Refiguring Modernism

U.S. Exhibitions of Latin American Art, 1959–1968

Delia Solomons

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780271094083
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Contemporary Art

In 1959, the very year the Cuban Revolution amplified Cold War tensions in the Americas, museumgoers in the United States witnessed a sudden surge in major exhibitions of Latin American art. Surveying the 1960s boom of such exhibits, this book documents how art produced in regions considered susceptible to communist influence was staged on U.S. soil for U.S. audiences.

Held in high-profile venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Walker Art Center, MoMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibitions of the 1960s Latin American art boom did not define a single stylistic trend or the art of a single nation but rather attempted to frame Latin America as a unified whole for U.S. audiences. Delia Solomons calls attention to disruptive artworks that rebelled against the curatorial frames purporting to hold them and reveals these exhibitions to be complex contact zones in which competing voices collided. Ultimately, through multiple means—including choosing to exclude artworks with readily decipherable political messages and evading references to contemporary inter-American frictions—the U.S. curators who organized these shows crafted projections of Pan-American partnership and harmony, with the United States as leader, interpreter, and good neighbor, during an era of brutal U.S. interference across the Americas.

Theoretically sophisticated and highly original, this survey of Cold War–era Latin American art exhibits sheds light on the midcentury history of major U.S. art museums and makes an important contribution to the fields of museum studies, art history, and Latin American modernist art.

Table of contents

• COVER Front
• Copyright Page
• Table of CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Introduction
• Notes to Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Eagle Surveys the Hemisphere
• Notes to Chapter 1
• Chapter 2: World Picturing in the Carnegie and Guggenheim Internationals
• Notes to Chapter 2
• Chapter 3: Contending for the New in New Art of Brazil and New Art of Argentina
• Notes to Chapter 3
• Chapter 4: MoMA’s “War-Time Enthusiasm” for Latin America
• Notes to Chapter 4
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX