Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges through Art, Architecture, and Design 1945–1985 9781350088481, 9781350088511, 9781350088504

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EXHIBITIONS BEYOND BOUNDARIES

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EXHIBITIONS BEYOND BOUNDARIES Transnational Exchanges through Art, Architecture, and Design 1945–1985

Edited by Harriet Atkinson, Verity Clarkson, and Sarah A. Lichtman

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BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 © Editorial content and introduction, Harriet Atkinson, Verity Clarkson, and Sarah A. Lichtman, 2022 © Individual chapters, their authors, 2022 Harriet Atkinson, Verity Clarkson, and Sarah A. Lichtman have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Design by Daniel Benneworth-Gray All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-8848-1 ePDF: 978-1-3500-8850-4 eBook: 978-1-3500-8849-8 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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In Memoriam David S. Raizman (1951–2021)

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Foreword, Jonathan M. Woodham Acknowledgments

Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries: An Introduction Harriet Atkinson, Verity Clarkson, and Sarah A. Lichtman

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1 Universal Civilization and National Cultures: Producing Israel at the Venice Biennale, 1948–1952 Chelsea Haines

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2 Salvaging Through Merchandising: America’s Vietnamese Craft Diplomacy on Display in the US in 1956 and 1958 Jennifer Way

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3 “A Slightly Exotic Country”: Poland’s Contentious Debut at the 11th Milan Triennale,1957 Katarzyna Jez˙ owska

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4 Self-Management on Display: Negotiating the Visions of Yugoslav Socialist Modernity at Expo 58 and Porodica i domac´ instvo Exhibitions Rujana Rebernjak 5 “One of the Puzzles of the Exhibition”: A Misunderstood Cittadina, Neoliberty, and the Italian Display at Brussels Expo 58 Rika Devos and Serena Pacchiani

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6 Assembling Smallness: The United States Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, 1961 Nushelle de Silva

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7 Painting from the Pacific and Artistic Exchange Across the Pacific, 1961 Ian Cooke

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8 “A Wholly American Plastic Package”: Transnationalism, Technology, and Theology at the Vatican Pavilion in the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair Ethan Robey 9 “The Gentle Art of Cookery”: Exhibiting Transnational Anglo-Russian Diplomatic History During the Cold War, 1967 Verity Clarkson 10 From FESMAN ’66 to FESTAC ’77: Competing Curatorial Strategies for African-American Art at Pan-African Festivals Lindsay Twa

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11 Designing Stability: Hong Kong’s Pavilion at Expo 70 and Local Expositions Daniel Cooper and Juliana Kei

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12 Pharaoh Diplomacy: The Soft Power of the Treasures of Tutankhamun Mario Schulze

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13 A “Tropic-Proof Container Exhibition”: The Role of Environmental Factors in Configuring Design, a Dutch Case Study Joana Meroz Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

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CONTENTS

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263 283 287

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 1.2 2.1

2.2

2.3 3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 6.3

Israel and United States Pavilions, Venice Biennale. Israel Pavilion, Venice Biennale. Pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition, International Housewares Show. A bird’s-eye-view drawing of the interior pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition, International Housewares Show. A large cutout photograph of President Diem, Republic of Viet Nam, United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum. Polish Pavilion exhibit at the 11th Triennale di Milano, 1957. Yugoslav Pavilion at Expo 58, view from outside with the plaza and steel sculpture seen in the corner. Exhibition design at the Yugoslav Pavilion at Expo 58, showcasing the central graphic panel stretching across all five levels. Exhibition model of a three-room flat for four to five people shown at the II Porodica i domaćinstvo exhibition in 1958. The reception hall in the castello at Expo 58. The Olivetti exhibit in the section on Industrial Production, building D, by Ludovico Quaroni and BBPR at Expo 58. The first exhibit in the Italian Pavilion, The Environment, by Luigi Moretti at Expo 58. Local workers assemble the geodesic dome at the United States Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, 1961. A seamstress demonstrates sewing techniques at the United States Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, 1961. Clinton and Willard Jackson demonstrate their portable sawmill at the United States Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, 1961.

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46 50 62 82 84 89 103 107 109 121 124 126

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7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 9.1

9.2 10.1 10.2

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11.1 11.2 11.3 12.1 12.2 12.3 13.1 13.2

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Painting from the Pacific, 1961, installation view 1. Painting from the Pacific, 1961, installation view 2. Painting from the Pacific, 1961, installation view 3. Entrance to the Vatican Pavilion, New York World’s Fair 1964–1965. Michelangelo, Pieta (1499), as exhibited in the Vatican Pavilion, New York World’s Fair 1964–1965. Premier Alexei Kosygin (center) inspects the Sword of Volgograd (Stalingrad Sword) at the opening of Great Britain–USSR: An Historical Exhibition, 1967. Kosygin and the Soviet delegation view some of the many documents displayed in Michael Brawne’s linear, wall-mounted cases, 1967. Installation view of Ten Negro Artists from the United States: First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, 1966. Marilyn Nance, “African-American Contemporary Art Exhibition of FESTAC ’77, with Valerie Maynard speaking to the Nigerian Press, and artists Reginald Jackson and Ernest Crichlow in the background.” Marilyn Nance, “Winnie Owens in Ipetumodu, with Iya Alamo, Agbo Folarin, and Napoleon Jones-Henderson in the background,” 1977. Hong Kong Government Pavilion in the 1967 Brand and Product Expo, Hong Kong. The “bat-wing” sail on the Hong Kong Pavilion at Expo 70, Osaka. Hong Kong Pavilion at Expo 70, Osaka. Catalog cover from the Treasures of Tutankhamun US exhibition, 1976–1979. The figure Selket during the installation of the Treasures of Tutankhamun Cologne exhibition, 1980. Reproductions of the Selket sold in US museum shops during Treasures of Tutankhamun, 1976–1979. Overview of Dutch Design I at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, 1973. Dutch Design II’s display was designed so that it could be adapted to any number of foreign environments. Sketches by Gert Dumbar, c. 1977–1978. Overview of Dutch Design II at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Netherlands, 1978.

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201 214 218 219 232 233 239 251

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FOREWORD

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he range of innovative approaches and methods in this collection on Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries demonstrates how far the expectations and ambitions of researchers, writers, academics, museum professionals, and curators working in this field have grown over the past half century. This important book represents a significant disciplinary turn in the way that historians approach exhibitions, providing a variety of models for future investigations into what is clearly an expanding, diverse, and necessary focus on transnational exchange. As well as growing our body of knowledge of particular instances of art, architecture, and design production and consumption since 1945, the editors also underline the ways in which histories of design and the visual arts have engaged productively with a diversity of other disciplinary fields alongside an increasingly global agenda of fresh perspectives and nuanced insights. As such, this book opens up new avenues of thought for those working in these related disciplines, complementing and extending recent research.1 What makes this book so significant, therefore, is its foregrounding of transnational exchange through exhibitions. The editors go well beyond established parameters, forging new ground by expanding the disciplinary field and shining a light on events, which by dint of their scale or geography were previously overlooked. More than forty-five years ago when design history was still in its relative infancy as a potentially significant field of academic study, in terms of research and scholarship on exhibitions there was a tendency to foreground the many major national or international exhibitions and World’s Fairs from the 1851 London Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations onwards, a phase that might be seen to constitute a mapping of the field. Such exhibitions generated innumerable appearances by individual countries from around the globe in the form of national pavilions and exhibition displays, as well as other manifestations involving engineering, manufacturing, and other industries. They proliferated exponentially until 1928, when the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) was established to regulate the number and organization of such events, not least to ensure that international participation remained sustainable in terms of cost. In 1979, in his A Bibliography of Design in Britain 1851–1979,2 Anthony Coulson

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produced a brief twenty-page outline bibliography for international exhibitions and World’s Fairs, covering a range of major exhibitions predominantly from Europe and North America from the mid-nineteenth century through to Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan. Naturally, these highlighted many of the exhibitions at which Britain was represented but, by definition, they also embraced representation from many other parts of the globe, including countries that still remain underrepresented in art- and design-oriented publications in the field today. Another text from this early period was John Allwood’s The Great Exhibitions (1977),3 which, overly dominated by narrative rather than analysis, commenced with the French national exhibitions of the late eighteenth century and guided the reader fairly swiftly through to Expo 70. Allwood drew attention to the volume of literature generated in direct connection with the exhibitions themselves, instancing, for example, the fact that the Japanese delegation to the 1873 Vienna International Exhibition produced ninety-six volumes of description and that the French government created a special department to write the history of the 1889 Exposition Universelle, a process that was not halted before twenty-one volumes had been completed. Another tendency discernible in early design history writing was that investigation into individual exhibitions was often dominated by an association with particular styles at the expense of other often complex and more focused investigations: the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle was equated with Art Nouveau and the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes with Art Deco. From the hindsight of the 2020s, it is perhaps hard to conceive of the fact that from the 1970s onwards, there was felt to be an emerging need to map out the exhibitions field more comprehensively in order to engender a systematic and inclusive cartography that recognized a world beyond that generally dominated by Western European, North American, and imperial perspectives. By the time of Paul Greenhalgh’s Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–19394 (1988) it was possible to discern the themes running through such exhibitions, supported by a growing number of published conference papers and journal articles, that reflected the development of design history. One of a series of Studies in Imperialism, edited by John M. MacKenzie and published by Manchester University Press, Greenhalgh’s text explored themes such as “funding politics and society,” “imperial display,” “the national profile,” and “the fine arts.” By this time, design history research, study, and publication had developed considerably in Britain with the establishment of specialist undergraduate programs of study in the field, enhanced by the advent of design history masters courses and doctorates in the field. The Journal of Design History (JDH), published by the Design History Society (DHS) in conjunction with Oxford University Press, commenced in the same year. The DHS had been founded in 1977 and played an important networking role through its newsletters and national conferences, with a number of the early annual conference papers published by the UK’s Design

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FOREWORD

Council. Since the early years of the JDH, Special Issues have played an important role in bringing together significant and innovative research themes. A positive recent instance of this may be seen in connection with Joana Meroz’s essay in this Bloomsbury edited volume. It explores an environmental approach to transnational exhibitions with a focus on traveling exhibitions of Dutch design and was underpinned by a JDH Special Issue entitled “Beyond Dutch Design: Material Culture in the Netherlands in an Age of Globalization, Migration, and Multiculturalism”5 (2016), co-edited by Meroz. The early twenty-first century was a period in which other relevant research initiatives were underway as, for example, in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Ghent, Belgium, under the leadership of Professor Mil De Kooning. This initiative provided an important focal point for design historical research in Belgium and produced significant doctorates including one by Rika Devos, a contributor to this essay collection, entitled “Modern at Expo ’58: Discussions on post-war representation.” Research into Expo 58 provided a focus for the Ghent department in the years leading up to its fiftieth anniversary. It resulted in a wide-ranging collection of essays written by Belgian and other authors contained in the substantial publication L’Architecture Moderne à l’Expo 58: “Pour un monde plus humain”6 (2006); numerous further contributions to specialist journals and books also appeared. The book was extremely well illustrated and contained eighteen essays including several devoted to national and other pavilions including those for Belgium, Italy, Norway, Finland, Japan, Brazil, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Britain, Germany, and the project for Poland as well as Le Corbusier’s Philips Pavilion. A number of essays in this volume have touched on particular dimensions of Expo 58 and its multi-faceted cultural and political complexities, and add further insights to some of the thinking underpinning key essays included in the 2006 publication. In the same decade as the Ghent initiatives, the powerful, if not revolutionary, impact of the internet began to make itself felt in arts and humanities and disciplinarily related research circles, bringing about access to electronic journals, photographic libraries, and archival indexes, thereby liberating fresh opportunities that should not be underestimated in the development of design history. The early twenty-first century was also important for the ways in which museum-generated exhibitions themselves provided considerable stimuli for developing and understanding frameworks and models for innovative research and publication. Significant amongst such initiatives was the series of large exhibitions re-exploring twentieth-century art and design mounted by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) between 1999 and 2011. Amongst them, and with considerable relevance for several essays in this collection, was Cold War Modern: Design 1945–1970, curated by David Crowley and Jane Pavitt at the V&A in 2008.7 In addition to the organization of an accompanying international conference, as well as many complementary publications and media events stimulated by this, the

FOREWORD

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exhibition also traveled to Vilnius in Lithuania, the European Capital of Culture in 2009, and impacted new audiences from the Baltic States. Importantly, such exhibitions were also influential in reshaping and extending museum collecting policies. This new 2022 collection of essays embraces a wide range of exhibitions including the Venice Biennali and Milan Triennali, as well as trade fairs. It shows touring exhibitions played a significant role in extending our understanding of transnational concerns through ‘blockbuster’ shows such as the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition, which toured internationally during the 1970s and was an embodiment of diplomatic and commercial relationships between Egypt and the UK, the USA, and Germany; the 1961 Painting from the Pacific fine art traveling show, which pointed to emerging global relationships between the countries of the Pacific Rim; and the US Small Industries Exhibition, which went on view in Colombo in 1961, and traveled to five other locations in India and Ghana. In their Introduction, the editors of this new volume emphasize its origins in the transatlantic alliance of two major art and design history organizations—the College Art Association (CAA) and the DHS—in a panel of speakers at the 2017 CAA Conference in New York. This was an important manifestation of the consolidation of global outreach that had always been part of the commitment of the JDH and also reflected in the emerging internationalization of the DHS’s annual conferences. However, wider demands for a more inclusive global perspective in design history had also led to the formation in 1999 of the International Conferences in Design Studies and Design History (ICDHS) collective in Barcelona as a means of embracing those working outside what was still felt to be the dominant worlds of North American, Western, and European research and publication. Subsequent ICDHS biennial conference venues have included Havana, Guadalajara, São Paulo, Istanbul, Osaka, Taipei, and (virtually) Zagreb, bringing together communities of design history researchers from different parts of the globe. China has also seen developments in design history, including the recent event and seminar to mark the publication of Victor Margolin’s World History of Design (vols. 1–2) in Chinese in Guangzhou in December 2020, involving (virtual) speakers from North and South America, the UK, and Australia.8 The wide-ranging geographical and cultural implications inherent in Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries does much to further such an inclusive geographical and cultural outlook, with the new essay on Hong Kong’s contribution to Osaka 70 providing an important backdrop to current cultural understandings and conflicts. The book is underpinned by a strong sense of academic rigor, not least since several of the chapters have evolved from doctoral programs supported by research councils and other arts and humanities funding organizations and cultural bodies in different parts of the globe. Characteristic of many of the contributions is also the widespread interrogation of a variety of multilingual archival sources, a number of which are not well known. The impact that Exhibitions Beyond

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FOREWORD

Boundaries will exert in its own terms will surely have a significant role in energizing a new and substantial global framework for further research and publication in the exhibitions field. Jonathan M. Woodham Emeritus Professor of History of Design, University of Brighton

NOTES 1 For example those in the recent series of books “Rethinking the Cold War”, published

by De Gruyter from 2018 onwards, which explore themes such as soft power, cultural diplomacy, and artistic interaction in the East and West as well as other fields such as social and economic planning, and sport. Kristen Bönker and Jane Curry, eds., Rethinking the Cold War (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018). 2 Antony J. Coulson, A Bibliography of Design in Britain 1851–1970 (London: Design

Council, 1979). 3 John Allwood, The Great Exhibitions (London: Studio Vista, 1977). 4 Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and

World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). 5 Joana Meroz and Javier Gimeno-Martínez, eds., “Beyond Dutch Design: Material

Culture in the Netherlands in an Age of Globalization, Migration, and Multiculturalism,” special issue, Journal of Design History 29, no. 3 (2016). 6 Rika Devos and Mil De Kooning, L’architecture moderne à l’Expo 58: “Pour un monde

plus humain,” (Brussels: Fonds Mercator/Dexia, 2006). 7 David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, eds., Cold War Modern: Design 1945–1970 (London:

V&A Publishing, 2008). 8 Originally published as Victor Margolin, World History of Design, vols. 1–2 (London:

Bloomsbury, 2015). It was published in Chinese in 2020 by the Jiangsu Phoenix Fine Arts Publishing House.

FOREWORD

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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arm thanks go first to Jonathan M. Woodham, Emeritus Professor of History of Design at University of Brighton for his generosity in writing the Foreword to this book. Thanks, too, to all of the contributors and to our brilliant editorial team at Bloomsbury: Rebecca Barden, our commissioning editor, and Claire Constable, Olivia Davies, and others who have worked with us to bring this book to fruition. We have been extremely fortunate to have excellent editorial and production support from Rachel H. R. Hunnicutt and Elizabeth Sanders. In the development of the ideas in this book, we have all benefited from discussions with a number of colleagues in our home institutions: at the School of Humanities and Social Science, Centre for Design History and Design Archives, all at University of Brighton, and Parsons School of Design, The New School in New York City. We also acknowledge the generous financial support we have received from University of Brighton’s Centre for Design History, from Parsons School of Design, from the Design History Society (as sponsor of the CAA panel), and from the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK (for Harriet Atkinson’s Leadership Fellowship AH/S001883/1 “The Materialisation of Persuasion”: Modernist Exhibitions in Britain for Propaganda and Resistance, 1933 to 1953). The creation of this book maps onto a turbulent period in our home countries— the UK and US—that has shaped and inflected our thinking. Our discussions started around the time of the “Brexit” vote in June 2016 and the election of Donald J. Trump in November 2016, two events that sowed deep division and political unrest. In the light of this challenging environment, with Higher Education ever more financially squeezed and pressured, we have understood the importance and felt the joy of academic collaborations, which allow us to be less atomized, to spur each other on, and to rise above the pressures of our individual institutions and circumstances. Editing and talking together about the issues raised by this book has been a genuine pleasure. When we started collaborating several years ago, we were conscious as historians that we were, as ever, working at a temporal remove from exhibitions held and dismantled in the past. Now, as we complete this project from our respective homes during a global pandemic, we are aware of a different kind of separation from our subject: that is, the spatial remove not only from the

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examples in the book but also from exhibition spaces per se, many still closed, and we yearn for a return to these important, vibrant spaces of thought, contemplation, and interaction. Finally, we pay tribute to the late David S. Raizman (1951–2021), Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Art and Art History at Drexel University. We remember fondly his contributions to the discussion at the CAA panel that was the starting point for this book and the many other collegial interactions shared over the years. David was a generous and insightful colleague and we benefited greatly from his scholarship and friendship. It is to his memory that this book is dedicated.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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EXHIBITIONS BEYOND BOUNDARIES: AN INTRODUCTION Harriet Atkinson, Verity Clarkson, and Sarah A. Lichtman

If exhibitions are acts of “exposure” that manifest deeply held views and beliefs, as literary theorist Mieke Bal claims, then the exhibitions that are the subject of this book enacted such exposure both within and beyond the confines of exhibition spaces, and across national borders and boundaries.1 Building on previous studies that have analyzed exhibitions within the context of the nation-state, our concern here is with how museum and gallery exhibitions, trade fairs, and international expositions held between 1945 and 1985 provided the focus for transnational exchanges. In bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, including cultural studies and art, architectural, and design history, we are interested in considering what happens when the concern is not solely with how exhibitions operate as sites of exchange in the political economy of art or design, but also with the ways in which they provide a focus for other sorts of exchange. Our book looks through or beyond exhibitions’ content, to highlight their role not simply as acts of “exposure” but as something more: as heavily freighted objects of diplomacy, as networks, and as articulators of national values and principles. We are seeking, therefore, to make manifest what historian of collections Krzysztof Pomian describes as the interrelationship between “visible and invisible,” between an exhibition and its publics (local, national, international), between exhibition instigators and exhibition makers and their networks, and between politicians and their contacts.2

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ORIGINS AND FRAMEWORKS This book developed out of a 2017 panel we co-convened at the College Art Association (CAA) conference in New York. It was the first time that the Design History Society (DHS) sponsored a CAA session as an “Affiliate Society,” and we, as design historians, were interested in finding a theme that would unite our own discipline with that of the dominant art history focus of CAA. Exhibitions proved a fruitful starting point for conversations across these disciplinary boundaries. They presented a chance to consider our differing approaches to these complex events, including their wider networks, the interconnections and exchanges that are engendered by and through exhibitions, and how they become the focus for diplomatic exchanges and for addressing social or political contestation. The enthusiastic response to our call for papers confirmed that this subject touched on something that others were also keen to explore.

SITUATING EXHIBITIONS AND TRANSNATIONALISM The thirteen chapters in this book cover an array of intersecting topics and approaches played out in and through exhibitions. Collectively, they form a commentary on the diversity of post-war transnational cultural contacts and expand the parameters of disciplinary frameworks. The study of exhibitions—these visual, material, spatial, and textual hybrids—is, by its very nature, interdisciplinary. The authors in this volume draw on a range of approaches, enmeshing political and cultural history with cultural studies, material culture studies, literary studies and semiology, art history, architectural history, and the editors’ “home” discipline of design history. But as the chapters make clear, while interdisciplinary, the study of exhibitions also takes on distinct disciplinary inflections. Art historians, for example, have written about artworks displayed at exhibitions, investigating stylistic or thematic commonalities and the development of artistic networks through exhibitions;3 architectural historians writing about exhibitions have focused on the buildings, structures, and professional or trade links;4 and design historians have explored displays of decorative arts as well as the furnishings and interiors of exhibition spaces and the design and materiality of exhibitions as a totality, including their installation and graphics.5 Design historians have also commonly focused their analysis on displays at temporary international exhibitions and world’s fairs,6 rather than on the materiality of the museum-based exhibitions that have more often been the terrain of art history and museology.7 As such, we, the editors, decided that arranging the chapters chronologically offers the greatest potential to highlight the complexities of each case study. Although many chapters

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EXHIBITIONS BEYOND BOUNDARIES

share themes of cultural diplomacy, networks, and nationalisms, ordering simply by theme, exhibition typology, or locale would have served to flatten nuances and stifle dialogue. It is our intention to offer pathways and approaches that stimulate the reader to consider exhibitions anew. This volume, therefore, moves beyond analyzing exhibitions as self-contained objects or as manifestations of the politics of host institutions, organizers, or individual nations, to consider the dynamic and complex transnational exchanges that happen through and around them. It necessitates venturing beyond the subject of a display, the materials and materiality of the exhibition’s design, and its structures to wider questions about how and why exhibitions enact exchanges and what is left in their wake. It considers how some temporary exhibitions can evolve, gathering or indeed losing momentum as they move between sites and locations. It highlights the temporal complexities of fleeting and short-term exhibitions that historians may have overlooked because of their modest scale, but which are culturally significant for a number of reasons nevertheless, perhaps for the artists or designers who took part, or the particular cultural conjuncture the exhibitions represent. It requires considering the many and various human actors that work in, on, and around them, and their motivations, which can alter during a showing and between iterations at different venues. We consider “transnational” a useful term for describing these relationships. The term suggests a complex set of political, economic, and cultural processes happening both within and beyond the boundaries of nation-states. It acknowledges, for example, the migration of people, objects, and ideas between places and the traces they leave. It accommodates the idea of communication systems that can instantaneously transport images, contacts, and exchanges from one part of the globe to another, shaping and influencing one another in myriad ways. It allows us to explore these complexities in multiple directions, to describe exchanges that happen through and beyond, communications that may call for translation and negotiation, for reciprocity and accommodation: a disjunctive, ever-changing power dynamic. At the same time, this is negotiated within and between nationstates with fixed borders, laws, and particular political systems. Such exchanges are frequently messy, complex and dynamic transnational entanglements.8 The relations we are interested in interrogating here transcend boundaries. Key to understanding transnational exchanges is analyzing the power dynamics implicit in them, building on sociologist Tony Bennett’s theoretical formulation of an “exhibitionary complex” (itself derived from Michel Foucault’s elaboration of a disciplinary complex), with exhibitions forming a web of vehicles for inscribing messages of power in a society.9 This edited collection extends these formulations to consider how power relationships traverse the geographical boundaries and borders shaping exhibitions. It seeks to broaden the analysis of power dynamics past the well-rehearsed interactions of the superpowers through exhibitions and

INTRODUCTION

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to consider other lesser-known power dynamics—the “scalar dynamic,” to use anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s phrase—which are inevitably played out between polities of different scales, with those of smaller scale fearing cultural absorption by those of larger scale.10

RECONFIGURING GEOGRAPHIES Exhibitions’ capacity to reconfigure global geographies has been the subject of scholarship in the burgeoning field of international art biennials and biennales.11 Up to 1989 only thirty biennials were founded. But, as art historian Sabine B. Vogel explains, with the advent of globalization and the end of the Cold War, the dismantling of ideological, economic, and communicative barriers, an enormous boom in biennials set in. Today there are around 277 and the number is ever increasing.12 New geographical identities and groupings—local, regional, and transnational—are constantly being formed and re-formed in this context. While biennials support new regional cultural collaborations, they also allow for the “production of locality,” to use another phrase from Appadurai, the assertion of particular local identities in the face of cultural centrism.13 Biennials also support the production of transnational identities, as artists transcend or reject political affiliations associated with their own nationalities and as exhibition curators choose themes that challenge local or national conditions. Over recent decades a number of scholars have developed decolonial approaches to begin to address the urgent need to reconfigure the geographies of art and design histories beyond the Euro-American hegemony.14 Academics writing exhibition histories have shared these concerns.15 A driving intention of our own edited collection is also to reconfigure the geographies for exhibition studies by including case studies from the Global North and South including Asia, Africa, Australasia, the Middle East, Europe (East and West), and the United States. During the preparation of this volume, important research in design studies and design history has emerged on Latin America, crucially expanding the map. We look forward to future scholars further reconfiguring the field.16 While seeking to expand the geographies of exhibition histories, we are also, in a sense, contracting them to consider a series of case studies, some relatively modest, which, nevertheless, act as nodes or as snapshots of engagements within extended networks of practice, with political ideas and ideals, or with trade and commerce. Each addresses issues of locality, locale, and regionalism, especially regionalism within a globalizing world. Some exhibitions, although small in size and scale, traveled extensively across national boundaries and continents, clocking up miles, allowing us to reflect on how forward momentum from place to place and through time changed them.

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NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES Cultural theorist Stuart Hall suggests we can consider identity as “a production,” never complete, “always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation.”17 In keeping with this, all of the exhibitions discussed in this book can be considered moments in which multiple identities were in the process of being produced and negotiated: collective and individual identities; local, national, and regional identities; personal and professional identities. There is an extensive literature on the development of national identities within the context of international expos and world’s fairs.18 Institutional identities also develop through exhibitions, as chapters in this book show, with events initiated by a range of organizations, from governments and museums to exhibiting societies. These transnational entanglements were regularly played out in the context of colonial or indeed postcolonial relationships, through the production and assertion of independent identities. This is seen in this book in Hong Kong’s negotiation of its relationship with Britain, the identities in formation of recently independent states such as Sri Lanka, or in diasporic relationships, for example through PanAfrican negotiations with the US. In these chapters, we find nations shaping and negotiating their self-image on the world stage: Israel at the Venice Biennale, “Italianness” at Expo 58, “Dutchness” on tour, New Zealand in the context of the Pacific region, the Italian response to Poland, or Yugoslavia asserting its “third way.” Sometimes these relationships are more explicitly violent: in the case of the West’s brutish appropriation of Egyptian treasures, for example, which formed the background to the uneasy negotiations around the blockbuster Treasures of Tutankhamun tour. Since the late 1980s, exhibitions have been useful portals through which historians consider issues of cultural identity, the representation of race, class, and gender. Design historian Paul Greenhalgh’s pioneering study Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 focused on gender and racial hierarchies and the despicable practice of displaying human beings at world’s fairs.19 More recently, scholars have turned to consider how world’s fairs enable communities to build identities, suggesting greater reciprocity between exhibitions and their visitors. Architectural historian Mabel O. Wilson, in her book Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums, focuses on Black Americans’ participation in world’s fairs, showing how the events offered prospects for Black US citizens to witness their own progress as a race and a nation.20 This idea of Blackness and exhibitions continues to evolve. MoMA’s 2021 exhibition entitled Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, organized by Wilson, Sean Anderson, and Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, explores ways in which histories can be made visible and equities can be built. Exhibitions, even when temporary and seemingly ephemeral, have longer lasting

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impacts and consequences in evolving identities for communities and individuals, as well as for nations.21

WHY 1945 TO 1985? Exhibitions’ potential to showcase a nation’s imperial might, manufacturing prowess, erudition, or productivity had been established in the nineteenth century through successive international expos and world’s fairs, but their use took on a new potency in the twentieth century. Nations emulated each other in this respect. While visiting the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition, for example, British civil servants were overwhelmed by how Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion projected national power and set about attempting to replicate this image in exhibitions at home.22 In the 1930s, with the rise of authoritarian states in Germany, Italy, and Spain, exhibitions’ potential for communicating the might of nations and for opposing that power became established practice. Exhibitions became tools of opposition, allowing activists to highlight inequalities, to oppose fascism, and to critique colonialism.23 Exhibitions continued to be part of the armory of propaganda preceding and during the Second World War, aimed at both domestic audiences and international ones, and addressing both allies and enemies.24 In wartime Britain, the Ministry of Information recognized exhibitions’ communicative potential, adopting them as part of their campaign alongside posters, books, and broadcasts. The US Office of War Information did the same, collaborating with the Museum of Modern Art to create touring exhibitions, giving insights into the superiority of life in a democracy. In the turbulent years after the Second World War, within the gathering storm of the Cold War and as colonial power waned, many newly established nations again turned to exhibitions to promote their artistic and cultural identities on an international stage, and it is these years that are the focus of this book. This timeframe, in conjunction with expanded geographies, also offers the potential to reperiodize exhibition histories, reassessing more conventional chronologies from multiple global perspectives.25 We suggest that from 1945 to 1985—the period spanned here—exhibitions gained a more nuanced political and cultural potency, diversifying and proliferating against a shifting backdrop of broad historical changes and processes including decolonization and globalization. Museum and gallery exhibitions, industrial and trade fairs, biennials, triennials, festivals, and world’s fairs increasingly became locations for the display of “soft power,” for the exercise of cultural diplomacy between nations, and as spaces for addressing areas of social or political contestation. The middle years of the twentieth century saw a concerted use of exhibitions in the formation of national identities: with the building of new nation-states, as former colonies gained independence, and as existing states were redefined in the

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context of the Cold War. These identities were not formed in isolation, of course, but negotiated within and between states, as the chapters in this book show. A number of scholars have previously written about how cultural diplomacy and key political exchanges were enacted between superpowers through Cold War-era exhibitions.26 The international interventions during this period of one major institution, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, have been particularly extensively researched.27 The relationships our authors trace in Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries were played out in a range of exhibition spaces from wellknown and well-attended international exhibitions—such as Expo 58 in Brussels, the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, and Expo 70 in Osaka—to blockbuster touring sensations, as well as smaller sized trade fairs and traveling exhibitions. International exhibitions have much in common with other “megaevents”—such as the Olympics—with parallel investment in designing national representations, the focus of recent scholarship.28 What is apparent from looking across from major exhibitions to short-lived and small-scale ones is that regardless of size, they inescapably connect to political, economic, and cultural concerns of that moment. In focusing on the political logic of exhibitions, their role as diplomacy, propaganda, and soft power, it can be easy to overlook their financial or trade impetus.29 An economic motivation was implicit in the majority of the transnational interactions traced in this book. This was overt in the case of trade fairs, and profits were part of the calculation for traveling blockbusters, but it was also woven into the context of exhibitions as an arm of diplomacy that politics could clear the path for trade deals. Today, when global superpowers increasingly come to blows in seemingly intangible ways—through “fake news” and manipulation of social media—it is interesting to consider the more physical traces exhibitions left in these decades after the Second World War as they were packed and unpacked in order to travel from one location to another, as politicians unveiled them, as visitors went to see them, and as readers experienced them through reports in contemporary newspapers.

NETWORKS AND AGENTS But what of the people who make exhibitions? In locating exhibitions within their wider geographies, it can be easy to forget the motivations and ideals of the teams of people who collaborate to bring exhibitions to life. Previous work has focused on how art curators broker national or regional identities through contemporary art, existing at the center of an international network dominated by private foundations, corporations, and business.30 The process of making exhibitions is highly collaborative; it involves curators, administrators, politicians, designers, artists, architects and technicians, marketers and

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merchandisers, and many others besides. As well as being spaces of work, exhibitions are also contexts in which these exhibition makers assert themselves and their beliefs, allowing for the development of professional identities, as the chapters in this book demonstrate. Integral to this process of imagining, creating, and disseminating exhibitions is their representation and mediation in the contemporary press.

THE AFTERLIFE OF EXHIBITIONS As many of the chapters in this book demonstrate, news reports and glossy magazine articles about exhibitions often remain as part of the limited body of evidence after an exhibition closes. This is, of course, problematic without special attention to a publication’s particular perspective and raises further questions about what remains afterwards. A book like this, drawing together exhibitionary case studies across many sites and spaces, invites questions about the archiving and archeology of exhibitions and highlights the challenges around interpreting and evaluating the evidence that is kept. It can be hard to find images of an exhibition’s installation and records to allow an understanding of the design and construction of spaces. How do we, as researchers, rehabilitate and reconstruct temporary spaces containing objects dispersed long ago? Archivists, too, have been thinking about this challenge as set out, for example, in the book Folding The Exhibition edited by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), which interrogates the challenges of archiving and documenting past exhibitions.31 Approaches to the temporal qualities of exhibitions vary and there is an increasing distinction between researchers analyzing exhibitions as synchronous entities, within their own historical moment, and diachronic approaches, which consider how exhibitions have evolved through time. In the latter case, exhibitions become portals through which to understand and re-evaluate history, as they travel through and between locations. In this book, traveling exhibitions originating in Egypt and the Netherlands, for example, have differing relevances and resonances as they move through time and space. The enthusiasm over the last decade for not only reconstructing exhibitions in writing and analysis but for restaging them in real space is testament to this interest in exhibitionary traces and legacies. As art historians Jane Chin Davidson and Nicola Foster show, exhibitions have been restaged for changing political ends.32 Take, for example, the notorious 1937 Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) exhibition, organized by Adolf Ziegler. It put on show confiscated works of art that were interpreted as an attack against the German people and as symptoms of a cultural decline inextricably associated with liberal democracy. This exhibition was, as Davidson and Foster demonstrate, toured by the Nazis repeatedly throughout Germany in the late 1930s. It was then restaged at the end of the Cold War in 1991 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in order to expose Nazi ideology and its approach to European

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avant-garde art, then restaged in multiple locations, with several curatorial approaches, throughout the 1990s. Their interest in this is not the act of repetition but the specific differences that each restaging introduces in terms of site and approach.

