entirely convinced that the hedonism of Europe

(France especially) was not a contributing factor in the

weakening of its moral fiber, which allowed it to be

37Hauptman, 48. 38Ibid.

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susceptible to defeat by an enemy. In part, controversies

over what should be shown abroad arose because of the doubts

and fears that were prevalent after the war and were a

tangential reaction to the supposed threat of Communist

infiltration.

The Attack

Dondero shrewdly designed his attack against the evils

of modern art to attract a number of followers:

The movement of modern art is a revolution against the conventional and natural things of life expressed in art. The artists of the radical school ridicule all that has been held dear in art. Institutions that have been venerated throughout the ages are ridiculed. Without exception, the paintings in the State Department group that portray a person make him or her unnatural. The skin is not reproduced as it would be naturally, but as a sullen ashen gray. Features of the face are always depressed and melancholy. That is what the Communists and other extremists want to portray. They want to tell the foreigners that the American people are thoroughly despondent, broken down or of hideous shape— thoroughly dissatisfied with their lot and eager for a change of government. The Communists and their New Deal fellow-travelers have selected art as one of their avenues of propaganda. Their game is to use every field of information and entertainment in an effort to shatter all that conflicts with despotic Communism. When taxpayers' money is used to buy pictures painted by Communist artists we not only distribute their propaganda, we also put money in their pockets and thereby enable them to influence their efforts to make America Red Communist.39

Critical of the supposed "front" affiliations of art­

ists, Congressman Dondero felt that the way to protect from

without was to purge from within. He went so far as to

39Larson, The Reluctant Patron. 36.

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demand that works by artists with questionable affiliations

be banned from publicly supported arts institutions, no

matter how innocuous the subject matter. And, more specifi­

cally, these artists should be banned from federally

sponsored cultural exchanges. Finally, he attacked modern

art as being an instrument of Communist subversion. Artists

were "those misguided disciples who bore from within to

destroy the high standards and priceless tradition of aca­

demic art."40 The current targets, Dondero asserted, were

America's intellectual and cultural centers, which were

being infiltrated with the "depravity, decadence, and

destruction" of modernism.41 Modern art was seen by many to

represent only radical, divergent, and nonconformist ele­

ments just as many perceived it at the time of the Armory

Show. In this regard, modern art came to exemplify what

were perceived to be the nation's ills.

Few people in Congress vocally disagreed with

Dondero's assertions. One exception was Jacob Javits, the

liberal representative from New York, who defended the free­

dom of expression:

Criticism of the record of individuals as citizens or residents of the United States and discussion of their political background and present beliefs is one thing, but an effort to discredit all modern art forms is quite another and one which should not be taken and which should be depreciated, for my colleague's personal opinion of modern art is his privilege, but my col­ league's suggestion that it should all be lumped together and discredited— perhaps suppressed— because he

40Mathews, 762. 41Ibid, 772.

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believes it is being used by some— even many— artists to infiltrate Communist ideas is a very dangerous use of the word "Communism." The very point which distin­ guishes our form of free expression from Communism is the fact that modern art can live and flourish here without state authority or censorship and be accepted by Americans who think well of it.42

Despite this defense of artistic freedom by Congressman

Javits, the State Department was riddled with charges of

subversion and was scrutinized by the Congressional Appro­

priations Committee.

Caught off guard, Secretary of State George Marshall

tried to placate the Congressional Appropriations Committee

and defuse the affair by promising not to purchase any more

art. However, criticism continued to mount, letters poured

into Congress, and the vocal opposition was not satisfied

with the State Department's promise to behave. In March

1947, Assistant Secretary Benton was called before the

appropriations subcommittee and ridiculed by House Appropri­

ations Committee Chairman Karl Stephan. The scenario began

with Stephan asking Benton to identify the subject of an

abstract work to which Benton replied, "I can't tell you."

Mr. Stephan retorted, "You paid $700 for it and you can't

identify it?"43 The fate of the show had been sealed.

It became evident that the Advancing American Art

exhibition could not be salvaged in its existing form. The

42Hauptman, 48.

43Larson, The Reluctant Patron. 28, quoting State Department Hearings, 1947.

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exhibition was recalled from its two initial stops in Port-

au-Prince, Haiti, and Prague, Czechoslovakia.44 A panel of

experts from the art community was organized by the State

Department to make recommendations concerning the art pro­

gram. But, caught in bureaucratic quagmire, this panel

failed to materialize even though the members were

selected.45 The State Department wanted to wash its hands

of the affair and did not want to position itself for con­

tinued persecution.

To that end, a letter was drafted by Carl A. Sauer,

acting chief of the Division of Libraries and Institutes:

Contemporary living art, as you probably realize better than I, is a controversial subject on which it is dif­ ficult to get any general agreement. . . . The problem is not entirely whether the paintings are good or bad, but rather whether the Department should use public funds for that purpose. This can be debated at length on both sides. Since differences of opinion on this subject have threatened to jeopardize the approval of funds for the entire cultural and informational program, we considered it wise to suspend further activities in this field until we have general public support.46

44Larson, "From WPA to NEA," 303.

45Announced June 3, 1947, in memorandum to OIC William T. Stone and William Benton from Kenneth Holland (Archives Roll #3769) . Members of the panel included Mrs. Juliana Force, director, Whitney Museum of American Art; Mr. Duncan Phillips, director, Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Mr. James Johnson Seweney, formerly director of paint­ ings, MOMA; Mr. Perry T. Rathbone, director, City Art Museum, St Louis, MO; Mrs. Grace L. McCann Morley, director, San Francisco Museum of Art; Mr. Daniel Cotton Rich, direc­ tor, Chicago Art Institute.

46April 1947, Letter drafted by Carl A. Sauer, acting chief of the Division of Libraries and Institutes, Papers of Advancing American Art, Archives of American Art Roll #3769.

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The public rejection of this exhibition of modern art

indicated the problem of perception that had been created

when the government actually purchased modern art. The real

dilemma had been caused by direct governmental responsibil­

ity for art work that did not have a broad public consensus

regarding its content or aesthetic.47 And the political

context, which was a "mixture of idealist isolation,

nativism, and antiradicalism," according to Ninkovitch,

served to enforce "opposition to institutionalizing the cul­

tural program."48

LeRoy Davidson's position as divisional assistant in

the Division of Libraries and Institutes was abruptly dis­

continued on April 1, 1947.49 The State Department side­

stepped the issue of actually firing Davidson by simply

eliminating his position. The resignation of Davidson,

which had previously been submitted, was accepted by his

supervisor, Richard H. Heindel, chief of the Division of

Libraries and Institutes50 The elimination of Davidson's

47Judith H. Balfe and Margaret J. Wyszomirski, "Public Art and Public Policy," Journal of Arts Management and Law 4 (Winter 1986): 12.

48Ninkovitch, Diplomacy of Ideas. 125.

49Memo to Davidson, 1 April 1947, from Richard H. Heindel, 1 April 1947, Division of Libraries and Institutes, Advancing American Art Papers, roll 3769, Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art.

50Ibid.

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job and the activities that went along with it had a weighty

consequence for the future of the art program. Heindel

wrote to Davidson concerning the future of the program: "It

is difficult to see how the Division can perform anything

but activities looking to the liquidation of the Art Pro­

gram."51 Yet, Heindel recognized the importance of the

effort and congratulated Davidson for his efforts. He

wrote:

Although it has been a modest program, I believe that you have done much on behalf of the artistic activities of the United States and their rightful role in the field of international understanding. . . . The Art Program as developed by you has shown vitality, profes­ sional integrity, and effectiveness abroad.52

The Advancing American Art paintings were declared

surplus property and turned over to the War Assets Adminis­

tration for disposal by public auction. Lloyd Goodrich,

director of the Whitney Museum, offered a space in the

museum so that the paintings could be viewed for a month

(May 17-June 20, 1947) before being sold. Because of a 95

percent discount the paintings sold at a liquidation price.

At the auction priority was given to veterans and tax-

supported institutions.53

51Ibid. 52Ibid.

53The two largest groups of paintings went to the Uni­ versity of Oklahoma and Alabama's Auburn University (thirty- six each). The remaining works were divided into smaller groups and distributed among other universities, school sys­ tems, and private individuals with a veterans preference. William Benton, who resigned from the State Department in September 1947, bid on Kuniyoshi's painting Circus Girl

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The termination of the show while it was still in

Europe and Latin America aroused an enormous number of

protests from intellectual circles, critics, and art profes­

sionals alike. They were shocked that the State Department

that created and financially supported the exhibition would

go to such lengths as retrieving the art work and selling it

at a loss to appease its vocal opposition.54

Modern Art Controversy in the Postwar Climate

When constructing the Advancing American Art exhibi­

tion, J. LeRoy Davidson had been aware that the show would

make a statement about contemporary American values. The

diversity of the works included emphasized that the United

States is a nation comprised of "humanistic, unprejudiced,

and strongly individual people."55

The perspective that Davidson offered about the United

State was a distinct departure from the image that others

wanted to put forward of American society. The show David­

son constructed steered away from idealistic nationalism and

nostalgic scenes of American life. For example, he included

no examples of work by Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, or

John Stuart Curry, noted regionalist painters. By his

selection of distinctively modern works he seemed to

Resting but was unsuccessful in attaining it. See Ausfeld and Mecklenburg, 25.

54Ausfeld and Mecklenburg, 26.

55Ibid., 52.

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indicate that "American-centered" aspects of regional paint­

ings nourished isolationist values, which in the postwar

environment were obsolete.

The Advancing American Art exhibit signaled a breaking

away from the insular paintings and a movement toward a more

international agenda. The examples of expressionism and

abstraction included in the show indicated a movement toward

the more vanguard ideas of modernism— dealing with universal

communication as expressed in the mythic and unconscious

symbols in Robert Motherwell's and William Baziote's paint­

ings. Within two decades, the situation gradually changed.

Modern art fared much better both domestically and abroad,

as it came to be perceived as uplifting, bolstering a bold

American image— exemplifying diversity and freedom of

expression.

The Advancing American Art exhibition, the first, ill-

fated attempt at showing a vigorous and courageous cultural

image, nevertheless made an impact internationally— it tried

to communicate succinctly that we were a culturally

sophisticated but humanely concerned people. It was in

essence a "free world" advertisement. The Advancing Amer­

ican Art exhibition achieved its purpose abroad. However,

it was an unprecedented disaster at home. Conservative

opposition overlooked the message that was so obvious to

foreign observers— that American artists enjoyed freedom of

expression, that they were allowed to criticize injustices

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they perceived in society at large, and that they could

freely express themselves in an unprescribed manner.

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A TURNING POINT: THE ERA OF CONFRONTATION

The disorderly events of the postwar period helped

forge a new approach to cultural diplomacy. The political

failure of the Advancing American Art exhibition altered the

status quo of the arts-government nexus. It increased the

distance between the government and the art community.

Gazing at one another askance, artists were wary of offi­

cially sponsored exhibitions because of the threat of

censorship. The government was unsure of what type of art

should be publicly sponsored— only that which portrayed the

United States in a positive light or works of art that

represented the diversity and freedom of expression,

demonstrating values upheld in a democracy.

The Advancing American Art exhibition brought recogni­

tion that the government's arts policy internationally and

at home was very conservative, even more so than during the

Works Projects Administration days. According to Lloyd

Goodrich, art historian and the director of the Whitney

Museum in the 1950s, "Official art policy has reverted to

what it was a generation ago. It now represents a viewpoint

more antiquated than that of even our most conservative

85

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museums."1

The controversies of the Advancing American Art exhi­

bition spawned an embryonic arts lobby with the intention of

reviving a failed, if not completely discredited, effort at

cultural diplomacy. Simultaneously, an ideological battle

was occurring between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The

anti-Communist sentiments of the cold war catapulted govern­

ment once again into the cultural realm. Cultural relations

were viewed to be important in fostering diplomatic

relations— a recurrence of the phenomenon of the thirties

when culture first became a viable tool in bolstering the

U.S.'s image with foreign countries.

The cold war to some extent solved the problem of

political support for intercultural exchanges. In theory,

cultural diplomacy through exhibitions, performing arts, and

films seemed like a good idea, a good weapon to "fight cul­

ture with culture." In actuality, however, no consensus was

reached about content. American art work that exemplifies

freedom of expression, that is nonprescriptive and allows

for diversity readily demonstrated how different the U.S. is

from totalitarian governments. But garnering government

support for such a collection often proved problematic.

During the 1950s the United States continued to make

great strides artistically. The New York school painters—

-••Lloyd Goodrich, "Should Government Have a Role in Art?" Art Digest 5 (May 1953): 5.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz

Klein, Robert Motherwell, and others— rejected the ideologi­

cal stance of social realism and the iconographic formulas

of European modernism. They developed a new aesthetic,

Abstract Expressionism, which came to be viewed as "politi­

cally neutral art." This seemed a suitable aesthetic com­

promise between traditional and modern factions, as it put

forward contemporary concerns by utilizing the canvas in a

nonrealist manner, but there was no consensus with suspect

social commentary or subject matter.2 Because public

efforts had failed in 1946-47, the private sector, namely

the Museum of Modern Art and the Woodward Foundation, devel­

oped an institutional basis for cultural diplomacy that led

to a more active and positive policy in the following

decade.

Chronology— A Turning Point

Arts organizations began to realize the importance of

collective activity to influence and initiate congressional

action. A coalition called the Committee on Government and

Art (CGA) was formed in 1950 and brought together the fol­

lowing organizations: American Association of Museums,

American Federation of Arts, American Institute of Archi­

tects, American Institute of Decorators, Artists Equity

2Serge Gibeaux, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Abstract Expressionism. Freedom, and the Cold War (Chi­ cago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 157.

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Association, Association of Art Museum Directors, College Art

Association, National Academy of Design, National Association

of Women Artists, National Institute of Arts and Letters,

National Society of Mural Painters, Sculptors Guild.3

Broadly, the committee's objectives were to reactivate

the federal art program, to include private and professional

advice on such a program, and to eliminate government

censorship.4 Lloyd Goodrich was selected to chair the new

coalition, and the first meeting was held in New York on

February 14, 1950. "Ever since the end of the federal art

project in 1943," Goodrich told the members, "there has been

a growing feeling that our federal government lacks any

planned consistent policy in relation to the arts."5 The

group was concerned in particular about the lack of a policy

relating to the controversy stemming from the Advancing

American Art exhibition and the need to clarify the impor­

tance of further international exchange. As a result, the

following resolution was passed:

We are convinced that in the present situation, such exchanges are essential to promote understanding among other peoples of America's cultural contributions. Our scientific and material achievements are known through­ out the world. Our literature and our films have gained

3"Report to the President," February 24, 1954, Lloyd Goodrich Papers, Box 3, Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art (hereafter LG Papers, Box #, AAA).

4Larson, The Reluctant Patron. 38.

5Minutes of the first meeting of the Committee on Government and Art, 14 February 1950, Lloyd Goodrich Papers, Box 5, Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89

a world audience, our music and architecture are in pro­ cess of doing so; but our painting, sculpture, and graphic art in which we are producing some of the most vital work of today are practically unknown beyond our own boundaries.6

Along with the resolution, Goodrich and the committee

members urged President Truman to commission a study of

existing governmental procedures and facilities. In 1951

Truman requested the Commission of Fine Art, a modest agency

responsible for architectural planning in Washington, D.C.,

to conduct the study. Some of the major recommendations

that resulted from the report issued in 1954 as a result of

the study were as follows: the enlargement and implementa­

tion of activities in the areas of international art

exchange under the aegis of the National Gallery of Art;

decoration of federal buildings; design of medals and

stamps; recording of military history; maintenance and exhi­

bition of the Nation's art collection, and expanded federal

educational activities in the arts. The report steered away

from suggesting subsidizing the art world or directly sup­

porting artists or the centralization of government arts

activities through a ministry of fine arts. The report also

opposed combining in a single bureau art activities carried

on effectively in a number of government agencies.7

The CGA responded to the report by noting, "In our

opinion the Report does not propose adequate bodies or

6,lReport to the President," 20. 7Ibid., 6.

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procedures to effect any substantial improvement in existing

art activities.1,8 Shortly thereafter, also in 1954, the

Committee on Government and Art submitted its own report to

the president. They were opposed to having the National

Gallery as the supervising agency for international

exhibits. Their opposition was twofold: The National Gal­

lery was perceived as a conservative establishment— one that

would not put forward the works of contemporary artists;

secondly, the National Gallery, it was feared, would monopo­

lize the selection process and not incorporate diverse

points of view through a broader advisory commission. The

CGA report to the president maintained that international

arts exchanges should be "guided by a broadly representative

body of leaders in the art world."9

The Committee on Government and the Art recommended

that the functions of international exchange remain with the

Department of State or with the U.S. Information Agency, and

that both of these agencies should contract with competent

organizations. To allow for more participation, they recom­

mended that an advisory commission be appointed by the pres­

ident consisting of art scholars, since the "composition and

standards of exhibitions sent abroad are of vital importance

and should be determined by the best qualified knowledge and

judgment in the particular field."10

8Ibid. 9Ibid., 21.

10Ibid.

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The CGA report stated that government art policies

should allow for "the broadest viewpoints consistent with

high standards, and should allow for the diversity and indi­

vidualism of a democratic society."11 Further, the report

recommended that no one school or tendency should have

exclusive control of governmental art policies and that

under no circumstances should political considerations take

the place of artistic standards of excellence in taste and

judgment.

Even so, with these tenets put forth, there was still

disagreement among the arts community, the government, and

individuals about the content of the work to be sent abroad.

An ideological battle was occurring. If art were to play a

role in international diplomacy, creating the window through

which other cultures could view us, then the image that was

portrayed was crucial. Some contended that only the good

aspects of our culture should be presented, while others

contended that this "goodness" has a negative corollary. By

not trying to glaze over blemishes, what is really presented

is that America values freedom— freedom of expression and

freedom to criticize negative aspects of society.

Lloyd Goodrich, who was largely responsible for the

CGA report, had long been a proponent of the value of free­

dom of expression. Even before the formation of the CGA and

the subsequent reports, he had defended the values of

n Ibid., 3.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. freedom. In 1951, amidst all the cacophony of differing

perspectives, he remained a "lone voice in the wilderness"

defending the importance of free exchange in the arts.

While at a conference sponsored by the American Federation

of the Arts on October 31, 1951, he asserted that "I believe

in a much increased and freer program of international

exchanges.1,12 The tenor of the conference, however, was

overly cautious. To some of the more conservative factions,

it appeared that the U.S. government sympathized with the

idea that there was Communist influence in the art world and

maintained an official policy of censorship. At the height

of McCarthy's power in 1953, A. H. Bearding, then chief

spokesman for the United States Information Agency (USIA),

delivered a speech before the American Federation of the

Arts. He maintained that "our government should not sponsor

examples of our creative energy which are nonrepresenta-

tional." He then followed this statement with an explana­

tion of the types of work that the USIA officially banned

from circulating shows, including "works of avowed Com­

munists, persons convicted of crimes involving a threat to

the security of the United States, or persons who publicly

refuse to answer questions of congressional committees

12Speech delivered by Lloyd Goodrich at the AFA meet­ ing at Corning, NY, 31 October 1951, p. 7, LG Papers, Box 3, AAA. (Note: The American Federation for the Arts was established in 1909 as a not-for-profit museum service orga­ nization that, among other things, would commission exhibits of art for museums and organizations.)

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 93

regarding connection with the Communist movement.1,13 Many

of the participants at the American Federation of Art meet­

ing felt that contemporary art selected as ambassador to

other countries in officially sponsored exhibits should

depict the U.S. in a positive and traditional manner and be

readily comprehensible to all viewers. Goodrich attacked

the shortsightedness of this opinion:

We are engaged in a worldwide ideological battle, in which we represent the ideals of freedom as against totalitarian control of thought, of expression and of action. We cannot win that battle by adopting the meth­ ods of our adversaries. . . . The most effective answer to totalitarian control and uniformity is to show clearly to the world the freedom, the individualism, the diversity, and the experimentalism that are inherent in a democracy.14

Goodrich consistently made the case for the importance

of freedom of expression. He ventured to say that he would

be willing to "send to Europe an outright piece of antidemo­

cratic propaganda (providing of course that it is a work of

art, which is the basic criterion)." He defended his

stance, stating: "I believe that the act of sending it and

the freedom of thought and expression which this demon­

strates are ten times more effective propaganda for democ­

racy than the picture itself would be antidemocratic

propaganda."15

13Hauptman, 50.

14Speech delivered at the American Federation of Arts, 31 October 1953, 7, LG Papers, Box 5, AAA.

15Ibid.

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Competitive Coexistence

Goodrich's sentiments were shared by Javits, who in

1954 underlined the importance of American cultural efforts

abroad:

There is an enormous propaganda weapon which the Rus­ sians are using against us, with the most telling effect all over the world. They are posing, and getting away with it, as the people of culture. The Russians are doing an enormous job in that. They have sent traveling artists, violinists, pianists, whole ballet companies, theater companies, into the big world centers, and they have made an impression.16

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Com­

mittee, Alexander Wiley, also proposed cultural offensive

tactics. He advocated intensified U.S. cultural exchange

"to combat the new and old strategy and tactics of the

Soviet Union aimed at world domination.1,17 Wiley addressed

the Wayne State University Student Forum in Detroit,

Michigan, on May 19, 1955. His speech outlined an offensive

for peace that would include cultural exchange "to bring

people over in the first place to give them a chance to see

us and understand us.”18 He proposed that we could obtain

victory through "things of the spirit”— and he advocated

that the United States should look to its own cultural

laurels:

16Quoted in Larson, The Reluctant Patron. 73.

17Speech delivered by Wiley to the Wayne State Univer­ sity Student Forum, Detroit, MI, 19 May 1955, LG Papers, Box 4, AAA.

18Ibid.

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There has been a magnificent flowering of the arts in this free country, but we could voluntarily do more— far more— to encourage the creative arts— music literature, poetry, ballet, the living stage. And if we do so, we will, by that much, be strengthening our foreign policy. Because we will be further demonstrating to the world that, far from being a "crass, materialist civiliza­ tion," we have a deep and abiding interest in the "things of beauty which live forever."19

In June 1955, legislation was proposed in Congress,

"The Educational Exchange and Trade Fair Participation Act,"

that would fight the cold war through culture and sports—

two positive aspects of American culture. On June 14, 1955,

Massachusetts Senator McDonald addressed the Congress:

I have come to the conclusion that the battle of competitive coexistence has entered a new phase that calls for a quietly aggressive presentation of all the good things America has to offer and stands for. By this I mean by word, by picture, by exhibit, by groups of artists, and athletes to spread the story that this is indeed a land of plenty in industry, culture, sports— these are, after all, products of freedom.20

He was cautious, however, that cultural and athletic

exchanges should not be used solely to combat Communist

propaganda, but that "such performances should be promoted,

rather, to share our cultural heritage with others and to

show samples of our talent, for the cultures of various

countries are a common meeting ground."21

Thus, it was during the mid-fifties that Washington

launched policies to confront the ideological struggle with

19Ibid.

2084th Congress, Congressional Record (14 June 1955), 6987.

21Ibid.

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Russia for allies, particularly in Europe, Asia, and the

Middle East. Cultural exchanges were seen as a means of

bolstering our image abroad, even to the extent of self

defense. They were fostered under the basic assumption

"that a loss of face and U.S. backdown in any area of the

globe, no matter how remote, would bring about an adverse

shift in the balance of power."22 Through cultural efforts

we could show that the American way of life was superior to

the existence imposed by totalitarian governments. Our

freedom would in part be dependent upon how well we could

defend this stance, in light of the alleged goal of com­

munist world domination.