THE CHAPTERS The chapters in this volume begin by considering postwar exhibitions and issues related to transnationalism and negotiated national identity. Chelsea Haines focuses on the early history of Israeli art and architecture at the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest international art exhibition and the first to resume in Europe after the war. In “Universal Civilization and National Cultures: Producing Israel at the Venice Biennale, 1948–1952,” the author analyzes the tensions visible in negotiating the newly established state of Israel’s identity via art and architecture, interrogating two moments at the Biennale amid shifting definitions of emergent “Israeli-ness.” The first, a 1948 display of artworks, took place in a designated section of the Italian Pavilion mere weeks before the state of Israel was officially declared. The 1952 exhibition, by contrast, occupied a new, permanent, International Style Israeli Pavilion containing modern art. Haines suggests that, by 1952, Israel’s identity selectively excluded non-European Israeli identities from the exhibition to promote a narrative of cultural affinity with Western European civilization and modern, secular Euro-American democracy. In “Salvaging Through Merchandising: America’s Vietnamese Craft Diplomacy on Display in the US in 1956 and 1958,” Jennifer Way shifts the focus to representations of Southeast Asia, analyzing the transnational workings of US postwar cultural diplomacy and cultural hegemony and its “civilizing” mission via ideas of salvage and rescue. Way’s chapter investigates the tripartite relationship between trade and retail displays of Vietnamese craft in New York, economic aid programs, and US middle-class consumers. Charting the differing contents and installations of two trade fairs of Southeast Asian crafts at the New York Coliseum in 1956 and 1958, it analyzes how modernist US industrial design was used to develop Vietnamese craft products for export, providing economic assistance to South Vietnam to discourage it seeking Communist support. The displays of handmade items, fine art, and historical replicas at the Coliseum and in US department stores spanned a range of tastes and affordability, making visible these asymmetrical power relationships. They assimilated Vietnamese craft into a UScontrolled narrative, diverting attention from the State Department’s international Cold War “craft diplomacy” towards the domestic consumption of craft objects. Katarzyna Jeżowska similarly foregrounds craft and the Cold War in “ ‘A Slightly Exotic Country’: Poland’s Contentious Debut at the 11th Milan Triennale, 1957,” framing the exhibition as a location for competing Polish identities. She investigates how the critical reception of this exhibition of modern craft objects—comprising

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distinctively Polish textiles, ceramics, and rough-hewn “exotic” furniture—became a site of reflection for Poland’s post-Stalinist identity both domestically and internationally. For many commentators in Poland, who judged these unique craft objects by the standards of mass production, the display evinced the stagnation of Polish manufacturing and provoked calls to rethink how handicraft could better serve modern society and industrial design. However, some international commentators, particularly in Italy and Finland, perceived shared aesthetic sensibilities with Poland, aligning it not with the Eastern Bloc but with the ideals of the Western design community. Foreign and domestic audiences for postwar socialist national identities are explored further in “Self-management on Display: Negotiating the Visions of Yugoslav Socialist Modernity at Expo 58 and Porodica i domaćinstvo Exhibitions,” Rujana Rebernjak’s study of two 1958 Yugoslav exhibitions: the country’s pavilion at the international Brussels Expo—the first world’s fair after the Second World War—and the Porodica i domaćinstvo (Family and Household) exhibition at the Zagreb Fair. The former, a light, glass and steel structure containing displays of Yugoslav history, art, natural landscape, and political and economic development, used abstract metaphors to suggest openness and neutrality; the latter, a display of domestic environments and communal goods and services, promoted a comfortable, modern way of life. Rebernjak brings together these two exhibitions in the broader context of transnational interwar exchange, considering how design and architecture were used differently at home and abroad to represent workers’ “self-management”: a defining, but contested, characteristic of non-aligned, “third way” socialism in Yugoslavia. Another under-researched location at the Brussels Expo forms the centerpiece of Rika Devos and Serena Pacchiani’s chapter, “ ‘One of the Puzzles of the Exhibition’: A Misunderstood Cittadina, Neoliberty, and the Italian Display at Brussels Expo 58.” The authors feature Italy’s pavilion—a modest architectural setting, reminiscent of a cittadina (small town)—that visitors embraced for what they considered to be its authentically Italian character. Nevertheless, the pavilion provoked transnational debates among the international architectural press who condemned its vernacular style as a provincial rebuke of modernism. Devos and Pacchiani contend that the pavilion—developed by a team of modern architects— was a representation of the Italian architectural Neoliberty style alleged to demonstrate coherence and continuity. It combined modern technologies with local specificities, craft details, and human input, and was explicitly positioned as a counterpoint to the anonymity of the International Style. Analyzing both the exterior and the interior (the latter hitherto overlooked in much scholarship), they note that this ambiguous and misunderstood structure’s subtle critique was misinterpreted as reactionary in the otherwise brash surroundings of an Expo. The next four chapters move from the early 1960s into the middle part of the decade, bringing together trade fairs, art exhibitions, and historical displays. The

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chapters by Nushelle de Silva and Ian Cooke investigate theoretical and methodological issues around conceptualizing touring exhibitions. “Assembling Smallness: The United States Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, 1961” by de Silva concerns one iteration of a traveling US exhibition that visited six locations across India, Ghana, and Sri Lanka in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This display, which also functioned as part of a wider Cold War information strategy to promote the US way of life, was housed in geodesic domes and included displays of model laundries and sawmills alongside a 360º Circarama cinema. The author focuses on its showing in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), to propose that traveling exhibitions are not one unified, legible entity but a number of fragments that briefly overlap as a temporary assemblage. The Small Industries Exhibition eschewed “big business” to promote ideas of smallness across national borders. In doing so, it suggested that capitalism existed to serve ordinary people, an idea satirized in the Lankan press, which mocked the exhibition’s consumerist character. Ian Cooke echoes de Silva’s notion that touring exhibitions are inherently unstable and explores the ways in which cultural diplomacy and shifting geopolitical forces affect transnational exchange in the chapter “Painting from the Pacific and Artistic Exchange Across the Pacific, 1961.” It explores the curatorial networks underpinning a touring art exhibition, evaluating its success in reconceptualizing one nation within a broader geographic region. Cooke considers a 1961 exhibition organized by Auckland City Art Gallery that was the first to explicitly position contemporary fine art from New Zealand alongside art from Australia, Japan, and the West Coast of the US. He highlights the collaboration between Dr. Grace McCann Morley, the first director of the San Francisco Museum of Art, and Peter Tomory, Director of the Auckland City Art Gallery. Its aim was to demonstrate common aesthetic characteristics across national borders resulting from their shared Pacific Rim location. Despite efforts to take the exhibition overseas, it only toured within New Zealand, changing with each new location and installation. This chapter investigates how curatorial relationships worked at individual, institutional, national, and international levels. However, Cooke observes that critics agreed that ultimately the mixture of figurative, semi-abstract, and abstract works on display showed more cultural disparities than similitude. The volume returns to world’s fairs in Ethan Robey’s chapter, “ ‘A Wholly American Plastic Package’: Transnationalism, Technology, and Theology at the Vatican Pavilion in the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair,” which explains how the exhibition pavilion demonstrated tensions between modernization and tradition in the negotiations between the Roman papacy and New York Catholic establishment. Concurrent with the Church’s reassessment of its position in the modern world at the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962–5), the Vatican pavilion is chiefly remembered for its most popular exhibit, Michelangelo’s Pieta (1499), which had never before left Rome. Robey positions the Pieta’s visit as

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transnational, shipped from Italy by the US organizers cushioned in polystyrene beads—rather than the natural materials preferred by the Italians—and displayed behind protective Plexiglas. The statue formed the locus for shifting, unstable meanings: from technological optimism and faith in progress accompanying the three-ton statue’s successful journey across the Atlantic, to the accusations that the practices of consumer capitalism used in its display and promotion obscured its spiritual message. Transnational cooperation could also be the subject of exhibitions as well as an organizational method. Like Robey’s, Verity Clarkson’s chapter “ ‘The Gentle Art of Cookery’: Exhibiting Transnational Anglo-Russian Diplomatic History During the Cold War, 1967” explores the processes by which exhibitions assign contemporary meanings to centuries-old artifacts. Held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on the occasion of Premier Kosygin’s state visit, Great Britain—USSR: An Historical Exhibition was a hastily assembled survey of documents and cultural objects linking Britain and Russia since the sixteenth century. Despite the Cold War, this jointly-organized exhibition presented an image of longstanding and continuing diplomatic friendship between the two nations, prompting accusations that the British organizers were complicit in the Soviet Ministry of Culture’s “cookery”: the rewriting of historical narratives. This chapter interrogates the term cookery to explore not only allegations of historical falsification but also how the organizers blended together exhibits with links to both countries, exploring how both sides participated in constructing a selective, mutually beneficial image. The final four chapters of the volume move from the 1960s, through the 1970s, and up to the early 1980s, tackling the growth of global festivals, the evolving significance of expos, the development of blockbuster exhibitions, and the impact of environments on touring exhibition design. In “From FESMAN ’66 to FESTAC ’77: Competing Curatorial Strategies for African-American Art at Pan-African Festivals,” Lindsay Twa examines two key moments in the international presentation of traditional and contemporary Black-diasporan and African art and culture: the First World Festival of Black and African Culture (FESMAN) in April 1966 in Dakar, Senegal, and the Second Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), held in Nigeria in 1977. Twa’s analysis of these highly complex transnational arts events focuses on the curatorial processes around FESMAN and FESTAC’s displays of African American contemporary visual art, which found new global audiences via the festivals. In addition to detailing transnational artistic exchanges, Twa argues that the US visual art committees for each event employed different curatorial strategies with divergent outcomes: the first curated art objects with the intention of demonstrating US and African American dominance in global contemporary art, whereas the latter curated people, recognizing an unprecedented opportunity for dialogue and exchange across a worldwide Black community. Daniel Cooper and Juliana Kei situate the meanings of Hong Kong’s first pavilion at an international exhibition alongside a discussion of changing domestic

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identities during a time of migration from China and expansion in manufacturing. Their chapter “Designing Stability: Hong Kong’s Pavilion at Expo 70 and Local Expositions” notes that Hong Kong’s contribution stood out not only because of its unusual geopolitical status as the only “administrative zone” among seventy-six nations, but also because the structure atop the former colony’s pavilion—echoing the traditional sampan’s bat-wing sails—was an unexpected anachronism brought into sharp focus by the Japanese Expo’s emphasis on visions of the future. The authors position their analysis of the pavilion’s architecture and interior—intended to present a stable and industrious image abroad—in the context of a series of domestic trade fairs (1967–73) organized by the colonial government to downplay calls for workers’ rights. The 1970s also saw the development of the museum blockbuster exhibition, the epitome of which was the phenomenally successful Treasures of Tutankhamun, which toured internationally between 1972 and 1981. Mario Schulze’s chapter “Pharaoh Diplomacy: The Soft Power of the Treasures of Tutankhamun” unpacks the idea of “pharaoh diplomacy” to question how, and for whom, this loan exhibition of ancient Egyptian tomb artifacts functioned as soft power. Positioning the exhibition as a complex, transnational entity, rather than as a series of bilateral relationships between Egypt and countries in the global North, he analyzes its role in relation to the wider political, cultural, and economic interests of the 1970s: global oil politics, Middle East conflict, the branding of the Egyptian nation, and the international museums crisis. Combining a postcolonial approach with the concept of “soft disempowerment,” Schulze argues that ultimately Egypt was deprived of the power of these hugely symbolic artifacts via Western appropriation and commercialization. Our final chapter returns to a postcolonial example to highlight that transnational influences do not merely result from human exchanges and decisions; interacting physical and environmental factors may also shape the production and circulation of exhibition objects, installations, and narratives. Joana Meroz’s chapter “A ‘TropicProof Container Exhibition’: The Role of Environmental Factors in Configuring Design, A Dutch Case Study” builds upon recent scholarship considering factors such as temperature, humidity, light, and urban infrastructure to examine their impact on generating particular cultural practices in specific locations. Taking the traveling exhibition Dutch Design for the Public Sector II (1978) as a case study, she explores the “plasticity” of this example of cultural diplomacy that toured Europe, North America, and Indonesia through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Designed with the Indonesian climate and requirements in mind, this light, resilient, and affordable “container exhibition” comprised mainly mass-produced graphic design, which demonstrated “humane modernism,” and was simple for local populations to assemble as the multifunctional packing crates became the installation. Taken together, these chapters bring together ideas of nationalism, postcolonialism, materiality, technology, professionalization, networks, and diplomacy, all within the framework of transnational exchange. We intend this

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book to enliven and expand readers’ sense of the multiple ways of thinking about such complex and fascinating cultural objects.

THE FUTURE OF TRANSNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS? As museums and galleries around the globe remain difficult to visit in person for the foreseeable future and exhibitions are closed or postponed, we, as the editors of this book, do not currently have direct access to many of these types of spaces. As we long for a return to the experience of casually mingling with strangers in public and for the auratic frisson of standing before real objects in a gallery, this spatial separation has provided new perspectives on the lives and legacies of exhibitions. It gives us pause to consider the relationship between the various stages of an exhibition’s existence: its pre-life in policy, budgeting, conversation, and debate; its often fleeting life in the gallery and contemporary media; and its afterlife in memory and in the archive. And, during the pandemic from 2020, some exhibitions have already been rethought, re-presented, and lived out in very different forms— from simple websites to full-blown virtual experiences that have the potential to transport us to a different time and place.33 Digital technology has naturalized transnational exchange as integral to contemporary communication. Through its investigations into exhibitions between 1945 and 1985, Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries reveals these complex processes that continue to forge an everexpanding global network.

NOTES 1 Mieke Bal, Double Exposures. The Subject of Cultural Analysis (London and New York:

Routledge, 1996), 2. 2 Krzysztof Pomian, “The Collection: Between the Visible and the Invisible,” in Susan

Pearce, ed., Interpreting Objects and Collections (London: Routledge, 1994). 3 Patricia Mainardi, Art and Politics of the Second Empire. The Universal Expositions of

1855 and 1867 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Linda J. Docherty, “Why Not National Art?: Affirmative Responses in the 1890s,” in Diane P. Fischer, ed., Paris 1900. The “American School” at the Universal Exposition (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999); Carolyn Kinder Carr, “Prejudice and Pride: Presenting American Art at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition,” in Carolyn Kinder Carr and Robert W. Rydell, eds., Revisiting the White City. American Art at the 1893 World’s Fair (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993). 4 Rika Devos, Alexander Ortenberg, and Vladimir Paperny, eds., Architecture of Great

Expositions 1937–1959. Messages of Peace, Images of War (London and New York: Routledge, 2015) or David Dean, The Architect as Stand Designer. Building Exhibitions 1895–1983 (London: Scolar Press, 1985).

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5 Penny Sparke, Brenda Martin, and Trevor Keeble, eds., The Modern Period Room. The

Construction of the Exhibited Interior, 1870–1950 (London and New York: Routledge, 2006); Jeremy Aynsley, “Pressa Cologne, 1928: Exhibitions and Publication Design in the Weimar Period,” Design Issues 10, no. 3 (1994): 52–76, or Jason T. Busch and Catherine L. Futter, Inventing the Modern World. Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2012). 6 Jonathan M. Woodham, “Images of Africa and Design at the British Empire Exhibitions

between the Wars,” Journal of Design History 2, no. 1 (1989): 15–33; Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair. Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876– 1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Robert W. Rydell, World of Fairs. The Century-of-Progress Expositions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas. The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988); Paul Overy, “Visions of the Future and the Immediate Past: The Werkbund Exhibition, Paris 1930,” Journal of Design History 17, no. 4 (2004): 337–357; Amy F. Ogata, “Viewing Souvenirs: Peepshows and the International Expositions,” Journal of Design History 15, no. 2 (2002): 69–82. 7 Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn, eds., Colonialism and the Object. Empire, Material

Culture and the Museum (London and New York: Routledge, 1997) is an edited collection exploring the impact of colonial contact with other cultures on the material culture of both the colonized and the imperial nation as collected and displayed in museums. 8 “Entanglements” is a term developed by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

to describe complex sets of interactions and used by anthropologist Tim Ingold to describe relationships formed across time and space. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum, 1987); Tim Ingold, Being Alive. Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London and New York: Routledge, 2011): Part II: “The Meshwork.” For use of the concept of entanglements in exhibition histories see Harriet Atkinson, “ ‘Lines of Becoming’ Misha Black and Entanglements through Exhibition Design,” Journal of Design History 34, no. 1 (2021): 37–53. 9 Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations 4 (Spring 1988):

73–102. 10 Scholarship that addresses Cold War exhibitionary interactions between the so-called

“superpowers” is footnoted below. Appadurai uses the phrase “scalar dynamic” in his essay “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2 (1990): 295–310, 295. 11 Anthony Gardner and Charles Green, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta. The

Exhibitions that Created Contemporary Art (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), The Global Work of Art. World’s Fairs, Biennials, and the Aesthetics of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) and Sabine B. Vogel, Biennials. Art on a Global Scale (Vienna: Springer, 2010). 12 “Directory of Biennials,” Biennial Foundation, accessed April 12, 2021, https://www.

biennialfoundation.org/network/biennial-map/. 13 Arjun Appadurai, “The Production of Locality,” in Richard Fardon, ed., Counterworks.

Managing the Diversity of Knowledge (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 204–225.

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14 In design history see Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley, eds., Global

Design History (London and New York: Routledge, 2011); Kjetil Fallan and Grace Lees-Maffei, eds., Designing Worlds. National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016); D. J. Huppatz, “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” Journal of Design History 28, no. 2 (2015): 182–202; Yuko Kikuchi and Yunah Lee, eds., “Transnational Modern Design Histories in East Asia,” special issue, Journal of Design History 27, no. 4 (2014). In art history see Catherine Grant and Dorothy Price, eds., “Decolonizing Art History,” Art History 43, no. 1 (January 2020): 8–66 or Nicholas Mirzoeff, “Empty the Museum, Decolonize the Curriculum, Open Theory,” Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 25, no. 53 (2017): 6–22. In architecture see Andrew Herscher and Ana María León, “At the Border of Decolonization,” e-flux architecture, accessed February 13, 2021, https://www.e-flux. com/architecture/at-the-border/325762/at-the-border-of-decolonization/. 15 In her edited volume Cultures of International Exhibitions 1840–1940, Marta Filipová

attends to some of the lesser-known exhibitions and less dominant contributors at world’s fairs to reassert the significance of exhibitions happening in what have been seen as the “political margins,” to turn attention to “regional modernity.” Filipova, ed., Cultures of International Exhibitions 1840–1940 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). 16 Patricia Lara-Betancourt and Livia Rezende, eds., “Locating Design Exchanges in

Latin America and the Caribbean,” special issue, Journal of Design History 32, no. 1 (2019); M. Elizabeth Boone, “The Spanish Element in Our Nationality”. Spain, America, and the World’s Fairs and Centennial Celebrations, 1876–1915 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019); Lowery Stokes Sims, ed., New Territories. Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America (New York: Museum of Art and Design, 2014); Gabriela Rangel and Jorge Rivas Perez, eds., Moderno. Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, 1940–1978 (New York: Americas Society, 2015). 17 Ideas developed by Stuart Hall in “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Jonathan

Rutherford, ed., Identity. Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 222. 18 Kjetil Fallan, “Milanese Mediations: Crafting Scandinavian Design at the Triennali di

Milano,” Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History 83, no. 1 (2014): 1–23; Harriet Atkinson, The Festival of Britain. A Land and its People (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012). 19 Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas. 20 Mabel O. Wilson, Negro Building. Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 21 Sean Anderson and Mabel O. Wilson, with Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, curators,

Reconstructions. Architecture and Blackness in America, February 27–May 31, 2021, Museum of Modern Art, New York, accessed June 16, 2021, https://www.moma.org/ calendar/exhibitions/5219. 22 Stephen Tallents, The Projection of England (London: Faber & Faber, 1932),

34–35. 23 Marin Kuijt’s essay on Anti-Colonial Exhibition Action is a case in point: “Exposing the

Colonial Exhibition: Dutch Anti-Colonial Activism in a Transnational Context,” Reinvention. An International Journal of Undergraduate Research 12, no. 2 (2019): n.p. 24 In The Power of Display. A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern

Art (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998), Mary Anne Staniszewski analyzes the politics

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of MOMA’s exhibition installations, while Miriam M. Basilio discusses the role of exhibitions in supporting opposing sides in the Spanish Civil War in Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). More recently, Michael Tymkiw has analyzed exhibitionary mechanisms adopted by the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1942 in Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), exposing the contradictions at the heart of the National Socialist regime’s cultural mechanisms. For an account of traveling exhibitions as soft power, see Annebella Pollen, Art Without Frontiers. The British Council Collection (London: British Council, 2022). 25 For an earlier call to reperiodize modernism, Geeta Kapur’s 1992 lecture “When Was

Modernism in Indian Art?” published in Kapur, When Was Modernism? Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India (New Delhi: Tulika, 2000). 26 These include Jane Pavitt and David Crowley in Cold War Modern: Design 1945–1970

(London: V&A Publishing, 2008); Susan Reid on “The Soviet Pavilion at Expo ’58,” in Alla Aronova and Alexander Ortenberg, eds., A History of Russian Exposition and Festival Architecture, 1700–2014 (London and New York: Routledge, 2018); Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty. Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997); Greg Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front. The Soft Power of Midcentury Design (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan, Cold War Confrontations. US Exhibitions and their Role in the Cultural Cold War (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2008). 27 See, for example, Mary Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display and Ingrid Halland,

“The Unstable Object: Glifo, Blow and Sacco at MoMA, 1972,” Journal of Design History 33, no. 4 (2020): 329–345. 28 Maurice Roche, Mega-Events and Modernity. Olympics and Expos in the Growth of

Global Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); Mike O’Mahony, Olympic Visions. Images of the Games through History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Jilly Traganou, Designing the Olympics. Representation, Participation, Contestation (London: Routledge, 2016). 29 See Harriet Atkinson and Verity Clarkson, eds., “Design as an Object of Diplomacy

Post-1945,” special issue, Design and Culture 9, no. 2 (2017). 30 Mari Carmen Ramirez, “Brokering Identities: Art Curators and the Politics of Cultural

Representation,” in Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne, eds., Thinking About Exhibitions (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), or on how designers used their experiences of working on exhibitions, see for example Roland Marchand, “The Designers Go to the Fair II: Norman Bel Geddes, The General Motors ‘Futurama,’ and the Visit to the Factory Transformed,” Design Issues 8, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 22–40. 31 Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and MeLa Publications, Folding

the Exhibition (Barcelona: MACBA, 2014), https://img.macba.cat/public/uploads/ publicacions/foldingtheexhibition/Folding%20The%20Exhibition.pdf. 32 Jane Chin Davidson and Nicola Foster, eds., “Restaging Exhibitions,” special issue, with

essay contribution “Restaging Feminism: The Activist Retrospective,” Journal of Curatorial Studies 8, no. 2 (2019). 33 For example the Turner Prize 2021 was won by the eleven-strong Array collective who,

rather than producing exhibitable art works as such, built an illicit drinking den and filled it with banners, ashtrays and scrawled-on mirrors to create a pointed portrait of Northern Ireland. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/dec/02/array-

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collective-winning-turner-prize-belfast-bar-drinking-den. Additionally, the spaces of exhibition are also being rethought post-pandemic with empty shop spaces identified as valid venues for exhibitions in Britain; see for example Museums Journal, March 2021. https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/analysis/2021/03/ transforming-our-high-streets/#. Finally, at the “Van Gogh Experience”—an internationally touring multimedia exhibition and “virtual reality experience”—visitors interact with large-scale representations of the artist’s work through 360º digital projections and atmospheric sound and lighting. https://vangoghexpo.com/.

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1 UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION AND NATIONAL CULTURES: PRODUCING ISRAEL AT THE VENICE BIENNALE, 1948–1952 Chelsea Haines

The pavilion for Israel at the Venice Biennale opened on July 28, 1952, well past the opening of the Biennale itself and a few months later than expected.1 In a letter apologizing for the delay, a senior official in Israel’s Ministry of Education and Culture thanked the Biennale’s Secretary-General Rodolfo Pallucchini for his patience and emphasized the new state’s commitment to the project: In a newly founded state, which without exaggeration may be said to be struggling for its very primary essentials, problems of culture are naturally postponed and considered less pressing than acute material needs. Nevertheless, our decision to undertake the building of an Israeli pavilion in Venice was made despite the many predicted and unpredicted difficulties, which a new state faces in projects of this nature.2 Indeed, Israel was just beginning to emerge out of the crisis mode it inhabited since the state was declared four years earlier. Amidst the threat (and occasional eruption) of war with its neighboring states, the doubling of its population through Jewish immigration from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and dire economic straits that led to rationing and food shortages, the construction of the Pavilion was delayed at least once due to Israel’s shortfall of foreign currency

19

spurred by its international trade deficit.3 A much needed jolt to the economy in the form of a West German reparations agreement would not take effect until 1953. It was therefore under conditions of austerity at home that the Israeli government decided to build a pavilion for its modern art in Italy. Yet the decision to build the Israel Pavilion was neither frivolous nor haphazard. Israel had first participated in the Venice Biennale even before it was a state in 1948—albeit as a guest display in the main Italian Pavilion—and initiated plans to build a permanent structure on the Biennale’s fairgrounds as early as the spring of 1949.4 As the oldest exhibition of its kind in the world, participation in the Venice Biennale was a sign of Israel’s entrance onto the world stage.5 Between 1948 and 1952 the Venice Biennale became a critical site for Israeli nation-building in three distinct but complementary ways. First, Israel’s mere presence in the Biennale raised awareness of the new state amongst the cosmopolitan cadre of visitors to the exhibition. In the words of one diplomat, Israeli presence in Venice was “designed to impress the enlightened world” by showcasing the state’s artistic achievements.6 Second, the Israel Pavilion forged a sense of cultural affinity between Israel and the Euro-American nation-states exhibiting at the Biennale in the early 1950s. In so doing, the Israeli state imagined itself as both the origin point and an extension of western civilization in the Middle East. This position highlighted the work of only a fraction of the Israeli population—namely secular Ashkenazim (European Jews) who immigrated to Palestine before the Holocaust and became Israel’s ruling elite—and occluded the vast majority of Israel’s population and their diverse cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. Establishing Israel as a “western” nation rhetorically positioned the territorial Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a generalized clash between JudeoChristian and Islamic civilizations. Finally, the Israel Pavilion helped to reify a statist notion of Israeli identity in the country itself. The Israel Pavilion is key to understanding the development of Israeli nationhood, not just because it was the first government-funded, purpose-built space for Israeli art, but because it was a curatorial and architectural experiment later put into practice at home by institutions including, eventually, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.7 In 1965, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur described the challenge of emerging nation-states as “how to revive an old, dormant civilization and take part in universal civilization.”8 This tension is characterized by, on the one hand, an atavistic search for ancient and eternal roots in the land, and on the other, a quest to prove the state’s essentially modern and progressive character. For Israel, this pursuit of national character developed through postwar international frameworks of universalism and modernism. As the Israeli government sought to forget the complicated realities of the recent past, this chapter asserts that it embraced the supposed clean slate afforded by modernism to produce a notion of Israeli identity unmarred by notions of religion and ethnicity and unencumbered by the violence of war, dislocation, and exile. The Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was a nexus

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for nationalism, modernism, and universalism to intersect, in turn producing a concept of Israeli identity that would have wide-ranging consequences for how international publics and Israelis themselves perceived the state. While it may seem peculiar that the first purpose-built space for art commissioned by the Israeli government was not on Israeli soil, the real purpose of the Israel Pavilion was never its ostensible function of showcasing the country’s contemporary art. For a country still lacking a national cultural infrastructure in any tangible sense, the Israel Pavilion was aspirational. It was designed to show the world what Israel wanted to be rather than what it was—and it was not alone in this goal.

(EUROPEAN) UNIVERSALISM After the Second World War, a growing roster of international exhibitions and world expos became sites of publicity for nation-states eager to explore these events as venues for public diplomacy and self-promotion.9 This new enthusiasm for international recognition was especially true for rising nations situated outside the power centers of western Europe and the United States. While Israel was the first country to build a national pavilion on the grounds of the Venice Biennale after the Second World War, its construction was quickly followed by Venezuela in 1954, Japan and Finland in 1956, and Canada in 1958.10 In fact, during the first two decades after the Second World War, national participation in the Biennale more than doubled to thirty-four countries by 1965.11 These new pavilions signified more than a geographical expansion of nations represented on the fairgrounds— they signaled a paradigm shift in how the Venice Biennale thought of itself no longer as the gatekeeper of European art production but rather as a cultural reflection of the family of nations established in the aftermath of the Second World War. In the introduction to the catalog for the Biennale in 1952, Pallucchini celebrated the augmentation of “extra-European” nations in the exhibition and asserted that this phenomenon “attests to the trust that the artistic circles of the whole world place in the old Venetian institution.”12 Art historian Nancy Jachec has argued the Biennale played a critical role in the international recuperation of Italy’s reputation following decades of Mussolini’s regime.13 During Pallucchini’s tenure as Secretary-General from 1946 to 1956, the institution sought simultaneously to recuperate prewar modernism and expand international representation to include new nations by “describing modernist art as the language that could unite . . . ‘a universal family.’ ”14 Paradoxically, inclusion into this new family of nations meant adhering to an increasingly normative model of nationhood based on principles developed from the European Enlightenment. New and newly-independent countries adopted the model of the nation-state generated in the late eighteenth-century United States and France both through tangible structures—such as a parliamentary democracy, constitution,

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rule of law, and separation of state and religion—as well as broader philosophical concepts such as secularism and universalism.15 As world-systems analyst Immanuel Wallerstein has outlined, the notion of universalism as it has been deployed in international political and philosophical thought is predicated on the inherent superiority of Europe over the rest of the world. What Wallerstein prefers to call “European universalism” developed specifically in relation to the nonEuropean “high civilizations” in Asia and the Middle East. Thus, while the Ottoman Empire, for example, developed the trappings of civilization by European standards—writing, organized religion, rule of law, centralized bureaucracy, and extensive trade relations—it was intrinsically considered lesser than Europe. The cause of this inferior status was identified as a lack of forward movement in the march of history that saw the “Orient” as “somehow frozen in their trajectories [and] incapable therefore of transforming themselves into some version of modernity without the intrusion of outside (that is, European) forces.”16 To become “modern,” in other words, was to take the shape of Europe. Modern art and its attendant institutional structures, such as the Venice Biennale, played key roles in propagating these more abstract civilizational notions. In this way, western Europe maintained cultural hegemony while celebrating newfound global inclusivity. The great irony that this new family of nations was primarily formed out of Europe’s begrudging relinquishment of its colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East was largely lost in favor of the opportune rhetoric of universalism. Furthermore, in many cases, this normative western model of the nation-state merged with an older concept of the nation as a unified people rooted in shared ethno-religious identity and extended familial relations.17 These two models of the nation-state converged as a hybrid postwar nationalism paralleled in artistic trends, which attempted to merge national concerns with supposed transnational aesthetics typified by modernism, especially gestural abstraction.18 Rather than functioning as antinomies, as Israeli art critic (and, later, commissioner of the Israel Pavilion in Venice) Eugen Kolb stated in 1949, “artistic universalism and national distinctiveness need not be mutually exclusive or an oxymoron. On the contrary, they can and must complement each other . . . they will, with greater vigor and with richer means, create a distinctive and well rooted Hebrew-Israeli style of painting that we all crave.”19 International exhibitions like the Venice Biennale became sites where nationalism and universalism overlapped through art and architecture. As architecture historian Lucia Allais has argued in relation to another cultural institution, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the framework of international cultural platforms often allowed projects to suspend overt nationalist rhetoric in the name of universalist principles.20 By asserting themselves on a cultural rather than a political stage, nations effectively advanced their agendas at the Venice Biennale while appearing to serve a broader goal of establishing a world culture.

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A STATE IN PROGRESS Despite the high stakes of the 24th Venice Biennale in 1948—as the first major international art exhibition to resume in Europe after the Second World War— some important details of this display were left to the last moment. In a letter dated May 2, 1948, Pallucchini negotiated an agreement with the Association of Painters and Sculptors in the Land of Israel on the title of their exhibition to be held in the Italy Pavilion.21 Correspondence reveals that the title had changed at least three times in as many months: from Artists of Palestine (Artisti della Palestina) to Hebrew Artists of Palestine (Artisti Ebraici della Palestina), and, finally, to the agreed upon Artists of Eretz Israel, Palestine (Artisti di Erez Israel, Palestina).22 Photographs of the installation show the words Artisi Palestinesi plastered facing a wall with Erez Israel on the other. They are documents of perhaps the last moment such a mistranslation could feasibly have taken place, when the meanings of the words Palestine and Israel were not as inflexible as they would soon come to be. This categorical confusion was almost certainly caused by the fact that the state of Israel had yet to be declared, or more accurately, was in the long process of being declared and therefore named.23 The official declaration of the state of Israel occurred less than two weeks later. The exhibition was made up of a combination of established figurative painters including Marcel Janco and Reuven Rubin, whose work is discussed more later in this chapter, as well as Siona Tagger, Yitzhak Frenkel, and Nahum Gutman; the sculpture of Dov Feigin, whose primitivist carved stone Canaanite Woman (1946) was the centerpiece of the exhibition; and Israeli artists working in abstraction or semi-abstraction, namely the triad of painters Avigdor Stematsky, Yechezkel Streichman, and Joseph Zaritsky (whose practices were sometimes compressed together by critics who referred collectively to the small cohort as “Streichmatzky”).24 An oil painting titled Still Life with a Reproduction of Matisse (n.d.) by the unofficial leader of the group, Zaritsky, provides a clue to their aesthetic orientation.25 While no record of that painting survives, it appears to be one of a number of works Zaritsky painted around the time that referred to modernist masters.26 His Painting After Braque (1947), today in the Israel Museum’s collection, offers insight. Composed of blocky swaths of paint, the work appears to be an homage to the Cubist Georges Braque, whose career revitalization after the Second World War culminated in his winning the grand prize at the Venice Biennale in 1948, and a commentary on Zaritsky’s own painting practice. While modernism outside of Euro-America is often perceived as belated or arrière-garde due to its temporal delay, in this instance, Zaritsky’s homages signal a synchronous awareness of a larger international cultural project to revive the paragons of French modernism. Italian and foreign reviews of the Biennale for the most part ignored the modest display while Jewish publications, such as Israele in Rome, gave it importance insofar as it affirmed the new state-in-becoming. Congratulating Israel for being

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“readmitted” to the hall of nations, the author concludes his article, “While the cannons of the Arabs were throwing grenades against our University, against the Library, and against the science institutes of Mount Scopus—which they would not be able to reconstruct—our young artists were preparing their Biennale room. What a level of difference on the scale of civilization!” Here, the author makes explicit a level of political rhetoric that was only ever implied in Israel’s artistic contributions.27 As the late Israeli art critic Sara Chinski astutely pointed out, “the adoption of Western practices [in Israeli cultural production] is designed to bolster the depiction of the Zionist enterprise as a force for good—a beacon of enlightenment in the region, a ‘bastion of democracy,’ an island of civilization in the barbaric sea surrounding us.”28 By adhering to the standards of European culture, Israel could rely on the support of the “civilized” world. In so doing, individual Zionists (such as the anonymous author of the Israele article) turned a political conflict over territory—in this instance, over Mount Scopus, the site of the Hebrew University campus in East Jerusalem—into a generalized contrast of civilizational values.

A STATE OF PROGRESS In Israel, the 1948 exhibition was met with division among the local art community because it was not the selection of artists that had been approved by the Association of Painters and Sculptors in the Land of Israel. As a membership-based group that organized the major annual exhibition of Jewish artists in Palestine, the Association of Painters and Sculptors was a union-like organization that ostensibly spoke for all professional Jewish artists in that territory. The final checklist of works sent to the Biennale was quite different from the list of artists the Association’s leadership gave to the special commissioner Angelo Fano. The works of realist artists such as painters Menachem Shemi and Zeev Ben Zvi were replaced by the more abstract paintings of Avigdor Steimatzky, and Rubin and Gutman were brought in to represent the establishment of Eretz Israel painting, underscoring a longer artistic tradition in Jewish Palestine. As art historian Alec Mishory recounts, this change to the selection—orchestrated by the painters Zaritsky, Streichman, Yohanan Simon, and Aharon Kahana, who made up the leadership committee for the Association’s international exhibitions—was largely kept secret from the Association as a whole until after the exhibition’s opening.29 This secret substitution was followed up with a more public act of defiance against the Association when sixteen artists—most of whom had exhibited in Venice—refused to show their work at the Association’s annual exhibition in Tel Aviv in July 1948. As a big tent organization set up to support artists in a country with almost no independent art market, the Association held sway over the majority of the Israeli art world until that date; the break was not just against the

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Association but the entire status quo of the art world. In a letter published in the newspaper Haaretz, the artists argued that, given the recent establishment of the state, Israeli art had to be set to a higher standard. Now in the new state of Israel, they stated “concern for the respect of Hebrew art has barred us from taking part in an exhibition that emphasizes dangerous ignorance” of professional standards and principles, in a veiled allusion to those artists whose work was less acquainted with au courant movements in Europe.30 These seceding artists now became known as New Horizons and held their first show at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1948, where they would hold an exhibition every year from 1948 until 1959, with the support of curators such as Kolb who saw their movement as a bridge between European modernism and Israeli identity.31 Over the next decade, New Horizons became synonymous with Israeli art internationally. As New Horizons became more established at home and abroad, Zaritsky emerged as the group’s leader and their original inchoate defense of professional standards developed into a strong preference for gestural abstraction, and the promotion of an “international style” art.32 As Zaritsky spoke on the need for Israeli artists to develop their work without explicit nationalistic (i.e. symbolic) subject matter, Israel was already working to secure its permanent place in the Biennale through its own national pavilion. Plans to break ground on the Pavilion were ultimately confirmed by the Israel Ministry of Education and Culture on August 31, 1951.33 In a letter from September 1952 to the Ministry, Mordecai Ardon, the newly appointed Director of the Art Department, asserted that Moshe Sharett, Minister of Foreign Affairs and soon-tobe Prime Minister, had personally championed the construction of the building.34 Furthermore, Ardon emphasized the importance of the Israel Pavilion and maintaining good relations with the Biennale was “not only cultural but political.”35 It was also economic. In a June 1948 letter, Fano—the Italian-Israeli engineer who played a key role in establishing the Israel Pavilion—lobbied Italian government officials in Rome to recognize the Israeli state and help re-open trade relations between the two countries following the British exit from the territory the month prior. At the same time, he was promoting Israeli art at the Biennale in Venice.36 Importantly, Fano was not an art aficionado; his main interest in the Biennale appears to have been as a strategy for strengthening diplomatic and economic ties between Israel and Italy.

NATIONALIZING THE VERNACULAR The Israel Pavilion building itself, simultaneously inspired by a prewar international style and contemporary Israeli architectural principles, conveyed a sense of the Israeli modernist project.37 The Pavilion was one of the first constructed on the Biennale fairgrounds that could reasonably be described as modernist.38 Certainly,

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FIGURE 1.1 Israel and United States Pavilions, Venice Biennale. Photo: Benjamin J. Young.

the Israeli building did (and to some extent still does) immediately stand out in the Giardini, especially in comparison to its immediate neighbor, the United States Pavilion (Figure 1.1).39 Built in 1930 and designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich in a style of Beaux-Arts Classicism, the American building conveys the mood of a mini-Monticello—Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home and plantation— with its central dome and Greek temple portico façade built from red brick with marble detailing.40 Smaller in size than the United States Pavilion, the Israel Pavilion, designed by Zeev Rechter, exemplified what was in effect a synthesis of international style principles and practices, informed by the work and teachings of European modernist architects, above all, Le Corbusier. Rechter was a member of the Chug (Circle) group of architects, a young consortium of émigrés to Israel including Arieh Sharon and Dov Karmi.41 Rechter was born in 1899 in the Ukraine and immigrated to Palestine in 1919, later moving to Paris in 1929 to continue his studies in engineering at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, where he was first introduced to the work of Le Corbusier.42 He returned to Palestine in the early 1930s, where many of his commissions came in the form of private houses for wealthy Tel Avivians. His best-known building from this period is the Engel House on Rothschild Boulevard, built in 1933, which typifies Rechter’s mature style: asymmetrical layout, building set on pilotis, or

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FIGURE 1.2 Israel Pavilion, Venice Biennale. Photo: Benjamin J. Young.

pillars—a Corbusian motif that Rechter introduced to Israeli architecture—with greenery under and around the structure; long ribbon windows, and large balconies. After Israeli statehood, Rechter began to receive public commissions, particularly for cultural institutions, including the Binyanei HaUma (International Convention Center) in the new capital of Jerusalem, begun in 1949. In Tel Aviv, Rechter designed two important public buildings near Habima Square: Heichal HaTarbut (1957), also known as the Frederick Mann Auditorium, home of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra; and the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, designed to house contemporary art exhibitions organized by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and opened the year before Rechter’s death in 1960.43 Visually, the Israel Pavilion harkens to a moment before the decimation of modernism in Europe under fascism and strongly evokes Le Corbusier (Figure 1.2). The Israel Pavilion serves as a version of exhibition architecture inspired by some of the Swiss architect’s private homes, such as the Villa Savoye (1928), and to a lesser extent, Rechter’s own buildings in Tel Aviv, such as Engel House, which served as excellent prototypes for pavilions due to their intimate scale. Le Corbusier’s influence is clear in Rechter’s interest in clean geometric forms, the use of mostly unadorned whitewashed ferroconcrete as a surface material, and the deployment of pilotis. Inside the building, a circular central staircase with winding metal handrails leads to an upper floor, resembling a promenade architecturale, moving visitors in a very specific procession through the building.