The United States began to match the cultural efforts

of the Soviet Union. With funds supplied by the president's

$5 million dollar Emergency Fund, divided between cultural

and industrial exhibits, 23 projects were underway. Among

the performing arts attractions that were sent abroad to

help win new friends for the United States were a production

of Porav and Bess, the NBC Symphony of the Air, the New York

City Ballet, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.23

Visual art exhibits continued to be a major component

of cultural exchange, although, there was a series of false

starts precipitated by a lingering red scare. The USIA, for

22Kozloff, 45.

23Larson, The Reluctant Patron. 79.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 97

example, sponsored an exhibition in conjunction with the

Olympic Games of 1956. The exhibit, 11 Sport in Art" was

organized by the American Federation of Arts and funded in

part by Sports Illustrated magazine. The show toured

extensively through American cities, including Washington,

D.C., Louisville, Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Fran­

cisco, before the final showing in the National Gallery in

Melbourne, Australia. The tour was well attended and

received favorable reviews. The show included examples of

modern art and received no resistance on this account until

it reached Dallas. The Dallas County Patriotic Council made

political charges against some of the artists included in

the show. Specifically, the group wanted to remove the

works of George Grosz, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, and Max

Weber. The viewpoint that prompted this demand was that

modern artists were being used by the Kremlin as "instru­

ments of destruction.1,24

For example, Congressman George Dondero, who called

these artists "cultural termites," tried to discredit the

works of Picasso. He declared that

Picasso is rated as an aesthetic hoax, a charlatan and a fraud by artists of note. . . . He describes his dis­ torted art spasms as "Communist Paintings." . . . To the regimented, brainwashed artists-in-uniform of the Red art brigade, he is a symbol of the power of orga­ nized Communist propaganda.25

24Hauptman, 50.

25"Minutes of a Communist Cell," Educational News Ser­ vice 7 (November 1960): 2.

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In response to the "Sport in Art" exhibition, Dondero

gave a speech in the House of Representatives on June 14,

1956. His opening remarks were as follows: "When and if the

time comes that the United States State Department capitu­

lates to pressure organized in the brainwashing cells of

Marxist minds conspiring against our form of government—

that is the day we will have lost the ideological battle

against world socialism, the ultimate goal of Communist con­

spiracy."26 Condemning "peaceful coexistence" as "unthink­

able and most dangerous," Dondero stated, "Well-publicized

Soviet news releases reveal that culture is a major weapon

that the Communist Conspiracy has selected from its

propaganda arsenal for use in non-Communist countries at

this time."27

Another notorious exhibition organized for the USIA by

the American Federation for the Arts in June 1956, "100

American Artists of the 20th Century," again became the

focal point of a "pink" scare because of the alleged Com­

munist affiliation of some of the artists. John I. H.

Bauer, curator of the Whitney Museum in New York, and Dwight

Kitsch of the Des Moines, Iowa, Art Center selected the

paintings from museums, galleries, and private collections

around the country. Among the artists included in this

retrospective were George Bellows, John Sloan, Grant Wood,

Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh, Ivan Albright, Max

26Ibid., 2. 27Ibid.

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Weber, John Marin, Ben Shahn, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Of the

100 artists, the USIA found that 10 of the artists were

"unacceptable for political reasons."28

The show was withdrawn. Outraged by the USIA's

cowardly behavior, the forty-two trustees of the American

Federation of the Arts issued an ultimatum and refused to

participate in the exhibition if the artists were to be sub­

jected to political scrutiny. The Federation cited a

resolution adopted in 1954 that art "should be judged on its

merits as a work of art and not by the political or social

views of the artist."29 Defending their stance, the

trustees of the AFA quoted the comments made by President

Eisenhower on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the

Museum of Modern Art:

Freedom of the arts is a basic freedom, one of the pil­ lars of liberty in our land. . . . But my friends, how different it is in tyranny. When artists are made the slaves and the tools of the state, when artists become the chief propagandists of a cause, progress is arrested and creation and genius are destroyed.3**

Through this statement Eisenhower had taken a stand

against "thought control" with vaguely disguised comments

that were clearly intended for McCarthy. By this time the

McCarthy hearings were over and the Senate was then debating

the question of censorship. The memory of "suppression" and

28Washinqton Post and Times Herald. 22 June 1956.

29Ibid.

30Lyons, Good Old Modern. 350.

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"blacklisting" was still in the minds of artistic and aca­

demic worlds.

The Washington Post criticized the USIA for withdraw­

ing the show because this action portrayed the "United

States as a country in which art is judged in terms of its

propaganda value and artists are rated in accordance with

their political orthodoxy."31 Not only could this image

taint America's prestige abroad, but it presented the very

picture of America which the enemies, Soviet propagandists,

had tried to paint.

Still under the shadow of the failed Advancing Amer­

ican Art exhibition, the cowardly action of the USIA had

been premised on the fear that Congress would deny funds to

the agency if it capitulated to sponsoring works by con­

troversial artists. Government backed out of trying to

present exhibitions of American culture abroad, and the pri­

vate sector's "role" became primary as government stood in

the wings.

International Council— Museum of Modern Art

While reports were being written about government

involvement and before any positive action was taken, the

activities of exhibiting art abroad were expanded by the

newly developed International Program of the Museum of

Modern Art. Founded in 1952, the program was launched under

31Washinaton Post. 23 June 1956.

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the directorship of Porter A. McCray, who headed the Depart­

ment of Circulating Exhibitions. The project was initiated

by a Rockefeller Brothers Fund grant and had the broad mis­

sion of facilitating international understanding through the

exchange of contemporary visual art. An auxiliary member­

ship organization, the International Council, was created

the following year "to give the International Program both

national and international cooperation and support."32

Porter McCray said that "before the Second World War

there was no awareness of American art overseas."33 Nelson

Rockefeller, trustee of MOMA, was committed to the idea that

contemporary American art work was important enough to be

known abroad.34 The Museum of Modern Art began to foster an

American presence at important international exhibitions

such as the Sao Paulo Biennial and the Venice Biennial. The

State Department had refused to take responsibility for

United States representation at the Venice Biennial, one of

the most important of international cultural and political

art events, where all European countries, including the

Soviet Union, were competing for cultural honors. To

alleviate this glaring absence, in 1954, the Museum of

Modern Art purchased the United States Pavilion in Italy for

32International Council pamphlet, n.d., Museum of Modern Art Archives.

33Porter McCray, Interview by Douglas Greenwood, 16 February 1989, New York, NY.

34Ibid.

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$20,000, the only privately owned building at the Venice

Biennial. In this capacity, the International Program

assumed a quasi-official character— it provided national

representation in shows where other countries were repre­

sented by government-sponsored shows.35

The first MOMA show at the United States Pavilion

included paintings by Jackson Pollack, Arshile Gorky, and

Willem de Kooning, all contemporary artists and abstract

expressionists.36 Eva Cockroft states in "Abstract Expres­

sionism, Weapon of the Cold War" that "by giving their

paintings an individual emphasis and eliminating recog­

nizable subject matter, the Abstract Expressionists suc­

ceeded in creating a new art movement."37 She contends that

"the divorce between art and politics perfectly served Amer­

ica's needs in the cold war."38 The New York school

painters— Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko,

Franz Klein, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, and others—

rejected both the ideological stance of social realism and

the iconographic formulas of European modernists. As an

alternative, these painters produced what one member

35Margaret Coggeswell, interview by author, 4 June 1990, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.

36Ibid.

37Eva Cockroft, "Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War," Artforum 12 (June 1974): 40.

38Ibid., 41.

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described as "an art in which impulse, instinct and the

automatic, as guides to interior reality were to usurp all

forms of intellectualizing.,l39

A tragic and alienated feeling pervaded their view of

modern society, whose mass conformity and spiritual poverty

they vehemently criticized. They depicted our national

heritage in universal terms and they produced American art

that transcended its own culture.40 Because the abstract

expressionists had made their art apolitical, it could be

utilized to represent liberal values in the battles of the

cold war. Abstract expressionism, individualistic and

expressive but nonideological, was exactly the kind of art

that was suppressed in the Soviet Union.

Despite the seeming political correctness and

neutrality of abstract expressionist paintings, these con­

temporary works were often viewed with skepticism by Amer­

ican diplomats abroad. Mrs. Clare Booth Luce, the American

ambassador to Italy at the time, had reservations about de

Kooning and Shahn's paintings. Porter McCray recalls, "We

had quite a problem with Mrs. Luce— she didn't care much for

the art we were putting on display and decided not to come

to the Biennial exhibition the night before the opening, but

39Sidra Stitch, Made in U.S.A.: An Americanization in Modern Art. the 50's and 60's (Berkeley: University Art Museum and University of California Press, 1987), 18.

40Jack Twerkov, "Notes on My Painting," Art in America 7 (September-October 1973): 69.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104

to her credit and to our great relief, she did come."41

The Museum of Modern Art continued to take responsi­

bility for the Biennial exhibitions during the span of nine

years from 1954 to 1962 but relinquished then owing to fund­

ing problems.42

In 1960, the International Council expanded its role

to include the placement of paintings in American embassies

abroad. The International Council's "Art in Embassy" proj­

ect was initiated largely through the efforts of Mrs.

L. Corrin Strong, the wife of the ambassador to Oslo. Mrs.

Strong borrowed paintings from private collections and

dealers. She requested the assistance of J. Alfred Barr,

the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, to borrow

paintings from MOMA for the residence in Oslo. The Oslo

project exhibiting American paintings in embassies abroad

was a successful pilot. Mrs. Strong, along with other mem­

bers of the International Council, including Mrs. George

Hamlin Shaw, Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon, and Mrs. Caroline Farr

41Douglas McCreary Greenwood, Art in Embassies; Twenty-five Years at the U.S. Department of State (Washing­ ton, DC: Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies, 1989), 23.

42From 1965 to 1976 USIA's International Art Program contracted with the Smithsonian Institution to present the biennales; from 1976 the International Exhibition committee, comprised of representatives from the Smithsonian, MOMA, and NEA. In 1986 it was under the auspices of the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and USIA (Coggeswell inter­ view) .

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 105

Simmons, formed a committee to raise funds to organize the

embassy project. In the course of its ten-year existence

(1960-70), "Forty-one collections were prepared for embas­

sies in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America."43

In cooperation with the Office of Foreign Buildings,

the International Council would be allowed to make their own

selections of works of art. The IC had been founded to

showcase American contemporary paintings and prints. How­

ever, in late 1962, due to fiscal constraints, the program

began to include collections of European modern masters, not

just American contemporary art.

The established criteria for this project were that

only the best examples of art should be sent abroad and they

should "tell a story of American art." However, it was not

explicit what story should be told. Where possible, con­

temporary works were selected, but not always contemporary

works by American artists. Also one of the criteria was the

caution to "avoid criticism from traveling representatives

of American taxpayers." This was achieved by keeping the

project independent. As a private endeavor of MOMA, the

program had more autonomy. The International Council owned

all the works of art and paid all expenses for shipping and

43International Council pamphlet, n.d., Museum of Modern Art Archives.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 106

insurance.44

It was recommended that this project should investi­

gate further working relationships with other private and

public organizations already involved in such efforts and

establish a working relationship with government organiza­

tions administering American federal buildings abroad.

The current director of MOMA's International Council,

Waldo Rasmussen, describes the aegis of the program as being

intended to stimulate the government's involvement in the

visual arts.45 The emphasis of the International Council's

Art in Embassy project was its educational function as

opposed to its decorative aspect. As Rasmussen put it quite

directly, "We were not about decorating the walls of embas­

sies. In the early days of the project there was a desire

to make American art better known abroad."46 The collec­

tions were to display, in part, how diverse and sophisti­

cated contemporary American art had become. The Interna­

tional Council's Art in Embassy Project allowed art to be

sent to foreign countries where it had never been shown

before and opened the door for future museum exhibitions.47

Mrs-. Simmons remembered that the Eastern European countries

44Report to the International Council by Mrs. L. Corrin Strong, Chairman Ad Hoc Committee, 24 November 1958, Museum of Modern Art Archives.

45Waldo Rasmussen, interview by author, 18 December 1988, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

46Ibid. 47Ibid.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 107

especially were "crying out for examples of American con­

temporary art, and ambassadors did everything they possibly

could to bring in the public and to make the exhibit avail­

able."48 Artists especially were intent upon finding out

about the new contemporary work in the United States.