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According to UNESCO, what makes Israeli architecture from this period so unique as to be worthy of world heritage status is its “implementation of [international] trends taking into account local cultural traditions and climatic conditions,” namely the hot climate and harsh sun of the southern Mediterranean.44 Two of the most notable ways Israelis adapted architectural modernism from Europe for the Israeli climate were enlarging balconies, lifting buildings on piloti, and designing large courtyards to increase airflow on one hand, and developing ways of softening the harsh natural light through a variety of fenestration techniques on the other.45 For the Israel Pavilion, Rechter attempted to adapt both Israeli techniques for the Venetian context. From some earlier drawings of the building, it is evident that Rechter originally intended the Pavilion to have a central courtyard, but the oddly shaped parcel of land in the Giardini allocated to Israel did not allow such a design without detrimentally impacting the size of the building.46 Instead, Rechter designed the back of the building as a fully glazed wall that would allow visitors to see the foliage outside, including some palm trees planted for the Pavilion and a few potted plants placed alongside the ground floor. The glazed back wall, together with the piloti at the entrance—which, rather than opening up the space to the outside, became in effect a large awning for a glazed entrance wall—attempted to signal a fluidity between inside and outside. There are other elements of the Israel Pavilion that appear to be entirely Rechter’s own imagining and are not seen in his Israeli projects; in particular, the small decorative details on the building’s exterior. The two-row circular patterning running along the top of the building serves as an abstract reference to a cornice, while the dramatic manner in which the building recesses closer to the ground is likely an attempt to emphasize the concept of the pilotis and make the boxy building appear more lightweight and dynamic.47 Rechter, and Israeli architects in general, were better primed to produce the synthesis of “East and West” in architecture than in painting, due in large part to a preexisting and longstanding engagement in Mediterranean and Arab vernacular by architects like Le Corbusier. While individual painters such as Rubin effectively arrived at their mature styles by merging Zionist visions with the style of primitivist Post-Impressionist painters such as Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin, Israeli architects were able to harness the European modernist tradition altogether more seamlessly. Le Corbusier’s own interest in Mediterranean vernacular architecture and his formative voyage d’orient in 1911 to the Balkans and Istanbul are welldocumented by the architect himself.48 It was that trip which ultimately led Le Corbusier to his archetypal style of whitewashed flat-roof buildings built on a modular system, which architectural historian Zeynep Çelik has characterized as “Mediterranean vernacular with an Islamic touch.”49 As for what vernacular meant for Le Corbusier, as architectural historian Francesco Passanti has argued, his understanding was shaped by notions of ethnic and national identity that he had become aware of through his friend, the Swiss music and art critic William Ritter.50

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For Le Corbusier, the role of the vernacular, rather than employing isolated motifs or decorative elements used in a particular culture, was meant to discover forms produced by the supposedly organic characteristics of that particular society. Thus, aesthetically as well as conceptually, it was easy for Israeli architecture to nationalize the vernacular, as the idea itself was ultimately grounded in notions of national essence. The Israel Pavilion signaled a distinctively Israeli vernacular based on the presentation of a modernist building via Le Corbusier. However, it also functioned as a connection to a prewar European left exemplified by the idea of the Bauhaus, that would later be defined in Israel as Tel Aviv Bauhaus. The idea of the Bauhaus, as outlined by historian Paul Betts, was characterized by a condensation of multiple modernist schools and styles into a single category akin to an “international style.”51 The Bauhaus as a catch-all category conflated the aesthetic and the political; modernism as an aesthetic category of experimentation was mapped onto a left-leaning (but not Communist) political orientation that became extremely useful for the United States and western Europe as Cold War tensions grew. Relatedly, as Jachec has pointed out, modern art—particularly gestural abstraction—at the Venice Biennale became a means for the Italian government to nullify Communist influence, minimizing the impact of the social realists and their political program.52 Through the revitalization of the Bauhaus as a moment of utopian promise cut short by fascism, the Israeli national project became rhetorically enmeshed in the recuperation of modernism as a whole after the Second World War.53 For the most part, the historical Israeli connection to the Bauhaus is tenuous; only a few architects working in Israel in the 1940s and 1950s had been trained at the school, with Arieh Sharon the most prominent. Moreover, the primary influence for architects like Rechter remained Le Corbusier, not the Bauhaus. However, this notion of the Bauhaus as political metaphor has an added layer of significance in the Israeli context, as the German National Socialists stridently smeared the school and its teachers as “Semitic, foreign, and un-German” in the 1930s alongside their broader project of the destruction of modernism.54 This connection between modernism and an international left apparently remained unchallenged by Le Corbusier’s problematic relationship with Vichy, which was largely swept under the rug in the immediate postwar years.55

CLEANING UP THE CANON The 1952 exhibition displayed the Israel Pavilion’s commitment to modernism curatorially as well as architecturally. A Hungary-born, Vienna-educated critic and curator well acquainted with European museum practices, Eugen Kolb adopted a relatively new curatorial strategy—seen also in the United States Pavilion—of

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selecting a relatively small number of artists to represent the nation. While there was some criticism about not organizing a survey exhibition, Kolb ultimately chose to curate three small retrospectives of established artists who had exhibited widely internationally: painters Marcel Janco, Moshe Mokady, and Reuven Rubin.56 Janco was an obvious choice as both a member of a veritable European vanguard in his former home in Zurich and New Horizons in Israel, and having exhibited at the Biennale in 1948. The Poland-born Mokady had spent his formative artistic years in Paris before immigrating to Palestine in 1933, where he eventually became Director of the Art Department of the Ministry of Education and Culture, where he was involved in the production side of the Biennale. Mokady’s landscapes and portraits, painted in a melancholic Post-Impressionist style evocative of Chaim Soutine and the École de Paris, provided a stylistic complement to Janco’s Cubistinspired aesthetic. Rubin’s work, on the other hand, appeared far more engaged with developing a uniquely Israeli painting. Together, the three painters represented the dominant strands in Israeli art at the time. Rubin was a Romania-born artist who emigrated to Palestine in 1912, when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire.57 One of the best-known Jewish Palestinian artists of the 1920s and 1930s, he become known for his Post-Impressionistic treatment of Holy Land imagery, from biblical landscapes to exotic portrayals of the country’s non-European population, namely Arab Palestinians and Mizrahim, Yemenite immigrants. At the entrance to the Israel Pavilion, Rubin displayed two large-scale canvases, both painted several decades before 1952. The painting closest to the entrance was the central panel of a larger triptych titled First Fruits from 1923. The painting depicts a tanned and powerful pioneer displaying the fruits of his labor after a harvest—namely a watermelon and a bunch of bananas— while a significantly paler woman, often interpreted as a fertility figure, kneels with exposed breasts while holding an orange in her left hand.58 To their side, a young Yemenite couple stands with a small child. The woman passes a pomegranate, which symbolizes fruitfulness in Jewish traditions and is traditionally eaten at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Together, these figures are meant to symbolize the promise of the fecundity of both Jewish lands and Jewish people. While First Fruits was not a new work of art in 1952, what was novel was the way in which it was displayed. The painting on view in the Israel Pavilion was in fact only the central panel of a triptych; the other two panels, which were not sent to Venice, depict an Arab Palestinian shepherd playing the flute while sheep doze around him and, on the other panel, a Bedouin man resting in the desert alongside his camel. Together, the three panels of First Fruits represent a fuller spectrum of the ethnic diversity of the territory—Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, as well as Arabs and Bedouins—although characterized by Orientalist clichés (for example, the Arab and Bedouin play and rest in nature while the Jews are productively farming the land and raising their offspring). The omission of the two side panels is revealing, less for how it altered the meaning, and more for how

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Zionist discourses impacted art and exhibitions in the years between Rubin’s production of the painting and its display in the Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. To the painting’s right hung another canvas by Rubin, The Artist’s Family (1926–1927), today in the collection of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The painting— of the artist, his mother, and his brother and sister—is staged like a European group portrait in a Middle Eastern landscape dominated by olive trees and a goat in the foreground. The relative cultural and generational position of these individuals are indicated in their attire. The seated older woman wears the traditional outfit of an orthodox Jew, with a head covering and modest black and white garment, while the younger man and woman are dressed in the latest European fashions, the man wearing a gray suit and tie and the woman donning a light pink frock that just reaches below the knees. In contrast to these two takes on diasporic fashion—the religious and the secular—the artist depicts himself less formally: tanned, shirt unbuttoned and without a tie, holding his palette and brush. In the exhibition, The Artist’s Family operates as a surrogate for the other two panels of First Fruits; together, they are the new Israeli social body. By raising consciousness of the state and its official cultural exports among European and American elites who visited the Biennale, Israel secured subsequent cultural partnerships from international collectors, donors, and institutions that helped establish professional art worlds in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The opening of the Israel Pavilion in 1952 marked the moment the state made its grand debut in the international art world. The Pavilion proved impressive enough to gain the attention of one of the most important modern art collectors in the world: Peggy Guggenheim. Following her visit to the Israel Pavilion in 1952, and after meeting with Kolb, Guggenheim donated thirty-six works of Surrealist and AbstractExpressionist works to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where Kolb had recently been appointed director. The donation included three paintings by Jackson Pollock, alongside works by other well-known artists such as Man Ray, André Masson, and Roberto Matta.59 Despite never visiting the museum, this donation became her largest bequest to an institution outside the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York and her only donation to an art institution outside the United States, besides her own foundation in Venice. The Guggenheim bequest instantly endowed the Tel Aviv Museum of Art with a world-class collection and an institutional reputation that it had previously lacked, thanks in large measure to the Israel Pavilion. The polished display clearly impressed international collectors. However, Kolb’s remarks at the opening of the Pavilion emphasized the grit of Israel in the face of the state’s hardships: Israel is a small country in full struggle for its existence. But even in these harsh conditions, the people of Israel do not neglect their cultural task. It has

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succeeded in creating spiritual values that on the one hand express the original character of the country, on the other they highlight human relations between Israel and the world. Israeli artists are pioneers: they create in the most serious difficulties.60 Here, as well as in his catalog essay, Kolb referred to Israel and Israeli artists as a bridge between East and West, or as above, between Israel and “the world.” Crucial to this bridge were the visual forms employed to promote Israeli identity. These exhibitions sought to establish Israeli art vis-à-vis claims for visual art as an autonomous and utopian transcultural form—an art beyond borders—that would reflect principles of a progressive culture with roots in Europe.

A NATIONAL MODERNISM? The supposed tension between universalist discourses of modernism and the rhetoric of nationalism has been emphasized in Israeli art historiography, where it has taken the guise of a debate over whether Israeli artists discovered inspiration in the universal—European—or the local—Israeli.61 Yet rather than functioning as polar opposites, the story of the Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale shows that modernism and nationalism in fact bolstered each other within the environment of the postwar international art world. The more pertinent question to ask may be: what kind of nationalism did Israel project? While both the Israeli government and Israeli artists and curators, working on behalf of the state, saw themselves operating in the vein of Euro-American nation-states, the reality was infinitely more complicated. The “editing” of Rubin’s triptych First Fruits in 1952 provides a clue into how non-European identities were carefully omitted from the Israeli narrative. Certainly, the foundational event of the Nakba, the expulsion of much of the Arab Palestinian population during the first Arab–Israeli War in 1948, cannot be underestimated in the strategic absences produced by the construction of Israeli identity, as the exhibition of Rubin’s painting highlights.62 Moreover, as mentioned at the outset of this chapter, the Jewish population of Israel more than doubled from 1948 to 1952. These new Israelis were almost entirely refugees: Holocaust survivors from Europe as well as those coming from countries in the Middle East such as Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Yemen. In both cases, their cultures and histories were minimized in official state narratives.63 Instead, the state of Israel projected the invention of a homogenous Israeli identity that would unite its disparate population under the progressive banner of modernism, secularism, and a postwar international order. The name given to this process was the negation of exile (Shlilat ha-Galut), sometimes translated as the negation of the diaspora. Ultimately, the Israeli

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government relied heavily on Jewish history in the diaspora, but as a means to fortify Israel’s standing internationally. In the art world, this meant privileging architects, artists, and other cultural producers who were trained or conversant in European modernism. The state of Israel’s early interaction with the Venice Biennale served as a microcosm of the Israeli national project, which despite its claims for political autonomy, relied heavily on recognition by Europe and affiliation with Euro-American culture to assert itself as a Jewish homeland enveloped in the trappings of secular democracy. The international spread of modernist art and architecture in the 1950s has often been accounted for as part of a pro-American (and anti-Communist) agenda that attempted to keep old allies enthralled and influence new nations in the so-called peripheries.64 While these studies have been useful for understanding the cultural effects of postwar American foreign policy, the presumption that Cold War binaries uniformly impacted cultural production around the world is false. This chapter articulates a more multiplex view of the relationship between modernism and soft power in the immediate postwar era. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the nascent Israeli state developed its own foreign cultural policy to promote a national culture cast in the image of Europe, and the international recognition and representation of Israeli art and culture over time became central to the state’s conception of itself. On another level, a close reading of Israel’s early engagement with the Venice Biennale reveals more generally how universalist ideals espoused in the growing international art world after the Second World War were both predicated on national issues and never fully disengaged from western Europe’s attempts to maintain cultural hegemony in a rapidly decolonizing world. Statist notions of Israeli identity based in transnational modernism reached their climax in the establishment of the Israel Museum in 1965. Under the artistic direction of Dutch curator Willem Sandberg, the museum displayed ancient artifacts, Jewish traditions, and international modern art in subtle juxtapositions that presented a unified synthesis of national patrimony and world culture.65 Yet in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War and the ongoing Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, attempts to achieve a unified national culture based in ideals of secular universalism have definitively failed, both revealing the limits of statist concepts of Israeli identity and opening the door for the rise of a politically subversive postmodern art scene. Particularly since the late 1970s and the rise of the right-wing Likud party, the early notions of Israeli identity outlined in this chapter have been set aside as both a religious and secular nationalist right-wing has risen to political and cultural prominence. If the Israel of the fifties discreetly occluded difference through claims to modernism, today Israeli nationhood has hardened into a defensive identity defined by border walls, restrictive movement, and sharply defined classes of citizenship. In this sense, the Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale stands as an artifact of a historical moment since passed.

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NOTES 1 Letter, Rodolfo Pallucchini to Eugen Kolb, June 22, 1952. XXVI Biennale, State of Israel

folder. Historical Archives of Contemporary Art (ASAC), Venice. Hereinafter cited as SoI, ASAC. 2 Letter, M. Zeev to Pallucchini, May 7, 1952. XXVI Biennale, SoI, ASAC. 3 Letter, M. Zeev to Pallucchini, March 19, 1952. XXVI Biennale, SoI, ASAC. 4 Letter, Giovanni Ponti to Giovanni Battista Gianquinto [Italian], December 5, 1949.

SoI, ASAC. All translations into English are the author’s unless stated otherwise. 5 La Biennale di Venezia was founded in 1895 as the first biennial exhibition of

contemporary visual arts. It was followed by the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh in 1896 and the São Paulo Bienal in 1953. See Bruce Altshuler, Salon to Biennial. Exhibitions that Made Art History, Volume 1: 1863–1959 (New York: Phaidon, 2008). 6 Letter, Foreign Minister to Education Minister [Hebrew], May 13, 1952. Education

Department, Exhibitions in the Venice Biennale folder (1952–1953), no. 9470. Israel State Archives, Jerusalem. Hereinafter cited as ISA. 7 While museums had been established in Israel prior to 1948, the Israel Pavilion in

Venice was the first permanent building for Israeli art commissioned by the government. 8 Paul Ricoeur, “Universal Civilization and National Cultures,” in Paul Ricoeur, History

and Truth (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 275. 9 For example, the Bienal de São Paulo was established in 1951; the quinquennial

Documenta in Kassel, Germany in 1955; and the Biennale de Paris in 1959. In addition, numerous national and international organizations developed traveling art exhibitions and organized displays of modern art at world’s fairs and expos. See Nikolas Drosos, “Modernism and World Art, 1950–72,” in Chelsea Haines and Gemma Sharpe, eds., “Art, Institutions, and Internationalism: 1945–1973,” special issue, ARTMargins 8, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 55–76. 10 Art historian Vittoria Martini has described the proliferation of national pavilions at

the Venice Biennale in the 1950s as a “third wave,” following the initial establishment of European national pavilions with the advent of the Biennale in 1895 and a second wave, when other western nations, including the United States, were invited to construct pavilions in the two decades between World Wars. Vittoria Martini, “A Brief History of I Giardini: Or a Brief History of the Venice Biennale seen from the Giardini,” trans. Jennifer Knaeble, in Muntadas/On Translation: I Giardini (Barcelona: Actar), 2005. 11 Nancy Jachec, Politics and Painting at the Venice Biennale, 1948–64. Italy and the Idea of

Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 8. 12 Pallucchini, “Introduction,” in XXVI Biennale, catalog, 2nd edition (Venice: Alfieri

Editore, 1952), xxiv–xxv [Italian]. The “extra-European” nations noticeably excluded the Soviet Union, which had put its participation on hiatus from 1934 until 1956, three years after Stalin’s death. 13 Jachec, Politics and Painting, 3. 14 Only fifteen countries participated in the 1948 exhibition but the Biennale “recover[ed]

rapidly what had been left behind mainly by the cultural closure by the fascist past.”

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Enzo Di Martino, The History of the Venice Biennale, 1895–2005 (Venice: Papiro Arte, 2005), 39. 15 Political theorist Partha Chatterjee has traced the ways in which new nation-states

forming out of decolonization movements, such as in India, have replicated the structures, discourses, and ideologies of western European colonial powers. See Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (London: Zed Books, 1986). 16 Immanuel Wallerstein, European Universalism. The Rhetoric of Power (New York: The

New Press, 2006), 33. Wallerstein elaborates: “Only European ‘civilization,’ which had its roots in the Greco-Roman world of Antiquity (and for some in the Old Testament as well), could have produced ‘modernity’—a catchall term for a pastiche of customs, norms, and practices that flourished in the capitalist world-economy. And since modernity was said to be by definition the incarnation of universalism, modernity was not merely a moral good but a historical necessity. There must be, there must always have been, something in the non-European high civilizations that was incompatible with the human march toward modernity and true universalism.” Wallerstein also notes the foundational work of Anouar Abdel-Malek and Edward Said in analyzing how the hegemony of European universalism impacted the European study of non-western cultures and histories. 17 For more extensive background on the new nationalisms and internationalisms of the

postwar era, see Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace. The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 18 Unlike the earlier artistic and literary movements of the Middle East of the 1920s and

1930s, which were driven almost entirely by an atavistic return to origins through the deployment of ancient culture—such as Canaanism in the Yishuv, Pharaonism in Egypt, and Phoenicianism in Lebanon—postwar national art, at least in Israel, was far more concerned with seeking the universal through the national and vice versa. For a discussion of atavistic modernism in each country, for example, see David Ohana, ed., Modernism and Zionism (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2012); Alexandra Dika Seggerman, “Revolution and Renaissance in Modern Egyptian Art, 1880–1960” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2014); and Asher Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia. The Search for Identity in Lebanon (London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 2004). 19 Eugen Kolb, “A World Language and Original Language in Art,” Al HaMishmar, May 8,

1949. Also cited in Gila Ballas, New Horizons. The Birth of Abstraction in Israeli Art (Tel Aviv: Modan, 2014), 10e. 20 Lucia Allais, Designs of Destruction. The Making of Monuments in the Twentieth

Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 21 Letter, Fano to Pallucchini [Italian], May 2, 1948. Angelo Fano Archives, Central

Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Hereinafter cited as AFA, CAHJP. Also cited in Alec Mishory, 1948. Hebrew, EretzIsraeli Art Leading to the Future (Ein Harod: Mishkan Le’Omanut, 2008), 15. 22 “Eretz” is the Hebrew word for land, and Eretz Israel is used to refer to the biblical land

of Israel. 23 Adding to the confusion, the Italian government only recognized Israel as a state on

February 8, 1949, months after Israel had presented its art in the Biennale. Letter, Fano to Zeev Rechter, [Hebrew], January 26, 1950. Personal records of Zeev Rechter, housed at Rechter Architects, Tel Aviv, and courtesy Amnon Rechter.

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24 The eclecticism of the exhibition was not limited to the exhibition of Israeli artists. As

Jachec has pointed out in her book Politics and Painting at the Venice Biennale (Manchester University Press, 2007), the Biennale in the late 1940s and early 1950s did not exclusively promote one single school or style of art, despite Pallucchini’s own preference for abstraction. 25 “Mostra di Artisti Palestinesi,” XXIV Biennale, catalog, 4th edition (Venice: Venice

Biennale, 1948), 335 [Italian]. 26 Fano appears to have coordinated the donation of an artwork, likely Still Life with a

Reproduction of Matisse, to the Civici Musei e Istituti d’arte e di storia e arte in Venice. Letter, Giulio Lorenzetti to Fano [Italian], October 27, 1948, AFA, CAHJP. 27 “Gli artisti d’Israele alla Biennale di Venezia,” Israele, June 24, 1948 [Italian]. Located in

the Documentation Collection of Visual Arts, 1948, vol. 4/9. ASAC. 28 Sara Chinski, “Silence of the Fish: The Local and the Universal in the Israeli Art

Discourse,” Theory and Criticism 4 (Autumn 1993): 114 [Hebrew]. 29 Yigal Zalmona, A Century of Israeli Art (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2010), 165–166. 30 Public statement, Haaretz, July 2, 1948 [Hebrew]. Ofakim Hadashim, Documentation

and Correspondence (1948–1956), vol. 1b, 4324, Ziffer House Archive, Tel Aviv University. Archive hereinafter cited as Ziffer House. In the pre-state era, “Hebrew art” was a popular way to describe art made by Jewish Palestinians in opposition to the diasporic and religious connotations of “Jewish art.” 31 For a comprehensive history of New Horizons exhibitions, see Ballas, New Horizons. 32 The more realist-inclined artists of New Horizons, such as Janco and Aharon Kahana,

left the group in 1956. 33 Letter, Moshe Mokady to Pallucchini, August 31, 1951. XXVI Biennale, SoI, ASAC. 34 Letter, Fano to the “Committee,” presumably Irgun Ole Italia [Italian], December 28,

1951. AFA, CAHJP. Thanks to Marta Cacciavillani for her translation. 35 Letter, Mordecai Ardon to M. Avidor [Hebrew], August 9, 1952. Central Archives for

the Ministry of Education, Exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, 1952–1953, folder no. 9470. ISA. 36 A Venetian engineer whose vociferous antifascist activities against Mussolini’s regime

led to his brief imprisonment in the 1930s, Fano eventually settled in Palestine in 1940 at Givat Brenner. In a 1951 letter describing his activities in Venice, Fano stated that when he returned to Venice after the war, “I felt that they were considering the idea of bringing back the Biennale so I decided to ask to the local authorities if the participation of artists and Jewish-Palestinian cinematography would have been accepted. They answered me positively . . . in spite of some reservations from the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs.” Letter, Angelo Fano to the “Committee,” presumably Irgun Ole Italia [Italian], December 28, 1951. Angelo Fano Archives, folder no. P192. CAHJP. Thanks to Marta Cacciavillani for her translation of this letter. 37 There are conflicting records about who exactly commissioned the building in early

1950, whether Mokady, operating as Director of the Art Department for the Ministry of Education and Culture, or Fano, acting in an unofficial capacity. Letter, Fano to Zeev Rechter [Hebrew], January 26, 1950; Ran Shechori, Zeev Rechter (Jerusalem: The Public Council for Culture and Art, 1987), 59 [Hebrew]. 38 Perhaps the first building that could be considered “modernist” in the Giardini is the

Austria Pavilion, designed in 1934 by Josef Hoffmann and Robert Kramreiter, which

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features a classic symmetrical layout with an unadorned façade. The second modernist building, the Swiss Pavilion, designed by Bruno Giacometti, opened the same year as the Israel Pavilion in 1952. 39 The Israel Pavilion still stands today on the grounds of the Giardini. This analysis stems

from my own observations of visiting the building as well as studying various floor plans and drawings available at Rechter Architects, Tel Aviv. 40 “Pavilion of the USA at the Giardini,” Universes in Universe, accessed August 27, 2019,

https://universes.art/en/art-destinations/venice/biennale-di-venezia/giardini-biennale/ usa. 41 For a detailed discussion of the Chug architects, see Zvi Efrat, The Object of Zionism.

The Architecture of Israel (Leipzig: Spector Books, 2019). 42 To date, the only monograph on Recher’s work is Ran Shechori’s Hebrew-language

volume from 1987. See Ran Shechori, Zeev Rechter. 43 The Mann auditorium has since been renovated and renamed the Charles Bronfman

Auditorium. 44 UNESCO declared the modernist “White City” of Tel Aviv a World Heritage site in

2003. “White City of Tel-Aviv—the Modern Movement,” UNESCO World Heritage Convention, accessed April 6, 2020, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1096. 45 Notably, rather than invent new techniques, Israeli architects adapted already-existing

approaches to dealing with these climatic conditions. In addition to using Corbusian brise-soleil, for example, architects also designed vertically oriented windows with side opening slats to reduce light and minimize the amount of dust entering the building. 46 The reason why the Israel Pavilion is located next to the United States Pavilion has

been the subject of some speculation, however, both Italian and Israeli archives confirm the placement was directed by the Italian authorities. For example, Letter, Moshe Mokady to Rodolfo Pallucchini, August 31, 1951. Exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, 1952–53, folder no. 9470. ISA. 47 The effect that the Israel Pavilion was floating was emphasized by the way in which the

lower portion of the building was originally painted black. That area was painted white, and the back glazed wall was covered, in a renovation by Danish architect Fredrik Fogh in 1966, to make the Pavilion appear more like a white cube. 48 Le Corbusier, Voyage d’Orient, English edition (New York: Phaidon, 2002). 49 Zeynep Çelik, “Le Corbusier, Orientalism, Colonialism,” Assemblage 17 (Spring 1992):

59. 50 Francesco Passanti, “The Vernacular, Modernism, and Le Corbusier,” Journal of the

Society of Architectural Historians 56, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 447. 51 Paul Betts, “The Bauhaus as Cold-War Legend: West German Modernism Revisited,”

German Politics & Society 39 (Summer 1996): 75–100. 52 See Chapter 2 of Jachec, Politics and Painting, titled “Communism, anti-communism

and government intervention at the Venice Biennale, 1948–52.” 53 In recent decades, Israeli modern architecture has been retrospectively categorized as

Tel Aviv Bauhaus. See, for example, Jessica Steinberg, “Tel Aviv-Bauhaus in the Promised Land,” The Modernism Magazine 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004–2005): 100–105. Alona Nitzan-Shiftan details the process by which Tel Aviv was rebranded as UNESCO’s “White City” in “Contested Zionism, Alternative Modernism: Erich

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Mendelsohn and the Tel Aviv Chug in Mandate Palestine,” Architectural History 39 (1996): 147–180. 54 Joel Robinson, “Folkloric Modernism: Venice’s Giardini della Biennale and the

Geopolitics of Architecture,” Open Arts Journal, no. 2 (Winter 2013–2014): 11. 55 See, for example, Marc Perelman, Le Corbusier. Une froide vision du monde (Paris:

Michalon, 2015) [French]. 56 Report, Meeting held at the Tel Aviv Museum on April 5, 1952 with Eugen Kolb, Marcel

Janco, Reuven Rubin, and Fano in attendance. Education Department, Exhibitions in the Venice Biennale folder (1952–1953), no. 9470. ISA. 57 See Reuven Rubin, My Life My Art. An Autobiography (New York: Funk & Wagnalls,

1969); Carmela Rubin, Dreamland. Reuven Rubin and His Encounter with the Land of Israel in His Paintings of the 1920s and 1930s (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum, 2006). 58 See, for example, the discussion of First Fruits in Rubin, Dreamland, 218. 59 Jill Fields, “Was Peggy Guggenheim Jewish? Art Collecting and Representations of

Jewish Identity In and Out of Postwar Venice,” Nashim. A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 25 (Fall 2013): 56–58. Fields characterizes Guggenheim’s position toward her Jewish heritage as an ambivalent one, marked by an “elite GermanJewish American perspective” that likely would have made her both generally dismissive of Zionism as a political project, but supportive of establishing modern art institutions in Israel. 60 Statement, undated. Correspondence for the construction of a new Israel Pavilion

folder. ASAC. 61 Recently some scholars have reconsidered this binary. In her 2014 preface for New

Horizons. The Birth of Abstraction in Israeli Art, which was originally published in 1980, art historian Gila Ballas acknowledges that in the decades since she initially wrote her book it has become apparent that New Horizons always had a complex if unspoken relationship to Israeli identity. Ballas’s acknowledgment of the evident, albeit abstract, “Israeliness” of New Horizons bears striking similarities to the Chug circle of architects, and to Rechter’s Israel Pavilion itself. Gila Ballas, New Horizons, 16e. 62 Artist Larry Abramson has explored the absence of the Palestinian village in Zaritsky’s

landscapes in his own painting series In Tsoba (1993–1994). Other artists such as Zaritsky, despite his sensitive artist’s eye, failed to record the hundreds of abandoned Palestinian villages dotting the new Israeli landscape, even though one village—Suba— lay literally underneath his home in the new Hebraicized kibbutz of Tzuba. For further discussion, see Abramson, “Art of Camouflage,” in Larry Abramson. Paintings 1975–2010 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum, 2010), 308. 63 See, for example, Tom Segev, 1949. The First Israelis (New York: Free Press, 2018);

Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel (New York: Verso, 2014); and Ilan Pappe, The Idea of Israel. A History of Power and Knowledge (New York: Verso, 2016). 64 For a study of American cultural expansionism in western Europe, see David Caute,

The Dancer Defects. The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (London: Oxford University Press, 2005). 65 After years of artist-led protests and disputes, the museum opened an Israeli art

department in 1979.

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2 SALVAGING THROUGH MERCHANDISING: AMERICA’S VIETNAMESE CRAFT DIPLOMACY ON DISPLAY IN THE US IN 1956 AND 1958 Jennifer Way

Increasingly during the 1950s, the US State Department approached “national and international problems” together instead of separating “domestic policies from foreign policies.”1 It stressed the importance of non-state actors in fostering good relationships between nations of the Free World, an informal network of democratic, mostly capitalist nations.2 By mid-decade, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) intensified US partnerships with these nations, “rooted in the facts of economic and defense interdependence” and in “the understanding and respect of each partner for the cultural and national aspirations of the other.”3 The US took a leading role in advancing these interdependencies, claiming that its unofficial leadership of the Free World compelled it to assist weaker, less developed states to preclude their joining the Communist Bloc.4 To this last point, the US sent industrial designers to nations not yet belonging to the Free World—or that showed vulnerability to becoming communist—in the Caribbean, Central America, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia. The State Department charged some of these “designer diplomats” with revitalizing native craft industries to prosper at home and export craft to the US where they would present it to trade specialists, business representatives, and consumers.5 In 1955, it developed a craft aid program for this purpose in South

39

Vietnam and to oversee the program it contracted with industrial designer Russel Wright (1905–1976) and his firm, Russel Wright Associates (RWA). The managerial and technical assistance they would provide South Vietnam ultimately addressed US concerns about military security and economic strength in a world context that was witnessing the Cold War spreading to Asia.6 Two exhibitions of Vietnamese craft that Wright and RWA selected, designed and installed in the New York Coliseum, featured very different designs. In calling attention to craft made by refugees throughout Southeast Asia, the Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition of 1956 expressed colonialist ideas in its evocation of a foreign bazaar. In 1958, the presentation of Vietnamese craft at the US Trade Fair in modular spaces demarcated by hardedged, slim vertical pillars and flat, horizontal supports highlighted what Wright described as “beautifully made and designed objects [that] blend beautifully with our modern style of home decoration.”7 Despite their respective designs having different aesthetics, structures, and arrangements of craft objects, these exhibitions nevertheless both expressed the US privileging a history of Western presence in Vietnam as well as American agency and desire in Cold War politics and culture concerning Southeast Asia and South Vietnam in particular.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT, RUSSEL WRIGHT AND CRAFT DIPLOMACY As Vietnam emerged from its colonial status, in 1954 the State Department introduced economic diplomacy there in part to help resettle nearly a million people who were moving south to avoid living in a communist state in the north.8 The following year, craft diplomacy emerged. As a form of US economic aid, craft diplomacy aimed to reduce the likelihood of former refugees fostering communism in the south by giving refugees and residents of South Vietnam work in reviving and growing native craft industries so families and communities could support themselves, and to strengthen the economy, notably by exporting craft throughout Asia, Europe, and especially the US. Craft diplomacy fostered the vitality of what Americans perceived as native foreign craft to achieve the goals of American economic aid and the larger diplomatic agendas it served. For the program to work in South Vietnam, Vietnamese craft needed to reach middle-class Americans, not just cultural elites who might commission a designer to realize their individual visions, because the middle class augured a larger potential market for modestly priced craft items.9 The State Department recognized Wright’s professional experience as particularly befitting its needs concerning craft-based diplomacy.10 In the US, Wright had built a career in developing home furnishing lines that integrated elements of modern craft and design for middle-class Americans, such as American Way of the early 1940s,11 and

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American Modern—ceramics and wood tableware having organic, simple silhouettes and rich, solid colors manufactured by Steubenville Pottery of Ohio between 1939 and 1959.12 As a designer and manager of these lines, and like his fellow US industrial designers, Wright was known in the industry to oversee “the entire product itself—the planning, the materials used, the craftsmanship, the appearance, etc.”13 From 1951 to 1955, Wright participated as a designer and a judge in the Museum of Modern Art’s Good Design program. It promoted tableware and home furnishings that integrated modern design and craft elements to design retailers at the Chicago Merchandise Mart, visitors to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and consumers shopping in department stores in that same city.14 Wright and RWA contracted with the State Department to survey craft fabrication in Southeast Asia from November 1955 to January 1956.15 There, they purchased and collected examples of craft,16 and Navy ships transported these items to the US.17 The State Department amended RWA’s original contract to support their displaying a selection of these items at the New York Coliseum.18 As part of the first annual International Housewares Show for trade professionals and merchandisers held June 25 to 29, 1956, the Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition promoted craft as a means to foster economic and social recovery in a region of Asia.19 The exhibition simulated a foreign bazaar displaying woven baskets, mats and hats, lacquered items, ceramics, jewelry, silverware, and textiles from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Formosa). Beginning in 1957, the State Department would further amend its contracts with RWA, resulting in Wright and his firm overseeing craft fabrication and merchandising concerning South Vietnam through 1961.20 Then, in 1958, Wright and RWA selected and installed an exhibition with a modern aesthetic to represent South Vietnamese craft to retailers and the public at the US World Trade Fair held in the New York Coliseum from May 7 to 17, 1958.21 The design emphasized an orderly yet spacious appearance that looked very different from the exhibition simulating a foreign bazaar from 1956. Yet, these exhibitions both gestured towards the transnational element of the craft aid program by taking place in the Coliseum, which served as a contact zone where nations met mainly to facilitate trade with the US.22 There, these exhibitions of foreign culture indexed “highly asymmetrical relations of power”23 by absorbing Vietnamese craft into frameworks privileging Western and US perspectives and benefits. Various elements of the look and the organization of the exhibitions corresponded to the State Department’s assertion of US hegemony by presenting the country as a “more advanced nation” in comparison to “less advanced nations,” such as South Vietnam.24 Within this dynamic coupling of “a strong and a weak partner,”25 US expressions of its agency and oversight call to mind the anthropological concept of salvage. As Virginia Dominguez explains,

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We assert the need to salvage, rescue, save, [and] preserve a series of objects or, we announce our fear of [their] destruction, our inability to trust others to take appropriate action and our sense of entitlement over the fate of the objects. Our best liberal intentions do little other than patronize those slated for cultural salvage.26 This ethos evokes the “mission civilisatrice,” or civilizing mission with which, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, imperial France justified its colonizing activity abroad, including in Southeast Asia, where it ostensibly brought benefits of French civilization to the people it subjugated as it constituted them as subjects of the empire’s desires.27 Some elements of the 1956 exhibition echoed French colonial display practices and Orientalist ideas. As Christina Klein shows in US novels and films of the mid-twentieth century, as “middlebrow” intellectuals integrated domestic and international agendas, these forms of popular culture portrayed a relationship of reciprocal gain for Americans and Asians.28 However, as Klein also observes, cultural texts “legitimate a given distribution of power, both within and beyond the borders of the nation,”29 and so did exhibitions of Vietnamese craft. These transposed US needs for world leadership and oversight into the cultural-economic realm.

THE GEOPOLITICS OF US INTERESTS In 1954, as the State Department worried that political changes in Southeast Asia made the region vulnerable to accepting aid from the USSR and China, it proactively helped to establish SEATO, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, as a means through which to forge strong alliances.30 The need to do so seemed acute where Vietnam was concerned. That year also marked nearly a decade since Vietnam had declared political independence from imperial France, defeating it in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which left open the question of who would govern Vietnam. Cambodia and Laos respectively had declared independence from France in 1953. Four years earlier, the emergence of the Communist Party in China sent people fleeing to Hong Kong and led to the establishment of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Meanwhile, as Senator John F. Kennedy identified Vietnam as no less than “the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia,” with an “economy . . . essential to the economy of all of Southeast Asia,” Vietnam struggled.31 The Geneva Accords that followed Vietnam’s victory over France divided the state along the 17th Parallel, and elections for reunification never materialized. In the south, the Catholic, French-speaking politician Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu rose to power, and with the backing of the US, Diem became President of South Vietnam while Ho Chi Minh governed communist North Vietnam.32 The transnational program of craft diplomacy that Wright and RWA

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managed would strengthen the new nation and address State Department interests in world security and US leadership. Importantly, these efforts intersected with US desires for craft that the State Department estimated “exceeds presently available supplies.”33 Guided by US designers, artisans in South Vietnam would supply home furnishings and fashion accessories having features that Americans missed in their own mass-produced goods, such as natural materials, evidence of hand fabrication, and individuality.34 These designers advanced US interests in foreign craft by engaging with artisans as much by State Department directives as by their perceptions that, as industrial designer Don Wallance put it, mass production had bankrupted the West in its quality of life and things.35 In the US, designers took the lead in criticizing the loss of value and beauty that followed from the monopoly of machined mass production on fabricating home furnishings with synthetic materials to generate overly standardized forms lacking variation and indexes of history and makers. “We have lost touch—close, warm, loving daily touch—with materials. This is our most tragic weakness,” designer Henry Varnum Poor opined.36 In redress, according to Wright, craft exported from Vietnam to the US would help assuage Americans’ “emotional need for objects” by offering items expressing “individual personality and [that] are handmade.”37

SOUTHEAST ASIA REHABILITATION AND TRADE DEVELOPMENT SURVEY EXHIBITION, 1956 Under the theme of rehabilitation, for the Survey Exhibition RWA assembled craft from Vietnam together with examples from Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Formosa). In their vulnerability to communist incursions, so the State Department thought, these places would benefit politically and economically by exporting their craft to the US.38 Correspondingly, to the American merchandisers invited to attend, the Survey Exhibition represented craft as part of a foreign statebased and regional industry characterized by geographic and cultural differences. Prior to its opening, RWA and the State Department sent invitations to American importers, department store executives, and manufacturers specializing in home furnishings and fashion accessories.39 During the exhibition, Wright and his team used questionnaires to query these industry professionals about the types of craft products their consumers would prefer, what merchandising approaches might succeed with their customers,40 and whether they would consider “running a store promotion on Far Eastern products.”41 From RWA’s perspective, having home furnishings professionals visit the exhibition, review films and slides that Wright made during the survey trip to Southeast Asia, and respond to questions

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offered an efficient way to obtain industry-based assessments concerning the items RWA could help to develop in South Vietnam for export to the US.42 The exhibition’s appearance aimed to pique the interests of these visitors by evoking the environment in which one might purchase craft from the region. As described in Industrial Design magazine, its architectural framework—“two large vinyl plastic tents,” with one tent simulating a bazaar—together with the bazaar’s interior installation, conveyed the craft’s origins somewhere “exotic and far away,” signaling an appealing foreignness.43 Avrom Fleishman, Associate Editor of Industrial Design, expressed approval of the installation of these “oriental objects” “in an atmosphere natural to them” because it “communicate[d] the spirit of the places where they were collected” and sold in Southeast Asia.44 Fleishman also observed that even the arrangement of craft evoked its foreign origins: “by carefully placing the pottery, metalwork, and other small objects on low tables, the designers caught the predominantly horizontal spirit of an oriental trading place without being literal.”45 Together, the tent, the bazaar, and the arrangement of craft connoted a non-Western if not a pre-modern location that, “without being literal,” allowed attendees to engage imaginatively with this place and its wares. As a result, the exhibition’s simulation of a foreign bazaar offered industry visitors an opportunity to act as “cosmopolitans [who] tend to want to immerse themselves in other cultures, or in any case be free to do so,”46 as the anthropologist Ulf Hannerz explains, in his study of transnationalism, about “a willingness to engage with the Other.”47 That evocation of Otherness comprised a nod to a US trend in marketing Asian goods, elements of the interior aesthetic of the Coliseum, and traces of Orientalist attitudes and French colonialist exhibition techniques. Together, these strands of its appearance and organization revealed that US and Western perspectives underwrote the exhibition’s interpretation of these crafts. At this time, major retailers sent buyers to Asia to find goods to sell in the US. In some of their merchandising and publicity, they mythologized the heterogeneity of Asian places and things into generalized images and sites. One example is a large Shinto arch that welcomed visitors into an “Oriental Garden” at Macy’s Far Eastern Shop, which the department store opened in Midtown Manhattan in 1956.48 The Survey Exhibition’s staging of an “oriental bazaar” resonated in this mid-century US approach to homogenizing Asia representationally, in part to find an efficient way to signify Asian material culture as exotic, and highlight non-Western difference in comparison to US goods. On top of this, the Survey Exhibition echoed elements of the Coliseum’s architecture. Built between 1954 and 1956, the New York Coliseum opened off Columbus Circle in Midtown just two months prior to the Survey Exhibition, and its newness and modernity elicited much attention. In particular, Time celebrated its enormous size and number of elevators, state-of-the-art lighting, air conditioning, quantity of infrastructure hook ups, and generous seating space.49 The Coliseum’s grandeur and cutting-edge technology expressed trendsetting

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FIGURE 2.1 Pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition, International Housewares Show. Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 72. Photograph credited to Louis Reens, p. 73.

style, too.50 In its materials and construction, the Survey Exhibition made overtures to its venue’s modernity. For example, the exhibition architects Romaldo Giurgola and Paul J. Mitarachi imitated a generic traditional, foreign structure consisting of poles and a cloth tent by using modern materials—sleek white vinyl, which they cantilevered along the sides and looped over a metal armature—to effect a semienclosed space (Figure 2.1). Additionally, the exhibition echoed something of the climate and organization of its surroundings. To this point, Fleishman observed that its presentation of craft avoided the “random clutter of the conventional bazaar.”51 Instead, visitors may have sensed that the exhibition continued the aesthetic of the interior of the Coliseum, which the New York press heralded as clean and tidy (Figure 2.2).52 Inside the bazaar, mats and fabrics draped from frames and partitions, and other items sat on platforms. The display furniture carved out generous spaces between displays, which allowed for group conversations among the invited professionals and RWA. Color marked difference, as colored backgrounds distinguished each geographic section, with the implication that the craft items expressed additional cultural differences between these foreign places.53 Taken together, these elements of organization and presentation reinforced the Survey Exhibition’s aesthetic as belonging to the interior of the Coliseum. Overall, the American press considered the Coliseum a modern US temple of international trade resplendent in its efficiencies and design.54

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FIGURE 2.2 A bird’s-eye-view drawing of the interior pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition, International Housewares Show. Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 72. Photograph credited to Louis Reens, p. 73.

Within this arena devoted to modernity, traces of orientalism brought to the Survey Exhibition the inference that longstanding Western attitudes toward Asia continued to frame and inform its representations. The tent and bazaar conflated Southeast Asia with the Middle East and overgeneralized both areas of the world by failing to reference their cultures in any specifics of place and time. On top of this, the aforementioned concept of salvage crept into the exhibition, reflecting entitlement and privileging dominant discourses historically associated with Western paternalism concerning Asia. For example, the exhibition maintained the West’s privilege in delimiting as well as naming an entire region of Asia by updating the colonial nomenclature of Indochina with Southeast Asia, stretching that designation to encompass Taiwan and Hong Kong. Also, the exhibition employed display techniques that recalled an older style of presenting craft found in Paris expositions associated with French colonialism in Southeast Asia. In the Survey Exhibition, some items appeared in glass-top cases, while others of varying size were grouped together, creating a hodgepodge effect. The presentation echoed elements of the Indochina Pavilion of the Colonial Section of the 1925 International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris, especially craft displayed in the Stand de vente du Tonkin. That display highlighted textiles, metalwork, woodwork, and ceramics from the area of North Vietnam as curiosities

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for study and decoration arranged in ornate configurations mounted on the walls, on top of display furniture, and in glass cases.55 Something else echoed habits of French imperial-era displays of craft from the colonies. At the colonial exposition of 1931, items from the French colonies and other European empires had constituted a grand showing of “possession and consumption.”56 An exhibition from Indochina, specifically Tonkin, featured Indigenous shops and stalls replete with merchandise to entertain and tempt Parisian consumers.57 Twenty-five years later, the US State Department brought Vietnamese craft home from a place the US considered less developed and powerful, on the periphery of the Free World, to New York City, a location signifying a center, if not the center, of American cultural and economic power, and where the presentation of that craft conjured “an oriental trading place.”58 It did not occur to the press or the US designers and artisans involved in the craft diplomacy project to reflect on whether it was appropriate for Americans to exhibit craft from post-colonial Vietnam by engaging with techniques calling to mind displays rooted in that country’s colonial history with France. Nor did Americans clarify what it was about the histories and traditions of the region that especially mattered to them when, at the exhibition opening, Ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge characterized US economic diplomacy as a good custodian of tradition in Southeast Asia.59 At the same time, Wright supported re-styling craft for an import industry targeting the US.60 In 1958, Wright reiterated this point in a talk he aimed at designers in the Western hemisphere sponsored by the Designers and Decorators Guild of South Florida. “I am impatient with all those Americans I encounter—those sentimentalists who are only interested in preserving oriental culture traditions, and art. These things are dead,”61 Wright said, in seeming conflict with other statements he made about Americans desiring craft which retains the character of its foreign country of origin.62 Nevertheless, Wright shared with Lodge a sense of agency in aiming to guide the fate of Vietnamese craft. Conveyed in part through an orientalist impulse to look backward and forward, they iterated the hegemonic attitudes of the West about Southeast Asia as a developing region, as exemplified by US foreign policy taking charge of advancing its own needs there. Wright continued to sort out what belonged from the past, or not, in Vietnamese craft. In 1960 he ruminated, “we want handmade products from foreign countries but we want them to have the character and personality of the particular foreign country from which they come,”63 implying, perhaps in contradiction to his earlier statements, that Americans desired what they considered traditional about Vietnamese craft. As the ultimate recipients of these efforts, Lodge named “the American citizen and consumer.”64 In the wake of the exhibition, the US press represented the craft aid program in imperialistic overtones. Industrial Design depicted Wright and colleagues,

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government officials, and translators stepping off a sampan onto Vietnamese soil.65 Aimed at Americans at home, the image conveyed the US mobilizing design in Southeast Asia to advance its interests and help “weaker” nations. An article in Interiors associated Vietnamese refugees with a “gold mine in Southeast Asia,” suggesting they constituted raw material for Americans in the home furnishings and design fields to extract and refine as a workforce.66 In Retailing Daily, Wright reported that in response to visiting the Survey Exhibition, the design industries believed US buyers would prefer to purchase basketry, lacquerware, ceramics, and specialty fabrics from Vietnam.67 Meanwhile, RWA used the questionnaires to prepare proposals for nation-based projects with the State Department, including for South Vietnam.68 In June 1956, RWA submitted a report to the State Department with recommendations for developing a craft industry there.69 Discussions about establishing, funding, and managing a handicraft center in Saigon to train artisans, exhibit craft, and publicize samples in the US continued until 1957,70 when RWA helped to establish the Handicraft Development Center and began signing amendments extending their involvement with South Vietnam through 1961.71 In Saigon, the State Department’s United States Operations Mission advocated putting in place at the Center “a top flight handicraft development man who could organize and manage the activity on a full time basis” and would train a counterpart in Vietnam.72 For this purpose, RWA contracted Ken Uyemura, who trained in ceramics at Alfred University and prepared for working in Vietnam by studying tools for basketry and pottery production in Japan. Fashion designer Michiko Uyemura, Ken’s wife, provided expertise in design and fashion.73 Meanwhile, the RWA team began to redesign items for American consumption, such as ceramics tableware and grass mats having bold geometric patterns and bright colors.74 They contracted the American textile designer Jack Lenor Larson to oversee the design of grass carpeting and specialty weaving supported by American hand-weaving specialists, such as Reuben Eshkanian, an alumnus of Cranbrook Academy of Art.75 Through a firm called US Consultants Incorporated, the State Department hired Japanese technicians to help the Vietnamese government with projects in irrigation and fisheries. Their work in ceramics, bamboo and rattan, and weaving supplemented the American craft aid efforts throughout South Vietnam.76 Then, for the US World Trade Fair of 1958, Wright again presented craft from South Vietnam in the New York Coliseum.

UNITED STATES WORLD TRADE FAIR, 1958 Chicago sponsored the first United States International Trade Fair in 1950. In 1957, one year after the Coliseum opened, the Trade Fair’s second iteration took

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place in New York City, then known as a world leader in manufacturing, a major trade port, communications hub, home of major industries including finance, and the nation’s fashion capital. President Eisenhower equated locating the Trade Fair in that city with providing “a common marketplace in the Western Hemisphere.” This achievement, he explained, followed from the US “improv[ing] political and economic conditions throughout the world.”77 The New York Times picked up on the benefit to Americans visiting the Trade Fair; it gave them “a practical and efficient substitute for a world buying tour.”78 In 1958, the “tour” expanded to include Vietnam,79 whose exhibit appeared among those from over sixty nations.80 In reporting on its inclusion in the Trade Fair, The New York Times discerned that Vietnam’s craft “combines French and Oriental styles.”81 The mixture reflected layers of Vietnam’s history of transnational trade with France, China, and Southeast Asia. Many of the craft objects ostensibly representing Vietnam called to mind diverse cultural origins, like Cambodian heads of the Buddha, items from Japan, and a Cambodian figurative bronze statuette that the Vietnamese Bien Hòa Cooperative School of Ceramics likely reproduced from works dating to the preAngkor era.82 Other objects exceeded the political boundaries of South Vietnam, too. A map of Vietnam appearing in the printed program used dots to mark locations of contemporary craft activity throughout the peninsula, including in areas of North Vietnam, likely in Hanoi and Lai Chau.83 Collectively, the objects’ associations with many locations, histories, and cross-cultural elements suggested a rich cultural lineage for craft. Yet, the exhibition refrained from explaining how these elements related to South Vietnam or on what grounds Vietnamese craft signified a political state, a geography, or a cultural form. On the other hand, the mixture of object-based references to multiple places, times, and cultural traditions may have exemplified a strategy on the part of RWA to foster the success of craft diplomacy through its American consumption. Considered in this context, the exhibition’s combination of handmade original and reproduced objects, some having ties to museums and others, made by contemporary artisans or iterating ancient objects, served as a means to facilitate market segmentation.84 Retailers with whom RWA corresponded for the 1956 exhibition included, on the more affordable end, Sears, Roebuck & Co., and, increasingly upscale, Lilly Dache and W. & J. Sloane in New York City and department stores in other urban centers. Differences in the cost of their products and consumers’ tastes and locations indicates RWA was alert to appealing to multiple segments of the middle-class market. To this end, RWA may have engaged with a range of retailers to increase the potential number of American consumers it could interest in purchasing Vietnamese craft. Correspondingly, Wright may have selected an assortment of craft to exhibit that aligned with this range. In addition to concerns about American consumption, for RWA to associate Vietnam with craft objects conveying a plurality of cultural affiliations relayed a political message that could spur retailer and consumer interest. That message

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FIGURE 2.3 A large cutout photograph of President Diem, Republic of Viet Nam, United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum. Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

involved the magnanimity of South Vietnam embracing objects bearing witness to cross-cultural connections. In the end, the exhibition’s own signs of Vietnam encompassed them all. A photograph of President Diem wearing a traditional Vietnamese robe (Figure 2.3) and a large sign stating the name of the nation in English bookended the exhibition space, legitimizing the craft displayed therein as belonging to the nation Diem governed. Its message of cultural inclusivity and openness to trade with the Free World contrasted with North Vietnam. It broadly criticized France and the US as imperialist powers that harmed Vietnamese craft as an industry. North Vietnam claimed this industry must benefit the Vietnamese foremost and it must interact primarily with the communist world.85 From the State Department’s perspective, the US set forth to benefit, not harm, that industry. Nevertheless, the exhibition Wright organized for the Trade Fair absorbed craft into the look of displays and interiors then conveying American economic, social, and cultural power and privilege. Unlike in 1956, the 1958 Vietnam exhibition did not refer to refugees or rehabilitation, and the simulated bazaar was gone. Instead, slim vertical pillars, panels, and shelves organized the craft objects as part of a three-dimensional, grid-like composition of open and filled-in shapes that raised them above the floor and set off their varied textures, colors, and silhouettes (Figure 2.3). Hanging rugs marked visual and physical boundaries, too, while horizontal shelves elevated at various heights accommodated

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small groups that track lighting picked out for visual emphasis. The back area displayed lacquer screens, a secretary, and a low table. The installation’s aesthetic echoed the look and components of US-designed modern exhibition furniture and spaces, the interiors of multinational corporations, and commercial displays of home furnishings.86 It served as a mobile, nimble medium for coupling commerce with economic diplomacy and trade in Cold War exhibitions sent abroad from the US, too.87 The application of its pared-down, minimalist International Style by architects Leon and Lionel Levy to the Coliseum, together with that venue’s polished concrete floors, marble-walled lobby88 and restrained appearance89 saturated the aesthetic with luxury, progress, and commerce. Furthermore, the exhibition’s modern aesthetic associated Vietnamese craft with the vanguard modern home. Rather than follow the practice of other foreign governments in hiring their leading designers to present wares to the best advantage, the Washington, DC-based Embassy of Vietnam commissioned Wright to design its exhibition at the trade fair, likely based on his renown in the US and his ongoing involvement with the craft diplomacy program.90 The press characterized Wright as a tastemaker familiar with the US domestic market for modern design,91 and Wright used this aesthetic to shape the installation for Vietnamese craft at the trade fair. Conversely, Wright brought the appearance of the interiors of contemporary homes having a modern aesthetic into the Coliseum, into which he inserted Vietnamese craft. In contemplating the house that Ray and Charles Eames designed for themselves in California during the late 1940s, design historian Pat Kirkham focused on the materiality and hand-worked aspects of the craft they had collected and that represented Indigenous American, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and African cultures. She proposed that in placing these objects around the house, the Eameses created “functioning decoration” that humanized the minimalist, machine-manufactured and inspired aesthetic expressed by the space and furniture.92 Presumably, as in the Eames House, to the modern design interior of the New York Coliseum and to the aesthetic of the Vietnamese craft installation, the craft brought a human touch and personality.93 At the same time, insofar as this aesthetic presented the craft within its geometric, hard-edge, modular abstract forms by holding, framing, surrounding, and containing it, the relationship of display and displayed allegorized US agency— if not control—regarding the craft and, by extension, the people and places it signified to the State Department.94

FAILURES IN US CRAFT DIPLOMACY WITH SOUTH VIETNAM The US rationalized a craft aid program in South Vietnam based on its perceptions about that nation’s need for restoration and the possibility that if the US did not

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respond, the Communist Bloc and North Vietnam would. The program proceeded as a transnational economic effort that expressed US agency and power, especially through salvage. The 1956 exhibition displayed craft in a mythicized, seemingly timeless structure and event—the tent and the bazaar. Orientalist themes and French strategies of presenting its colonial culture surfaced, too, within the Coliseum’s interior so primed with every possible efficiency of modern mass display and user technologies. The 1958 exhibition inserted craft into a modern design aesthetic manifest in trade fairs, corporations, museums, and vanguard homes. Neither exhibition addressed two failures that historian Michal Jan Rozbicki subsequently detected in othering practices that occur in cross-cultural encounters: failure to examine what things mean to those who make them and to reflect on your interactions with things considered foreign.95 Instead, both exhibitions subjected Vietnamese craft to facets of culture that privileged political and economic hegemony and interests associated with the West and with the US, beyond and within its borders. That power concentrated in the New York Coliseum, the nation’s major new gateway not for immigrants but for foreign commodities that flowed ultimately to US consumers from the work of US diplomacy efforts to maintain and expand the Free World.96 In these respects, with South Vietnam, US craft diplomacy fell short of achieving “understanding and respect . . . for the cultural and national aspirations of the other.”97

NOTES 1 Livingston T. Merchant, “The New Environment of American Diplomacy,” The

Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 804 (November 22, 1954): 761. 2 Robert Thayer, “Cultural Diplomacy: Seeing is Believing,” Vital Speeches of the Day 25,

no. 24 (1959): 740. 3 Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Recommendations for 1956 Mutual Security Program,” The

Department of State Bulletin 32, no. 827 (May 2, 1955): 711. 4 International Cooperation Administration, Technical Cooperation (Washington, D.C.:

Office of Public Reports, 1957), n.p. 5 For a list of designers and firms with whom the State Department contracted, see

Avrom Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat: The Government Applies the Designer’s Approach to Problems of International Trade,” Industrial Design 3, no. 5 (August 1956): 68–73, and Lazette van Houton, “USA: Design for Developing People,” Design 132 (1959): 131–135. In India, the Ford Foundation funded a separate program to explore the potential for design studies spearheaded by Charles and Ray Eames. Saloni Mathur, “Charles and Ray Eames in India,” Art Journal 70, no. 1 (2011): 34–53; Claire Wintle, “Diplomacy and the Design School, The Ford Foundation and India’s National Institute of Design,” Design and Culture 9, no. 2 (2017): 207–224. 6 United States Foreign Operations Administration and Russel Wright Doing Business as

Russel Wright Associates, June 30, 1955, Record Group 469, Box 27, RWA Contracts,

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National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, hereafter NACP. Kenneth T. Young, “The United States and Southeast Asia,” The Department of State Bulletin 33, no. 856 (September 21, 1955): 844. 7 Dorothy Roe, “Designers Tour Far East,” The Washington Post and Times Herald

(Feburary 1, 1956), 41. 8 “Exodus: Report on a Voluntary Mass Flight to Freedom in Viet-Nam, 1954,” The

Department of State Bulletin 32, no. 815 (February 7, 1955): 224–228. Ronald Bruce Frankum, Operation Passage to Freedom. The United States Navy in Vietnam 1954–1955 (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007). 9 Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan, Cold War Confrontations. US Exhibitions and

Their Role in the Cultural Cold War (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2008), 18. 10 Air gram, International Cooperation Administration, Far East Demonstration Small

Industry and Handicraft Development Project, July 29, 1955, Record Group 469, Box 31, NACP. 11 Jennifer Way, The Politics of Vietnamese Craft. American Diplomacy and Domestication

(New York and London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019), 37–38. 12 Way, 12, 37–38. 13 “Industrial Design and Craft,” Industrial Design 6, no. 10 (1959): 91. 14 Way, The Politics of Vietnamese Craft, 41–42. 15 “Americans Study Vietnamese Handcrafts for Export,” News from Viet Nam 2, no. 12

(January 28, 1956): 5. 16 Airgram, Leland Barrows, Saigon, to ICA, February 24, 1956, Record Group 469, Box

31, NACP. 17 Memo, [Leland] Barrows to ICA, March 8, 1956, Record group 469, Box 31, NACP. 18 Amendment to RWA Contract, June 23, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 31, NACP. 19 “Caution is urged in U.N. Aid role,” The New York Times, June 26, 1956, 50. See also

Betty Pepis, “Handcrafts Bring Asia Near to U.S.: Hong Kong Furniture,” The New York Times, June 6, 1956, 30. 20 Contracts with RWA, May 27, 1957, Record Group 469, Box 31, NACP. 21 Brendan M. Jones, “Wares of the World Meeting at Coliseum,” The New York Times,

May 4, 1958, WT1. 22 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession 91 (1991): 34. 23 Ibid. 24 International Cooperation Administration, Technical Cooperation (Washington, DC:

Office of Public Reports, 1957), 3. 25 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Press, 1978), 140. 26 Virginia Dominguez, “Of Other Peoples: Beyond the ‘Salvage’ Paradigm,” in Hal Foster,

ed., Discussions in Contemporary Culture No. 1 (Seattle: Dia Art Foundation and Bay Press, 1987), 131. 27 “mission civilisatrice,” in Roger Scruton, ed., Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political

Thought, 3rd edition (Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 2007), https://libproxy.library.unt.edu/ login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/macpt/mission_civilisatric e/0?institutionId=4982.

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28 Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism. Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961

(Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2003), 5, 12–14. The term middlebrow is associated with Russell Lynes (1910–1991), who stratified intersections of economic class and taste, which he implicitly treated as white. Middlebrow refers to the cultural content and forms ostensibly desired by the American middle class or created for them during the mid-twentieth century. It comprises culture interpreted by expert specialists and organizations, like museums and universities, as well as cultural forms, especially mass-produced and distributed films, posters, magazines, novels, and radio and television programs. Affordability and plenty made it easily accessible. See Russell Lynes, “The Tastemakers,” Harper’s Magazine 194, no. 1165 (June 1947), 481–491; Russell Lynes, “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow,” Harper’s Magazine 198 no. 1185 (February 1949), 19–28; Russell Lynes, The Tastemakers (New York: Harper, 1954). 29 Klein, Cold War Orientalism, 7. 30 Walter Bedell Smith, “The Importance of Indochina,” The Department of State Bulletin

30, no. 773 (April 19, 1954): 589–590. 31 John F. Kennedy, “America’s Stake in Vietnam: Cornerstone of the Free World in

Southeast Asia,” Vital Speeches of the Day 22, no. 20 (1956): 617–618. 32 Christopher Goscha, Vietnam. A New History (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 290ff. 33 ICA, Far East Demonstration Small Industry and Handicraft Development Project, July

29, 1955, Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 34 Henry Varnum Poor, “Design: A Common Language,” Craft Horizons 9, no. 3

(November 1951): 19, 21; Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., “Introduction,” in Industrial Design in America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc., 1954), 8–9; George Nelson, Problems of Design (New York: Whitney Publications Incorporated, 1957), 12. 35 Don Wallance, “The Craftsman as Designer-Producer, Part Three,” Industrial Design 3

(August 1956): 81–82. 36 Poor, “Design: A Common Language,” 21. 37 Slide Lecture, Market for Asian Handicrafts in the U.S., January 1960, Box 38, Russel

Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 38 Under Secretary [Walter Bedell] Smith, “America’s Primary Interests in Asia,”

Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 789 (August 9, 1954): 191–195. 39 Letter, James Silberman, Office of Industrial Resources, ICA, to American

manufacturers and importers, Washington, D.C., June 12, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 27, NACP. 40 Airgram, Leland Barrows, Saigon, to ICA, February 24, 1956, Record Group 469, Box

31, NACP. Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” p. 70–71. 41 RWA, Survey and recommendations for advancing the economic welfare of workers in

small production shops and cottage industries of Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY. 42 Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 71. 43 “Market Spotlight,” Industrial Design 3 no. 5 (August 1956): 50. 44 Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 72. 45 Ibid.

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46 Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places (London and

New York: Routledge, 1996), 105. 47 Ibid., 103. 48 “Fall Boutiques Bow in Three Major Stores,” Retailing Daily, September 24, 1956, 33.

See also “Field’s to Survey Far East Market’s Potential,” Retailing Daily April 15, 1955, 8, and “Japan Trade Eyes Martinuzzi’s Visit,” Retailing Daily, April 22, 1955, 1, 23. 49 “A Temple for Mecca,” Time 67, no. 18 (April 30, 1956): 98. 50 Vera Berry, “Elegant Coliseum Show has Modern Manners,” Retailing Daily, August 27,

1956, 6. 51 Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 72. 52 C. B. Palmer, “Coliseum: Showcase of Showcases,” The New York Times, April 20, 1956,

14, 67. 53 Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 72. 54 “A Temple for Mecca,” 98. 55 See Plates VII and XIV in Pierre Guesde and Henri Gourdon, Section coloniale

Indochine, in Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (Paris, Mulhouse: Braun et Compagnie, 1925). 56 Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina. Colonial Encounters (Oxford and New York: Berg,

2001), 68ff. 57 Cooper, France in Indochina, 75. 58 Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 72. 59 “Caution is urged in U.N. Aid role,” The New York Times, June 26, 1956, 50. 60 Betty Pepis, “Handcrafts of Asia,” The New York Times, June 24, 1956, SM15. 61 Russel Wright, Notes—Design Derby, Miami, 1958, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers,

Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 62 Slide Lecture, January 1960, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research

Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 63 Ibid. 64 Press release, International Cooperation Administration, June 25, 1956, Box 43, Russel

Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY. 65 Fleischman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 71. 66 Russel Wright, “Goldmine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956): 100. 67 “Asian Exhibit Stirs Interest in New York,” Retailing Daily, September 7, 1956, 2. 68 Fleischman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 70–71. 69 RWA, Survey and recommendations for advancing the economic welfare of workers in

small production shops and cottage industries of Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 70 Memo, Leland Barrows and Lawrence Morrison, USOM Saigon, to SECSTATE,

Washington, DC, September 8, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 27, NACP. 71 Contracts with RWA, May 27, 1957, Record Group 469, Box 31, NACP.

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55

72 Letter, Leland Barrows to Russel Wright, August 17, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 27,

RWA Contracts, NACP. 73 Yuko Kikuchi, “Transnational Trajectories and Cold War design under the Russel

Wright Project in Asia: The Case of Ken and Michiko Uyemura,” Smithsonian Fellows Lectures, May, 18–20, 2016, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Final Report on Services and Accomplishment, May 1961, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. International Cooperation Administration, Industrial Activities Bulletin, Office of Industrial Resources, Washington, DC (April–May 1960): 1. Way, The Politics of Vietnamese Craft, 121–122. 74 Ching Yang, “A Study of the Program for Promoting Handcraft Export to America

Conducted by the Russel Wright Associates during 1955–60,” Bulletin of Japanese Society for the Science of Design 57, no. 3 (2010): 97–106. Way, The Politics of Vietnamese Craft, 110. For examples of some of the items designed with American consumption in mind, see Way, The Politics of Vietnamese Craft, 108, 110, 111, 124, 127. 75 Letter, Herbert Honig to Jack Lenor Larsen, August 14, 1958, Record Group 469, Box

47, NACP. Van Houten, “USA Design for Developing People,” 133. Oral history transcript, Jack Lenor Larsen interview with Arline M. Fisch, February 6–8, 2004, Archives of American Art, NY. https://www.aaa.si.edu/download_pdf_transcript/ ajax?record_id=edanmdm-AAADCD_oh_247149. 76 Activities of Japanese Technicians of US Consultants, June 11, 1959, Record Group 469,

Box 62, NACP. “Handicraft Development Contract Extended,” News from Viet Nam 6, no. 1 (January 12, 1960): 12–13. 77 “World to Enter Trade Fair Here,” The New York Times, January 3, 1957, 46. 78 Carl Spielvogel, “New York’s A Fair the Year Round,” The New York Times, April 14,

1957, 8. 79 Jacques Kunstenaar, “Success of World Trade Fairs,” The New York Times, May 23, 1958,

22. Gloria Emerson, “Trade Fair will Introduce Vietnamese to Americans,” The New York Times, May 2, 1958, 33. 80 Harry C. Kenney, “Nations to Display Wares,” Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 1958,

16. 81 “Vietnam in U. S. Debut,” The New York Times, May 4, 1958, WT7. 82 Gloria Emerson, “Trade Fair will introduce Vietnamese to Americans,” 33. 83 Official Directory, United States World Trade Fair, Coliseum, New York City, May 7–17,

1958, 130. 84 Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 301. 85 Vietnamese Handicrafts (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959), 3, 16–18,

22–26, 35–39. 86 George Nelson, Display (New York: Whitney Publications, Inc., 1953); Lucinda Kaukas

Havenhand, Mid-Century Modern Interiors. The Ideas that Shaped Interior Design in America (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019), especially 105–128; The Value of Good Design [exhibition], Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, February 10 to June 15, 2019. 87 Andrew James Wulf, U.S. International Exhibitions during the Cold War. Winning

Hearts and Minds (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 68ff; Masey and Morgan, Cold War Confrontations.

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88 Brendan Gill, “Forty Thousand an Hour,” The New Yorker, March 30, 1956, 23–24. 89 C. B. Palmer, “Coliseum: Showcase of Showcases,” 14, 67. 90 “Leading Designers Creating Exhibits,” The New York Times, May 4, 1968, 6WT.

Emerson, “Trade Fair will introduce Vietnamese to Americans,” 33. 91 For example, Emerson, “Trade Fair will introduce Vietnamese to Americans,” 33;

Harriet Morrison, “Designs from Southeast Asia Coming Here,” New York Herald Tribune April 2, 1958, 4; Betty Pepis, “Handcrafts Bring Asia Near to U.S.: Hong Kong Furniture,” 1956, 30. 92 Pat Kirkham, “Humanizing Modernism: The Crafts, ‘Functioning Decoration’ and the

Eameses,” Journal of Design History 11, no. 2 (1998): 25–26. 93 Poor, “Design: A Common Language,” 21. Slide Lecture, January 1960, Box 38, Russel

Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 94 On containment discourses, see Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound. American

Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988). On craft and modern furniture in the Herman Miller Company’s publicity, see Kristina Wilson, “Like A ‘Girl in a Bikini Suit’ and Other Stories: The Herman Miller Furniture Company, Gender and Race at Mid-Century,” Journal of Design History 28, no. 2 (2015): especially 174–175. 95 Michal Jan Rozbicki and George O. Ndege, “Introduction,” in Michal Jan Rozbicki and

George O. Ndege, eds., Cross-Cultural History and the Domestication of Otherness (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 2. 96 Carl Spielvogel, “New York’s a Fair the Year Round,” 8. Press release, June 25, 1956, Box

43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 97 Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Recommendations for 1956 Mutual Security Program,” The

Department of State Bulletin 32, no. 827 (May 2, 1955): 711.

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3 “A SLIGHTLY EXOTIC COUNTRY”: POLAND’S CONTENTIOUS DEBUT AT THE 11TH MILAN TRIENNALE, 1957 Katarzyna Jez˙owska

The 11th Milan Triennale opened on July 27, 1957. Retrospectively, historians have called it the “Triennale of design” because of the role it played in consolidating international recognition of the discipline and the fact that it was “the most cosmopolitan iteration of the event to date”: there were contributions from fortythree nations, spread across various thematic exhibits.1 For Poland, one of the eighteen countries that were represented by dedicated national pavilions, the Triennale was the first international showcase of this kind since the post-Thaw reopening to the West.2 In search of its new post-Stalinist identity, it turned to craftsmanship, a decision which, as some of the Polish commentators noted, generated an impression of Poland as “a slightly exotic country.”3 At first, this was not an issue. The Triennale organizers applauded the diversity of contemporary design culture and acknowledged that a multiplicity of design voices could have a positive impact on the variety of “proposals, suggestions, visions—but also—prospects [. . .] that could transform tomorrow, predict and contrive the world that we aspire to, which has not been born yet, but which has always existed beyond our present.”4 This affirmative statement issued by Ivan Matteo Lombardo, the Triennale’s longstanding president, was not internalized by design critics and commentators, however, the majority of whom were perplexed by the Polish display. They perceived it as a testament to Eastern European

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backwardness and to Poland’s own inability to keep up with the tendencies of modern industrial design. A sympathetic response came from two critics, for whom the Polish reliance on modern craftsmanship resonated. These critics—the Italian architect and editor Ernesto Nathan Rogers and the prominent Finnish writer Annikki Toikka-Karvonen—consistently advocated in their texts for a flexible definition of contemporary design that would recognize the value of the vernacular tradition in the modern world. Polish commentators were aware of the particularity of the Polish proposal but took pride in the originality of the display and the quality of the pieces exhibited. Criticism by some of these commentators focused on the disparity between the first-class craftsmanship on display and the lamentable state of material culture at home. While they were fully supportive of Polish craft and its role as a wellestablished marker of the nation’s identity, they called for an urgent modernization of national production through design. This chapter examines how the self-proclaimed “exoticism” of the Polish exhibit was explained and rationalized by the Polish organizers to the international design community and how it was received by various participants of the design debate that emerged around the 11th Triennale. By contextualizing these diverse responses to the Polish exhibit—domestic and international, sympathetic and dismissive— and considering the distinct vantage points from which they emerged, it questions the feasibility of transnational design exchanges in the late 1950s. With the international design community invested in securing the professional autonomy of design and transfixed by a singular—modernist—aesthetics, there was little willingness to consider different proposals. The Polish exhibit at the 11th Milan Triennale, staged shortly after Eastern Europe reopened to the world, evidences a struggle to contribute to global design culture from a non-Western position.