The content and duration of the show was influenced to

some degree by the climate of the country in which it was

exhibited. Usually oil paintings were selected because

works on paper (prints, etc.) were more fragile and suscep­

tible to damage in the less-than-temperate climate of such

continents as Africa and Asia, for example. Loans were made

for the duration of at least one year. In that way, higher

quality paintings were more likely to be lent since the

paintings would be exhibited for a significant amount of

time. During the course of the program collections were

sent to Bonn, Germany; Lisbon Portugal; Ottawa, Canada;

Paris, France; Copenhagen, Denmark; Tokyo, Japan; Addis

Ababa, Ethiopia; Reykjavik, Iceland; Lima, Peru; New Delhi,

India; Bangkok, Thailand; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; and Warsaw,

Poland.49

The intention of the Art in Embassies Project was

twofold: Not only was it to provide suitable covering for

the bare walls of the embassy, but it also had the more

48Caroline Farr Simmons, interview by author, 14 May 1990, Washington, DC.

49"Summary Sheet," International Council, Museum of Modern Art Archives, 1970.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108

didactic purpose of educating foreign audiences about the

cultural aspects of American life. In a letter to August

Heckscher, chairman of the International Committee in 1961,

Ambassador Galbraith requested paintings to be exhibited in

the Embassy in New Delhi. He stated his purpose:

It is my intention to make the embassy an important cul­ tural and intellectual center and, in so far as pos­ sible, to show a case for American life. To this end I am very anxious to have a collection of good contempo­ rary paintings appropriate for the new embassy, and for the residence.50

The paintings sent through MOMA's International Coun­

cil's Art in Embassy Project were diverse, ranging from the

realism of Winslow Homer to various new abstract works. The

intent was not only to show the diversity of America's cul­

tural expression, but "whenever possible each group of loans

also includes works by artists whose forefathers came from

the country in which the residence is located, and in a few

cases, by artists native to that country."51 To provide the

ambassador and visitors with background information, the

loans of artwork were accompanied by a presentation album

containing a photograph of each work and a biography of the

artist. Often sets of books and monographs on the artist

and other American artists were given to the embassy as out­

right gifts.

50Helen M. Frank, "To Reflect the True Image . . .," Overseas: The Magazine of Educational Exchange 3 (November 1962): 8.

51Ibid., 9.

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The collection had a specific pedagogical purpose and

functioned like a small traveling exhibition. The program

was described as having the following purpose and scope:

"The function of the collections is to assist the ambassador

in making the embassy an important cultural and intellectual

center, and it is hoped that special visits to the embassy

can be arranged for artists, critics and other interested

intellectual leaders."52

The Art in Embassies project of MOMA's Independent

Council was an impetus for furthering the causes of cultural

diplomacy, and for emphasizing the importance of reciproc­

ity. To this end, on May 12, 1955, the International Coun­

cil sponsored a symposium on "International Exchange in the

Arts." The keynote speaker was the ambassador to India,

George F. Kennan. "However great the importance of interna­

tional cultural exchange from the standpoint of our rela­

tionship with other countries," Kennan maintained, "this is

not the main reason why we Americans have need for cultural

contacts with other peoples at this time."53 The main

reason for cultural contact with other people, according to

Kennan, "lies rather in our own need as Americans for just

52International Council, "Art in Embassies," n.d., Museum of Modern Art Archives.

53Transcript of the Symposium "International Exchange in the Arts," 7, George Kennan, 12 May 1955, International Council, Museum of Modern Art, NY.

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this sort of enrichment of our national spirit."54 He dis­

cussed the importance of cultural interchange and how con­

tinued progress in this field is dependent upon interacting

with other cultures:

I am persuaded that any really creative development in the field of art or of literature is intimately con­ nected with international contact and is, in fact, unthinkable without it. To test the proof of that proposition, I think you have only to glance at the roots of our own American culture and see how varied they are, and from how many types of soil, both in time and in space, they spring. No such culture could ever have developed in isolation, and, what is more important for us today, I am sure that no such culture can con­ tinue to retain its spiritual vigor if it is kept in isolation.55

Kennan also realized the potential of cultural exchanges to

narrow the gap between adversarial nations:

It is a fact that in the creation of beauty and in the great monumental works of the intellect, and there alone, human beings have been able to find an unfailing bridge between nations, even in the darkest moments of political bitterness and chauvinism and exclusiveness.56

Kennan stressed the importance of fostering the arts at home

as well as abroad:

What we have to do, of course, is show the outside world both that we have a cultural life and that we care some­ thing about it— that we care enough about it, in fact, to give it encouragement and support here at home, and to see that it is enriched by acquaintance with similar activity elsewhere.57

Kennan was adamantly opposed to censorship, especially

the vigilar.tism that was so prevalent in earlier shows

sponsored by the Department of State and the USIA:

54Ibid, 55Ibid.

55Ibid. 57Ibid.

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In recent years, it seems to me there has grown up among us a most reprehensible habit, a totalitarian habit in fact, of judging the suitability of cultural contribu­ tions by whatever political coloration we conceive their creators to have acquired. I know of nothing sillier than this. A painting is not more or less valuable because the artist once belonged to this or that party or contributed to this or that group. . . . If we are going to encourage artistic expression, for goodness sake, let's do precisely that, and let's look, like mature people, to the content of what we are promoting and not the irrelevant personal attributes of those who participate.58

Kennan's well thought out comments indicate a slow

turning of the tide to a calmer, more conducive environment

for cultural exchange in keeping with Eisenhower's earlier

statement that "Freedom of the arts is a basic freedom, one

of the pillars of liberty in our land."

With the beginning of the Art in Embassies Program,

ambassadors began to take a more active role in the new cul­

tural exchange that was encouraged within the embassies.

The first exhibition assembled by the Art in Embassies Proj­

ect was sent to Ambassador Walter F. Dowling in Bonn,

Germany, on May 7, 1960. Twentieth-century American artists

were included in this collection: Charles Burchfield,

Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Edwin Dickinson, Edward

Hopper, and Jackson Pollack. German artists were also

represented, including a bronze sculpture by Gerhard Marcks,

paintings by Emil Nolde and Otto Mueler, and watercolors by

Paul Klee. There was also a painting by Max Beckmann, a

German emigre to the United States.

58Ibid.

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Shortly thereafter, Ambassador John Moors Cabot

requested loans for his residence in Poland. Included in

this collection were thirty-four twentieth-century American

paintings, including such leading abstractionists as Philip

Guston, Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan

Mitchel. Also included were the representational paintings

of Mardsen Hartley and Maurice Prendergast, and more

abstract ones by Joseph Stella and John Marin, artists of

the first half of the century. A Calder mobile was

included, as were paintings by earlier exponents of abstract

expressionism, including Joseph Albers, Burgoyne Diller, and

Leone Smith. The works by artists of Polish ancestry were

also included— Theodore Rozak, Richard Stankiewicz, Stanley

Twardowicz, and Jack Tworkov.59

The content of these embassy exhibitions showed the

diversity of American artistic developments, and works by

the host country's own artists were also shown. This was a

way of indicating that the United States had at least par­

tial understanding of artistic movements in the country in

which it conducted diplomatic affairs.

The Woodward Foundation

The other major contributor to cultural diplomacy

efforts during the late 1950s was the Woodward Foundation,

located in Washington, D.C. The foundation was created in

59Paper, International Council, 1970, Museum of Modern Art Archives.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113

1959 by Ambassador Stanley Woodward. In 1961 he began lend­

ing his exemplary collection of contemporary American paint­

ings and lithographs to American embassies abroad. The

Woodwards "had become convinced that U.S. art would have a

strong impact in countries that still believe that America's

main contributions to the world were airplanes and nylon

stockings.1,60

Two coinciding trends seemed to give Ambassador Wood­

ward the idea for the foundation project. As he stated in

an article for Newsweek, "There were all those new embassies

opening with all those bare walls, and at the same time

there was this upsurge in American art."61 Works were

selected by Ambassador Woodward to provide "exposure of the

best American art in our embassies where they can be viewed

by the artistic, intellectual, and diplomatic sectors of the

various capitol cities."62 "Best" in this context meant

cutting edge and modern works. According to Henry Geld-

zahler, adviser to the Woodward foundation and curator of

contemporary art at MOMA, the Woodward collection repre­

sented a "microcosm the leading ideas and tendencies of the

past twenty years, the most exciting and eventful years in

60New York Times. 6 July 1965.

61Jack Kroll, "Art in Striped Pants," Newsweek. 9 October 1967, 107.

62Henry Geldzahler, exhibition catalog, Woodward Foun­ dation, n.d.

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the history of American art."63 And he asserted that the

"meaningful effect of the Woodward Foundation embassy pro­

gram is the way in which the density and multiplicity of the

American intellectual experience is made real and palatable

to non-English-speaking people through the vehicle of paint­

ing."64

The collection comprised over 350 works of art by out­

standing and notable American artists. The range was broad,

including old masters such as Joseph Stella and Georgia

O'Keeffe, Albers, Cornell, Rothko, Newman, Gottleib, Kline,

Avery, and Reinhardt, and from a more recent generation,

Robert Rauschenberg, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler,

and Frank Stella. The collections that were sent abroad

usually ranged from ten to twenty-five works of art,

exhibited in a cohesive manner. The collection was meant

for display in the public rooms of the embassy residence,

where they were lent for exhibition and then returned to the

headguarters in Washington at the close of the ambassador's

tenure. During the span of the Woodward Foundation's opera­

tion (1959-77), ninety-nine collections were taken abroad

and exhibited in chief diplomatic missions.65

Both the Woodward Foundation's and MOMA's Interna­

tional Council programs were similar in their intent of

63Ibid. 64Ibid.

65Stanley Woodward, to Lee Kimche McGrath, 4 October 1988.

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influencing the intellectual elite. Mrs. Woodward, for

example, said that the criteria for receiving a collection

from the foundation "depends on the interest of the ambas­

sador and his wife. . . . If an ambassador is sent avant

garde paintings he must be able to defend them."66 The col­

lections sent by the Woodward Foundation were attempts to

show new movements in American art and to have an impact on

the intellectual community abroad by utilizing the embassy

as a cultural center. One of the staff members of the foun­

dation, Margaret Cahan, described how the foundation focused

on presenting the best of contemporary American art:

America is the catalyst and powerhouse of the art world, and the embassies are one of the most important outlets abroad. . . . The paintings in a first-class collection become ambassadors in their own right.67

Occasionally collections assembled by the Woodward

Foundation for exhibition abroad would be exhibited for a

time in museums in Washington, D.C. One such instance took

place in November 1967, when paintings from the foundation

were displayed in the Washington Gallery of Modern Art. The

"Art for Embassies" show contained works by Helen Franken­

thaler, Hans Hoffman, Jasper Johns, Milton Avery, Ellsworth

Kelly, Frank Stella, Adolph Gottleib, Robert Motherwell, and

Ad Reinhart among others. These artists represented the

diversity of the artistic movements that had been going on

since the war. The exhibition was reviewed in the

66Kroll, 108. 67Ibid.

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Washington Star newspaper, and the reviewer concluded that

the show served to "present the vitality and excitement of

American painting since the war."68

Though intended for political and intellectual elites,

in actuality the collections reached many constituencies—

embassy visitors from home and abroad, the embassy staff and

artists within the country. Among those most directly

affected by the art were native artists. The exhibits on

the embassy walls allowed them to see— perhaps for the first

time— the works of important contemporary artists. Thus the

benefits of this informational educational colloquium

allowed more people access to the works of art.

The exhibits assembled and distributed by the Museum

of Modern Art's International Council and the collection of

the Woodward Foundation differed from earlier projects.

MOMA's Art in Embassies Project included modern work from

many nations, not just America. The Woodward Foundation's

collection highlighted the cultural achievements of the

Abstract Expressionist movement.69

68Washinaton Star. 10 November 1967.