THE POST-THAW TRIENNALE The Triennale, which had evolved from a modest interwar review of Italian decorative arts, in the 1950s achieved the status of a respected advocate for design in the postwar world.5 Additionally, thanks to the official support of the Italian government, the Milan municipality, and the local manufacturing industry, the Triennale rapidly established its position as a site for international diplomacy, in which design was used to forge international relations.6 Driven by “the strong interest in comparing ideas, tastes and creative modernity from two opposing worlds,” in February 1956 the organizers of the Milan Triennale had sent letters of invitation to Poland, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary, and shortly afterwards to the non-aligned communist state of Yugoslavia.7 Bulgaria and Hungary declined the invitation, while the Soviet Union withdrew its participation from the Triennale at the last minute in light of the mounting tension

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between Moscow and Rome.8 One American journalist contended that the Soviet non-attendance impelled Eastern European participants “to show the Western world what they could do without their stepmother Russia’s eagle eye on them.”9 While this assertion is difficult to prove, the Triennale presented a timely opportunity for these Eastern European countries to reappear on the international scene in the aftermath of political upheaval. Stalin’s death in 1953 triggered a wave of gradual yet profound change—known as the Thaw—across the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Poland was one of the first countries to experience de-Stalinization: over the following four years Moscow’s interference in domestic politics decreased, and subsequently Poland renewed its diplomatic relationships with the West and reinstated global trade and cultural exchanges.10 The Communist Party’s control over society loosened, mass repressions were abandoned, and economic priorities began to shift away from investment towards consumer goods.11 By 1954 the official artistic doctrine was renounced, and in spring 1956 Włodzimierz Sokorski, the Minister of Culture and Art who had introduced Socialist Realism into Polish culture in 1949, was dismissed.12 Subsequently, Karol Kuryluk, a widely respected journalist, publisher, and editor, with networks reaching back to the interwar period, took over the ministerial position.13 Organising the Polish pavilion for the Milan Triennale must have been one of his first tasks in the office. In October 1956 Władysław Gomułka, a communist politician imprisoned during the Stalinist period, became the Party’s First Secretary. By the end of 1956 the political situation at home had stabilized, and the exchange between the Triennale organizers and the Polish committee had gained momentum.14

“CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLES OF THE HISTORIC ARTS” In the meantime, Marek Leykam was appointed as curator and lead designer of the Polish pavilion. Born and educated in Warsaw, Leykam was an architect well acquainted with the city’s artistic circles, and had developed good working relations with the municipal bureaucrats through his high-profile professional assignments.15 In 1948, alongside many other architects and artists, Leykam participated in preparations for the Exhibition of Regained Territories in Wrocław, one of the most spectacular cultural initiatives in postwar Poland, devised to corroborate the Yalta Conference decision on Poland’s new borders.16 The exhibit not only shaped the repertoire of innovative design solutions that were frequently referred to by architects, artists, and bureaucrats in the years to come, but also consolidated a milieu of artists and architects who soon emerged as the most prominent designers of Polish displays. For the exhibit in Wrocław, Leykam designed the main courtyard which served as a prelude to the thematic section of the display. Photographs of his

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FIGURE 3.1 Polish Pavilion exhibit at the 11th Triennale di Milano, 1957. © Triennale Milano—Archivio Fotografico.

contribution were widely reproduced in the accompanying publications, official newsreels, and newspaper articles to promote the entire exhibit.17 By comparison, his work for the Polish pavilion in Milan was on a much more intimate scale. Together with his frequent collaborators Czesław Rajewski and Maciej Krasiński, Leykam adapted one of the rooms in the Palazzo dell’Arte al Parco, a monumental exhibition hall, for the Polish display. The setting was very simple—they painted one of the walls a bright magenta and covered the other three with woven textiles suspended from the ceiling. The decorative fabrics formed a background for ceramic pieces and wooden sculptural objects that the designers placed directly on the floor. One of few existing photographs of the setting captures an intricate structure of sunlit textiles that contrasts with a row of

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black earthenware vases produced by self-taught artisans from north-east Poland (Figure 3.1). These textiles were not a mere element of exhibition design, however. They were prime examples of modern Polish craftsmanship, designed within the milieu of the Ład Artists’ Cooperative. The Cooperative, founded by craftspeople, architects and applied artists following the success of the Polish pavilion at the 1925 Paris International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, thrived during the interwar period and regained its impetus in the 1940s after experiencing difficulties during the occupation. Ład’s initial aim of improving the material culture of Poland domestically by manufacturing high-quality objects was derailed by the ongoing interest of the political authorities, who regularly commissioned Ład to furnish Polish embassies and ministerial offices.18 This process, although it allowed the Cooperative to prosper, also reinforced the representative rather than the utilitarian dimension of Ład’s pieces. The Polish pavilion at the Triennale, in featuring newly produced decorative textiles and ceramics with floral patterns and rural landscape motifs, demonstrated the “diplomatic functionality” of Ład products in the post-Thaw order. Decorative textiles by Eleonora Plutyńska, one of Ład’s founders and a proponent of traditional hand-weaving and natural dyes, were presented in Milan alongside textiles by a younger generation of artists.19 Together they demonstrated original aesthetics and an experimental approach, achieved as a result of close collaboration between artists and artisans from rural Poland. One of the outcomes of these efforts, a large, colorful figurative appliqué tapestry, occupied a prominent space within the Polish display. This work, by Tadeusz Brzozowski, an avant-garde artist, and Maria Bujakowa, a craftswoman and educator from Zakopane, offered a national reinterpretation of The Song of Roland, a medieval poem about the victory of Charlemagne’s army over the Saracens.20 The main protagonist of the story featured on the tapestry was represented as a Sarmatian, a member of the Polish gentry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a characteristic mustache and voluminous robe. The use of national iconography was one of the hallmarks of Polish textiles; meticulous craftsmanship and a unique mode of production were another. While the Western European fabrics produced at this time were screenprinted and developed with mass production in mind, the Polish textiles on display were woven, one of a kind, and primarily decorative.21 The ceramics Poland presented at the Triennale shared similar features. Julia Kotarbińska and Wanda Golakowska, while demonstrating a high level of craftsmanship, pushed the boundaries of traditional techniques in their work by experimenting with forms and colorful glazes. Architectural ceramics by two couples—Lech and Helena Grześkiewicz, and Helena and Roman Husarski—were key examples of the public art that flourished in socialist Poland. Alongside mosaics, murals, sgraffiti, and neon signs, developed under the state’s patronage, these large-scale craftworks beautified Polish towns while making a case for the

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egalitarian nature of socialist culture, which was available to everyone on a daily basis.22 The exhibit also featured works by the sculptor and educator Antoni Kenar, a close friend of Leykam. From his diverse oeuvre, that included woodwork, ceramics, and textiles, the curator selected a set of roughly carved wooden furniture displayed in the center of the Polish pavilion. These were big blocks of raw wood, more akin to sculptural objects than pieces of furniture. The exhibit also presented screen-printed linen fabrics, which Kenar had developed with a youth collective workshop from the Tatra Mountains in Southern Poland.23 These designs, featuring sequences of simplified rustic imagery, were commissioned by the Institute of Industrial Design, which searched for a way to apply the creativity of craftspeople and youth from rural areas to industrial production.24 Within this handicraft showcase, in the middle of the Polish pavilion, the curator placed, quite unexpectedly, a television screening “a succession of shapes in motion [. . .] creating an effect very like that of an abstract picture film.”25 This experimental light and music spectacle, called Kineformy (Cinéforms), by Andrzej Pawłowski, a multi-talented designer and artist, was seemingly at odds with the rest of the craft-based Polish exhibits.26 The film, whose artistic value had quickly gained critical acclaim, could have been helpful for the state—which acted as the exhibit’s commissioner—to testify to its progressive ambitions and support of experimental arts in front of an international audience. Nonetheless, it was omitted from the exhibit statement written for the comprehensive Triennale catalog, which presented the curatorial messages of all the participants.27 The text, published in Italian under the title Arti Applicate e Forme Industriali in Polonia (Applied Arts and Industrial Forms in Poland), introduced Poland’s showcase of “contemporary examples of the historic arts” that grew from local folk tradition.28 It mapped the development of craft and industry in Poland from the early postwar years while crediting the growth of craft to the progressive cultural policies of the socialist state. The text explained that artists such as those associated with Ład, driven by the needs of the contemporary moment, sought to apply their skills to improve the visual quality of everyday life “through the design of our clothes, book covers and all other objects that surround us.”29 While the text stressed the role of craftsmanship in transforming Polish industry, it barely mentioned the Institute of Industrial Design, which since 1950 had been at the forefront of these endeavors. It did not explain the premise of the Institute’s program, which aimed to transform Polish industrial production by facilitating the collaboration between educated artists and architects and talented peasants. Nor did it mention the work of Wanda Telakowska, the Institute’s charismatic director, who established interdisciplinary teams of craftspeople, designers, and fine artists in an effort to introduce “beauty every day and for all.”30 Instead, the text emphasized the political dimension of craft development in Poland and its social agenda. It stressed the state’s commitment to preserving national heritage,

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providing employment to artists, and making art useful to society at large through “wise policy, organizing exhibits, purchasing artworks, and [the development of] a scholarship system.”31 Moreover, it asserted that the whole of Polish society was deeply interested in the improvement of everyday aesthetics, and it was public demand that motivated artists to seek new ways to apply their skills for the transformation of their surroundings.

VERNACULAR DESIGNS OR “FURNITURE FOR MODERN NEANDERTHALS”? The Eastern European exhibitors phrased the curatorial statements that were published in the Triennale official catalog carefully in order to make their presentations look appealing to an international audience. Each country argued that its craftsmanship, although inspired by the local culture, was relevant to modern-day production. The main subject of the Czechoslovak pavilion, artistic glass, which was steadily building an international reputation, was promoted as an original national product of significant economic, aesthetic, and cultural value.32 Romania’s decorative textiles, ceramics, and terracotta vessels, alongside examples of graphic design, testified to the modern legacy of traditional handicrafts.33 The Yugoslav display (which, despite the country’s split with the Soviet Union in 1948, was considered by the Triennale commentators in the same light as the other three Eastern European countries), featured a range of ceramics, textiles, jewelry, and furniture to manifest the country’s hybrid identity to a global audience.34 Despite these efforts, the Eastern European presentations of handmade, decorative, and unique pieces diverged from the Triennale’s vision of design as an industrial force.35 Although the Triennale declared its interest in relationships “between craftsmanship and industrial aesthetics, between creation and manual skill, between art and industrial organization, between formal invention, functional efficiency and manufacturing possibilities,” industrial design remained central for organizers, participants, and journalists from the West.36 Some associated design with “the new humanism of our times.”37 This faith in the potential of the new discipline was reflected in the extensive press coverage of the national pavilions and the thematic exhibits that featured industrial design, as well as the limited attention paid to the craft-focused exhibits of non-Western participants.38 The reviewers underplayed the originality of the latter, disavowed national approaches, and measured the exhibits according to standards set for the outcomes of mass production. The aesthetics of Poland’s folk-inspired exhibits varied significantly from those of the domestic goods and electric appliances on display in the pavilions of Western countries. According to Angelo della Masse, a journalist at the Italian newspaper Corriere della Nazione, while the former was a result of international collaboration

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within the European community, the latter reflected the near-decade of isolation that Eastern European countries had experienced since the late 1940s.39 Western pavilions reportedly displayed objects that resulted from the combination of an artistic approach and modern technology, which della Masse described as refined, elegant, and practical.40 On the other hand, the heaviness and monotony of Eastern European exhibits supposedly mirrored the political separation of the respective countries. In della Masse’s opinion, these traits were most acutely exemplified by the Polish textiles and art ceramics, which gave an impression of the melancholy and stagnation caused by their distance from “Old Europe” and lost connections with the European community. Conversely, as della Masse observed, Western European exhibits were marked by a vivacious spirit.41 Other reviewers pointed out how constraints on travel and the lack of international exchange had also negatively impacted the Romanian and Yugoslav pavilions.42 Similarly, the West German journalist Ulrich Seelmann-Eggebert commented in his review that “Poland has sent a selection of folklore with wall rugs, ceramics, and battered wooden furniture suitable for log cabins and hunting huts.”43 One Italian reviewer from the conservative La Nazione stated bluntly: “Sad section, full of banality, and old stuff.”44 The social-liberal Comunità, founded by Adriano Olivetti, described Kenar’s rough benches with repulsion: “a massive structure of thick beams that hold up a four-piece sofa.”45 The Austrian daily Neues Österreich, also highly skeptical about Kenar’s pieces, went as far as identifying them as “furniture for modern Neanderthals.”46 Cultural stereotypes reinforced by the Cold War political divide had shaped Western perceptions of Eastern Europe as traditional, rural, folksy, and even underdeveloped.47 These tropes provided a clear qualitative distinction between the Eastern and the Western exhibits, and were frequently adopted by reviewers in their attempts to make sense of Poland as a first-time Triennale participant and as a representative of the socialist camp.

PRAISE FOR ORIGINALITY A few commentators avoided such clichés and offered a more nuanced reading of the Polish exhibit. Italian architect and editor-in-chief of the influential magazine Casabella-continuità, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, was among them. As an active supporter of artisanal culture in Italy and one of the initiators of the Compagnia Nazionale Artigiana (National Craft Company), Rogers had a good understanding of contemporary craftsmanship, which no doubt influenced his sympathetic view of the Polish exhibit. Yet his comments should also be interpreted within his contextual approach to the modern movement more broadly, which turned many of his texts into passionate appeals for a more open and wide-ranging understanding of postwar modernity.48

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In a detailed review of the Triennale, Rogers assessed the Polish exhibit in context and suggested that the exhibits reflected the desperate social and political conditions in which they were conceived. In his view, the pieces were expressive and sincere. He claimed that although the value of the works presented may not have been immediately recognizable to some, they deserved the attention of the Western design community. He reasoned that by presenting their work at the Triennale, artists were re-engaging with the international debate about contemporary design after years of isolation and struggle under Stalinism. Their voices, still hoarse at times, made a valuable contribution that, according to Rogers, design culture desperately needed.49 Elsewhere he reprimanded those in the Western design community who held a narrow view of modernism as merely an aesthetic style, confined to a codified repertoire of materials and forms.50 Their disregard for vernacular culture was a grave mistake that hindered the creation of genuinely modern design and architecture. For Rogers, awareness of historical context, technological development, and local artistic traditions were indispensable conditions for any ingenious work. A sense of one’s identity was central for creative pursuits across disciplines that could be achieved only by maintaining a dialogue with a national history, and not by merely imitating the work of others. As Rogers insisted, the Polish exhibits, by demonstrating these qualities, challenged the impoverished vision of modernity at the Triennale. Annikki Toikka-Karvonen, a prominent Finnish critic, advocate of national design abroad and thoughtful educator of consumer taste at home, shared Rogers’ dissatisfaction with the homogeneity of design culture. For her, contemporary design suffered from a lack of diversity, and commentators who were not particularly interested in new voices reinforced this unfortunate situation. This dissatisfaction led her to believe that Poland could offer something unique to the international design community, just as her native Finland had done a few years earlier. The Polish exhibit, she argued, was a memorable one: it differed fundamentally from the sleek aesthetics of other pavilions, which exhibited a “stiff dry prickliness, amoeba-like slackness, and confused compositions.”51 The resemblance between Poland and Finland that Toikka-Karvonen alluded to was an idea that stimulated the imagination of politicians and creatives alike in the 1950s. Many Polish craftspeople and designers shared aesthetic sensibilities with their Finnish peers, such as an appreciation of natural materials and the revival of traditional craftsmanship. Additionally, a social agenda of design culture gained wide currency in Poland around the 1950s. Friendly relations between the President of Finland, Urho Kekkonen, and the First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party, Władysław Gomułka, created a congenial atmosphere for cooperation, and the Polish authorities, driven by a political affinity with the Finnish government, supported reciprocal cultural exchange. The Polish public

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was exposed to Finnish culture through literary translations, musical concerts, and exhibits that included displays of architecture and design.52 The latter were accompanied by catalogs, illustrated articles in professional magazines, and texts that outlined the organization of artisanal practices and industry in Finland in the twentieth century. The state sponsored a research program which allowed Polish artisans, architects, and designers to visit the design studios of their Finnish counterparts and familiarize themselves with the ways in which the industry was organized.53 The curator of the Polish pavilion also pointed out the analogy between Polish and Finnish craft and design trajectories. In an article for Projekt, Leykam suggested that the Finns’ pioneering approach had paved the way for the recognition of craftsmanship and the awards the Triennale jury awarded to the Poles: the gold medal to Ład for its jacquard textiles, and silver medals to both Kenar for his printed textiles and to the Leykam’s team for overall exhibit design.54 By the mid-1950s, Finland was already internationally recognized for its original design. The first postwar decade was marked by a dramatic shift in the character of its national production from heavy industrial goods to sophisticated domestic items. While the former covered Finland’s war reparations to the USSR, an expansion into the Western European and North American markets prompted the latter.55 It was an outcome of the Finnish government’s carefully planned economic and cultural policy, which, by collaborating with modernist designers, created a strong national brand. As part of this strategy, Finland increased its presence at international trade fairs and exhibits abroad, including Milan’s Triennale.56 Apart from their commercial goal, these presentations declared that Finland, despite its historical ties with the Russian Empire and later with the Soviet Union, belonged to Western Nordic culture. Commenting on the early success of Finnish design at the 9th Triennale in 1951, Toikka-Karvonen argued that Finland, being independent in its artistic exploration, brought to humanity its unique sensibility without acting as “an apprentice or imitator of those who are apparently more powerful.”57 Six years later, reviewing the Polish exposition at the 11th Triennale, Toikka-Karvonen again stressed the importance of an original aesthetic language of design. In a review published in Helsingin Sanomien, the major Finnish newspaper, she wrote that “despite the small budget,” the Polish display “demonstrated a clear sense of style with attention to detail. Poland, who took part in the Triennale for the first time, presented great finesse and a selection of original artistic talents—especially in the first-class decorative textiles.”58 To prove her point, Toikka-Karvonen used a tapestry designed by Helena and Stefan Gałkowski to illustrate the text. In their respective reviews, both Rogers and Toikka-Karvonen pursued an argument for including Polish craft in the contemporary discourse of European material culture. At stake was not just a narrow interest in a single country from Eastern Europe, but a more comprehensive and diverse vision of modernity.

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APPLAUSE AND CRITICISM AT HOME A celebratory tone dominated the reviews of the Polish pavilion published in the national press. The official outlets of the Party, Trybuna Ludu and Życie Warszawy, hailed the Polish success in Milan. The Polish News Agency, another propaganda instrument, reported that the original works of decorative art had attracted the attention of the director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, who was interested in purchasing the Gałkowskis’ textiles.59 “We were not short of compliments, which were well deserved and indisputable,” reported one journalist for the popular magazine Świat.60 Commentators who were closely involved with the local design scene also commended the quality of the craftworks on display. Nevertheless, their opinions about the Polish exhibit were more nuanced. Jerzy Hryniewiecki, a prominent architect and frequent commentator on design, suggested that Polish handwoven textiles, one-off ceramics, and rough furniture broke the monotony of the Triennale.61 He echoed the sentiments of Rogers and Toikka-Karvonen that in pursuit of modern forms “the particular character of each country has been lost. There is no visible link between an object and a country [where it was produced].”62 Although he praised “a sort of exoticism” that he found in the Polish display, he also expressed his disappointment that industry (or the state?) was not capable of integrating this excellent craftsmanship into the quality of everyday material culture at home. Hryniewiecki, like the majority of Polish commentators, argued that these decorative pieces were not what the Poles badly needed: that is, affordable and well-designed products for everyday consumption.63 His was not an isolated criticism, and even the most vocal advocates of Polish craft and decorative art often wondered how the exotic image of the country produced for an international audience could be harnessed for the benefit of the Poles. Leykam himself was critical about the lack of socio-economic impact of the displayed objects. In his article for Projekt, he pointed out that for years the industry had been ignoring the creative potential of craftsmanship that the exhibit demonstrated, and had developed a limited understanding of craft as superficial and decorative. Now was the time to fight for the recognition of artists’ expertise in the industrial context, “not only for export but also for internal use.”64 The relationship between handicraft and industrial production must be reorganized and put to work in response to the needs of modern society. Aleksander Wojciechowski, an art historian who had published widely on Polish craft, decorative arts, and design, was even more direct in his criticism. He noted that the craft-orientated profile of the Polish exhibit was not so much due to the deep affection of the Polish nation for artisanal shapes and textures, but was rather a result of the immaturity of other modes of production and technological issues. At the moment, Wojciechowski implied, showing craft was for Poland a sort of necessity. His critical assessment was not that far from the remarks made by the

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Western journalists. Yet while his was a frustration-driven appeal to improve the situation of the Polish craft and industry, the disdain of the majority of Western commentators revealed their misconception of the material culture that did not conform to the modern design aesthetic. According to Wojciechowski, the only way for Poland to break the impasse and invigorate national production was to embrace industrial design. He stated: Tradition helps art to develop. But tradition can also hinder progress. We cannot reject tradition if we don’t want to impoverish our art. Yet, carrying on the entire spectrum of its experiences means deliberately reducing opportunities for rapid progress.65 The development of modern technologies and the integration of the skills of artists and artisans could, he claimed, provide Poland with an opportunity to develop a distinct industrial language, rooted in the nation’s culture and relevant to modern needs.

SHIFTING VISIONS The Polish exhibit at the Triennale attracted a range of different responses. Foreign commentators measured the quality of the work against the international standards set for industrial design. Their judgments, in part galvanized by the official narrative of the Polish pavilion, reflected the general perception of Poland as a country whose culture had been determined by Soviet influences and folklore. The critique by the Polish reviewers, expressed in a series of articles published throughout the summer and autumn of 1957, stemmed from elsewhere. Their main point of contention was the disparity between the quality of the objects that Poland promoted internationally and the actual goods that were available for everyday domestic consumption in Poland. Prompted by this national representation in Milan, Polish commentators voiced their criticism about the current situation concerning the production and consumption of goods, the organization of industry, and the limited role of artists in the entire process. These claims did not mean that they dismissed craft: on the contrary, many of them believed that artisanal skills and creativity could form the basis for developing industrial design practices that respected the country’s needs and traditions. Although these critical responses by international journalists, and pleas for change, did not transform Polish craft and design practices, three years later Poland returned to the Triennale with a significantly different proposal.66 Rather than portraying a country that drew heavily on folklore and tradition to shape its present, in 1960 Poland presented itself as a progressive welfare state, one in which industrial design and modern architecture were indispensable for realizing its

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social vision. The 1960 exhibit—prepared by Oskar Hansen, an esteemed member of an international architectural circle—depicted socialist Poland as a place where design and architecture could develop beyond the constraints experienced in capitalist societies. By presenting over 400 diverse pieces (in comparison to just over a hundred at the 11th Triennale), including decorative glass, ceramics, textiles, architectural photographs, furniture, domestic utensils, illustrated books, and toys, the exhibit aimed to demonstrate the breadth of Polish design. It also intended to highlight the impact of design on everyday life through the provision of spaces for modern living and education.67 This stark difference between the two consecutive national pavilions demonstrated the authorities’ new priorities in domestic policy and international relations. In time, industrial design consolidated its global role as a driver of creativity and as a symbol of national technical and aesthetic prowess. Polish craftsmanship lost its power to attract the attention of an international audience. The exhibit in the 1957 Triennale was one of the last international displays in which Poland confidently presented folk art and handicraft as an alternative to industrial production. Although the country continued to showcase its craftsmanship at various exhibits and trade fairs in subsequent decades, the premise of these presentations changed significantly: folk-inspired objects and modern craftsmanship were framed not as a substitute for, but as a supplement to, industrially produced goods.

NOTES 1 Anty Pansera, Storia e Cronaca Della Triennale (Milan: Longanesi, 1978). Also

Agnoldomenico Pica, Storia Della Triennale 1918–1957 (Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1957). 2 The countries with dedicated pavilions were Spain, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia,

Poland, Holland, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Romania, West Germany, Yugoslavia, Japan, Belgium, Austria, France, Mexico, and the United States. 3 Aleksander Wojciechowski, “Niektóre sprawy polskiej architektury wnętrz,” Projekt 2,

no. 3 (5) (1957): 13. 4 Ivan Matteo Lombardo, “Discorsi Inaugurali,” in A. Pica, ed., Undicesima Triennale

(Milan: Triennale di Milano, 1957), 14. 5 Anty Pansera, “The Triennale of Milan: Past, Present, and Future,” Design Issues 2, no. 1

(1985): 23. 6 Kjetil Fallan, “Milanese Mediations: Crafting Scandinavian Design at the Triennali Di

Milano,” Journal of Art History 83, no. 1 (2014): 1–23. 7 “Alla prossima Triennale,” Il Giornale della Radio industria e della Elettrodomestica,

April 21, 1956, 2–4. 8 Following Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956, the Italian authorities openly

voiced their criticism of Soviet politics. Tensions escalated later that year when

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the Milan-based publishing house Feltrinelli announced plans to publish the first-ever edition of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, a novel banned in the USSR due to its perceived anti-Soviet sentiment. See Paolo Mancosu, Inside the Zhivago Storm. The Editorial Adventures of Pasternak’s Masterpiece (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2013). 9 Louis Goodenough, “25 Nations Mingle Politics, Designs as Triennale Opens,” Home

Furnishings Daily, July 29, 1957, 1. 10 Paweł Machcewicz, Rebellious Satellite. Poland 1956 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow

Wilson Center Press; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). 11 This shift has been described in detail by historian Andrzej Paczkowski in his The

Spring Will Be Ours. Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). On the impact of the post-Stalinist transformation on material culture and everyday life in Poland and the Eastern Bloc, see three volumes edited by David Crowley and Susan E. Reid: Style and Socialism. Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Socialist Spaces. Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (Oxford: Berg, 2002). 12 Patryk Babiracki, Soviet Soft Power in Poland. Culture and the Making of Stalin’s New

Empire, 1943–1957 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); and Piotr Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta. Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989 (London: Reaktion, 2011). 13 The new minister advocated greater cultural openness towards the West and initiated a

series of scholarships for Polish writers, cinematographers, and artists that allowed them to spend time abroad. He was dismissed two years into his term of office. Sebastian Ligarski, “Polityka władz komunistycznych wobec twórców kultury w latach 1945–1989,” Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość 2, no. 24 (2014): 51–73 and Ewa Kuryluk, “Karol Kuryluk (1910–1967),” Zeszyty Literackie 2 (1998): 131–139. 14 The earliest information about Poland’s participation in the Milan Triennale is dated

August 23, 1956, with the opening scheduled for July 27, 1957. Letter, Tommaso Ferraris to the Italian Embassy in Warsaw, December 1, 1956, XI Triennale di Milano, Box no. 32. Polonia, Folder no.1, Polonia rapresentanze diplomatiche, Archivio Storico—La Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy. 15 Tadeusz Mycek, Spotkania z mistrzami. Portrety 63 architektów polskich (Warsaw:

Nask, 1998). 16 Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, “Modernism between Peace and Freedom. Picasso

and Others at the Congress of Intellectuals in Wrocław, 1948,” in David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, eds., Cold War Modern. Design 1945–1970 (London: V&A Publishing, 2008), 33–41; also Tomasz Fudala, Marianne Zamecznik, and Ewa Skolimowska, Space Between Us (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art, 2010). 17 It was one of the most representative installations, that combined engineering

innovation with creativity. Maria Zwierz, Tradycje wystawiennicze we Wrocławiu w latach 1818–1948. Architektura i rozplanowanie terenu wystaw (Wrocław: Muzeum Architektury, 2016): 247–299. 18 Ład designs were used in the newly established Polish embassies in Sofia, Berlin, and

Stockholm, and in the postwar period furnished the Polish consulate in Moscow. See Agnieszka Chmielewska, W służbie państwa, społeczeństwa i narodu: „państwowotwórczy” artyści plastycy w II Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Filozofii i Socjologii PAN, 2006) and Anna Frąckiewicz, ed., Spółdzielnia Artystów “Ład” 1926–1996, vol. 1 (Warsaw: Muzeum Akademii Sztuk Pięknych, 1998).

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19 Plutyńska had a major influence on the development of art textiles in Poland. Anna

Demska, “Eleonora Plutyńska. Directly onto the Loom,” in Czesława Frejlich, ed., Out of the Ordinary. Polish Designers of the 20th Century (Warsaw: Adam Mickiewicz Institute, 2011): 102–111. 20 The tapestry was titled Olifant or Il cono d’Orlando (Roland’s horn). 21 A.[leksy] Cz.[erwiński], “Nowoczesna Tkanina,” Stolica, October 6, 1957, 16–17. 22 Paweł Giergoń, Mozaika warszawska. przewodnik po plastyce w architekturze stolicy

1945–1989 (Warsaw: Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego, 2014). 23 In 1947 Kenar joined the State High School of Wood Industry in Zakopane as an

instructor before becoming a headmaster. David Crowley, “Stalinism and Modernist Craft in Poland,” Journal of Design History 11, no. 1 (1998): 71–83. 24 Wanda Telakowska, “Zakopiańskie wzory dla przemysłu,” Projekt 1, no. 2 (1956): 60. 25 Davide Catullo Uhrmacher, “Polonia,” in Undicesima Triennale, 304. 26 Pawłowski started experimenting with moving image in 1955 but Cinéforms

premiered at Cracow’s famous Cricot 2 Theatre at the beginning of 1957 and was followed by the film recording of the performance a few months later. Jan Trzupek, “Wprowadzenie,” in Jan Trzupek and Maciej Pawłowski, eds., Andrzej Pawłowski 1925–1986 (Katowice: BWA, 2002). 27 The text was written by Davide Catullo Uhrmacher, a publicist and translator

associated with the Milan publishing house Feltrinelli, who in July 1957 took over Leykam’s curatorial duties. 28 Uhrmacher, “Polonia,” 165. 29 Uhrmacher, “Polonia,” 165. 30 Lou Taylor, “The Search for a Polish National Identity—1945–68. An Analysis of the

Textile Design Work of Prof. Wanda Telakowska, Director of the Institute of Industrial Design, Warsaw,” in Suzanne Stern-Gillet, Tadeusz Sławek, Tadeusz Rachwał, and Roger Whitehouse, eds., Culture and Identity. Selected Aspects and Approaches (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 1996), 396–414. 31 Uhrmacher, “Polonia,” 165. 32 The Czechoslovak pavilion at the World Expo in Brussels in 1958—notably curated

and designed by the same professionals as the exhibit at the Triennale—further strengthened this message and emphasized the role of glass in the construction of the identity of the nation. Cathleen M. Giustino, “Industrial Design and the Czechoslovak Pavilion at EXPO ’58: Artistic Autonomy, Party Control and Cold War Common Ground,” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 1 (2012): 48–68 and Marta Filipová, “Czech Glass or Bohemian Crystal? The Nationality of Design in the Czech Context,” in Kjetil Fallan and Grace Lees-Maffei, eds., Designing Worlds. National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016), 141–155. 33 “Rumania,” in Undicesima Triennale, 305. The pavilion also featured works by

Constantin Brâncusi, a Romanian-born sculptor who had died a few months earlier. 34 “Jugoslavia,” in Undicesima Triennale, 305. See Kimberly Elman Zarecor and Vladimir

Kulic, “Socialism on Display: The Czechoslovak and Yugoslav Pavilions at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair,” in Laura Hollengreen et al., eds., Meet Me at the Fair (Pittsburgh, PA: ETC Press, 2014), 225–239. For Yugoslavia, the Triennale was also an occasion to strengthen diplomatic and commercial relations with Italy, which proved to be

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particularly important in the following years. Karlo Ruzicic-Kessler, “Italy and Yugoslavia: From Distrust to Friendship in Cold War Europe,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 19, no. 5 (2014): 641–664. 35 See Anty Pansera, Storia e Cronaca Della Triennale, 1978. 36 “Eleventh Milan Triennale,” in Undicesima Triennale, 297. See for example Achille

Perilli, “Lungo Viaggio Intorno Alla XI Triennale,” Civiltà Delle Macchine, nos. 5–6 (1957): 29–31. 37 Giorgio Kaisserlian, “ ‘Industrial Design’ Alla Triennale Di Milano,” Giornale Del

Mattino. Firenze, August 17, 1957. 38 The thematic exhibits included the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture,

the International Exhibition of Industrial Design, and the Exhibition of Living Interiors. See, for example, Domus 337 (1957) and Casabella-continuità 215 and 217 (1957), which were dedicated to the Triennale. The Polish journal Projekt 2, no. 6 (8) (1957) focused on these national entries and included only a passing mention of pavilions from behind the Iron Curtain. 39 Angelo della Masse, “Serie, Attraenti e Convincenti Le Esposizioni Straniere Alla

Triennale,” Corriere Della Nazione. Roma, August 28, 1957. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Roberto Papini, “La Triennale e la forma pura,” La Nazione. Firenze, September 20,

1957. 43 Ulrich Seelmann-Eggebert, “Die Modenschau der schönen Formen,” Hessische

Nachrichten, August 1, 1957. 44 Roberto Papini, “La Triennale e la forma pura,” La Nazione. Firenze, September 20, 1957. 45 Mario Labó, “Le sezioni straniere,” Comunità Milano, October 1957, 67. 46 Isabelle Yves, “Mailand Eroffnete Seine Triennale,” Neues Österreich, August 4, 1957. 47 Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, “Introduction: The Cold War from a New

Perspective,” in Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, eds., Reassessing Cold War Europe (London: Routledge, 2010), 1–15. 48 A selection of his texts was reprinted in English in Roberta Marcaccio and Shumi Bose,

eds., The Hero of Doubt. Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Architecture Words 14 (London: AA Publishing, 2016). 49 Ernesto Nathan Rogers, “Utilità e inutilità della Triennale,” Casabella-continuità 217

(1957): 3. 50 Ernesto Nathan Rogers, “Continuità o Crisi?,” Casabella-continuità 215 (1957): 2–3. 51 Annikki Toikka-Karvonen, “Tuli mieleeni Milanossa,” Kaunis Koti 1 (1958): 23, quoted

in Harri Kalha, “The Other Modernism. Finnish Design and National Identity,” in Marianne Aav and Nina Stritzler-Levine, eds., Finnish Modern Design. Utopian Ideals and Everyday Realities, 1930–1997 (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 1998), 40. 52 Katarzyna Szal, Finnish Literature in Poland, Polish Literature in Finland. Comparative

Reception Study from a Hermeneutic Perspective (Joensuu: University of Eastern Finland, 2013). 53 Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, “Helsinki-Warsaw, c. 1960,” in Łukasz Stanek, ed., Team 10 East.

Revisionist Architecture in Real Existing Modernism (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art,

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2014), 116–150. The exchange included study visits made by Teresa Kruszewska and Oskar Hansen. See Hansen’s report, “Trzy Kontakty z Finlandią,” Projekt 8, no. 1(34) (1963): 2–7, 21. 54 Triennale organizers were generous with accolades—they awarded 25 Grand Prix, 50

gold, and 100 silver medals to various participants. Marek Leykam, “Impresje Powystawowe,” Projekt 2, no. 6 (8) (1957): 24. 55 Timo Myllyntaus, “Design in Building an Industrial Identity. The Breakthrough of

Finnish Design in the 1950s and 1960s,” ICON: The Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology 16 (2010): 201. See also Kevin Davies, “ ‘A Geographical Notion Turned into an Artistic Reality’: Promoting Finland and Finnish Design in Post-War Britain 1953–1965,” Journal of Design History 15, no. 2 (2002): 101–116. 56 Kjetil Fallan, “Milanese Mediations: Crafting Scandinavian Design at the Triennali Di

Milano,” Journal of Art History 83, no. 1 (2014): 1–23. 57 Rosa te Velde, “Ultima Thule, Beyond Known Borders: Exploring the Relationship

between Design and Finnish National Identity,” Kunstlicht 34, no. 3 (2013): 74. On Toikka-Karvonen, see Satu Kähkönen, “ ‘Kunnia sille kelle se kuuluu’—Annikki Toikka-Karvonen taideteollisuuskriitikkona Tahiti,” TAHITI 3 (October 28, 2014), http://tahiti.fi/03-2014/tieteelliset-artikkelit/%e2%80%9dkunnia-sille-kelle-sekuuluu%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-annikki-toikka-karvonen-taideteollisuuskriitikko na/. 58 Annikki Toikka-Karvonen, “Milanon Triennale—näyttely,” Helsingin Sanomien,

October 20, 1957. 59 Ryszard Wojna, “Polska na XI Triennale w Mediolanie (Korespondencja Własna AR z

Włoch),” Gazeta Pomorska, August 8, 1957. 60 “Czekamy na Sukcesy w Kraju,” Świat, October 20, 1957. 61 Jerzy Hryniewiecki, “Dzień Polski na Triennale w Mediolanie,” Życie Warszawy,

October 2, 1957. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Marek Leykam, “Impresje Powystawowe,” Projekt 2, no. 6 (8): 24. Ibid., 26. 65 Aleksander Wojciechowski, “Niektóre sprawy polskiej architektury wnętrz,” Projekt 2,

no. 3 (5) (1957): 13. 66 The Polish pavilion at the 12th Milan Triennale in 1960 was curated by Oskar Hansen

with the assistance of Jolanta Owidzka. 67 Oskar Hansen, “Dom i Szkoła. XII Triennale w Mediolanie,” Architektura 10, no. 156

(1960): 407–408.

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4 SELF-MANAGEMENT ON DISPLAY: NEGOTIATING THE VISIONS OF YUGOSLAV SOCIALIST MODERNITY AT EXPO 58 AND PORODICA I DOMA C´INSTVO EXHIBITIONS Rujana Rebernjak

In an article published in the magazine Industrijsko oblikovanje (Industrial Design) in 1970, the architect and design critic Fedor Kritovac outlined the search for “national character” in Yugoslav design. Defining the country’s “self-managed social structure as the ‘Yugoslav thing,’ ” Kritovac suggested that the building of self-management and modern design were closely aligned: design had a fundamental task of materializing self-management in tangible form.1 First introduced by the Yugoslav government in June 1950, self-management was a complex political, social, and economic system that underpinned all aspects of everyday life, from industrial production to education, from housing to leisure. As the key feature of Yugoslav socialism, it formed the basis of its non-aligned foreign policy. Envisioned as a form of direct decision-making, for Yugoslav leaders, self-management marked the return to a “truer” version of socialism, as opposed to a “Stalinist deviation.”2 For this reason, presenting the essence of

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self-management on an international stage became a key political project, one in which design was to play an important part. Still, despite its central role in Yugoslav society, the meaning of self-management, both in official ideology and everyday practice, remained elusive and was open to continuous interpretation and debate.3 The lack of a monolithic vision of self-management was reflected in design practice. Over the course of the 1950s, efforts to “design” self-management became a source of tension and anxiety, unfolding both within the design profession and through outward-facing public displays, exhibitions and events.4 These tensions were made visible in two exhibitions held in 1958: the Yugoslav pavilion at Brussels Expo 58 that opened to the public in April, and Porodica i domaćinstvo (Family and Household), an exhibition held at the Zagreb Fair in September that same year.5 Examined side by side, these exhibitions highlight two contrasting rhetorical and visual registers that were used to display self-management in material form. Addressing an international audience, the Expo pavilion projected an abstract vision of self-managed socialism, one that appeared unconcerned by consumption, domesticity, and the material culture of everyday life and focused, instead, on a top-down political narrative. Porodica i domaćinstvo, on the other hand, was attended mostly by local visitors and proposed a less self-conscious image of self-management. Rather than being showcased as an abstract ideological goal, at Porodica i domaćinstvo selfmanagement was indexed to everyday experience and presented as a means for improving the overall quality of life. These contrasting display strategies highlight the role of cultural diplomacy and transnational exchange in shaping both the image as well as lived experience of state socialism amidst the tensions of the Cold War. In the Yugoslav case, as the country was trying to establish its non-aligned position in between the two blocs, the Brussels Expo served to showcase its “third way” socialism on the global stage.6 However, the Yugoslav government struggled to harmonize the international image it desired to portray with the experience of self-management as an everyday practice. Beyond the pavilion’s architectural quality, Yugoslav political leaders and architectural critics alike found its representation of self-management to be off the mark. As a result, the Expo was not only a platform for exchange and cultural transfer abroad, but also instigated a moment of introspection at home. An alternative vision was evident at Porodica i domaćinstvo, highlighting how wider tensions about the meaning of self-management were translated into an object of design in exhibitionary form.

DEFINING SELF-MANAGEMENT The efforts to represent Yugoslav socialist modernity in material form became particularly urgent following Tito’s split with Stalin in 1948. The split escalated

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following a series of disputes about Yugoslavia’s socialist policy and its relationship with the neighboring Balkan countries. These debates, however, masked the central issue: the Yugoslav government’s claims about “the unique and autonomous origins and legitimacy of the Yugoslav regime.”7 To affirm its power in the period of economic and political uncertainty that followed the split, the Yugoslav government set about establishing its own “third way” socialism, in-between the two Cold War superpowers. The most important step in that process was the introduction of self-management in June 1950.8 Premised on the social ownership of the means of production and withering away of the state, self-management placed factory management in the workers’ hands. In this decentralized system of economic and political management, the Yugoslav technocrats envisioned that workers would become key decision makers within industry, exercising their power by grouping into workers’ councils. Positioned as a “founding myth” of socialist Yugoslavia, from the early 1950s self-management quickly became both the practical and rhetorical linchpin of everyday life under Yugoslav socialism.9 Political leaders declared that “the development of socialism cannot proceed in any other way but through the constant strengthening of . . . self-management of the peoples’ masses.”10 However, this ideological emphasis on participation and decentralization remained abstract and far removed from everyday life. To gain validity, self-management needed to be tied to everyday experience. For this reason, from its initial introduction within the political and economic sphere, self-management was to extend into everyday life through local councils and housing communes. Through self-management, Yugoslav workers could influence their position outside the workplace by taking decisions with regards to the attribution of housing, private loans for housebuilding, healthcare, education, access to holiday resorts, childcare, or other social services. In this way, self-management was implicitly tied to domesticity and modern, comfortable lifestyles. As a result, sociologist Sharon Zukin has argued, Yugoslav citizens came to understand “self-management more in terms of economic benefits than ideological goals.”11 For Zukin, this “dualistic view of self-management” meant that it was the promise of a “good life” and material abundance that made Yugoslav citizens more inclined to identify with and participate in self-management.12 This resulted in a paradox. On the one hand, Marxist theory, with an emphasis on collectivization and workers’ emancipation, took center stage in public discourse. On the other, the everyday practice of self-management legitimized individualism and self-interest. As Zukin asserts, “the Yugoslav ideology was the first to state explicitly that working to raise one’s standard of living is legitimate under socialism,” thereby elevating “self-interest into a historical necessity in an underdeveloped socialist country.”13 This understanding of self-management was embraced by Yugoslav designers, who sought to affirm the legitimacy of design practice by emphasizing its role in the building of socialism. In their writing in

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architectural and design magazines such as Čovjek i prostor (Man and Space) or Arhitektura (Architecture), they claimed there was a pressing need to “create an environment suitable for our new social reality” based on self-management.14 Modern mass housing and rational, economical furniture were to become indicators of the successes of self-management, presented to the public through exhibitions and fairs. These public displays became a testing ground for experimentation in design, as well as a platform for negotiating the disjunction between government rhetoric and everyday practices of self-management.

YUGOSLAV PAVILION AT EXPO 58: SELF-MANAGEMENT AS RHETORIC In 1956, Arhitektura, published by the Croatian Association of Architects, announced the shortlisted entries for the competition to design the Yugoslav pavilion at Brussels Expo 58.15 Despite awarding three winning prizes, the selection committee decided that “the competition did not produce satisfying results in terms of the number of entries that offer the required quality for such an international exhibition.”16 The jury’s dissatisfaction suggests the serious commitment of the Yugoslav government towards its participation at Brussels. The exhibition, held ten years after the Tito-Stalin split, offered a unique occasion to present its “third way” socialism on the international stage. Among sixteen submitted proposals, the jury awarded third place to the entry designed by the architects Vjenceslav Richter and Emil Weber.17 Their design proposal was a twostory cube made of metal and glass that aimed to integrate the inside and the outside of the pavilion, with a distinctive roof that filtered natural light through the exhibition space. The jury did not express much enthusiasm for the project. Compared to the winning proposal, a hyperbolic paraboloid, whose dramatic sloping construction revealed layered gallery spaces connected by an elevated ramp, Richter and Weber’s geometric design was deemed by the jury to be too “rigid.” They remarked that “the elementary design characteristics leave in a certain sense the impression of a utilitarian building,” while the Expo required a more “expressive” representation of Yugoslav identity in architectural form.18 A second competition organized shortly after, this time by invitation only, produced more satisfactory results.19 The jury report stated that the “invited architects submitted work on the expected level of general architectural quality in relation to Yugoslav and international standards,” although submissions ranged in “audacity of design and construction,” with some proposals offering “particular expressive effects.”20 Among six invited teams, it was Richter and Weber’s proposal that ultimately won the final pavilion commission. While maintaining many design features of the first iteration, the new building was conceived as a floating object, suspended from a 70-meter-high central pillar. The jury rewarded the

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architectural vision of this gravity-defying construction. Called by Richter “foundations in the air”, the pavilion’s audacious design clearly met the expressive qualities the jury was looking for, even though it recognized that the complex construction “may not be entirely in-line with our current production and technological reality.”21 Still, the building could be read as a powerful symbol of “human strivings for progress and the launching of the first rocket into space.”22 The symbolism appeared fitting both for the theme of the Expo—“A World View: A New Humanism”—as well as the battle for progress in science and technology that dominated Cold War debates. That such an ambitious design came from Richter was no surprise.23 Trained in the interwar modernist tradition, Vjenceslav Richter was a key figure of the Yugoslav neo-avant-garde that charted the country’s move away from socialist realism in the early years after the Tito-Stalin split.24 Richter was one of the founders of the group Exat 51, which set out to define the forms of spatial, material, and visual expression suitable for self-managing socialism.25 In their manifesto, the artists, architects, and designers grouped around Exat advocated for the sinteza (synthesis) of different art forms, calling for the abolition of any distinction between fine and applied arts.26 The call for the breakdown of disciplinary hierarchies signals the influence of interwar modernism on Yugoslav architects and designers. For members of Exat, this influence came from Zdenko Strižić, a professor in the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Engineering. Having studied and worked in Berlin under Hans Poelzig, a member of the Deutscher Werkbund known for his expressionist approach, Strižić introduced Exat architects to the principles of modernist architecture with an emphasis on “functional analysis” over “architectural expression.”27 According to the architect Božidar Rašica, Exat members sought to emulate the work of Kazimir Malevich, Le Corbusier, Paul Klee, and Piet Mondrian, and their emphasis on analysis and synthesis stemmed from this avant-garde lineage.28 Exat members were also lecturers at the Academy of Applied Arts in Zagreb, founded on the Bauhaus model in 1949. Although short-lived, closing after only six years of activity, the academy proposed a new model for arts education organized around experimental, multidisciplinary workshops.29 According to the art historian Ješa Denegri, access to the writings of László Moholy-Nagy, Siegfried Giedion, and Max Bill provided the theoretical foundations for Exat’s manifesto, as much as for the group’s approach to teaching.30 For Exat, sinteza was crucial for the production of a new material environment for the new socialist subjectivity. In the view of design critic Radovan Ivančević, “the synthesis was only possible as a result of collective work ‘in which the architect, sculptor and painter would collaborate from the very beginning.’ ”31 The synthesis of visual arts—both in its call for the breakdown of disciplinary hierarchies as well as collective labor—formed a suitable theoretical and practical model for architectural and design production within the context of an egalitarian, horizontal

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order of the self-managed socialist state. It is unsurprising, then, that Richter drew a clear historical parallel between sinteza and socialism. In his 1964 book titled Sinturbanizam (Synthurbanism), Richter declared that “visual synthesis,” as the precondition for the progressive development of visual arts, was only possible in the context of socialism as its “social medium.”32 Aligned with the Yugoslav socialist project, Richter’s ideas about synthesis were fully formed through a number of exhibition projects designed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Developed in collaboration with Exat members Ivan Picelj, Aleksandar Srnec, and Zvonimir Radić, these early projects included the Yugoslav pavilions at the Vienna International Trade Fair in 1949, Stockholm International Fair in 1949–1950, and Chicago International Trade Fair in 1950. Commissioned by the Yugoslav government, they established a clear modernist visual and spatial register through which the state was to present itself on the international stage. The pavilion at the Chicago fair, for example, featured a modular structure made of white metal rods that rhythmically marked the space, forming light geometric shapes and prisms that framed objects on display, thus unifying the set-up into a coherent spatial whole. This modernist language was striking considering the lingering debates about socialist realism. For the design historian Jasna Galjer, the state “consciously approved this departure, clearly with the intention of representing the visual culture that in this case was to be understood as a correlative for

FIGURE 4.1 Yugoslav Pavilion at Expo 58, view from outside with the plaza and steel sculpture seen in the corner. Fund 56, Generalni Komisarijat Jugoslovenske sekcije Opšte Med¯ unarodne izložbe u Briselu, Archive of Yugoslavia, Belgrade.

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democracy.”33 Therefore, the modernist synthesis of visual arts appeared as the ultimate formal, visual and spatial dogma of the self-managed socialist state. The 1958 Expo pavilion needs to be seen within this context. Its impressive design, although never realized as intended—it was too costly and difficult to execute—should be read as a culmination of Richter’s ideas about synthesis.34 The final Expo building, rather than being suspended from a central pillar, featured an open geometric structure placed on steel columns, leaving the ground floor open (Figure 4.1). The theme of openness permeated the pavilion: “it was literally and symbolically an ‘open house’ ” that served as a metaphor for the Yugoslav system, open towards both the East and West.35 Its location on the Expo grounds, nestled between Switzerland and Portugal and away from other Eastern European countries, further reinforced the country’s supposed neutrality.36 The spatial organization of the exhibition themes, on the other hand, reflected the country’s ideological underpinnings. The ground floor, in fact, housed the section on the economy; this formed the “base” upon which rested the “superstructure,” which consisted of exhibits on State and Social Organization and Contemporary Art and Tourism, occupying the floors above. In his review of the pavilion published in Arhitektura, the architect Andrija Mutnjaković defined it as a “rationally functional and exact construction solution” whose “exhibition spaces differentiated by height . . . create a playful spatial composition across five levels, visually captured through perforations in the ceiling and reciprocal overlaps.”37 This modulated, dynamic space formed the core of Richter’s ideas about exhibition design. In an article published in 1954, in fact, he argued that space is “the strongest means of visual propaganda” and that objects can only be perceived as a result of a wider spatial interaction.38 The material on display followed the pavilion’s spatial logic, with the exhibition content subordinated to the architectural design and conceived, according to critics, “in the first place as a visual solution.”39 In the words of a leading Yugoslav political figure, Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, this was the pavilion’s major downfall, for it “represented more the Yugoslav architecture than Yugoslavia as a whole.”40 In fact, Yugoslavia was awarded one of Expo’s thirty-five gold medals in recognition of its avant-garde architecture, rather than the overall exhibition, whose “ ‘didactic quality’ was utterly disappointing.”41

THE FORM OF SELF-MANAGEMENT What did this “didactic” exhibition look like? The pavilion featured a modular exhibition design that included a range of graphic panels (some extending across all five levels of the pavilion), long tables, and glass cases. The structure framing the displays matched the construction of the pavilion, with the building’s rectangular grid animating their disposition in space. Vertical explanatory panels contained

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key information about each section, while long horizontal tables explored their themes in greater depth. The modular elements were characterized by a striking visual language, an ongoing development of Exat’s experiments, with geometric shapes, lines and grids, sans-serif typography, and black-and-white photographs arranged in dynamic compositions. These panels reflected the avant-garde pavilion architecture and artwork on display. This was particularly evident in the open space on the ground floor, where the Economy section blended in with the artwork displayed across the site. The artist Dušan Džamonja’s metal and glass wall sculpture, for example, formed the backdrop for a display on the industrial and economic development of Yugoslav regions. However, consumer goods were conspicuously absent from the exhibition. Instead, pieces of industrial machinery

FIGURE 4.2 Exhibition design at the Yugoslav Pavilion at Expo 58, showcasing the central graphic panel stretching across all five levels. Fund 56, Generalni Komisarijat Jugoslovenske sekcije Opšte Med¯ unarodne izložbe u Briselu, Archive of Yugoslavia, Belgrade.

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and high-tech products, such as an ultrasonic drilling machine, a telephone exchange, and parts of electric plants, as well as samples of ferrous metals, were displayed as sculptural objects, either under glass or on plinths. This mode of display emphasized the country’s capital goods and offered an aestheticized vision of Yugoslav economy and industrial production. This was not entirely surprising: other socialist countries, such as the Soviet Union with its Sputnik replicas, favored showcasing technical achievements over consumer products.42 Nevertheless, such an abstract display of technology was at odds with Yugoslav “third way” socialism and far removed from the everyday experience of self-management. This display strategy proved even more problematic in the section on State and Social Organization. The section’s main themes included the history of Yugoslavia with an emphasis on national liberation during the Second World War, the organization of economic and social self-management, culture, science, and education, as well as international relations. Together with descriptive texts and statistical data, the displays were characterized by large-scale photographs of Yugoslav workers, self-managers, partisan heroes, or schoolchildren, deployed in an attempt to humanize the abstract political and social structure of the system. However, this human touch was overpowered by rhetorical sloganeering. One panel, for example, featured a collage of photographs showing Yugoslav workers, a factory building, and a stylized hand with the phrase “In my own hands,” evoking the power of workers’ councils to make decisions about factory management. Another panel featured aerial photographs of a city and a public square with two main slogans stating: “Where I live, I take part in government” and “Where I work, there I am in charge.” While each panel was carefully designed following unique layouts and compositional logic, reports remarked that this section was the least visited of the exhibition, with visitors breezing past the graphic backdrops.43 In contrast to the Czechoslovak pavilion, for example, which featured sections on “aesthetic taste, including clothing, shoes, and designed objects, children and puppetry” as well as a Laterna Magika (Magic Lantern) and Polyekran (Multiscreen) multimedia performances, the complexity and abstraction of Yugoslav graphic displays seemed too dry in the context of the Expo.44 The difficulty of translating self-management into a spatial, exhibitionary form was clear. Even the leading politician Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo expressed dissatisfaction with this section, arguing that it was “regretful that the organizers of our exhibition didn’t manage to display the essence of the social order in our country in a simpler and more attractive way” to allow even the most casual visitor to gain a fuller understanding of self-management.45 For critic Boro Pavlović, writing in the architecture magazine Čovjek i prostor (Man and Space) the main issue was not with “what was in the pavilion. But rather—what wasn’t.”46 Reflecting on the overall commercial character of the Expo he lamented the absence of “attractive” displays, arguing that “If other pavilions presented the same conception in terms of exhibits, they would appear restrictive, in an almost ascetic mood.”47

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Another critic questioned whether “our country could have been better presented” in a “more efficient way that would be less refined but more accessible to ‘ordinary people,’ ” highlighting the struggles over the material representation of selfmanagement in the spectacular setting of the Expo.48 International commentators, however, rejected such criticism. In fact, the Western press was pleasantly surprised with the overall quality of the Yugoslav display, testifying as much to the avant-garde status of Richter’s design as to their own prejudice towards state socialism.49 In the UK, Architectural Design praised its “sophisticated architecture,” while in the US Industrial Design commended its “youthful freshness” and described the display as “simple, direct, clear and ‘human.’”50 As these contrasting opinions show, the pavilion displayed an imagined reflection, one that was designed in anticipation of a foreign gaze cast on Yugoslav selfmanagement. A different presentation of self-management, one that emerged when the gaze turned inwards, can be seen in an analysis of Porodica i domaćinstvo (Family and Household), part of a series of exhibitions held in Yugoslavia from 1957–1960.

PORODICA I DOMAC´INSTVO: SELF-MANAGEMENT AS MODERN DOMESTICITY While the Expo pavilion eschewed a representation of modern lifestyles, exhibitions centered around model domestic environments became a staple of Yugoslav design rhetoric in the late 1950s, framing mass production and consumption within the wider efforts to strengthen self-management. This model of exhibition display, of course, has a long history, and can be traced back to exhibitions such as the L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs or the 1927 Die Wohnung (The Dwelling) exhibition in Stuttgart commissioned by the Deutscher Werkbund. In the Yugoslav case, Porodica i domaćinstvo was preceded by Stan za naše prilike (Housing for our Means) exhibition held in Ljubljana in 1956 and the Yugoslav pavilion at the 1957 XI Milan Triennial, both of which featured model domestic environments. The vision of modern domesticity presented at these exhibitions owed much to transnational exchange and the country’s non-aligned openness towards both the East and the West. Publications like Svijet (The World), a women’s magazine designed in the early 1950s by Aleksandar Srnec, one of the founding members of Exat, became key vehicles for introducing consumerist lifestyles to Yugoslav audiences. On its pages, Yugoslav women could find advice about how to decorate their homes with modern furnishings such as daybeds and modular bookshelves.51 Equally, the Zagreb Fair was central in shaping the Yugoslavs’ imagination of the good life as a reflection of one seen in the West. As the literary critic Željko Ivanjek

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has written, visits to the fair offered an unmediated and corrective “glimpse into the achievements of rotten capitalism,” with displays such as a fully fitted American supermarket capturing the visitors’ attention in 1957.52 Still, while such exchanges undeniably shaped Yugoslav conceptions of everyday life, consumption, and domesticity, they needed to be adapted to the socialist context. Designers, here, had a central role to play. Bernardo Bernardi, one of the founders of Exat, argued in 1959 that the question of well-designed objects and spaces was “of particularly big importance . . . in a socialist country, where production forces are no longer used as a tool for speculation.”53 Under socialism, he claimed, “where all creative forces need to be directed towards the improvement of material and cultural standards of the working people, there is a true possibility for industrial design to fulfill its social function in creating a new living landscape, the visual, plastic and spatial medium for the new man.”54 Referencing the avant-garde belief in design’s “ability to transform the consciousness of those who were brought into contact with it,” Bernardi called on designers to shape a new, total living environment that would produce an emancipated and unalienated self-managed socialist subjectivity.55 As part of this broader effort, in September 1958 the Council of Women’s Associations of Yugoslavia organized the second edition of Porodica i domaćinstvo (Family and Household). Part of a series of three exhibitions, held in September 1957, September 1958, and April and May 1960, respectively, the aim of the exhibition was to educate the public about modern ways of life. The original program outline, published in 1957, declared that one of the main goals was to act “as a strong tool for collective propaganda: the fight of united forces of producers and society to win over new categories of consumers, to increase the placement of goods intended for family and households.”56 This drive towards consumerism was justified as a political goal: the overall aim of the exhibition was to reflect on the position of women in society and to “free women from housework” so that they could take an active role in self-management.57 Under self-managed socialism, the exhibition program suggested, domestic labor needed to be collectively shared, “transformed into a social activity.”58 The question of women’s rights, a prominent issue in a socialist state with its claim to both class and gender equality, gave much needed political gravitas to the otherwise commercially-oriented exhibition.59 The second edition of Porodica i domaćinstvo was staged in the newly opened fairgrounds in Novi Zagreb, a sprawling urban development to the south of the city.60 The fair’s pavilions in glass and steel, examples of architectural experimentation in high modernism, provided a suitable framework for the exhibition.61 The fair also fostered international exchange and building of networks with architects and designers from countries across the East-West divide, such as Italy, whose pavilion was designed by Raffaele Contigiani, or East Germany, with a pavilion by Richard Paulick, a collaborator of Walter Gropius.62 Within this international context, yet speaking mostly to domestic audiences, the political

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significance of Porodica i domaćinstvo was reinforced by explicitly tying its exploration of modern domesticity and design to the building of self-management. At the core of the second edition was stambena zajednica (housing community), the unit of territorial self-management centered around one’s place of residence. As Edvard Kardelj, the country’s deputy prime minister, declared at the opening: This year a clear concept of the housing community was offered . . . not like some sort of residents’ association, but rather as a form of communal activity, a specific form where the initiative and resources of individuals, of individual working men, is connected to the planned action and resources of the commune so as to . . . satisfy our people in all their daily needs.63 As these comments suggest, Porodica i domaćinstvo was instrumental in instigating a paradigm shift in the way self-management was to be understood at home: not as an abstract ideological goal or as an instrument of economic management within the industry, but rather as a means through which individuals could improve their quality of life. To drive the message home, the exhibition organizers mobilized the language of modern architecture and design. The exhibition format, centered around model domestic environments, fully fitted supermarkets, and department stores, was used precisely because it served as “the most direct form of communication, or rather, the most stimulating generator of new habits and consumption.”64 Stretching across seven pavilions, Porodica i domaćinstvo opened with a model housing community for 5,000 residents with associated services: schools and supermarkets as well as laundry, restaurant, and social spaces.65 This model housing block was presented alongside projects that were already built across Yugoslav cities, such as Zagreb, Belgrade, or Ljubljana. As design historians Jasna Galjer and Iva Ceraj write, this exhibition format “implied that the project of an ‘ideal housing community’ is in reality the sum of existing experiences.”66 This future-in-thepresent format was divided into a series of thematic sections. “Housing community—extended family” showcased a range of services that were to be made available to working families, followed by a social restaurant, a supermarket based on the American model shown at the fair the year before, and a department store built as a separate pavilion exclusively for the purpose of the exhibition. Children’s services and playgrounds were followed by the key section of the exhibition, the Dwelling pavilion that featured eleven fully furnished model apartments.67 It was this last section that attracted the most interest;68 as one visitor remarked, “you know what people are like, they prefer to see something more tangible.”69 It was this tangible nature—both conceptually and in terms of exhibition design—that made Porodica i domaćinstvo central to debates about “designing” self-management. One report published in the newspaper Vjesnik (The Herald) made the connection between self-management and the model flats displayed at

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Porodica i domaćinstvo explicit: “According to the ideas of designers and authors of concepts . . . the housing community is not only an urbanistic, but also a socioeconomic unit. In it, the citizens share their existence and resources . . . They manage and make decisions autonomously.”70 Overseen by an elected council, the housing community mirrored the organization of workers’ councils within the industry, highlighting the way self-management was to extend from the economy into domestic life centered around standardized housing units. As a further validation of the exhibition’s concept, that same month the Council of Urbanists of Yugoslavia declared that the housing community was to become the elementary unit of urban planning.71 In this context, projects displayed at Porodica i domaćinstvo seemed like a tangible representation of the system of selfmanagement in everyday experience. The Dwelling pavilion proposed solutions for one-, two-, two-and-a-half, and three-room apartments.72 These model spaces were designed to alleviate the housing shortage, whilst, at the same time, offering “cultured” living spaces to Yugoslav workers, many of whom had only recently moved to urban centers. While small in size—even President Tito remarked upon his visit that “it all looked too tight”—these modest apartments featured fully fitted kitchens and were furnished with rational modernist furniture.73 Their compact size testified to the exhibition’s realism, its desire to offer pragmatic solutions for the present rather than utopian

FIGURE 4.3 Exhibition model of a three-room flat for four to five people shown at the II Porodica i domac´instvo exhibition in 1958. Personal Archival Fund: Bernardo Bernardi; Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts—Croatian Museum of Architecture.

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visions of the future. By displaying things “as they were,” the architect Andrija Mutnjaković remarked, these small model flats “were first of all speaking to the public,” the Yugoslav self-managers.74 Among the proposals, Bernardo Bernardi’s project stands out both for its practical solutions and conceptual underpinnings. Bernardi sought to elevate modern domesticity from “the level of mere ‘habitation’ to the higher level of ‘domestic culture.’ ”75 He proposed a cohesive design strategy that offered one of the first applications of sinteza (synthesis) in the context of functional, rational and economic housing construction for the working class. To achieve this, Bernardi developed the concept of “creative standardization,” which implied the creation of flexible, dynamic layouts and modular, multifunctional furniture. Two- and three-room flats shown at Porodica i domaćinstvo featured a porous organization of spaces. The bathroom and kitchen, pushed toward the center, allowed direct access to sunlight in the living room and bedrooms on either side, while mobile walls accommodated a level of internal flexibility. Equally, the “creative standardization” of furniture implied that most objects could be adapted for different uses. An image of the living room highlights how theories of sinteza could be translated into everyday practice (Figure 4.3). This small space featured a sofa and a low coffee table, while a sideboard, which also served as a desk, and a plywood chair designed by Bernardi suggested it could be used for both work and rest. Abstract patterns characterized the curtains designed by Jagoda Buić-Bonetti, while a tapestry by Exat member Aleksandar Srnec hung on the back wall, signaling that art was to be introduced into everyday life even in the context of modest mass housing. Indeed, rather than being displayed as aspirational, Bernardi’s apartments were distinctive in their representation of Yugoslav modernity because they addressed the housing conditions of the period, with their restrictive footprints, standardized mass construction, and limited budgets. This was not a rhetorical vision of Yugoslav socialism, but rather an example of what self-management could provide in everyday, lived experience. In the publication accompanying the exhibition, Bernardi painstakingly detailed room sizes and pieces of furniture, explaining their different uses and how they were to be produced. He argued, in fact, that the value of an apartment was determined not so much by its size or price but by its usability—a need that his cohesive approach tried to address.76 These flats were functional because they were tied to the wider network of services—a communal laundry, DIY workshops, cultural centers, and children’s spaces—accessed through the self-managed housing commune. By encouraging participation in local councils in pursuit of self-interest, Porodica i domaćinstvo stood in stark contrast to the abstract and austere propositions about democracy, emancipation, and equality seen at Expo 58. Here, modern design and the quality of life at home were set as the yardstick with which the success of self-management was to be measured. While not unique in its format, Porodica i domaćinstvo stands out among exhibitions centered around modern housing models for the clarity with which it

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connected political rhetoric to domesticity. This is particularly evident when compared to a 1956 exhibition titled Stan za naše prilike (Housing for our Means) held in Ljubljana. The exhibition coincided with the First Yugoslav Council on housing construction and urban dwelling where it was declared that the “right to housing” was “a basic legal institute that provides the working man with one of the essential living conditions.”77 Therefore, the exhibition had the goal of articulating what those living conditions were to look like by displaying a number of model family homes with custom-designed furniture: plywood chairs, low cabinets with color-block sliding doors, and elegant lighting. One apartment was furnished with objects designed by Studio za industrijsko oblikovanje (Studio for Industrial Design, SIO), a newly formed design office whose founders included Exat members Vjenceslav Richter and Zdravko Bregovac. SIO also coordinated Yugoslavia’s participation at the 11th Milan Triennale in 1957, where its pavilion featured a model domestic environment in an attempt to define Yugoslav kultura stanovanja (domestic culture) in relation to postwar modernism.78 Reporting on the exhibition, the magazine Arhitektura showcased images of the pavilion alongside Danish and Italian design, suggesting that Yugoslavia was integrated with international design networks. However, what appeared to be lacking at Stan za naše prilike and the Triennale pavilion was an explicit discussion of how these modern domestic environments related to the practice of self-management. In fact, model flats at Stan za naše prilike were not conceived as part of a wider housing community. Rather, these were terraced houses, designed for urban elites.79 By contrast, the flats showcased at Porodica i domaćinstvo were organized in compact housing blocks managed by the housing community and clearly designed for lower- and middle-class Yugoslav workers—the archetypical selfmanagers that featured in official rhetoric.

SELF-MANAGEMENT BETWEEN CONSUMPTION AND IDEOLOGY While tackling similar themes, examined side by side Porodica i domaćinstvo and the Expo pavilion show the lack of a singular vision of self-management, despite its ideological status as a defining feature of Yugoslav socialism. These differing representations can be seen as a reflection of the wider debates around selfmanagement at the time. In April 1958, the same month that the Expo opened its gates, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia held its VII Party Congress in Ljubljana. The party program officially sanctioned modern consumerism, stating that “the improvement of material and cultural conditions in everyday life, as well as quicker economic development of the whole of society” were one of the key goals of socialism and affirming that “a better supply of consumer products” was an essential part of that project.80 This legitimized a major paradigm shift in how

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self-management was to be understood that was enacted at Porodica i domaćinstvo in September that year. And yet, as modern lifestyle became, in the words of architectural historian Ana Miljački, “one of the most captivating and symbolically powerful registers of the Cold War,” an examination of the Expo pavilion suggests that a wholesale embrace of consumerism and the Western vision of the “good life” proved problematic for the Yugoslav regime.81 Its vision of modernity in the context of Cold War diplomacy was more closely tied to notions of cultural refinement, purity, and abstraction that characterized interwar avant-gardes, than the postwar drive towards spectacular consumption and technologically driven domestic lifestyles. While overt references to consumerism were omitted from the Brussels exhibition, those themes seemed suitable at home, where citizens needed to be mobilized to engage in selfmanagement and to work harder in pursuit of “third way” socialism. As such, these two exhibitions show that the very idea of the Yugoslav self-managed project— how it was to be defined, measured and displayed—was fragmented, subject to multiple interpretations and debate. At Expo 58 and Porodica i domaćinstvo, those dissonant debates were out on display.

NOTES 1 Fedor Kritovac, “Nacionalni dizajn?,” Industrijsko oblikovanje 1, no. 2 (1970): 23. 2 Milovan Đilas cited in Dennison Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, 1948–1974

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 54. 3 See Dušan Bilandžić, Borba za samoupravni socijalizam u Jugoslaviji 1945–1969

(Zagreb: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Hrvatske, 1969); Sharon Zukin, Beyond Marx and Tito. Theory and Practice in Yugoslav Socialism (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia. From World War II to Non-Alignment (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2016). 4 For a summary of these efforts see Vjenceslav Richter, “Industrijsko oblikovanje kao

društveni i kulturni faktor,” Naše teme, no. 3 (1962): 453–457. 5 The World Expo in Brussels was held between April 17 and October 19, 1958, whilst

Porodica i domaćinstvo ran from September 7 to 22, 1958. 6 For more on Yugoslavia’s role within the non-aligned movement see Tvrtko Jakovina,

Treća Strana Hladnog Rata (Zagreb: Fraktura, 2011). 7 The autonomy of the Yugoslav regime stemmed from the Partisans’ independent effort

to liberate the country during the Second World War with little help from the Red Army. Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, 28. 8 The Basic Law on the Management of State Economic Enterprises and Higher

Economic Associations by the Work Collectives was passed by the General Assembly on June 27, 1950. Ibid. 9 Ibid., 61.

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10 Edvard Kardelj quoted in Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, 54. 11 Zukin, Beyond Marx and Tito, 97. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 61–62. 14 Bernardo Bernardi, “Definicija i društveni značaj industrijskog oblikovanja,”

Arhitektura XII, nos. 1–6 (1959): 11. 15 The competition ran between April 20 and May 31, 1956. 16 “Natječaj za idejni projekt Jugoslavenskog paviljona na izložbi u Bruxellesu 1958. G.,”

Arhitektura X, nos. 1–6 (1956): 67. The jury included Branislav Kojić, Drago Ibler, and Milorad Pantović, nominated by the Council of Associations of Architects of Yugoslavia, and writer and art historian Oto Bihalji-Merin. See Jasna Galjer, Expo 58 i jugoslavenski paviljon Vjenceslava Richtera (Zagreb: Horetzky, 2009), 288. 17 “Natječaj za idejni projekt,” 67. 18 Ibid., 70; “Uži natječaj za Jugoslavenski paviljon za Svjetsku izložbu u Bruxellesu 1958.

Godine,” Arhitektura XI, nos. 1–6 (1957): 65. 19 The first three teams from the initial competition were invited to the second round.

The jury for the second competition met in July 1956 and included two additional members, the architects Edvard Ravnikar and Mehmed Kadić. The engineer Đorđe Lazarević and architect Božidar Tomić assessed the technical feasibility of the projects. 20 “Uži natječaj,” 65. 21 Ibid. 22 Galjer, Expo 58, 299–300. 23 Following the competition, Richter signed the project as the main author, with Weber

as an associate. See Galjer, Expo 58, 300. 24 Richter graduated from the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Engineering,

University of Zagreb, in 1949. 25 Exat 51 (short for Experimental atelier) was active between 1950 and 1956. Its

members included architects Bernardo Bernardi, Zdravko Bregovac, Božidar Rašica, Vladimir Zarahović, Zvonimir Radić, and Vjenceslav Richter; and artists Ivan Picelj, Aleksandar Srnec, and Vladimir Kristl. See Ješa Denegri, Exat 51: Nove Tendencije: Umjetnost konstruktivnog pristupa (Zagreb: Horetzky, 2009). 26 Exat 51, Manifest, 1951, Marinko Sudac Collection, Zagreb. 27 Bernardi quoted in Iva Ceraj, Bernardo Bernardi: Dizajnersko djelo arhitekta, 1951–

1985 (Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2015): 26. For more on Strižić see Krešimir Galović, “Zdenko Strižić - Natječajni rad za kazalište u Harkovu,” Peristil - Zbornik radova za povijest umjetnosti 40, no. 1 (1997), 137–148. For more on Poelzig see Deborah Ascher Barnstone, “Not the Bauhaus: The Breslau Academy of Art and Applied Arts,” Journal of Architectural Education 62, no. 1 (2008), 46–55; Julius Poesener, Hans Poelzig, Reflections on His Life and Work, ed. Kristin Feireiss (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992). 28 Božidar Rašica quoted in Josip Depolo, “Apstrakcija, naša, prva! Okrugli stol o Exatu

51,” Oko, 199 (1979): 8. 29 For an overview of the Academy of Applied Arts see Jasna Galjer, Design of the Fifties

in Croatia. From Utopia to Reality (Zagreb: Horetzky, 2004): 60–83; Ana Medić, ed.,

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Refleksije Bauhausa. Akademija primjenjenih umjetnosti u Zagrebu, 1949–1955 (Zagreb: Galerija Klovićevi dvori, 2019). 30 Denegri, Exat 51, 32. 31 Radovan Ivančević cited in Ana Šeparović, “Od sinteze likovnih umjetnosti do

Zagrebačkog salona: prilog poznavanju djelovanja ULUH-a 1960-ih,” Radovi Instituta za Povijest Umjetnosti, no. 42 (2018): 175. 32 Vjenceslav Richter, “Prognoza životne i likovne sinteze kao izraza naše epohe,” in

Sinturbanizam (Zagreb: Mladost, 1964): 15. 33 Galjer, Expo 58, 318. 34 Structural engineers from Đuro Đaković Company assessed the work, suggesting it

might shift under strong wind. See Bilten Pripremnog Odbora za učešće FRNJ na Općoj međunarodnoj izložbi u Bruxellesu 1958. godine, no. 2 (1956), Generalni Komisarijat Jugoslovenske sekcije Opšte međunarodne izložbe u Briselu, Fund no. 56, Folder no. 9, Archives of Yugoslavia. AJ-56-9. See also “Uži natječaj,” 65. 35 Galjer, Expo 58, 300. 36 Other communist countries participating in the fair were the USSR, Czechoslovakia,

and Hungary. 37 Andrija Mutnjaković, “Expo 58,” Arhitektura XII, nos. 1–6 (1958): 52. 38 Vjenceslav Richter, “Predmet kao prostorni subjekt: Razmišljanja o izložbama,” Mozaik,

no. 3 (1954): 43. 39 Svetozar Vukmanović Tempo, “Kako smo pretstavili našu zemlju na svjetskoj izložbi u

Brislu: Dvije ocjene,” Vjesnik u srijedu, October 15, 1958, 7. 40 Ibid. 41 Vladimir Kulić, “An Avant-Garde Architecture for an Avant-Garde Socialism:

Yugoslavia at EXPO ’58,” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 1 (2012): 181. 42 See, for example, Lewis Siegelbaum, “Sputnik Goes to Brussels: The Exhibition of a

Soviet Technological Wonder,” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 1 (2012): 120–136; Susan E. Reid, “Cold War Cultural Transactions: Designing the USSR for the West at Brussels Expo ’58,” Design and Culture 9, no. 2 (2017): 123–145. 43 “Izveštaj o nekim problemima i iskustvima našeg nastupanja na Izložbi u Brislu.”,

Generalni Komisarijat Jugoslovenske sekcije Opšte međunarodne izložbe u Briselu, Fund no. 56, Folder no. 9, Archives of Yugoslavia. 44 Kimberly E. Zarecor and Vladimir Kulić, “Socialism on Display: The Czechoslovak and

Yugoslavian Pavilions at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair,” in Laura Hollengreen, Celia Pearce, Rebecca Rouse and Bobby Schweizer, eds., Meet Me at the Fair. A World’s Fair Reader (Pittsburgh: ETC/Carnegie Mellon Press, 2014): 232. 45 Vukmanović Tempo, “Kako smo pretstavili,” 7. 46 Boro Pavlović, “Bruxelles 1958.: Jugoslavenski Paviljon,” Čovjek i prostor 5, no. 75

(June 15, 1958): 1. 47 Ibid. 48 Zaim Topčić, “Kako smo predstavili: Ni približna slika razvoja,” Vjesnik u srijedu,

October 29, 1958, 7. 49 For an overview of international press see Galjer, Expo 58, 502–519. 50 Ibid., 510–511.

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51 See, for example, “Vaša kuća,” Svijet, no.8 (August 1954), n.p. 52 Željko Ivanjek cited in Radina Vučetić, “Potrošačko društvo po američkom modelu

(jedan pogled na jugoslavensku svakodnevicu šezdesetih)”, Ǿasopis za suvremenu povijest 44, no.2 (2012): 285. On the US model supermarket see Shane Hamilton, “Supermarket USA Confronts State Socialism: Airlifting the Technopolitics of Industrial Food Distribution into Cold War Yugoslavia”, in Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, eds., Cold War Kitchen. Americanization, Technology, and European Users (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 137–159. 53 Bernardi, “Definicija i društveni značaj,” 18. 54 Ibid. 55 Paul Greenhalgh, “Introduction,” in Paul Greenhalgh, ed., Modernism in Design

(London: Reaktion Books, 1990): 13 [emphasis in original]. 56 “Program prve međunarodne revijalne izložbe Porodica i domaćinstvo,” 7, Savezni

sekretarijat za obrazovanje i kulturu, Fund no.318, Folder no. 151: Druge izložbe, Archives of Yugoslavia. 57 Ibid., 4. 58 Ibid. 59 See Chiara Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry in the Balkans. The Rise and Fall of the

Yugoslav Textile Sector (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019); Sabrina P. Ramet, ed., Gender Politics in the Western Balkans. Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010). 60 The new fair was partially completed in Autumn 1957, but the first edition of Porodica i

domaćinstvo was held in the old venue to the north of the Sava river. See Eve Blau and Ivan Rupnik, eds., Project Zagreb. Transition as Condition, Strategy, Practice (Barcelona: Actar, 2007): 214–238. 61 “Zagrebački Velesajam,” Čovjek i prostor 6, no. 82 (1959): 2–5. 62 See Borka Bobovec, Ivan Mlinar, and Domagoj Sentić, “Zagrebački Velesajam kao

poticaj razvoju novozagrebačkog centra,” Prostor 10, no. 1 (2012), 186–197. 63 “Velesajam dokazao snažan napredak naše industrije,” Vjesnik, September 11, 1958, 2. 64 Jasna Galjer and Iva Ceraj, “Uloga dizajna u svakodnevnom životu na izložbama

Porodica i domaćinstvo, 1957–1960. godine,” Radovi instituta za povijest umjetnosti, no. 35 (2011): 279. 65 M. Singer, “Oslobođena radna porodica,” Vjesnik, September 16, 1958, 2. 66 Galjer and Ceraj, “Uloga dizajna,” 279. 67 B. Stošić, “Šetnja kroz izložbu Porodica i domaćinstvo,” Vjesnik, September 11, 1958, 7. 68 Daily newspapers put the final figure at over 1.2 million visitors to the fair in sixteen

days. M. G., “Poruke i pohvale u ime stotina tisuća posjetilaca,” Vjesnik, September 25, 1958, 7. 69 Stošić, “Šetnja kroz izložbu,” 7. 70 Singer, “Oslobođena radna porodica,” 2. 71 P. J., “Stambena zajednica postaje osnovni suvremeni urbanistički element,” Vjesnik,

September 27, 1958, 1. 72 Andrija Mutnjaković, “Stambena problematika u okviru II Međunarodne izložbe

Porodica i domaćinstvo,” Čovjek i prostor 5, no. 79 (1958): 4–5.