69When the Woodward Foundation withdrew its collection from circulation in 1977, the works of art that comprised the collection found their way to various museums and gal­ leries. Recipients of works from this outstanding collec­ tion include such recognized institutions as the National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, the Metropolital Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery (DACOR publica­ tion in memorandum of Mrs. Sarah Rutherford Woodward, 1978).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The MOMA International Council and the Woodward Foun­

dation, though different in emphasis, succeeded in creating

rigorous standards of quality for the art selected to be

exhibited in American embassies abroad. Both programs

served as models for the development of the government-

sponsored Art in Embassy Program of the U.S. Department of

State which was established in 1964.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 5

ART IN EMBASSIES

"When I first came to Washington from California in

the early 1960s," recalled David Scott, former director of

the National Collection of Fine Art, "as sleepy as this

place was in the arts I thought I had landed in a suburb of

Boise, Idaho, by mistake." Scott, both an artist and an art

historian, had come to Washington to assume the directorship

of the NCFA. At that time, "The debate between abstract and

representational art was still being played out," he said.

A whole generation had been fighting this battle against abstract art, but by the mid-'60s this anti-abstract generation was fading. You still had to test the waters. Under Kennedy's administration art suddenly became "in"— and what a difference it made!1

If previously the city on the Potomac had been a cul­

tural backwater, the grace and sophistication of the Kennedy

administration transformed the sleepy southern town. One

could almost be swept away in an apparition of a twentieth-

century Camelot, the arts having received executive endorse­

ment contributed to this alteration.

While campaigning, John F. Kennedy linked the arts to

the larger concerns of the state, sweeping them up into the

1David Scott, interview by author, 12 October 1988, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC.

118

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regenerative movement of his proposed "New Frontier" admin­

istration. "There is a connection," Kennedy asserted, "hard

to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement

in public life and progress in the arts." He continued,

linking the arts to progress:

The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life can also be a New Frontier for American Art. For what I descry is a lift for our country: a surge of economic growth; a burst of activity in rebuilding and cleansing our cities; a breakthrough of the barriers of racial and religious discrimination; an Age of Discovery in Science and Space; and an openness toward what is new that will banish the suspicion and misgivings that have tarnished our prestige abroad. I foresee, in short, an America that is moving once again. And in harmony with that creative burst, there is bound to come the New Frontier in the arts. For we stand, I believe, on the verge of a period of sustained cultural brilliance.2

"In recognition of their importance," Kennedy and his

wife sent 155 telegrams to leading figures in the arts and

sciences to attend the Presidential Inauguration. Among

those invited were writers, playwrights, composers, and

visual artists such as Alexander Calder and Edward Hopper.

"During our forthcoming Administration," the invitations

read, "we hope to seek a productive relationship with our

writers, artists, composers, philosophers, scientists, and

heads of cultural institutions.1,3

2Quoted in Larson, The Reluctant Patron. 150.

3Ibid., 151.

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Inauguration day was sunny and crisp, and Robert

Frost's voice carried over the crowd with an uplifting

prediction that the New Frontier administration would bring

about the "next Augustan age . . ., a golden age of poetry

and power."4 It was during Kennedy's administration that

substantive strides were made in recognizing the centrality

of the arts.

Kennedy appointed August Heckscher, director of the

Twentieth Century Fund, as special consultant on the Arts,

and by executive order he created an Advisory Council on the

Arts to survey the needs of various arts throughout the

United States.5 Heckscher's report, "The Arts and the

National Government," made recommendations for domestic art

programs. His report also suggested that American art

should be placed in embassies abroad, asserting that "Amer­

ican embassies are important cultural outposts."6 Further,

4Ibid., 152.

5The President's Advisory Council on the Arts was created on June 11, 1963, by Executive Order 11112. Among the duties of the "members of private life . . . serving for two years" were to "survey and access needs and prospects of the various arts throughout the United States," to "identify existing policies," to "submit reports and recommendations to the president," to "encourage and facilitate the most effective use of resources," to "promote and stimulate public understanding and recognition of the importance of the arts and cultural institutions to our national welfare and our international interests."

6"The Arts and the National Government," Report to the President submitted by August Heckscher, Special Consultant on the Arts, submitted to the 88th Congress, 1st session, Senate Document #28, 28 May 1963.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121

The purchase by the government of American art, supple­ mented by private gifts, could lead to a collection administered by the National Gallery or some other bureau of the Smithsonian Institution and displayed on a revolving basis, in U.S. embassies. These works should not be considered "interior decoration," but as art representing the finest of American creative expression. They should be supplemented by special exhibitions, stressing contemporary works, loaned for short periods through such private patrons as the International Coun­ cil of the Museum of Modern Art and the Woodward Founda­ tion.7

Heckscher was not the only one to suggest placing

American art in embassies abroad. Two years earlier,

similar suggestions had been made by Robert H. Thayer,

special assistant to Secretary of State Dulles. He compiled

a report urging that United States embassies abroad become

"windows through which the people of foreign countries can

see American works of art of all kinds and periods."8 The

report lay idle until William A. Crockett became deputy

under secretary of state for administration and recommended

its findings to President Kennedy.

Almost two decades after Circus Girl caused a congres­

sional furor, the State Department reentered the field of

cultural diplomacy. "Based upon the belief that it is

important for embassies of the United States to reflect cur­

rent and traditional culture of this country in an effective

7Ibid.

8New York Times. 6 July 1965.

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manner," the Art in Embassies Program began in January

1964.9

The projects of the Woodward Foundation and the Inter­

national Council's Art in Embassy program were, by in large,

successful. The precedence they set was a catalyst for gov­

ernment to become once again actively involved in presenting

American art abroad at diplomatic posts. Successful both at

home and abroad, the efforts of these two private initia­

tives helped to dispel some of the negative memories of the

earlier Advancing American Art exhibition. The first direc­

tor, Nancy Kefauver, was appointed adviser on fine arts by

President Kennedy shortly before his death.10 Once again

art exchanges came within the purview of the State Depart­

ment, unobtrusibly and through the back door.11

Nancy Kefauver was sworn in as the State Department's

adviser on fine arts by Chief of Protocol Angier Biddle Duke

on January 13, 1964.12 A professional artist herself,

Kefauver had grown up in Scotland and studied at the Glasgow

School of Art. Mrs. Kefauver was widow of Senator Estes

9"The Art in Embassies Program— U.S. Department of State," 6 June 1967, Program Brochure, Art in Embassies Archives.

10Executive Order 11124, 28 October 1963, enlarged the membership of the President's Advisory Council on the Arts. Nancy P. Kefauver was appointed adviser on fine arts to the U.S. Department of State.

11New York Times. 6 July 1965.

12State Department Newsletter. No. 46, February 1964, in the clippings file of Carol Harford.

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Kefauver, who was a contender for the Democratic nomination

for president in 1956. She campaigned with him, traveling

from coast to coast, visiting virtually every state. They

also traveled abroad and visited many American embassies.

Looking at the vast empty walls of the residences, Nancy

Kefauver wondered why they were not hung with American

paintings. The few paintings that were displayed, she

declared, "told no story of our cultural background, did

nothing to present our cultural image."13

Although Kefauver had no formal experience as an

administrator, she brought to her assignment expertise in

the arts; a wide acquaintance among artists, museum direc­

tors, and collectors; and an unalienable sense of mission.

She was able to smooth the path for the new program, in

part, by her wide circle of friends on Capitol Hill. Less

than a year after she had been appointed director she went

to Senator Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Com­

mittee, Senator Javits and Senator Pell, among others, and

acquainted them with the program. Keeping potential advo­

cates informed of th Art in Embassies Program seemed the

logical plan of action to Mrs. Kefauver: "The time seemed

appropriate to talk with Senators and Congressmen, particu­

larly with those responsible for foreign relations and for

bills concerning the arts as well as those persons I felt

13San Diego Union. 21 May 1965.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124

would have a general interest in the Art in Embassies Pro­

gram. 1,14

As the fate of the Advancing American Art exhibit

demonstrated, perhaps above all, a benign political climate

is essential for any government venture in the arts to

prosper. Mrs. Kefauver had the political wherewithal to

build some logical ties with senators and members of the

House.

Much like the previous initiatives, Kefauver foresaw

the Arts in Embassy Program (AIEP) as "backing up our diplo­

macy with our cultural image." She explained, "We Americans

have been so busy abroad engineering, we've not given the

average people of these countries any real knowledge of

American culture."15 Cultural diplomacy was still the mis­

sion of the program, but under Kefauver's administration it

was to become more accessible to the general public.

Originally it was foreseen that her job would consist

of coordinating the efforts of the two private organizations

already putting art in embassies. But to some extent these

were independent programs with specific priorities and pro­

cedures. The Woodward Foundation, explained one observer,

"is trying to be in the mainstream of the new movements and

have an impact on the intellectual community abroad," while

l4"program Progress," Art in Embassies Newsletter. November 1965, 4.

15New Mexican (Santa Fe), 11 May 1965.

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the State Department offers "a more grass-roots kind of

art."16

While it appeared that the Woodward Foundation and the

Museum of Modern Arts's program would continue to send only

a handful of collections abroad per year, the policy of the

Art in Embassies Program of the State Department was to send

a collection to every post that requested one.17

In reaching this goal, Nancy Kefauver had only a few

obstacles to overcome: She had no art, no budget, and no

help. Although the Art in Embassies Program was formally

initiated by executive order, no budget was appropriated

other than Kefauver's fifty dollars per diem wage. By April

1964 Nancy Kefauver had one assistant, Carol Harford, who

had been in the diplomatic corp in Manila and Indonesia.

Acquiring art work with a nonexistent budget was one of the

major obstacles of the job. Yet, Kefauver managed to create

a successful program. Her mission was to do something about

the vast expanse of blank embassy walls, occasionally

punctuated with TWA or Pan Am posters or other objects that

were usually grimly utilitarian and often not anything

recognizably or representatively American.

Most of the art included in the Art in Embassies Pro­

gram would be borrowed from ambassadors who had their own

16Kroll, 108.

17Carol Harford, interview by author, 24 February 1989, Washington, DC.

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collections, and from individuals, galleries, corporations,

and museums who would be willing to lend works of art for a

period of at least two years. "The demand from ambassadors

for good American art is so great, and the interest of Amer­

ican artists to exhibit so strong," Kefauver maintained,

"that the problem will mainly be one of selection."18

By the time the new embassy in Mexico City opened,

only four months after Kefauver assumed her position, Amer­

ican works of art were on the walls. The stark, white

marble structure in Mexico City was complemented with a col­

lection of contemporary paintings loaned by artists from

Woodstock, New York. Again, logical ties were created with

the country. Each of the artists (Ethel Magafan, Bruce

Currie, Edward Chavez, Edward Millman, and Fletcher Martin)

had either studied, taught or exhibited in Mexico City. A

selection of the prints that were part of IBM's exhibit of

"Three Centuries of Printmaking in America" were included in

addition to the paintings. Diverse styles and techniques

were represented through the prints by Jonas Fendell,

Mauricio Lasansky, Carol Summers, J. L. Steg, and Antonio

Frasconi.19

The art for the embassies was chosen by Kefauver with

careful attention to the cultural contribution it would

18Washinaton Star. 15 March 1964.

19"Program Progress," Art in Embassies Newsletter. March 1964, 2.

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make, the type of building in which it would be placed, and

the artistic trends of the host country.20 Procedures were

established which continued to be characteristic of how AIEP

operated. The following criteria were outlined as a

guideline:

■ art work must be original and created by an American artist ■ art must be of a recognized quality to best represent American culture ■ art must be compatible with the cultural concepts and trends of the host country ■ art must enhance architecture and interior design of embassy buildings, to the extent possible21

Placing the paintings was often an act of diplomacy

itself. There was the need to be sensitive to local customs

as became evident when on one occasion an abstract painting

that bore a date for its title nearly caused a riot in the

country where it was displayed. The date, as it turned out,

was sacred to the people, and they mistakenly thought they

were being insulted.22

As for the content of the exhibitions, according to

the Foreign Service Journal, the program tended to "screen

out the more abrasive commentaries on shabby aspects of the

American scene, such as some works of the Ashcan School."