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73 “Jugoslavenska industrija već stoji na zavidnom nivou,” Vjesnik, September 8, 1958, 1. 74 Mutnjaković, “Stambena problematika,” 5. 75 Galjer and Ceraj, “Uloga dizajna”, 85. 76 Bernardo Bernardi, “Dva tipa stana sa industrijskom opremom,” in Stanovanje—NK

Hrvatska, II. Međunarodna revijalna izložba Porodica i domaćinstvo, 1958, 4, Osobni arhivski fond Bernarda Bernardija, Folder no. 6, The Croatian Museum of Architecture, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. 77 “Zaključci prvog jugosl. savjetovanja o stambenoj izgradnji i stanovanju u gradovima,”

Arhitektura X, nos. 1–6 (1956): 30. 78 Radoslav Putar, “Elementi funkcionalnog na XI. Triennalu u Milanu,” Arhitektura XI,

nos. 1–6 (1957): 49–55. 79 Jasna Galjer, “Je li modernizam još uvijek aktualan? Sraz realnosti i utopije na

izložbama stanovanja 1950-ih u SFRJ,” in Renata Novak Klemenčić and Martina Malešić, eds., Arhitekturna zgodovina (Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani, 2014): 108. 80 Program Saveza komunista Jugoslavije. Prihvaćen na Sedmom kongresu Saveza

komunista Jugoslavije (22–26. travnja 1958. u Ljubljani), (Sisak: 1984): 104, 151, 185, in Igor Duda, “Tehnika Narodu! Trajna dobra, potrošnja i slobodno vrijeme u socijalističkoj Hrvatskoj,” Časopis za suvremenu povijest 37, no. 2 (2005): 374. 81 Ana Miljački, “The Allegory of the Socialist Lifestyle: The Czechoslovak Pavilion at

the Brussels Expo, its Gold Medal and the Politburo,” in Robin Schuldenfrei, ed., Atomic Dwelling. Anxiety, Domesticity and Post-War Architecture (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 67.

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5 “ONE OF THE PUZZLES OF THE EXHIBITION”: A MISUNDERSTOOD CITTADINA , NEOLIBERTY, AND THE ITALIAN DISPLAY AT BRUSSELS EXPO 58 Rika Devos and Serena Pacchiani

Modest, and fitted into the sloping landscape, the Italian pavilion at Brussels Expo 58 did not leave fairgoers feeling indifferent. A contemporary translation of a Mediterranean cittadina or small town, it covered an expansive 17,800m² (of which 6,500m² was built) and had strong appeal for visitors because of its seeming authenticity. Many who roamed the pavilion felt as if they had spent a few relaxing hours in Italy amidst the bustle of the fair.1 Others, however, including many international architecture critics, expressed dismay and confusion over what they perceived to be a rejection of contemporary modern architecture. In the words of British editor and critic J. M. Richards, the pavilion was truly “one of the puzzles of the exhibition.”2 Ironically, the quiet architectural presence of the cittadina sat at the center of a heated transnational discussion on style and progress in architecture, one that raged on even after the fair closed. The pavilion featured five low volumes clad in white stucco, together mimicking groups of houses arranged around patios and alleyways. The main courtyard or piazza was dominated by the pavilion or castello, three levels high, establishing the project center. The streets had the look of century-old patchworked alleys, freely covered with bricks and cobblestones and enlivened with sculptures, both modern and historicized. However, in its celebration of the vernacular, the project was

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more than a nod to a bygone era. It was a subtle demonstration of the Neoliberty style, first identified in 1958 by young architect and historian Paolo Portoghesi and used by historians and critics in the years to follow.3 Neoliberty emphasized fine detailing and the building crafts in order to underline the local specificities of modern building and the human, personal input of designers and craftsmen in the building process. While members of the architectural team of the Italian pavilion were in the process of developing a language combining modern architecture with local, traditional Italian building techniques and materials, they themselves never referred to the cittadina as Neoliberty in the context of Expo 58. Nevertheless, at the Italian pavilion, the architects presented Neoliberty as a counterproposal to the ubiquity and anonymity of machine-inspired international modernism in postwar architecture. Unsurprisingly, the reception of the pavilion was ambiguous at best and most non-specialist Italian and several non-Italian specialist observers saw the cittadina as a negation of what was implicitly expected: it was considered not just vernacular but, above all, as “non-modern” architecture, lacking the visual flair commonly used to express postwar economic and cultural success and the style that dominated the Expo 58 architectural landscape. Tracing the concepts and conditions that shaped the Italian pavilion at Expo 58 helps us expose the impact of its contested exterior and interior, which have largely been overlooked in later academic and popular discourse. Discussions about its overall appearance dominated the initial planning of the pavilion as well as the ensuing transnational controversy. Organizational challenges plagued the project—including its delayed completion and disagreements on the design attribution of the interior spaces and exhibits—all of which contributed to the questioning of the Italian architectural team’s competency. A closer look at the tensions between the original architectural team and the subsequent appointments of Marcello Piacentini and Luigi Moretti clarifies the situation. The latter architects had gained experience during the interwar period and continued, tainted by their political associations, mainly behind the scenes, to influence Italian architectural discourse during the ensuing decades. Thus, while the Italian exhibition at Expo 58 presented a postwar image of the nation as part of an inviolable history, it did so without disavowing or even acknowledging its recent fascist past. Instead, through its visual languages, it conveyed a seemingly recognizable and timeless image of the Italian state, its people, arts, and industries.

POSTWAR TRANSNATIONAL MODERN STYLE AND ITALIAN AMBIGUITY As feats of modernity and progress, interwar world’s fairs and exhibitions had fostered the association between democracy, prosperity, and modernism.4 At Expo 58, the first postwar world’s fair, the Belgian and international specialists expected

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modern architecture to be omnipresent. During and after the event, both the Belgian organizers and professional critics confirmed a widely spread rapprochement between modern architecture on the one hand and the general public and the political establishment on the other.5 In this context of international comparison, most critics perceived postwar modernism as a lingua franca for the representation of a successfully globalizing nation and, when considered together, for a world at peace. The event became not only a place of acte de présence for the renewed faces of the former Allied Forces and Axis Powers, such as West Germany, Japan, and Italy, but also the new Cold War superpowers, the USA and USSR. Stylistically, the pavilions of most participants referred to the abstract touchstones of interwar modern architecture. These included visible structural elements, lofty and brightly-lit spaces, expansive glass surfaces, and strong geometrical façades. Many were, through their designers or commissioners, embedded in the vibrant postwar exhibition culture.6 This modern architecture was not as uniform, however, as the organizers had predicted, and several architects tried to express national character through their pavilions.7 Some commentators, such as German architect and critic Jürgen Joedicke—who, soon after the fair had closed, spoke critically of it as the “fair of national vanities”—found these explicit variations in modern architecture to be expressions of the failure to create a common architectural language in line with postwar globalization.8 Italian architect, historian, and critic Bruno Zevi also condemned these intentionally differentiated and symbolic architectures, in which he felt architects anxiously looked for a metaphorical expression of national character without considering “true architecture.”9 To Zevi, who by then had gained international recognition, these buildings were nothing less than acts of treason that betrayed the contemporary development of modern architecture. Zevi, who was active in the Italian postwar debate as a defender of modern organic architecture as an example of “true architecture,” strongly positioned himself against any form of academism, classicism, or neoclassicism. He wrote several critical pieces on Expo 58 in the magazines L’Espresso10 and L’Architettura: Cronache e Storia, the latter of which he owned and edited.11 For Zevi, the idiosyncratic differences between the pavilions were designed to underline the specificities of nations and therefore were analogous to the psychological condition that Frankfurt-born psychoanalyst Erich Fromm enumerated in his critically acclaimed Escape from Freedom (1941), to which Zevi referred explicitly in his article “Brussels 1958: First Questions.”12 In his book, Fromm questioned the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom.13 Unlike most other critics, Zevi understood the architecture of the fair as a materialization of postwar or Cold War anxieties and not as the demonstration of postwar peace and progress that much modern architecture claimed to be.14 In it, he detected a kind of architectural unrest in reaction to the newly acquired economic, social, cultural, and technical liberties of the postwar period. This sense of anxiety

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identified by Zevi has been analyzed by architectural historians Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, who propose a reassessment of postwar modernism as a phenomenon in its own right.15 At first sight, the Italian cittadina at Expo 58 blended vernacular architecture with modern technology, developing a formal language embedded in local postwar architectural discourse. By reassessing the vernacular, the pavilion also featured an Italian character and historical continuity in building that differed from the stylistic choices found in propaganda architecture—being either classicist or, on rarer occasions, modernist—and supported by Italian nationalist discourses for over thirty years. As a result, most observers failed to recognize the cittadina as modern architecture. However, its architects had clearly understood the privileged position modern architecture held in national postwar representations, as is apparent from their comments on what they referred to as the “formalist structuralism” of the fair.16 While the pavilion was the work of a team of architects, it was architect and critic Ernesto N. Rogers of the Milanese BBPR studio (Gianluigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, and Ernesto Nathan Rogers) who acted as the primary theoretician.17 Rogers, former publisher-editor of Domus (1946–1947), and current editor of the influential journal Casabella-Continuità (1953–1965), had in his postwar columns and books orchestrated a plea for the continuità (continuity) of the influence of tradition in contemporary architecture and for the search for coerenza (coherence) between historical context and new buildings. As such, he steered away from his advocacy for interwar rationalism and criticized postwar radical modernism. Before, during, and after Expo 58 Rogers expressed critical views on the fair’s architecture in general. His scathing article on the architecture of Expo 58 lambasted its “hypertrophy of form” and the many “modernistic, formal, pretentious and empty contributions.”18 What had been missed by many critics at the time was that the very concept of the Italian pavilion had been conceived as a critique of the recent evolutions in modern architecture that Rogers condemned. Rogers, however, recognized later that the subtleties of the pavilion had been misunderstood. He concluded: “In building the Italian pavilion we have tried to create a serene and quiet work rooted in our culture. Maybe we have forgotten that the taste of many people has now become spoiled; perhaps we should have added to the salt much more pepper.”19 In other words: the architect admitted that the Italian design team had misjudged the anticipated public who were unfamiliar with the ongoing debates on tradition and continuity in Italian modern architecture. He suggested a world’s fair—with its festive atmosphere, attempts at cultural diplomacy, and flaunted nationalisms—was no place for architectural subtleties. Placed in the context of this mass event, the Italian plea for the embrace of tradition in modern architecture was thus understood as a reactionary position. Moreover, the fact that other former Axis Powers sought to present a distinctly modern national image— one that broke away from the interwar propaganda style—did not help to clarify the Italian position.

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COERENZA (COHERENCE) AND CONTINUITÀ (CONTINUITY): THE ORIGINS OF THE CITTADINA The Italian pavilion at Expo 58, while a sanctuary to some visitors escaping the hustle and bustle, was also a puzzle to many. First, it did not meet the expectations of architecture specialists, according to the appraisal of Belgian critic Pierre-Louis Flouquet. “Those familiar with contemporary Italian architecture expected to find a monumental edifice, testifying of a brave self-awareness in modern design,” he wrote, “For 1958 one could not conceive of a more complete contrast than this cittadina.”20 Second, even before the fair opened, the pavilion was misread by the public as a naïve village, rather than a sophisticated commentary. As Giovanni Giovannini wrote doubtfully in La Stampa, months before its debut, “the Italian pavilion, which for now does not impose on visitors’ admiration . . . will represent a typical village: we hope that in the end it will be worthy of the Exhibition and of our Country.”21 Finally, as demonstrated in Rogers’s aforementioned postscript, its negative reception surprised even those involved in its creation, who felt they had lost control over the project. The pavilion’s design process was long and difficult; analyzing its chronology allows us to understand the slippages between intention and result. In winter 1955 the Italian Commissariato (Commissariat General), leading Italy’s participation in Expo 58, invited five of the most renowned Italian architecture studios to participate in a closed competition for the pavilion, including BBPR studio (Milan); Ignazio Gardella (Milan); Amedeo Luccichenti and Vincenzo Monaco (Rome); Giuseppe Perugini (Rome); and Ludovico Quaroni (Rome).22 All were well-known architects recognized in the architectural press for their modern work. While little detail is known about the competition brief, later testimonies suggest that the architects did complain that the client’s wishes were not clearly formulated.23 Yet taking into account that the Brussels organizers had announced Expo 58 as a feast of modern progress, the desire of the Italian government to put the nation on the postwar map, as well as the “progressive” reputation of the architects invited by the Commissariato, it can be presumed that the latter was looking for a pavilion to highlight Italy’s postwar successes in a conspicuously progressive and modern manner. Due to the short period to develop proposals—only two weeks—and the restricted budget that threatened to curtail the project, the architects decided to work together. They also demanded to be put in charge of curating the displays on view inside the building to allow for a coherent design. In their words, they felt they “were unable to seriously project a generic building in which anything could be placed,”24 and their proposal for the pavilion, they believed, could never be an “architectural ‘object’ that could be filled with ideas later.”25 Following the lead of

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Rogers, the team of architects opted for a theoretical and polemical stance against what they called “formalist structuralism,” an architectural tendency where loadbearing structures were rendered visible in a spectacular manner, which Rogers expected to dominate the fair. The design process was in three phases. In their first proposal (dating from late 1955 to early 1956), the architects conceived of the pavilion as a series of identical buildings: prefabricated steel umbrellas with a 10m2 plan. The few preserved drawings make it difficult to evaluate the building’s stylistic features in this first proposal. In an updated version presented to the fair organizers in July 1956, the architects suggested a similar layout, but with elements with load-bearing walls and roofs made from prefabricated concrete. As the architects explained, the buildings had a character “at once similar, continuous, modest, spontaneous and noble, with the aim to recall the long history of our country.”26 Published drawings of this second proposal, the architects’ own project description, and their contemporary work indicate that the project was stylistically in line with the Neoliberty tendency then developing in the architects’ oeuvres. The term ‘Neoliberty’ was introduced by Paolo Portoghesi27 in his analytical text “Dal neorealismo al neoliberty” (From Neorealism to Neoliberty) published in 1958, the year BBPR’s Milan Torre Velasca was completed.28 Sketching out the development of modern architecture in Italy, Portoghesi observed a renewed interest in the work of the early modern masters, including those of Art Nouveau or Stile Liberty. In its renewed interest in this period, Neoliberty was marked by a refined use of craftsmanship and technology, bourgeois cultural references, overall elegance and harmony, as well as, according to Portoghesi, its exploration “of the technical possibilities of both new and old materials without programmatic distinction.”29 Despite the architects working together, interpersonal tensions between them and the commissioners plagued the pavilion project from the start, as both struggled to keep control. Further budget cuts, and likely the tight time frame, eventually made the architects opt for a more conventional construction. In this third phase, dating to spring 1957, the building consisted of load-bearing masonry and concrete walls with flat roofs with a traditional timber structure. In this last version the buildings were no longer square or modular. One of the most prominent exterior features was a unifying, graphic element: a dark blue ribbon that highlighted the roof edges and window openings. The result was a pavilion that strongly resembled an idealized Mediterranean cittadina. In designing the pavilion, the architects used traditional materials and techniques in both the exterior and interior finishes: red brickwork, stuccoed walls, and plain terracotta tiles. The architects also left the wooden ceiling girders and iron joints visible, emphasizing a traditionalist aesthetic. This modest interior finish greatly added to the vernacular character of the ensemble. The concepts at the basis of the pavilion were inspired by the notions of coerenza (coherence) and continuità (continuity) between building traditions, human experiences, and

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FIGURE 5.1 The reception hall in the castello at Expo 58. Courtesy Collection of the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ghent University.

modern architecture, central to the intellectual work of Rogers.30 While its presence was more subtle in the exterior of the pavilion, the Neoliberty influence was most strongly felt in the interior of the castello, a central element present from the first design proposal onwards, where the crafty detailing of the architectural elements, the use of classic, luxurious materials and fittings in both building and exhibition, and, most prominently, the decorations and particular layout of the building strongly suggested a distinct architectural language. The castello contained a monumental hall on the first floor which was used as an exhibition space and reception hall (Figure 5.1). It boasted fine finishes such as the stained glass windows located in the open corners, the use of polished marbles, and an impressive Venetian Venini chandelier reminiscent of the one displayed in the Italian pavilion at the Paris 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes.31 Some distinct details, like the grooved edge of the roof or the railless ceremonial staircase, gave the hall an updated appearance.

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“INFANTILE REGRESSION?” INSULTED ITALIANS AND AGITATED PROFESSIONALS The ambiguity of the realized pavilion as built triggered strong and emotional reactions from both the popular and professional press in Italy, Belgium, and abroad. Criticism arose even before the pavilion opened and lasted, in some cases displaying shifting opinions, long after the fair closed. From quite early on, critics such as Giovannini aired their concerns that the pavilion, albeit unintentionally, would represent an Italy incapable of keeping up with the contemporary world. Such concerns gave rise to national indignation when the team failed to finish the project by the Expo’s opening.32 As a result, the Italian government publicly denounced it: “The government pushes the responsibility of the scandal of the expo over to the architects” read the headline of a critical article published in newspaper l’Unità two weeks after the official opening.33 Such a difficult reception in the homeland might also explain the explicit and self-conscious defense of the pavilion in the official catalog. It echoed the discourse of the architects themselves who had positioned the project as modern, but framed it in a critical light vis-à-vis the dominance of technology, while at the same time refraining from the use of overt nostalgia or folklore.34 Italian critics kept up the attack during the fair. The Italian popular press launched an almost univocal negative campaign that, according to Agnoldomenico Pica, one of the pavilion’s designers and editor of a commemorative booklet on the pavilion, greatly and negatively influenced popular sentiment against the cittadina and “weighed dramatically on the public opinion of our Country.”35 The building was judged not modern enough and as projecting an image of a backward Italy, excluded from globalizing tendencies. Although positive reactions in the international press eventually resulted in the official rehabilitation of the project in Italy, when the conclusive report on Italian participation was compiled, the Commissariato felt compelled to defend it. Cesco Tomaselli, for example, presented the pavilion as “a kind of architectonic protest . . . in the heart of conformist submission to search for new forms.”36 Nonetheless, the popular and political rehabilitation at the end of the fair did not bring an end to the quarrel in international architectural circles. The Italians’ critique of contemporary modernism, their assessment of traditional and regional elements and strategies, as well as the Neoliberty trend, all gave rise to continued controversy. The Architects’ Journal reported that “this distinguished team decided to abandon modern constructional technique and, indeed, all that we mean by ‘modern architecture.’ ”37 In critiquing the pavilion, British designer Misha Black wrote: “Italy has also chosen the path of slight self-deprecation, at least as far as its building is concerned.”38 French modernist architect and editor Alexandre Persitz had judged it simply “incomprehensible,” an architectural monster “that discourages

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all criticism and provokes a sentiment of dismay.”39 Although when the Expo closed, Persitz was already engaged in a fierce debate on Neoliberty with Rogers, he, like other observers, decided to ignore the pavilion’s polemical content completely.40 Zevi, in contrast, felt compelled to respond. While persistently critical of Neoliberty and with little enthusiasm about the pavilion in its early months, he finally defended the project and the architects in the professional press during the last month of the Expo.41 His journal Architettura: Cronache e Storia then published not only the three project phases of the pavilion but also a report on the structural research on the prefabricated concrete roofs of the second phase, inherently demonstrating the original modern intentions. In addition, Zevi gave the floor to the architects themselves through extensive published interviews.42 The pavilion and the critical position of Neoliberty once again came to the fore when discussed by Reyner Banham in his Architectural Review piece “Neoliberty: The Italian Retreat from Modern Architecture.” In it, he engaged in a debate on new tendencies in modern architecture, their ethical, political, and technical roots and impact, as well as the role of tradition and the duties of the modern architect. Banham accused the Italians of “infantile regression” vis-à-vis the modern movement and considered the Italian pavilion as a disappointing confirmation of the stylistic excesses of Neoliberty.43 Previously, Banham had admired postwar Italy for its “architecture of social responsibility” and “formal architectonic purity,” for which he considered BBPR a leading office. This new tendency, however, he considered to be a betrayal of modern architecture and nothing less than a proposal “to abdicate from the Twentieth Century.”44 Nevertheless, it is important to note that the international debate resumed shortly afterwards, when BBPR presented their recently finished Torre Velasca project at the 1959 Otterlo congress.45 Rogers showcased the tower building as “mixing the rational and the expressionistic,” and explained the varied program, concepts, and materials used for which the “main purpose was to give this building the intimate value of our culture—the essence of history.”46 Ironically, it is primarily because of such debates after Expo 58 that historians rehabilitated the Italian pavilion; Manfredo Tafuri, for example, included it in his historiography of Italian modern architecture. As such, it became a touchstone in an important moment of critique of the mainstream trends within the Modern Movement.47

AN EVEN MORE MODEST PRESENCE: THE INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITTADINA Interestingly enough, with the exception of Zevi48 and later Tafuri,49 most architectural critics devoted their attention to the pavilion’s exterior appearance

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and little was published on its interior.50 The cittadina, however, was not just an empty container for display but consisted of a series of similar interiors in the “houses” that employed vernacular materials in a contemporary manner.51 The exhibitions inside the cittadina were set in several low and rather dark spaces articulated as human-scaled rooms. The stylistic contrast with the large, bright, and modern exhibition halls of the other pavilions at Expo 58 could hardly have been greater. Nonetheless, the subtle tension between traditional craftsmanship and modern design that characterized Neoliberty was most present in its interior. From the early planning stages, the architects insisted on including the design of the pavilion’s exhibition in their proposal. At the same time, the Commissariato had appointed Leonardo Sinisgalli, a mathematician, poet and designer with ample experience in staging exhibitions as the exhibition coordinator.52 Sinisgalli had been the art director at Olivetti since 1938, a position that brought him into contact with architects such as Gardella and BBPR studio for the design of Olivetti shops in cities including New York, which BBPR designed in 1954. Together, they developed a simple and clear exhibition concept for the pavilion that set out to introduce visitors to the land of Italy, Italian society, and its accomplishments, all staged in a straightforward manner. Nonetheless, most probably because of budgetary issues, but also due to the unexpected appointment of architect and designer Luigi Moretti in January 1957, Sinisgalli resigned from the pavilion project in April 1957, to be replaced by Moretti.53 As recounted by Quaroni and De Carlo, this last-minute change roiled the architects as it rendered their attempt to design a unified building and exhibition space nearly impossible.54 As built, the exhibition comprised a succession of display sections following the official proposal of the Bureau International des Expositions, resulting in a more complex sequence than originally intended. Each section was devoted to a specific sector and financed either by public or private funding. Private funding dominated the Industrial Production section and in order to maintain a sense of unity throughout, the architects’ team installed a system of slender, white panels, delicately lit from behind, which helped lend a feeling of continuity and calm to the varied representations of the Italian industries. These panels served as a support for texts, which were specific to each of the exhibiting companies, some of which worked with their own designers. The Olivetti room, for example, was installed next to the exhibits of some of Italy’s best-known brands such as Fiat, Montecatini, and Finmeccanica, all of which had been part of the usual displays of Italy’s industrial achievements since at least the interwar period. Next to the explanatory text and product displays, the showcase was dominated by a repetitive graphic element borrowed from the letterheads of typewriters, one of Olivetti’s most successful products. In the corner stood a collection of typewriters, calculators, and teleprinters, each of them isolated

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FIGURE 5.2 The Olivetti exhibit in the section on Industrial Production, building D, by Ludovico Quaroni and BBPR at Expo 58. The Olivetti machines are not yet installed on the pedestals. Domus 345 (August 1958): 5.

on a black-and-white pedestal, like art objects (Figure 5.2). Overall, while not entirely successful, Gardella, Belgiojoso, Peressutti, and Rogers’s visual strategy for the Olivetti exhibit did garner some praise. Domus, for example, hinted at the author’s distaste for most of the interior but featured the Olivetti installation in a full-page photograph, and lamented how it wished “that all of the Italian representation was of this tenure, that is: perfect.”55

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A NEW EXHIBITION SCENARIO: LAST MINUTE INPUT BUILDING ON LONG STANDING EXPERTISE Although the team of architects remained involved with designing the pavilion’s interiors after Moretti’s appointment, they nevertheless felt unhappy with how it had turned out. To them, the exhibits were too large, lacked coherence, and were out of tune with the architectural concept. In short, they felt that they had lost control of the project. Clearly identified in the pavilion’s catalogs, but never cited in the contemporary press, the overall organization of the Italian contribution was in the experienced hands of Marcello Piacentini, an official member of the technical-artistic committee.56 The committee acted as intermediary between the commissioner-general and the architects’ team. Interventions in the planning of the exhibition seem to have been steered by this committee through Piacentini’s intercession and explain how and why Moretti eventually became the exhibition’s general coordinator; his appointment can be considered as the committee’s attempt to secure the “progressive” character of the Italian exhibition. Both Piacentini and Moretti had ample experience thanks to their involvement with exhibitions during the interwar, fascist period. While the Commissariato’s choice of experienced members can be understood from an organizational point of view, taking into account that Expo 58 was the first postwar world’s fair, this business-as-usual option sheds new light on the notion of continuity in Italian postwar representation. While not actively involved in the development of the pavilion, the influence and agency of Piacentini, “the fascist regime’s de facto official architect,” should not be underestimated.57 Piacentini was regarded as highly experienced after his successful involvement with the Italian pavilions for the world’s fairs of 1935, 1937, and 1939,58 and he had also been the driving force behind the design for the EUR42 exhibition planned by the fascist regime in Rome.59 Piacentini’s archive reveals that he was considered the Italian contact for the Commissariato of Expo 58.60 In terms of design issues, Piacentini’s interventions were appreciated, as evidenced by an April 1956 letter by architect and designer Gio Ponti which suggests that Piacentini’s expertise was called upon for active intervention in the pavilion project. When Ponti, on Piacentini’s invitation, finished writing a new exhibition concept together with Sinisgalli and Piacentini—a counterproposal to the original that was deemed “inappropriate”—he sent his proposal to Piacentini for approval, stressing the importance of a “completely modern expression.”61 Remarkably, his proposal for the exhibition resulted in one closely aligned with the final design and confirms that the committee feared a retrograde representation of Italy, so intervening in the design process.62 In the end, however, the Commissariato engaged Moretti, not Ponti, as exhibition coordinator,63 an event which, in combination with lingering budget issues, seems

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FIGURE 5.3 The first exhibit in the Italian Pavilion, The Environment, by Luigi Moretti at Expo 58. Courtesy Collection of the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ghent University.

to have led to Sinisgalli’s resignation one year before the opening. Eventually, Moretti, working with architect Franco Petrucci and SAICA (Società Anonima Italiana Costruzioni e Arredamenti), was put in charge of the scenario of the exhibition, as well as the design of those exhibition installations that were considered crucial for the representation of the nation.64 These included the “Italian habitat” section—sponsored by ENIT (Ente Nazionale Italiano par il Turismo)—which showcased such iconic Italian sites as the flowers of the Riviera coast; the Puglia countryside; San Marco square in Venice; and celebrated city centers as well as historic statues such as the Florentine porcellino by Pietro Tacca, and the Nereid of Bartolomeo Ammannati’s Neptune Fountain, all staged with photographic reproductions of the Bel Paese (beautiful country).65

A VICTORY OVER TRANSNATIONAL MODERNISM OR A RETREAT FROM THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE? Italian critic Giulia Veronesi wrote of the pavilion in the periodical Emporium: “despite being signed by nine architects among the best in our country . . . [the

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pavilion] is an anonymous work: an inevitable result of a work done by an excessive number of collaborators. It was conceived as a fake Italian village, but it is unacceptable . . . You cannot retreat and then claim victory in your fight.”66 For her, it was not the Neoliberty style that was problematic, but the architects’ decision to join forces. Veronesi deemed the resulting, seemingly un-authored architecture unfit for a world’s fair pavilion that was expected to celebrate national victory and progress. It seems that Rogers, for one, agreed when he declared they “should have added to the salt much more pepper.”67 She acknowledged that their proposal was too implicit, too modest and too anonymous to be recognized as a progressive criticism of contemporary modernism by the general public, let alone the critics. Veronesi’s understanding of “retreat” (that is, from the national boasting proper at world’s fairs) was, however, different from Banham’s criticism that Neoliberty represented an overall and unacceptable flight from modern architecture. If the rich, elaborate architectural details of the pavilion seemed to refer to a bygone, bourgeois society and cast doubt on the progressiveness of the Italian nation, its displays, at least in the case of the Olivetti exhibit, did not. The Italian pavilion at Expo 58 implicitly demonstrated the difficulties of both Commissariato and architects to anticipate the public and its reactions. While the architects themselves were perhaps overly engaged in a transnational specialists’ discourse on the contemporary state of modern architecture, the actions of the Commissariato exposed doubts about how to represent Italy postwar. This doubt turned into anxiety when the initial project of the architects transformed into what seemed to be a reconstruction of a vernacular village that ran the risk of being too conceptual, too simple, or too spare. As a consequence, they returned to a well-known and well-mastered exhibition formula, steered by Moretti, who had dubious interwar experience in representing the nation. The presence of Piacentini hinted at a remarkable continuity of strategies and personalities in the Commissariato. As a site of postwar international exchange, the project also reveals the simplified relation between international politics and architectural tendencies, as only distinctly modern styles were associated with progressive nations. Because of its interwar reputation in modern architecture and because of its postwar international political engagement, Italy was expected to represent itself with a grand modern pavilion. In this view, but maybe in this view only, the cittadina was a disappointment, irrespective of its popular appeal to Expo visitors.

NOTES 1 See reports in the Belgian and Italian popular press, reprinted in “Testimonianze.

Témoignages” in Andrea Pais Tarsilia, ed., L’Italie présente. Numero celebrativo della partecipazione italiana all’Expo ’58 (Rome: Bureau de presse du Commissariat du Gouvernement italien pour l’Exposition universelle et internationale de Bruxelles 1958,

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1959), 167–184. The Italian reports were written in September–October 1958, near the end of Expo 58. 2 J.M. Richards, “Expo 58,” The Architectural Review 124, no. 739 (1958): 93. 3 Paolo Portoghesi, “Dal neorealismo al neoliberty,” Comunità 65 (1958): 41. 4 Rika Devos, Alexander Ortenberg and Vladimir Paperny, “Messages of Peace and

Images of War: Modern Architecture as Diplomacy,” in Rika Devos, Alexander Ortenberg and Vladimir Paperny, eds., Architecture of Great Exhibitions 1937–1959. Messages of Peace. Images of War (Surrey/Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), 1–22. 5 Rika Devos, “Expo 58 in the Contemporary Press,” in Modern at Expo 58: Discussions

on Post-war Architectural Representation (Ghent: Faculteit Ingenieurswetenschappen, 2008), 151–154. 6 See for instance: Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan, Cold War Confrontations. US

Exhibitions and their Role in the Cultural Cold War (Baden: Lars Müller, 2008); Peter MacKeith and Kerstin Smeds, The Finland Pavilions. Finland at the Universal Exhibitions 1900–1992 (Tampere: Kustannus Oy City, 1993); Paul Sigel, Exponiert. Deutsche Pavillons auf Weltausstellungen (Berlin: Verlag Bauwesen, 2000). 7 Marcel Van Goethem, “Allocution prononcée par M. Van Goethem, architecte en chef,”

Journées de contact des commissaires généraux étrangers. Deuxième session. 21 et 22 Novembre 1956 (Brussels: Commissariat Général du Gouvernement, [1956?]), 39–41. Van Goethem was the architect-in-chief of Expo 58. His statement was made during the presentation of the preliminary designs of the pavilions to the international press. 8 Jürgen Joedicke, “Rundgang durch die Weltausstellung,” Architektur und Wohnform 9

(November 1958): 385. 9 Bruno Zevi, “Chiusura su Bruxelles. Il simbolismo, carie dell’espressione architettonica,”

L’Architettura: Cronache e Storia 36 (October 1958): 364. Zevi not only reacted to the “symbolism” at the fair, but also criticized the overall lack of “well-conceived” architecture. 10 Reprinted in Bruno Zevi, Cronache di Architettura III dall’Expo mondiale di Bruxelles

all’Inaugurazione di Brasilia 191/320 (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1971), 68–77 and 98–101. 11 From 1954 until his passing in 2000. 12 Bruno Zevi, “Bruxelles 1958: primi interrogativi,” L’Architettura Cronache e Storia 31

(May 1958): 5. Zevi refers explicitly to the title of the book, albeit briefly. He might have read the book upon its publication, as both had migrated to the United States (where the book was first published in 1941) during the war to escape antisemitic laws. There is no indication that the men met. 13 Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1941). 14 David Crowley, “Humanity Rearranged: The Polish and Czechoslovak Pavilions at

Expo 58,” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 19, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2012): 88–105. 15 Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, “Introduction: Critical Themes of

Postwar Modernism,” in Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, eds., Anxious Modernisms. Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture (Montréal and Cambridge, MA: CCA and The MIT Press, 2000), 11–23. 16 “La testimonianza degli architetti conferma le responsabilità del governo all’Expo,”

l’Unità, 27, April 1958, s.p.

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17 During the postwar period also called BPR, as Gian Luigi Banfi (1910–1945) had died

during the war. 18 “Hypertrophy” (p. 133) is the translation as published in Architects’ Yearbook of

“ampollosità delle forme” (p. 2), or “overstretching or blow-up of forms.” Rogers refers to the many spectacular constructional forms at Expo 58. 19 Postscript to Ernesto Nathan Rogers, “All’ Expo ’58 il futuro (dell’ architettura) non è

cominciato,” Casabella-Continuità 221 (1958): VI. (English translation in Casabella.) The article was later published as: Ernesto Nathan Rogers, “The Future was not to be seen at Brussels,” Architects’ Yearbook 9 (1960): 132–139. In the latter, the postscript was omitted. All translations by the authors. 20 “Note sur la participation italienne,” La Maison 6 (June–July 1958): 201, 207. 21 Giovanni Giovannini, “Prospettive dell’esposizione universale di Bruxelles,” La Stampa,

January 22, 1958, 3. 22 In full: Commissariato del governo Italiano per la partecipazione del nostro Paese

all’Esposizione Universale e Internazionale di Bruxelles 1958. 23 See: “La testimonianza degli architetti,” s.p. and also: Ludovico Quaroni and Adolfo De

Carlo in an interview with Renato Pedio, “Inchiesta sul Padiglione Italiano a Bruxelles,” L’Architettura Cronache e Storia 36 (October 1958): 405. 24 “La testimonianza degli architetti,” s.p. 25 Quaroni and De Carlo, “Inchiesta sul Padiglione Italiano,” 405. 26 Ibid. 27 See Gioia Seminario, Paolo Portoghesi. L’architettura come riflesso dell’anima (Naples:

Edizioni Scientifiche e Artistiche, 2009). 28 Paolo Portoghesi, “Dal neorealismo al neoliberty,” Comunità 65 (1958) as published in

Marcello Fabbri et al., eds., Architettura urbanistica in Italia nel Dopoguerra (Rome: Gangemi, 1986), 356–372. 29 Portoghesi, “Dal neorealismo al neoliberty,” 371. 30 On the characterization of the position and ideas of Rogers with respect to pluralism,

tradition, and continuity in contemporary architectural practice, and on the Italian discussion on Neoliberty, see: Marie Louise Lobsinger, “Monstrous Fruit: The Excess of Italian Neo-Liberty,” Thresholds 23 (January 2001): 44–51. 31 See Jean-Luc Olivié, “Un lustre pour le Pavillon italien à Paris en 1925,” Glasklar.

Festschrift für Helmut Ricke (Düsseldorf/Petersberg: Museum Kunstpalast/Michael Imhof Verlag, 2013), 118–129. 32 The pavilion opened with a delay of twenty days. 33 “Il governo scarica sugli architetti le responsabilità dello scandalo dell’expo,” l’Unità,

April 27, 1958, s.p. 34 “Les critères de construction. Les architectes projeteurs déclarent,” Catalogue

officiel, 43. 35 Agnoldomenico Pica in his introduction to Cesco Tomaselli, “Une anthologie de

l’Italie,” Corriere della Sera (October 1, 1958) as translated and reprinted in Andrea Pais Tarsilia, ed., L’Italie présente. Numero celebrativo della partecipazione italiana all’Expo ’58 (Rome: Bureau de presse du Commissariat du Gouvernement italien pour l’Exposition universelle et internationale de Bruxelles 1958, 1959), 173.

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36 Tomaselli, “Une anthologie de l’Italie,” 173. 37 “Italy,” The Architects’ Journal, May 29, 1958, 818. 38 Misha Black, “A Display of Character,” Progress 46, no. 259 (1958): 231. 39 Alexandre Persitz, “Souvenirs de Bruxelles 1958. Noirs et blancs,” L’Architecture

d’Aujourd’hui 81 (January 1959): 94. 40 On the involvement of Persitz in this discussion, see: Alexandre Persitz, “Casabella . . .