William Benton, having returned to the private sector,

donated some Reginald Marsh paintings to the newly created

20State Department Newsletter. May 1964, 2, in the clippings file of Carol Harford.

21Congressional Record. 9 September 1965, 22542.

22Douglas McCreary Greenwood, Art in Embassies. 31.

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Art in Embassies Program. Instead of Marsh's famous studies

of the bowery and burlesque scenes, Benton, with benevolent

goodwill toward the program, presented Mrs. Kefauver with

rather innocuous street and harbor scenes.23

While the Ashcan School was still being soft-pedaled

to diplomatic circles, American modern artists were gaining

worldwide recognition. At the 1964 San Paulo Biennale,

Adolph Gotlieb won first prize, while Robert Rauschenberg

took top honors at Venice— the first time for an American

since the days of Whistler.24 America's newfound cultural

prominence was a noteworthy achievement, one that Nancy

Kefauver hoped to emphasize through her program:

Now that America is in the lead in the art world, we must let other people see what we can do. People of foreign countries have not fully realized our vitality in the art world. We've not yet told our story along cultural lines. We have been so busy in the commercial and practical fields that no one has taken our cultural image seriously.25

National Accessions Committee

Despite procedures being in place and the recognition

that American was gaining in international shows, "At the

beginning we had a lot of problems with credibility,"

according to Carol Harford. "One of the keys to our success

23Foreiqn Service Journal. June 1967, 29.

24Lawrence Alloway, The Venice Biennale 1895-1968: From Salon to Goldfish Bowl (Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1968), 168.

25Conqressional Record. 9 September 1965, 22542.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129

was the National Accessions Committee that we established in

1965 to serve as a nationwide advisory committee.1,26 The

twenty-two members of this committee were prominent in

regional art circles and were outstanding in their respec­

tive fields, whether as collectors, administrators, or his­

torians. Along with the accessions committee there was an

Executive Committee, which was ultimately responsible for

screening the works of art. It was composed of three mem­

bers: Nancy Kefauver, Davis Scott of the National Collec­

tion of Fine Arts, and Lloyd Goodrich of the Whitney Museum

in New York. These two committees in effect gave the pro­

gram visibility: "It gave us knowledgeable consultants in

all aspects of American art and a national network— in short

it gave us credibility.1,27

The Accessions Committee of AIEP was constructed to

give the broadest geographic representation possible. It

solved the problem of participation and representation that

had contributed to the demise of earlier government initia­

tives in the arts. The committees gave AIEP political

credibility as well. Members of the original committee

included representatives from throughout the United

States.28

26Ibid. 27Ibid.

28Perry Rathbone of the Museum of fine arts, Boston; Sue S. Thurman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston; Bartlett H. Hayes of Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Richard Collins, director of arts and sciences, IBM; Robert H. Thayer, former assistant to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130

On June 17-18, 1964, the National Accessions Committee

held its initial session in Washington, D.C. The volunteers

were welcomed with sufficient Washington fanfare. A White

House reception was held in the Blue Room and Mrs. Dean Rusk

greeted the new members. President Johnson prepared a

statement that praised the "unstinting dedication of Mrs.

Kefauver and others who have worked to send art overseas."29

The following day Nancy Kefauver directed an executive work­

ing symposium of the committee. "I feel that with our

spirited and probing discussions as a basis for operation,"

Mrs. Kefauver concluded, "this program of cultural diplomacy

can now truly 'go national.1"30 To acquire a broad range of

art, to obtain representation that would in turn bolster the

political validity of the program, "going national" was the

logical solution to address the political reality of repre­

sentation. Resources would be tapped from all over the

Secretary of State Dulles; Janet Ruben of Obelisk Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Roy Moyer of American Federation of Arts, NY; Katherine Kuh, art editor of Saturday Review. NY; Edward Rust of Academy of Art, Tennessee; Gudmund Vigtel, of High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Rexford Stead of Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL; Otto Wittman of Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; Norman de Haan, architect, Chicago, IL; Laurence Sickman of Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, MO; Eugene Kingman of Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE; Donald Goodall of University of Texas Art Department, Austin, TX; Dorothy Dunn, honorary associate in Indian arts, Los Altos, CA; Richard Brown of Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Paul Mills of Oakland Art Museum, CA; Thomas Leavitt of Santa Barbara Museum of Fine Arts, CA.

29Washinaton Post. 19 June 1965.

30"Summary Report," 18 June 1964, clippings of Carol Harford.

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country. Mrs. Kefauver felt that this policy was "impera­

tive so that the diversities of this country are well

represented," and she continued, "We can make available the

best possible art from the various geographical regions."31

The program that Mrs. Kefauver envisioned was meant to

"serve U.S. embassies on a worldwide basis, from the most

sophisticated country to the most underdeveloped country."32

In conclusion, Nancy Kefauver outlined the intent of

the Art in Embassies Program:

We intend to serve the embassies by arranging collec­ tions of art works which will communicate to the people of the countries in which they are placed, and tell them something more about what we are all about. The program should operate as simply as possible, with the highest standards possible to serve as many embassies as pos­ sible.33

At the Washington meeting in 1965, Mrs. Kefauver

clearly delineated the separation of her office from that of

the Accessions Committee. While she maintained that the

committee was to "give the program breadth and scope," she

declared that ultimately she was the one in charge:

I am the one who must make the program work. . . . So with your guidance I will initiate and implement as you select and send art so I can place it.34

There was some animosity among the National Accessions Com­

mittee about the breadth of the program. Certain museum

officials felt that the quality of the art work would be

31Ibid. 32Ibid.

33Ibid. 34Ibid.

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compromised because of the variance from region to region.

But Nancy Kefauver's policy was decentralization and she

maintained it throughout her tenure as director.

Her approach to administering the program was "hands

on." She traveled extensively and learned about what was

happening in the arts throughout the United States. "Every­

one said I could just go to New York and find out what is

happening everywhere. . . . But I don't agree," she said

firmly; "You have to go out and get a feeling of what is

going on."35 In many ways, Kefauver was again on the

campaign trail, this time for the Art in Embassies Program.

Nancy Kefauver's efforts were met with success. In

the fall of 1965 she took a trip at the inviation of the

American Federation of Arts to Turkey, Greece, Italy, and

Spain. She monitored some of the exhibits already in place

and reported that people appreciate being reassured that our

country is not a cultural desert but, rather, that we have a

genuine appreciation of cultural refinements and have

achieved worldwide significance in the area of the visual

arts."36 The international trips were an opportunity to

"explore the cultural labrynth of the countries in request."

Mrs. Kefauver met with cultural leaders and artists and

visited museums and galleries. Through these visits she

35Albuauercrue Journal. 28 November 1965.

36State Department Newsletter. December 1964, 41.

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increased her knowledge of "pertinent cultural considera­

tions and art trends." At the same time, the Art in Embas­

sies Program brought to foreign countries "an expression of

our desire to bring understanding between our peoples."37

Eventually, through the Accessions Committee, the Art

in Embassies program had an entree into museums, private

collections, corporations, and foundations all over the

country. "We could begin building our own collection," Har­

ford explained, "though by this time we were more concerned

with borrowing really good works of art rather than building

our collection.1,38

Dr. David Scott, then director of the National Collec­

tion of Fine Arts, offered the program two basement rooms at

the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History to serve as a

repository. He had taken a special interest in the Art in

Embassies Program because of its importance in promoting the

cause of American art abroad and the potential that it had

in rectifying some of the negative feelings after the prob­

lematic shows of the McCarthy era. Later, the Art in Embas­

sies Program was situated in offices on the 11th floor of

the State Department Building and the repository was

maintained at the Smithsonian. By its fourth year, over

1,600 works of art were in circulation or in storage

37"Program Notes," Newsletter of the Art in Embassies Program. November 1966.

38Harford interview.

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awaiting assignment. Art from all periods and regions were

selected, and the mandate stipulated that paintings in all

media, graphics, ceramics, wall hangings, sculptures, and

photographs would be included.39.

Some of the press from abroad described the program as

"an astonishing state of affairs.1,40 The London Evening

Star reported that "there is now a painting by 'pop' artist

Andy Warhol on the walls of the United States Embassy in

Madrid, and a black-on-black 'op' canvas by Ad Reinhardt in

the residence of Ambassador Chester Bowles in New Dehli."

The paper went on to contrast these achievements with the

unmitigated disaster of the Advancing American Art Show:

Only a few years ago, when the State Department sent an exhibition of native art to Europe, Congress was in an uproar, denouncing the paintings as too abstract and the artists as too left-wing. . . . Now, under the direc­ tion of Nancy Kefauver, appointed to advise the State Department (and they needed some advice) on the fine arts, hundreds of modern American paintings are being sent out to United States embassies abroad to replace the familiar colour reproductions of George Washington and General Eisenhower.41

Frank Getlein, art critic for the Washington Evening

Star, summarized that Art in Embassies was significant

because "at long last in one more area, the United States

Government has assumed its proper responsibility to American

39Congressional Record. 9 September 1965, 22542.

40London Evening Star. 7 July 1965.

41Ibid.

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culture and to world interest in that culture."42 The pro­

gram was indeed one of the federal government's most suc­

cessful efforts in the field of cultural diplomacy.

The program survived and flourished, whereas the ear­

lier experiments were savagely dismembered. The change in

response may reflect a greater maturity, sophistication, and

tolerance for experimentation, as well as a dissipation, to

some extent, of the debate between traditional and modern

art.

Kefauver was able to speak in an unpresumptuous manner

about modern art. "To the connoisseurs, abstract represents

the artist's thinking," she explained. "It represents the

turmoil of these times. . . . Representational art is found

in pop art," she pointed out, "which is very documentary,

and in both comic strips and advertising art. . . . This

art typifies our way of life."43

She maintained that the philosophy of the program was

"to get both government and private sources interested in

working together to get a true picture of our cultural heri­

tage and our achievements in the world of art."44 Secretary

of State Dean Rusk also praised the program as a cooperative

42"Program Progress," Art in Embassies Newsletter. July 1966, 3, quoting article in the Washington Evening Star by Gelatin.

43The State. Columbia, North Carolina, 5 July 1965, from clippings file of Carol Harford.

44Ibid.

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enterprise, stating: "I am proud of the Art in Embassies

Program, both because it represents important aspects of

national culture and because it is a cooperative enterprise

which blends ideas and energies of Government and private

citizens and organizations interested in the visual arts."45

It is likely that much of the success of the AIEP can

be attributed to the finesse with which the program was

conducted— it was representative, inclusive, and politically

it was protected because of the careful cultivation of

important individuals on Capitol Hill. This carefully con­

structed network, established during Kefauver's tenure as

director, held the program together during a period of

uncertainty after her sudden death on November 20, 1967.

Despite the success of the program— ninety-seven col­

lections had been completed, over 1,000 American artists

represented, and works borrowed from over 600 lenders— the

program's existence was threatened.46 The United States was

entering the war in Vietnam. The State Department was doing

a considerable amount of belt tightening, and the Art in

Embassies Program was being reappraised.

In late February 1968, Carol Harford wrote the com­

mittee members that it is "quite likely that the Program may

have to be on a more selective and austere basis. This is

45Baltimore Sun. 17 October 1965.

45Summary 1968, Program Progress supplement, in files of Carol Harford.

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not a reflection on the desirability of the program, but

merely a recognition of the current situation.1,47

During the interim period before a successor to Nancy

Kefauver had been named, Janet Rubens, a member of'the

Advisory Committee, assisted Carol Harford. Rubens was

aware that the political realities of the time were a real

threat to the program. "Under cover of an economy drive,"

she informed the members, "we are faced with curtailment of

the Program without regard to its overall value." She went

on to state that "the profit to our country, measured in

terms of national and international interest, can never be

balanced against dollar expenditure. . . . The machinery of

the Program runs smoothly on a fantastically small

budget."48

The members of the Executive Committee mobilized an

advocacy effort and wrote to Idgar Rimestad, deputy under

secretary for administration, "to express our concern about

the continuation of the program."49 They hoped that efforts

would be made as a nation to "maintain those activities

which are worth surviving for."50 They reminded the under

47Carol Harford, to Lloyd Goodrich, 23 February 1968, LG Papers, Box 7, AAA.

48Janet Ruben, to Lloyd Goodrich, 6 March 1968, cc. to other members of the National Accession Meeting, LG Papers, Box 7, AAA.

49Bartlett Hayes, Executive Committee member in 1968, to Idgar Rimestad, 11 March 1968, LG Papers, Box 7, AAA.

50Ibid.

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secretary that earlier cultural efforts were not discontin­

ued, but rather encouraged, during the Second World War.

They hoped that "in the same spirit at the present time,"

efforts would be made as a nations to "maintain those

activities which are worth surviving for."51

Senator Claiborn Pell, a champion of federal support

of the arts, addressed the Senate on March 5, 1968, on

behalf of the Art in Embassies Program. He urged that Con­

gress allow the program "to continue as it has so success­

fully in the past; in other words, under direct government

sponsorship by the Department of State."52 Pell then

defended the program from an economic perspective: "The

State Department's Art in Embassies Program, which accom­

plishes so much, operates on an annual budget of only

$48,700." He concluded:

Most of the support of the program has come throughout the country as a developed sense of participation. The lenders, dealers, artists, collectors, corporations, and museums have responded to the enthusiasm of a hard­ working national committee that oversees the work of the program because they have been asked to make a contribu­ tion by their government for their government. . . . One particularly valuable aspect of the program is that extent to which the work of living artists is repre­ sented in the loans program . . . drawing from literally hundreds of sources across the country.55

The State Department considered enlisting the support

of the National Gallery in operating the program. However,

51Ibid.

52Conaressional Record. Senate, 5 March 1968, S2212.

53Ibid.

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the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery, at the sug­

gestion of the director, David Finley, did not approve this

action.54 Stephan P. Munsing was recommended by Finley to

be named as Nancy Kefauver's successor. Munsing had been

serving as cultural affairs officer at the American Embassy

in Copenhagen, Denmark. He had a notable background in the

arts, including repatriating art stolen by the Nazis and had

worked extensively on foreign trade fairs under the auspices

of the USIA.55

Thus, with the endorsement of Senator Pell and others

within the program, it was to carry on with its mission left

to Nancy Kefauver's successors: Stephan Munsing, Jane

Thompson, Lee Kimche McGrath, and Lacey Neuhaus Dorn.

Stephen Munsing— Educating People

Stephan Munsing became the director of the Art in

Embassies Program in April 1968. The program continued to

rely mostly upon loans so that the collections of con­

temporary art were kept up to date. Munsing collaborated

extensively with the Woodward Foundation and the

54Lloyd Goodrich papers, correspondence with David Finley, May 1968, LG Papers, Box 7, AAA. David Finley was one of the museum officials who questioned the "quality" art work included in the AIEP. Therefore, for both personal and administrative reasons he advised that the program stay with the State Department rather than coming under the auspices of the National Gallery of Art, which at that time did not collect the works of contemporary, living artists.

55Idgar Rimestad, to Lloyd Goodrich, 14 May 1968, LG Papers, Box 7, AAA.

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International Council and personally spent time going to

gallery exhibitions.

"In general," Munsing recalled, "we served as a

clearinghouse to facilitate communication back and forth

between foreign art enthusiasts, the ambassador, the staff,

and participants within art circles here at home."56

Munsing continued to give the AIEP art exhibitions a

contemporary emphasis. According to Munsing, placing the

work overseas "is sometimes a diplomatic business of marry­

ing the art with the tastes of the embassy's occupants,"

and, he maintained, "we have confrontations from time to

time."57 The contemporary emphasis was often met with

resistance, as was underscored in the collection that Muns­

ing put together for the Embassy in Dublin. The exhibit

consisted of contemporary and traditional works. When

Stephan Munsing went to inspect the collection he found that

the traditional works were prominently displayed. However,

he had difficulty finding the contemporary works and later

discovered them hidden behind a huge curtain in the

ballroom. The collection was recalled. "We were in many

respects in the business of educating people," Munsing

maintained.58

56Greenwood, Art in Embassies. 3.

57Washinqton Post. 15 July 1972.

58Greenwood, Art in Embassies. 33.

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Although the embassy crowd tended to be a "basically a

conservative lot," Munsing encouraged diplomats who objected

to daring choices to take some of them, along with their

more conservative preferences, since "they are often going

to countries which understand the art better than they do,

and it can't be too provincial.1,59

The works were not only displayed in embassies.

Munsing was often asked to approve temporary removal of

works from a residence for exhibit at a local international

art show, or for display in a trade fair. In this way the

art reached people who would not have the opportunity to

enter the embassy residence. Munsing commented that

"special requests of all sorts were stimulated by local

reaction to a collection."60

Although Munsing spent a great deal of time looking at

local group and one-man shows, he continued, though to a

lesser extent, to rely on the advice of the Executive Com­

mittee members. "They were used from time to time to make

sure no single area predominated. We tried to represent

various parts of the United States in our overall inventory

of contemporary works."61

59Washinqton Post. 15 July 1972.

60Stephan Munsing, interview by author, 19 June 1990, Washington, DC.

61Ibid.

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Munsing expanded the program by tapping the resources

of more private and public collections, and called on Amer­

ican artists living abroad to participate. Although his

intention was to be educational, his program also had com­

mercial implications. "We hope to relate our activities

more directly to the trend toward exhibition and sales of

American art overseas by a growing number of private gal­

leries, especially in Western Europe," Munsing maintained.

"We hope to continue to place first collections at addi­

tional posts as ambassadors request them and as priorities

permit."62 Munsing's educational approach was two-pronged—

he wanted to educate ambassadors about modern art and he

also wanted to expose the foreign intelligentsia to the

international market of American modern art.

Jane Thompson

After four years of directing of the Art in Embassies

Program, Stephan Munsing stepped down to finish his assign­

ment in Denmark as cultural attache. His successor, Jane

Thompson, was the wife of Llewelyn Thompson, who had twice

been the ambassador to Russia and also served in Italy and

Austria. Mrs. Thompson was an artist and while in Washing­

ton she served on the staff of the Woodward Foundation.

When her husband was reappointed ambassador to Russia

in 1966, Mrs. Thompson selected a collection of contemporary

62Anne M. Jones, "Talk with Stephan Munsing," Art Scene. 6 October 1971.

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art for Spaso House, the official U.S. residence in Moscow.

She described the collection as being "soft sell" for Amer­

ican culture. She said that

we aren't trying to change the Soviet idea of what painting should be. . . . The main point is to let them see for themselves. Understanding and learning to like contemporary painting is a matter of experience and exposure.63

Mrs. Thompson's daughter, Sherry Cando, who lived at Spaso

House while her father was ambassador, remembers the effect

that Robert Irwin's Bowed Canvas had upon the foreign

audience.

Irwin was a conceptual artist, and, depending on the lighting, Bowed Canvas can look just like a plain white canvas. But when you look at it long enough, the image begins to emerge. . . . [At first], many people dis­ missed it right away with a laugh, while others, partic­ ularly artists, were very interested in its effect.64

Like her predecessors, Mrs. Thompson tried to select

from a broad spectrum of American artists, borrowing works

in all media, styles, and periods from museums, corporate

and private collections, commercial galleries, and individ­

ual artists themselves. Contemporary artists who contrib­

uted to her program included Richard Diebenkorn, Robert

Rauschenberg, and Helen Frankenthaler, among others. Addi­

tionally, Jane Thomspson encouraged the works of emerging

artists from various parts of America. "I often encourage

them to choose things by people from their own states or

63Greenwood, Art in Embassies. 35.

64Ibid., 36.

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regions, to help give exposure to a wide variety of artists

from all parts of the country." The works included in the

program spanned the history of American art: "Even a few

John Singleton Copleys are displayed in embassies." How­

ever, Mrs. Thompson felt strongly that the spirit of the

project mandated that a majority of the works be by con­

temporary living artists. She tried to match the tastes of

the ambassador with the art works selected. "The ambas­

sadors need to feel pride in the works that they will live

with for several years," she said, "and to have a sense of

rapport with them."55 In selecting the art work, Jane

Thompson would work directly with the ambassador and spouse

and assemble a collection that suited their tastes.

Mrs. Thompson was aware of the potential of a good

collection of art in opening up new avenues of contact with

the people of a country and in attracting local art groups

for tours. "The collection helps to build good will," she

asserted, "and [they] tell a constant stream of foreign

visitors, as well as the diplomatic corps, a great deal

about the creative achievements of U.S. artists and the life

and culture they represent.1,56

The world context at the time, viewed from a broad

perspective, indicated how difficult it was to achieve the

vague goal of spreading good will. During the time that

65Christian Science Monitor. 28 July 1982.

66Ibid.

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Mrs. Thompson served as director, in many areas the politi­

cal tenor was volatile. America was no longer the interna­

tional hero. In 1979 bullets whistled through the United

States embassy in Tehran, shattering windows in the front

and back. The solid walls on either side where the collec­

tion of American art was displayed went untouched. Only one

work, an engraving by artist Wanda Miller Mathews, was

destroyed— pierced by nine bullets. The engraving now

reposes in a vault at the State Department as an example of

one of the first casualties of the program. It is ironic,

however, that the State Department could get the art out

before the hostages. Yet, "between the Shah's ouster from

Iran and the takeover by the militants, the State Department

managed to evacuate all the pictures and sculpture from the

Art in Embassies Program."67

While art was being removed from Tehran, literally

amidst flying bullets, American paintings were being

installed in Moscow, on loan from the collection of Barron

Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. Thyssen-Bornemisza, a

Swiss industrialist, owns a renowned private art collection

and lent three of his favorite American paintings to Ambas­

sador Watson for exhibition in Moscow. Included in the col­

lection were a 1954 Georgia O'Keeffe, From the Plains. II: a

Richard Estes tempera, People's Florist: and an N. C. Wyeth,

Kurner's Farm. Thus, American art in foreign collections

67Washincrton Post. 6 January 1980.

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came full circle and was "repatriated" to be displayed in an

embassy exhibition.68

The AIEP was also installing a collection in the more

understated atmosphere of Venezuela celebrating the instal­

lation of the ambassador's new collection, including works

by Richard Diebenkorn and Frank Stella. William H. Luers,

then ambassador to Caracas, observed, "There is certainly a

different psychological setting here than in Europe and most

particularly in Eastern Europe."69 In a letter to Mrs.

Mondale at the vice president's residence, Ambassador Luers

recounted, "[The party] was punctuated by the presence of

President Herrera, who spent an hour with the artists— both

Venezuelan and American. It was a special occurrence since

Venezuelan presidents rarely visit embassies of any foreign

government for any purpose."70 Further, he commented in

other correspondence that "there is a curious Latin and

Venezuelan belief that artists and intellectuals are some­

thing superior and anyone that likes them can't be all

bad."71

68Washinaton Post. 28 October 1979.

69William H. Luers to Jane Thompson, 5 June 1979, from Art in Embassy files.

70William H. Luers to Mrs. Walter F. Mondale, Vice Presidents House, 5 June 1979, bcc: Mrs. Jane Thompson, Art in Embassy files.

71William H. Luers to Jane Thompson, 5 June 1979.

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Lee Kimche McGrath

Jane Thompson directed the Art in Embassies Program

from 1972 to 1984. She was followed by Lee Kimche McGrath,

who came to this position after she had been the first

director of the Institute of Museum Services.72 McGrath

brought considerable experience from the museum field and

attempted to establish procedures that were in keeping with

museum accreditation standards. Her philosophy was that

"art has the ability to communicate and promote understand­

ing among peoples of diverse cultural backgrounds. . . . It

is a powerful form of international currency, and is part of

diplomacy."73

Lee McGrath imprinted her style on the way collections

were assembled; partly because she was from a museum back­

ground, she was fond of thematic exhibitions. She organized

collections of paintings for embassies that were "symbolic

of an aspect of American life."74 For example, the ambas­

sador to Australia wanted a painting of the America's Cup

Race. A painting of the winner of the 1867 race, Volunteer

by James Butterworth, was loaned by the Mystic Seaport

Museum in Connecticut. For the ambassadorial residence in

72The Institute of Museum Services, founded in 1976, is a federal program that provides operating funds to muse­ ums nationally.

73Lee Kimche McGrath, quoted by Katheryn Blee, "For­ eign Affairs," Art and Auction 2 (June 1989): 156.

74San Francisco Examiner. 29 June 1987.

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Beijing, among other paintings donated, the Disney Founda­

tion loaned the fiftieth anniversary portrait of Mickey

Mouse. For the embassy in Havana, Cuba, an exhibition of

American Hispanic art was originally decided upon. However,

since there were so many factions in that genre, "we decided

to send a collection of women artists," Lee McGrath wryly

stated. "It was good for the macho culture."75

McGrath also encouraged ancillary activities to make

the collection available to more people. For example, in

the embassy in Sierra Leone, Ambassador Perry hosted a

cross-cultural week for local artists, inviting them to dis­

play their works alongside the works of American artists in

the embassy residence. A host of institutes and groups were

invited, including the artists, library personnel, univer­

sities and school children. McGrath commented that "the

scope of the program is really dependent upon the efforts of

the ambassador in how he or she utilizes the collection."76

In conjunction with the 1988 spring summit in Moscow,

a collection of twenty-nine contemporary works was installed

in Spaso House. A collection of well-known, mid-century

American artists was assembled as a subtle cultural backdrop

for the diplomatic discussion. Included were the works of

Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Gene Davis, Georgia O'Keeffe,

75Lee McGrath, interview by author, 14 June 1990, Washington, DC.

76Ibid.

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Frank Stella, Milton Avery, and Ellesworth Kelly, whose

works were loaned from public and private collections.

Henry Hopkins, former director of the San Francisco Museum

of Modern Art, wrote the accompanying catalog. With the

support of the Frederic R. Weisman Foundation, Armand

Hammer, Henry Hopkins, and the Trust for Mutual Understand­

ing, Mrs. McGrath arranged for six American artists whose

works are exhibited in Spaso House to visit the USSR. The

Russians reciprocated by sending six contemporary artists to

the United States in July 1990.77

While the debate over the content of art sent abroad

has dissipated to some extent, the larger obstacles con­

fronting the program remain mainly economic. The value of

art has skyrocketed over the years, making it more difficult

to borrow works. The cost of insuring them has gone up as

well as the cost of shipping them to foreign outposts.

Again, the solution to this dilemma was sought in the pri­

vate sector. The Friends of Art and Preservation in Embas­

sies (FAPE), initiated on September 13, 1986, was estab­

lished to raise funds to buy and preserve art and furnish­

ings, antiques, and American embassy buildings. Working in

close conjunction with the Art in Embassies Program, FAPE

77Soviet artists included Evgeny Maltsev, Valentin Sidorov, Vladimir Chepelic, and Mikhail Kurzanov; two crit­ ics accompanied them, Alexander Morozov and Stella Bazazianc. They toured New York and Los Angeles during their two-week visit. Henry Hopkins, interview by author, 10 July 1990, Washington, DC.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 150

was formally mandated to assist FBO in exhibiting and

preserving fine and decorative arts in United States embas­

sies.78

Chaired by the Honorable Leonore Annenberg, former

chief of protocol and wife of former ambassador to the Court

of St. James (United Kingdom) Walter Annenberg, the newly

formed group made progress almost immediately. The core of

the foundation was comprised of movers and shakers, includ­

ing former Secretary of State George P. Schultz; former

Ambassador at Large for Cultural Affairs Daniel Terra and

Mrs. Terra; FAPE's attorney, Harrison Wellford; Betsy

Bloomingdale, who served as the White House liaison; and

Harriet Deutsch, chief fundraiser on the West Coast. The

board members of the diplomatic council have raised more

than $2 million in contributions, pledges, and donations.79

A recent acquisition by the Friends group has been a

1982 silkscreen by Andy Warhol, Alexander the Great. It is

a part of the collection of Pop art that was chosen by

Ambassador Edward Djerejian in Damascas, Syria. According

to McGrath, the ambassador wanted to select something that

had never been shown in Syria before, and "he especially

liked the way it was related to the history of Syria as seen

78Greenwood, Art in Embassies. 41.

79Ibid., 42.

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through the eyes of America."80

Besides exhibiting works of well known American art­

ists, the program allows these artists to present their work

in a forum that otherwise might be unavailable to them.

However, Mrs. McGrath notes that "patriotism, a desire to

serve the country, and social status are the main reasons

for participating in the program.”81

Lee McGrath's contract expired in December 1989. Lacy

Neuhaus Dorn became the new director in January 1990. While

it is too soon to review the program under her directorship,

it is interesting to note that she is a political appointee,

as was the first director, Nancy Kefauver.82

Conclusion

The Art in Embassies Program began during Kennedy's

New Frontier administration and was an early and successful

project, forging a closer relationship between artists and

the government. During Kefauver's tenure, the program was a

successful public-private venture in exhibiting American art

abroad. It was an exciting time for the program, a golden

age after all the cloudy, ill-fated earlier attempts by

government to exhibit American art abroad. The formaliza­

tion of the Art in Embassies Program represents a rational

80Blee, 161.

81Ibid., 159.

82New York Times. January 1990.

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approach to exhibiting American art abroad, one of the suc­

cessful paths in a maze of attempts. Part of its success

was due to its representation, and to the placid political

climate that Kefauver was successful in maintaining.

Stephan Munsing presided over a darker era. Although

the program was maintained and even expanded, grass-roots

involvement was curtailed to some extent. Munsing's close

affiliations with the Museum of Modern Art and with the

Woodward Foundation influenced his preference for presenting

a specific image of the United States abroad— one that was

contemporary and modern and forward looking.

By the time Jane Thompson became director of the Art

in Embassies Program, in the mid-1970s, it was clear that

the United States was no longer an international hero. The

Art in Embassies Program, however, had expanded and to some

extent reached the majority of American foreign outposts.

Instances of works of art being borrowed from the foreign

collectors of American art indicated that the United States

had made its mark culturally in the international realm.

Lee Kimche McGrath continued to raise the visibility

of the program and made it a more appealing perquisite for

ambassadors, rather than an imposition. She suggested ways

that the program could be used for ancillary activities that

increased its effectiveness in cultural diplomacy and

fostering understanding. The professional standards that

she brought to the program, and the establishment of the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 153

Friends group, helped alleviate some of the economic limita­

tions to the program. Controversies over the content of the

works had dissipated to some extent and the program's more

pressing problems were economic. The exhibits were also

seen in the context of their surroundings, furnishings, and

decorative considerations were beginning to have importance.

At the 1988 Summit, art in the ambassador's residence in

Moscow was an important, though subtle, backdrop for diplo­

matic deliberations. Also, the Arts in Embassies Program

was a catalyst for cultural exchange of artists between the

two countries.

Currently, the Art in Embassies Program encompasses

more than 3,200 works of art valued at $46 million that are

on view at 140 posts in 120 countries.83 Though modest in

scope, the program is one example of a successful culmina­

tion of earlier government initiatives. Through trial and

error, a rational initiative was formulated to coordinate

the exhibition of American art abroad. The Art in Embassies

Program is a subtle, and largely symbolic, program, but it

has managed to stay free, to a great extent, from political

editorializing. The program is limited in scope and shaped

primarily by the director, and more recently, with the input

of the council of its private foundation. As a means of

cultural diplomacy, its success varies with the extent to

which ambassadors utilize the collection to foster cultural

8 3 Art in Embassies Fact Sheet, 1989.

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bridges. However, the impact that it can potentially make

is significant.

As a means of cultural diplomacy, these works of art

on embassy walls communicate person to person in ways that

transcend linguistic barriers. The United States embassies

abroad are windows through which citizens of diverse cul­

tures absorb, whether consciously or unconsciously, impres­

sions of the United States. The original works of art dis­

played on the walls of embassies provide a composite of our

values and traditions. That we are a country with a rich

artistic legacy, that we are a nation with a tradition of

diversity, that we allow for freedom of expression is con­

veyed, perhaps most succinctly, through the creative

endeavors of American artists.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

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Dunlop, Ian. The Shock of the New. London: Winfeld & Nicholson, 1972.

Espinosa, J. Manuel. Inter-American Beginnings of U.S. Cul­ tural Diplomacy. 1936-1948. Vol. 2. Washington, DC: Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 1976.

Gelman, Irwin. Good Neighbor Diplomacy: U.S. Policies in Latin America. 1933-1965. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1979.

Gibeaux, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Abstract Expressionism. Freedom and the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Goodrich, Lloyd. Pioneers of Modern Art in America: The Decade of the Armory Show. 1910-1920. New York: Whit­ ney Museum of Art, Praeger Publishers, 1963.

Green, Martin. The Armory Show and the Patterson Strike Pageant. New York: Macmillan, 1988).

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Greenwood, Douglas McCreary. Art in Embassies: Twenty-five Years at the U.S. Department of State 1964-1989. Washington, DC: Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies, 1989.

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Schwartz, Constance H. The Shock of Modernism in America: The Eight and the Artists of the Armory Show. New York: Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, 1984.

Stitch, Sidra. Made in U.S.A.: An Americanization in Modern Art. the 508s and 60's. Berkeley: University Art Museum and University of California Press, 1987.

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Periodicals and Newspaper Articles

Balfe, Judith H., and Margaret J. Wyszomirski. "Public Art and Public Policy." Journal of Arts Management and Law 14 (Winter 1986): 5-29.

Cockcroft, Eva. "Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War." Artforum 12 (June 1974): 39-41.

Christian Science Monitor. 28 July 1982.

Davidson, J. LeRoy. "Advancing American Art." American Foreign Service Journal 23 (December 1946): 7.

Davis, Stuart. "What About Modern Art and Democracy?" Harper's Magazine. December, 1943.

DeHart Mathews, Jane. "Art and Politics in Cold War Amer­ ica." American Historical Review 81 (October 1976): 762-87.

Frank, Helen M. "To Reflect the True Image." Overseas: The Magazine of Educational Exchange 3 (November 1962): 4- 10.

Goodrich, Lloyd. "Should Government Have a Role in Art?" Art Digest. May 1953, 5.

"Grantmakers in the Arts Conference Summary." In Philan­ thropy: Leadership in the 1990s. Fifth Annual Confer­ ence. Chicago: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 1989.

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Kennan, George. "International Exchange in the Arts," Symposium Transcript, 12 May 1955, International Coun­ cil, Museum of Modern Art.

Kozloff, Max. "American Painting During the Cold War.” Artforum 9 (May 1973): 43-54.

Kroll, Jack. "Art in Striped Pants." Newsweek. 9 October 1967): 106-107.

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Lyons, Russell. "1902." Artnews 11 (November 1987): 154- 56.

"Minutes of a Communist Cell." Educational News Service 7 (November 1960): 1-30.

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Goodrich, Lloyd, Papers, boxes 1-7. Housed in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Record Group 229, "Records of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs." National Archives, Wash­ ington, DC.

Interviews

Bergman, Richard. Interview by author, 10 March 1989, New York, NY.

Coggeswell, Margaret. Interview by author, 4 June 1990, Washington, DC.

Harford, Carol. Interview by author, 24 February 1989, Washington, DC.

Hopkins, Henry. Interview by author, 10 July 1990, Washing­ ton, DC.

McCray, Porter. Interview by author, 16 February 1989, New York, NY.

McGrath, Lee Kimche. Interview by author, 14 June 1990, Washington, DC.

Munsing, Stephan. Interview by author, 19 June 1990, Wash­ ington, DC.

Rasmussen, Walter. Interview by author, 18 December 1988, New York, NY.

Scott, David. Interview by author, 12 October 1988, Wash­ ington, DC.

Simmons, Caroline Farr. Interview by author, 14 May 1990, Washington, DC.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.