Casus Belli,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 77 (May 1958): xxxiii–xxxiv. 41 See for instance: Bruno Zevi, “L’andropausa degli architetti italiani,” L’Architettura:

Cronache e Storia 46 (August 1959): 222–223. 42 “Il Padiglione Italiano a Bruxelles,” Architettura: Cronache e Storia 36 (October 1958):

396–398 and “Progetto di cupole autoportanti per il Padiglione Italiano a Bruxelles,” Architettura: Cronache e Storia 36 (October 1958): 425–426, and “Inchiesta sul Padiglione Italiano a Bruxelles,” L’Architettura Cronache e Storia 36 (October 1958): 399–406, as well as Bruno Zevi, “Successo dell’ultimo minuto?,” Cronache di Architettura III, 98–101. 43 Reyner Banham, “Neoliberty. The Italian Retreat from Modern Architecture,” The

Architectural Review 747 (1959): 235. One of the illustrations in the article shows the monumental hall in the castello of the Italian pavilion. 44 Banham, “Neoliberty,” 235. 45 The Otterlo congress (1959), known also as CIAM ’59, followed on the CIAM X

congress (Dubrovnik, 1956) and announced the end of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux de l’Architecture Moderne). Rogers and Gardella were members of the coordination group of CIAM ’59. The discussions of this congress are published as Oscar Newman, CIAM’59 in Otterlo (Stuttgart: Krämer, 1961). 46 Newman, CIAM’59 in Otterlo, 92–93. 47 See Geert Bekaert, “Un volto sincero. Le pavillon italien,” in Rika Devos and Mil De

Kooning, eds., L’architecture moderne à l’Expo 58. “Pour un monde plus humain,” (Brussels: Fonds Mercator, 2006), 128–143, as well as Manfredo Tafuri, “La crisi del linguaggio nell’Esposizione Internazionale di Bruxelles e il progetto del gruppo italiano,” Ludovico Quaroni e la sviluppo dell’architettura moderna in Italia (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1964), 158 and Manfredo Tafuri, “Aufklärung II: The Museum, History, and Metaphor (1951–1967),” History of Italian Architecture, 1944–1985 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989), 217, note 10. 48 “Inchiesta sul Padiglione Italiano a Bruxelles,” L’Architettura Cronache e Storia 36

(October 1958): 399–406. The text is an interview with the architects, in separate groups. It can be assumed that Zevi is the interviewer. 49 Manfredo Tafuri, “La crisi del linguaggio,” 155–156. 50 A rare exception is the article “Inchiesta sul Padiglione Italiano,” but the images are not

commented on. 51 In its detailing and use of materials, the overall setting of the exhibition resembled

BBPR’s exhibition design for the Milan Castello Sforzesco (1954). Based on the analysis of photographs as published, among others, in Raffaele Marone, “L’allestimento del museo al Castello Sforzesco di Milano, tra il pensiero di E. N. Rogers e la pratica costruttiva di BBPR,” Rassegna di Architettura e Urbanistica XXXIX, nos. 115–116 (2005): 112–131.

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52 See Franco Vitelli, “Leonardo Sinisgalli,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 92 (2018),

http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/leonardo-sinisgalli_%28DizionarioBiografico%29/. 53 See Ludovico Quaroni and Adolfo De Carlo in “Inchiesta sul Padiglione Italiano a

Bruxelles,” L’Architettura Cronache e Storia 36 (October 1958): 405–406. It is suggested that Sinisgalli and the architects set out to develop the exhibition together, without an exhibition designer. When the Commissariato appointed Moretti, both Sinisgalli and Moretti assumed a similar or even identical role. Moretti was inclined to follow more closely on the wishes of the Commissariato, and of Piacentini. 54 Ibid. 55 “Prime immagini di Bruxelles,” Domus 345 (August 1958): 5. The attribution is unclear.

The current editor of the magazine was Ponti. 56 President was Cesare Valle; other members: Guglielmo De Angelis D’Ossat, M. G.

Franci, E. Grecco and E. Paulucci. 57 Terry Kirk, The Architecture of Modern Italy, Volume 2. Visions of Utopia, 1900–Present

(London and New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), 85. 58 See Lucia Masina, Vedere l’Italia nelle esposizioni universali del XX secolo 1900–1958.

Atti della Summer School EXPOsizioni (Milan: Educatt, 2016). 59 When appointed for Expo 58, Piacentini was involved with the planning of the

buildings for the 1960 Rome Olympics. Moretti too had been involved in EUR42. 60 Letter, Moens de Fernig to Piacentini, October 11, 1955, Folder 310, Piacentini

Archives, Università degli studi di Firenze. Biblioteca di scienze tecnologiche. Architettura, Florence. [Hereafter cited as Piacentini Archives.] 61 Letter, Gio Ponti to Camillo Giurati, April 28, 1956, Folder 310, Piacentini Archives. 62 Indicazioni per gli architetti, attached to Letter, Ponti to Piacentini, May 7, 1956, Folder

310, Piacentini Archives. It should be noted that, at this time, the architecture project had not yet turned into a cittadina. Ponti stresses the importance of a “completely modern expression.” 63 Note, Piacentini to Giurati, January 30, 1957, Folder 310, Piacentini Archives. 64 Masina, Vedere l’Italia, 406. 65 Moretti did not proceed on his own, however, and left some exhibits to Agnoldomenico

Pica, an architect and critic with whom he had previously collaborated. Pica was also the author of several important texts in the 1959 guide Italie présente, in which he formulated the official discourse on the exhibition concept and reacted to some of the criticism on the pavilion. Moretti and Pica’s exhibition project was finalized in May 1957, “Portrait de l’Italie actuelle,” in L’Italie présente, 142. For a detailed biography, see Maria Vittoria Capitanucci, Agnoldomenico Pica, 1907–1990. La critica dell’architettura come “mestiere” (Benevento: Hevelius edizione, 2002). 66 Giulia Veronesi, “Visita all’Esposizione di Bruxelles,” Emporium CXXVIII, no. 766

(1958): 148–149. 67 Rogers, “All’ Expo ’58,” IV.

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6 ASSEMBLING SMALLNESS: THE UNITED STATES SMALL INDUSTRIES EXHIBITION IN COLOMBO, 1961 Nushelle de Silva

In early 1961, crowds from across Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) flocked to the United States Small Industries Exhibition. A trade fair that had previously been shown in four cities in India, the Small Industries Exhibition went on view in Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo for four weeks, from January 21 to February 19, before moving on to Accra, Ghana at the end of that same year.1 In Sri Lanka, free admission to the fair, cheap train excursion rates, trolley connections from major railway stations to the venue, and a special bus service enabled citizens from even provincial towns and villages to see the spectacle in Colombo. Attendance at the fair soared to 1,644,520—the highest recorded at an exhibition in Sri Lanka and the second highest at any US exhibition held overseas to that date.2 As the total population of the island numbered only about ten million at the time, the numbers suggest that the Small Industries Exhibition was an unmitigated success. Gauging the outcome of an exhibition is, of course, rarely so straightforward. The geopolitical and economic realities of the 1960s that enabled the exhibition to be shown as it was, the calculative display techniques of the exhibition’s three organizing agencies, and the objects on view illuminate the negotiated alliances, improvised solutions, and divergent public responses so constitutive of political displays like the Small Industries Exhibition. In fact, they go so far as to unsettle the notion of the Exhibition as a single entity that moved as a legible whole between locations. A picture emerges of fragmented elements with discrete

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trajectories—organizing entities, persuasive displays, individual objects, and even political ideologies—that were briefly imbricated as the Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo before becoming undone, and distinct in many ways from its apparent counterparts in India and Ghana. Theories of assemblage offer a generative means to articulate the Small Industries Exhibition as this repeated sequence of composition, deterritorialization, and altered reconfiguration. Proposed by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to describe the contingent processes of social complexity, an assemblage or agencement is, broadly, a conditional constellation of disparate and even incommensurable elements, from tangible bodies to abstract signs.3 Deleuze and Guattari’s fittingly indeterminate conceptual sketch has been refined by others: philosopher Manuel DeLanda clarifies the assemblage’s multiscale ontology and the extricable autonomy of its constituent components (which are themselves further assemblages), while political theorist Jane Bennett emphasizes the appreciable agency of an assemblage’s non-human actants through her theorization of vibrant matter.4 Disassembling the Small Industries Exhibition into its dense, individual, autonomous fragments is not to disregard the whole but rather to begin apprehending a map of globally consequential systems. Destabilizing the notion of a traveling exhibition—i.e., one that is in fact capable of moving between locations and remaining recognizable as itself at each end—is precisely to foreground the geopolitical context so central to scholarship on travel and translation.5 In this framing, mutation and loss are integral to the mobility of modernity, not byproducts of it. This is all the more significant because the Small Industries Exhibition was so carefully presented in public media as a unified entity, despite the inevitable inconsistencies in the installations across India, Sri Lanka, and Ghana. Rather than deem these divergences as failure to hew to the images conjured on paper, it is possible to read them as equal constituents of each assemblage of the Small Industries Exhibition. The dense assemblage-fragment is also a means to grapple with how “smallness” was presented at the Small Industries Exhibition in its contradictory forms. Smallness as the miniature, the meticulously detailed, the microcosm, and the metonym has invariably been theorized as containing whole worlds in compressed concealment, albeit in ways that often stand in contradistinction to each other.6 Smallness is also identified as a deliberate political maneuver, embedded in seemingly unremarkable and quotidian actions.7 An exhibition is fundamentally a microcosm of present and projected worlds. At the Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, efforts to present the US as relatable grappled with a slippage into the unremarkable. The swiftness of light and technologically advanced objects contrasted with the slowness of simple machines designed for operation by an untrained individual. Yet these competing presentations of smallness were features rather than failures of the Small Industries Exhibition; they provide a compound lens through which to examine complex systems of governance and political exchange.

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A CENTURY OF LANKAN-US RELATIONS Lankans in the mid-twentieth century viewed the United States with ambivalence. Even before the Small Industries Exhibition, the image of the US as a formidable western superpower was tempered by its shared history as a former British colony.8 The sparse records of relations between the two countries in the century preceding the exhibition attest to a history of limited yet sustained cultural exchange. For instance, the proselytizing American Ceylon Mission, albeit restricted to the northern and eastern provinces by British colonial administrators, contributed to literacy and healthcare in the mid-nineteenth century.9 (Incidentally, these US missionaries are credited with introducing Lankans in the northern city of Jaffna to the techniques and technologies of photography.10) Lankan Buddhist lay preacher Anagarika Dharmapala was invited to speak at the first World’s Parliament of Religions, itself hosted at an exhibition, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair; US fascination with Buddhism facilitated a reciprocal flow of spiritual conversion. Further, US involvement in the late nineteenth-century Lankan Buddhist revival arguably bolstered the island’s independence movement.11 During this time, the two states also maintained longstanding if unremarkable economic relations. Lankan exports in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, like those of many colonies, were primarily raw materials. In 1903, the US constituted the single largest importer of Lankan graphite, and was recorded in 1922 as purchasing 80 percent of the total quantity of Lankan graphite exported that year.12 While reciprocal US exports to Sri Lanka also comprised raw materials like ice, kerosene, citronella, and prosaic goods such as salted meats and glassware, they also included a limited variety of industrial contrivances, such as sewing machines. By 1961, however, US ideologies appeared less appealing than its machines, and the impressive attendance at the Small Industries Exhibition belied the increasingly anti-west position of the Lankan government. Less than a decade after gaining independence from British rule in 1948, the country’s center-right United National Party had been replaced by a leftist coalition led by the recently formed Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). SLFP leader and newly minted Prime Minister Solomon (usually referred to by his initials, “SWRD”) Bandaranaike immediately negotiated the withdrawal of British military bases from the island, while beginning to explore options for trade with, and economic assistance from, the Soviet Union. At the same time, his policies on language and religion, intended to counteract colonial influence but which favored the country’s majority ethnic group, were causing concern within minority communities and strengthening a burgeoning majoritarian faction. Three years later, Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk, allegedly for agreeing to grant minority Tamils greater political autonomy. His widow Sirima Bandaranaike was sworn in as Prime Minister in July 1960 amidst growing communal tension, and she doubled down on her deceased husband’s initial domestic and foreign policy positions.13

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US economic development aid to the island, which had been initiated in 1956 and increased until 1959, began to dwindle as the new Prime Minister Bandaranaike took office. This decline was coupled with a corresponding surge in aid from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.14 In fact, her first term as Prime Minister (1960–1965) marked a period of unprecedented tension between Lankan and US administrations. Between 1961 and 1963, her government undertook the task of nationalizing the island’s oil companies under the newly formed Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, as the Soviet Union had agreed not only to sell oil at a rate lower than the world market price, but also to accept payment in rupees, the local currency. To this end, existing British and US oil facilities on the island were expropriated and nationalized, a common maneuver by states turning towards communism. This ignited an acrimonious debate about adequate compensation, and resulted in the retaliatory curtailment of US aid, resumed only when the center-right United National Party ousted the left-leaning Sri Lanka Freedom Party and returned to power in 1965.15 Prime Minister Bandaranaike’s public antagonism towards the United States was ostensibly at odds with her government’s readiness to host the Small Industries Exhibition in 1961. After all, this was precisely when the bill calling for the creation of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation was being introduced in parliament. Yet this increasing political friction was a key component in the assemblage of the Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, expressly designed as a visual appeal to the Sri Lankan administration to reconsider efforts to turn away from the United States.

NEGOTIATING DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN COMPETING IDEOLOGIES The Small Industries Exhibition was one of a concatenation of persuasive trade fairs conceived by the US in response to the heightened political tension of the Cold War, of which a subset was intended to counter political decisions of concern made by leaders in states across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A 1955 meeting of key figures from these states in Bandung, Indonesia—including SWRD Bandaranaike from Sri Lanka, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana—would catalyze the official formation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Belgrade, Serbia (then capital of Yugoslavia) six months after the exhibition’s showing in Colombo, and just two before its opening in Accra.16 Refusing to align their politics with either the capitalist countries of the First World or the socialist states of the Second World, the Movement largely comprised former colonies determined to resist further exploitation by US and Soviet superpowers. NAM member states, collectively dubbed the Third World, prioritized strengthening relations with eastern powers, but also strategically accepted aid from all sides for national economic development schemes. First and Second

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World states alike endeavored to sway NAM nations through enticing trade and development deals, and through exhibitions that promised industrial progress through political alignment. If non-aligned states appeared to waver on the matter of which ideologies to espouse, many unequivocally embraced the concept of the five-year plan, a Soviet technique for planning progressive stages of economic development. As a development strategy, this was extremely popular with leaders of emerging nonaligned nations, to the dismay of the US administration.17 The Small Industries Exhibition was deployed in New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai over 1959 and 1960 expressly to counter India’s Soviet-inspired Second Five Year Plan released in 1956; it was then posted to Colombo and Accra after Sri Lanka’s Ten Year Plan and Ghana’s Second Development Plan were launched in 1959.18 Like India and Ghana, Sri Lanka’s Ten Year Plan charted a shift from a primarily agricultural to an industrial economy, but was jettisoned a few years later following the change in administration.19 It prioritized the development of large production plants and manufacture of capital goods under the public sector, also proposing to increase hydropower (as in India’s First Five Year Plan and Ghana’s Second Development Plan), support more productive agriculture for capital, introduce import substitution, and implement housing schemes for the rapidly growing population.20 However, ambitions for progress embodied by these imposing state-led development schemes were checked by the practical realities of employing the swelling tide of largely rural communities; the Lankan Ten Year Plan, for instance, also contained more modestly proportioned pledges to promote small, laborintensive industries (textiles, coir, carpentry, pottery, brickwork, smithy-work, rattan, and basketry), and to connect these smaller endeavors to larger industries. These required little initial capital, limited technology, and no connection to the national power grid.21 Any machinery required by these village-based cottage industries was to be inexpensive, intuitive to use, and easy to maintain. The Small Industries Exhibition was intended to respond to these concerns, primarily by illustrating that small machines held great potential for economic development. Individual exhibits and their associated rhetoric embodied subtle differences in the articulation of smallness as a cultural value and were amplified in the space of the fair.

FROM PEOPLE’S CAPITALISM TO THE POWER OF SMALL INDUSTRIES Trade fairs and exhibitions presented public audiences and state actors with a rigidly controlled picture of economic and political systems in the US; surveys conducted during these events informed future exhibition design. Accordingly, the Small Industries Exhibition’s emphasis on smallness to present capitalism in service of ordinary individuals was a deliberately honed political strategy. US

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exhibits at early trade fairs had been designed to impress with grand displays of power, but often were found to alienate audiences instead.22 US propaganda agencies used these lessons to produce a mid-1950s campaign titled “People’s Capitalism,” revising their rhetoric to make the US appear more accessible to foreign audiences.23 A People’s Capitalism exhibit toured parts of Latin America as well as Sri Lanka in 1956, to mixed reviews, but was abandoned before it could commence a planned tour of India.24 The Small Industries Exhibition overtly recycled much of the People’s Capitalism rhetoric, while amending it to respond directly to the proposals of the Ten Year Plan. Press releases and official reports made much of the fact that the Small Industries Exhibition was the first solo US trade fair to be circulated during the Cold War. For the first time, US propaganda agencies were not forced to contend with competing messages broadcast from rival pavilions, especially those of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Yet this debut exhibition aimed to impress upon audiences that despite its size, the United States valued smallness in its many forms. Media articles emphasized the interdependence between small and large businesses and characterized most US manufacturing and retail firms as maintaining their humble origins, suggesting that rurality did not preclude entrepreneurism.25 This presentation of smallness gave audiences pause. As one exhibition-goer reflected in the Ceylon Observer daily newspaper, “We don’t somehow associate small industries with the massive US economy—‘Big Business’ is the term which readily comes to mind.”26 A further element of the exhibition assemblage, then, was an ongoing history of exhibiting the US in modest terms, including in Sri Lanka. The Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo was one in a long series of displays designed for exhibition outside the US, while also comparatively independent of the five other shows on small industries that went on view in India and Ghana, as evidenced in part by discrepancies in naming conventions over time.27 This disjuncture was compounded by the Small Industries Exhibition’s design by three different agencies: the United States Information Agency (USIA), the Department of Commerce’s Office of International Trade Fairs (OITF), and the Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service. The exhibits were marked by the three entities’ various agendas from the expansion of private business to agricultural development to image-building, and the agencies themselves were never monolithic. Owing to administrative reshuffling within the Department of Commerce at the time of the Small Industries Exhibition, the OITF remained in operation under that name only until mid-1961; by the time of the Accra exhibition, its functions had been absorbed into a new bureau.28 Finally, exhibitions were the result of specific agreements and compromises made between a rotating cast of agents in the US and abroad. These display arrangements between the OITF and private businesses rendered it impossible for exhibitions to travel as a pre-assembled group of displays between locations.

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Organizers collaborated with 125 private companies to produce the Colombo exhibit, but not every company sent materials and representatives to the other locations.29 Each display was a dizzying array of components from several private firms that were stitched into a functioning whole at each location.30

DESIGNING THE EXHIBITION EXPERIENCE An abundance of industrial displays, covering more than 35,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, spilled out of a large geodesic dome and four smaller domes installed at Campbell Park in Colombo.31 The geodesic dome itself, a far cry from typical brick-and-mortar urban structures in the city, presented an architectural spectacle to the group of local construction workers solicited to assemble it (Figure 6.1).32 According to USIA Director of Design Jack Masey, locals were first involved in pavilion construction out of sheer necessity at the Jeshyn International Fair in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1956. A late US entry had prompted a desperate request to designer Buckminster Fuller for an easily constructible geodesic dome to serve as the US pavilion, as well as entreaties to local Afghan

FIGURE 6.1 Local workers assemble the geodesic dome at the United States Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, 1961. Times Collection, Image 284.15. Department of National Archives, Colombo. Reproduced with permission from the Department of National Archives, Colombo.

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workers to assist in building it. Both geodesic domes and local involvement were taken up as distinguishing features of US pavilions at future exhibitions; the latter technique was purportedly an homage to the role of dragomans (tarjuman), interpreters who mediated between leaders of states in the Arabian peninsula and Europeans as early as the seventeenth century.33 US design critics believed the domes effectively showed how American technology could be “ingenious rather than lavish,” corresponding to the 1960s re-evaluation of consumerism that called for fewer but better things.34 Yet Masey’s assertion that the resemblance of geodesic domes to yurts might render them familiar to Afghans was not applicable in Colombo, where their exoticism made them an object of humor.35 Local designers also contributed to the overall spatial arrangement of each iteration of the Small Industries Exhibition, creating a pastiche of aesthetic choices unique to each location. Lankan designer Terry Jonklaas, of interior design firm Decorators & Furnishers Ltd., assisted in designing the shows in both Colombo and Mumbai, while engineer Shaukat Rai, of Indian architecture firm Kanvinde and Rai, was involved in the Kolkata show.36 Even US exhibition representatives were deliberately selected based on location. Industrial designer Thomas P. Rock from New York, who supervised the design of the show in Accra, was featured in Ebony as the first Black designer to be given this responsibility (he had not been assigned to work on the Colombo exhibit).37 Chicago businessman Eugene H. Scott, who was similarly sent to Accra to demonstrate and train locals at the dry-cleaning exhibit, did not travel to Colombo either.38

INTERFACING THE LOCAL FAMILIAR WITH THE FOREIGN UNKNOWN Involving locals at each location not only to assemble the exhibits but also to show audiences how to use the machines on view was a technique much vaunted by USIA exhibition designers. Verbal demonstrations in the three local languages in Colombo animated the prosaic placards of machinery specifications and power consumption, while also modulating the novelty of the objects on view.39 A model bakery, showing the versatility of wheat flour, doled out free samples of baked goods; many Lankans tasted their first Krispy Kremes thanks to a dedicated doughnut machine at the fair. Giving out free samples was also a US exhibition technique developed long before the Small Industries Exhibition was conceived, and was intended to demonstrate efficiency, abundance, and magnanimity. Yet it had drawn criticism at past events from exhibitor nations who could not afford to do the same, so at the Small Industries Exhibition it was paired with the technique of training locals to operate the displays. Press releases in local newspapers shared recipes for bread, hotcakes, and doughnuts, claiming that wheat was a more nutritious and inexpensive alternative

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to rice while also presenting it in terms of its resemblances to the latter grain.40 These claims were complemented by an oven and proofer, constructed almost entirely of indigenous materials by an American food processing technician and priced for South Asian markets, which was exhibited in the bakery to promote its use in cities and villages as a small-scale profit-making venture.41 Foreign modes of consumption were mediated not only by local demonstrators, then, but also by local-adjacent objects. Yet regional US newspapers reporting on the Small Industries Exhibition as it made its way across South Asia revealed that the real objective of the model bakery was not to educate audiences on nutrition but to aid efforts to expand the secondary market for US agricultural products in the region.42 Agriculture was used as a key political tool during the Cold War; US interventions in Asia included the introduction of high-yield varieties of crops, and subsidized imports of United States wheat that could be paid for in local currencies. The former was dubbed the Green Revolution; the latter program, which came under the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act (P.L. 480) of 1954, was later renamed by President John F. Kennedy as Food for Peace.43 The term also illuminates the program’s political intent to feed the “third world” before the Soviets did. The model bakery was a particularly potent assemblage of camouflaged economic concerns, political aspirations, and even prejudices about nutrition pressed into its material components from free doughnuts to the locally produced oven. Lankan car ownership in the 1960s was scarce, so the extensive auto repair and machine shop displays on view around the outer perimeter of the geodesic dome also appeared alien to most.44 Nevertheless, an interactive driver training machine invited the curious to test the joys of automotive travel, and power tools in the machine shop display were demonstrated to show their accuracy, efficiency, and ease of use.45 The spectacle of driving was augmented by the Circarama, a panoramic cinema originally developed by Walt Disney for the Tomorrowland theme park in California in 1955. Proving extremely popular at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair in Belgium, the Circarama apparatus was adapted for exhibition around the world and toured in a custom geodesic dome. A short film called America the Beautiful, shot to simulate the views that someone might see from their car on a road trip from the east to west coasts of the US, regaled the 500 viewers who crammed into the dome every twenty minutes with a continuous stream of landscapes that rolled past.46 The inclusion of the Circarama certainly distinguished the Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, for it had not been shown at any of the prior exhibitions in India. After the Colombo exhibit, it was taken to Helsinki, Finland, for a different exhibition whose tagline, “Industry in the Service of the Consumer,” was a nod to People’s Capitalism propaganda.47 The Circarama was not taken into Accra, either, but it was later shown as an independent cultural spectacle at several locations on the Indian subcontinent, funded by US-owned Indian rupees received as payment

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for previous Food for Peace trade programs, which included the US wheat surpluses being peddled through model bakery displays at exhibitions. These funds had accumulated to such a degree that a portion had to be set aside to expend for cultural programming to alleviate alarm at this mounting financial power.48 Other technologies, however, were already familiar to audiences, such as the shirt-making exhibit. The first Singer machine had been brought over to the island as early as 1869 (almost a full century before the Small Industries Exhibition), and the first Colombo office of the New Jersey-based firm was established in 1877. “Singer” soon came to describe all sewing machines, regardless of make.49 Singer sewing machines owed their success to local popularity as well as practicality and were received far more favorably than in neighboring India. At the Small Industries Exhibition, eleven volunteer seamstresses employed at local Sri Lankan firm Hentley Garments demonstrated how to join shirt sections, hem edges, make buttonholes, and fasten buttons using a Singer sewing machine. The firm also provided fabric for the display, while the local Singer distribution agency provided machines (Figure 6.2). Employees of Colombo laundromat Sitlani’s operated the model laundry display on how to use various washing, drying, and pressing machines.50

FIGURE 6.2 A seamstress demonstrates sewing techniques at the United States Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, 1961. Times Collection, Image 121. Department of National Archives, Colombo. Reproduced with permission from the Department of National Archives, Colombo.

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While using local demonstrators was rationalized as introducing locals to unfamiliar technologies, this was evidently not always true. In fact, what rendered the translators of industrial operations in the sewing or laundry exhibits most strange was not the action they engaged in, but the “unaccustomed overalls” they donned to perform it, in a curious reinterpretation of the displays of natives so common at world’s fairs in the previous century.51 Moreover, the uncertainty of political relations between Sri Lanka and the United States found expression in cautiously critical reviews of the Small Industries Exhibition in local media. Cartoons in daily newspapers gently poked fun at the doughnut machines.52 Free samples were always welcome, but an anonymous reviewer opined that the doughnut epitomized the exhibition’s consumerist ethos and wondered what locals could possibly do with a doughnut machine. In describing the personal experience of the Circarama, A. J. G. confessed that it was remarkable but concluded that “its possibilities are limited to spectacle,” revealing the challenges of curating palatable displays of plenty.53

COMPETING VISIONS OF SMALLNESS Many individual objects, too, were assemblages of materials, diverging convictions about human development, and theories of resource management, curiously encapsulated in competing presentations of the small. One such object was “the world’s most portable” sawmill, shown at work cutting and edging logs by its inventors, Clinton and Willard Jackson (Figure 6.3). Clinton Jackson, an engineer from Wisconsin, invented his portable sawmill in 1936 to process lumber in the woods and eliminate the need for transporting rough logs to the mill. By 1961, he and his brother Willard had shipped more than 500 to locations in the US and abroad, and the sawmill had become standard equipment for the US armed services.54 It could be set up for operation in thirty minutes, required little training to operate, and could produce cleanly cut lumber at a rate of up to 200 feet an hour. US newspapers described the Jacksons as “sell[ing] democracy to underprivileged countries in the world,” and the brothers received a citation of recognition from the US Department of Commerce for “aiding significantly the advancement of world understanding of peace and prosperity under the US system of competitive free enterprise.”55 It appears to have been shown only at the Colombo run of the Small Industries Exhibition, where it was so popular that operations were paused repeatedly to disperse the crowds.56 Locals quickly learned the brothers’ names, broadcast over the fair loudspeaker before each demonstration, and greeted them with a friendly “Hello Jackson!” as they traversed Colombo after hours.57 OITF representatives claimed it was “outstandingly appropriate” for Lankan needs,

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FIGURE 6.3 Clinton and Willard Jackson demonstrate their portable sawmill at the United States Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, 1961. Times Collection, Image 149. Department of National Archives, Colombo. Reproduced with permission from the Department of National Archives, Colombo.

and one was reportedly purchased for use in Hambantota, a town in the south of the island.58 The Jackson sawmill followed the logic of what architectural historian Reyner Banham terms a gizmo.59 A “small self-contained unit of high performance in relation to its size and cost,” a gizmo could transform an “undifferentiated set of circumstances” into something more suitable for human inhabitation. It required little skill to operate, functioned independently of social and physical infrastructures, and could potentially be ordered from a catalog, which Banham claimed made it eminently suitable for the developing world.60 Coincidentally, many such gizmos, including the Evinrude outboard motor and Sony transistor radio described in Banham’s essay, were also advertised in a Lankan newspaper supplement on the Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo by local distribution companies.61 The Jacksons would have agreed with Banham’s view that, having enabled westward expansion in the US, gizmos could aid economic development in the rest of the world. Yet the sawmill readily served as ambassador for other forms of development rhetoric; the Jacksons also readily demonstrated it at other industrial fairs, whose themes had little to do with smallness.62 The sawmill exhibit contrasted with a display of the recently developed Cinva-Ram block press. Invented in 1956 by Chilean engineer Raul Ramirez for the Inter-American Housing Center in Bogota, Colombia, it was intended as a

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cost-effective and environmentally friendly method for an individual to produce blocks and tiles for housing, using a packed mixture of earth, cement, and calcined limestone. Despite being advertised as a “solution to the housing crisis” alluded to in the Ten Year Plan, it was an intentionally labor-intensive and time-consuming process, albeit one that could still be undertaken by an individual.63 The block press was an exemplar of the burgeoning Appropriate Technology (AT) movement in the US, which would be further popularized in the second half of the 1960s with the publication of British economist E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, which drew inspiration from Indian political activist Mohandas K. Gandhi’s belief that small, local, and village-based technologies would foster self-reliant villages. These ideas clearly framed conceptions of smallness at earlier runs of the Small Industries Exhibition in India, with overt references to Gandhi, and the slogan “For the Welfare of All” hung above the displays.64 While the Colombo exhibit contained no explicit references to Gandhi, the presence of the block press still relayed this ideology, seemingly in response to references to rural self-sufficiency as a development strategy in the Ten Year Plan.65 In this manner, the idea of progress as increased technical performance jostled with that of holistic community development, and both were presented as forms of smallness that could be adopted by Lankans on their path to economic and industrial development. Meanwhile, the geodesic dome was an assemblage that contained both of these extremes. One of several of Buckminster Fuller’s lightweight machines for living in, the geodesic dome could be air-dropped with ease to desired locations, which made it appealing to the US military. By the mid-1950s, Fuller’s domes had garnered mass popularity, and were co-opted in the mid-1960s by proponents of the US counter-culture movement, particularly in pioneering Colorado commune Drop City (although as leaders of the movement began to focus more on community and ecology, they revised their view of Fuller’s ideas as being too individualistic).66 Yet USIA exhibition designers saw the geodesic dome’s mass of contradictions as an asset, not a defect. Jack Masey saw them as epitomizing the US as a “dramatic, on-going experiment . . . a flexible, even radical, system that could accommodate conflicting points of view.”67

AN ASSEMBLAGE OF SMALLNESS Smallness itself was thus an assemblage of ideas that held, however uncomfortably and briefly, for the duration of the Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo. Its conception and execution were configured by larger political events of the period. In January 1961, Lankan-US relations were on a precipice. If President Eisenhower had not taken the initiative to commence an US exhibitions program in the mid1950s, or if Prime Minister Bandaranaike’s National Planning Council had not prepared the Ten Year Plan in 1959, the exhibition would not have existed, or may

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not have been shown in Colombo. But it was just as much constructed through a series of particular and personal actions, by the worker who assembled a segment of the geodesic dome or the seamstress who selected what fabric to use at a given moment. The Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo was an assemblage distinct in many ways—from the human actors who designed it to the specific objects on view—from the fairs elsewhere that bore the same name. Of the many components of the Small Industries Exhibition, from the Jackson sawmill to the Circarama, some had arrived in Sri Lanka a century earlier, while others circulated from locations other than the United States. Some “small” US industries were only feasible because of the development of large infrastructural networks, particularly postal and transportation services. Smallness itself was a contradiction, as compact machines embodied work both swift and laborintensive, requiring little skill or specialized expertise, to be handled by an individual or distributed across a team. The lightness and quickness of the geodesic dome and sawmill contrasted with the labor-intensive slowness of the block press. The microcosm of an industrial future showcased by the sewing machine, an already-familiar object, stood in opposition to that presented by the condensed film of the Circarama and associated driver-training machine. Exhibitions of mobile objects are indeed supported by networks of logistical and administrative substructures. Yet reading the Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo as an irreproducible assemblage of objects, interactions, and politics that held together for a brief time, and whose individual components were contingently produced and contained multitudes, offers just as much insight into the constellation of ongoing forces that produced it, while also defining the contours of its specificity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Arindam Dutta, Timothy Hyde, and Anoma Pieris for their insightful feedback on earlier versions of this essay, and for comments received on parts of my argument presented at the NESAH Student Symposium and Art History Graduate Student Conference at Binghamton University in 2015. Thanks are also due to staff at the Department of National Archives in Colombo and at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, MD, for helpfully facilitating access to the archival materials consulted.

NOTES 1 The Dominion of Ceylon was renamed the Socialist Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka

in 1972, as part of a change in status from British dominion to independent republic within the Commonwealth of Nations. In this chapter, I use “Sri Lanka” as the term is more familiar to readers, and because the increasingly prevalent use of “Ceylon” in

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popular writing invokes the country’s past in nostalgic terms, discounting its colonial overtones. I also endeavor to omit the controversial honorific “Sri” where possible. Similarly, I use “United States” or “US” (but not America) as an abbreviation for the United States of America. For purposes of continuity, I use the present-day names of all other locations mentioned in the text, with 1961 naming conventions in parentheses if applicable. 2 “President’s Special International Program Semi-Annual Report, Volume 10,” 1961, RG

306, Entry# P 173: Reports Relating to the Special International Programs: 1955–1975, Box 2, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (NARA, College Park, MD). 3 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille Plateau (Paris: Éditions de minuit, 1980),

translated by Brian Massumi as A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 4 Manuel De Landa, A New Philosophy of Society. Assemblage Theory and Social

Complexity (London: Continuum, 2006). Bennett draws on Bruno Latour’s actornetwork theory of human and nonhuman actants and Baruch Spinoza’s work on the power of affect, as well as Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theories of assemblage, to delineate her theory of vibrant matter. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). 5 Scholarship that examines the act of translation in global majority nations, and

specifically in the realm of visual culture includes James Clifford, Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Saloni Mathur, ed., The Migrant’s Time. Rethinking Art History and Diaspora (Williamstown, MA: New Haven, CT: Clark Art Institute; Distributed by Yale University Press, 2011); Ila N. Sheren, Portable Borders. Performance Art and Politics on the U.S. Frontera since 1984 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016); Rebecca M. Brown, Displaying Time. The Many Temporalities of the Festival of India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017). 6 For writings on various aspects of smallness, largely in the field of literary theory, see

“Toys,” in Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1957), translated by Annette Lavers as Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 53–55; Susan Stewart, On Longing. Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham; London: Duke University Press, 1993); Italo Calvino, Patrick Creagh (trans.), Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1985–86. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Gaston Bachelard, La poétique de l’espace (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958), published in English as The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969); Steven Millhauser, “The Fascination of the Miniature,” Grand Street 2, no. 4 (Summer, 1983): 128–135. Barthes sees toys as microcosms for a future adult world, while Stewart sees the impetus for the miniature as a nostalgic eye to the past. Calvino’s articulations of quickness and lightness contrast with Bachelard’s observation of the heaviness of tiny details. Millhauser’s recognition of the relativity of smallness is also arguably explored in the two versions of documentary film Powers of Ten by Ray and Charles Eames. 7 For the politics of everyday actions, see Emily S. Apter, Unexceptional Politics. On

Obstruction, Impasse, and the Impolitic (London and New York: Verso, 2018); Michel de Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien (Paris: Gallimard): Union générale d’éditions, 1980), translated by Steven Rendall as The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). On grappling with scale in the writing of history,

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see John-Paul A Ghobrial, ed., “Global History and Microhistory”, Past & Present 242, Issue Supplement 14, November 2019. 8 For a discussion of other twentieth-century Lankan-US interactions through

exhibitions, see Anoma Pieris, “Modernity and Revolution: The Architecture of Ceylon’s Twentieth-Century Exhibitions,” in Duanfang Lu, ed., Third World Modernism. Architecture, Development and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2011), 141–164. 9 C. R. de Silva, The American Impact on Sri Lanka (Colombo: American Studies

Association of Sri Lanka, 1989). 10 John H. Martyn, Martyn’s Notes on Jaffna. Chronological, Historical, Biographical

(Tellippillai, Sri Lanka: American Ceylon Mission Press, 1923), 206. Many thanks to Vindhya Buthpitiya for this source. 11 A founding member of the Theosophical Society, US colonel Henry Steel Olcott is

particularly well known in Sri Lanka for his contributions to creating a catechism, designing a flag, founding secondary schools, and establishing new national holidays. Kingsley M. de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2005). 12 Nira Wickramasinghe, “Fashioning a Market: The Singer Sewing Machine in Colonial

Lanka,” in Daniel T. Rodgers, Bhavani Raman, and Helmut Reimitz, eds., Cultures in Motion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 154. 13 S. U. Kodikara, “Major Trends in Sri Lanka’s Non-Alignment Policy after

1956,” Asian Survey 13, no. 12 (December 1973): 1121–1136; de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka. 14 Richard Stuart Olson, “Expropriation and International Economic Coercion: Ceylon

and the ‘West’ 1961–65,” The Journal of Developing Areas 11, no. 2 (January 1977): 205–226. 15 The US government invoked the 1962 Hickenlooper Amendment to the Foreign

Assistance Act of 1961, which mandated the cessation of financial assistance to any government that expropriated US property without full and timely compensation in convertible foreign exchange. Passed in response to a recent wave of uncompensated nationalization projects in Latin America, the Hickenlooper Amendment turned a discretionary practice into a compulsory procedure but has been invoked only twice: in response to schemes in Sri Lanka in 1963, and in Ethiopia in 1979. While the case of Ethiopia is unsurprising, as its government was in the process of joining the Soviet bloc, the Lankan case has been critiqued as a power move in which a noncompliant smaller state was threatened without hurting United States trade, as the island had few resources valuable to the US at the time. Kodikara, “Major Trends in Sri Lanka’s Non-Alignment Policy after 1956”; Olson, “Expropriation and International Economic Coercion: Ceylon and the ‘West’ 1961–65.” 16 For a report on the Bandung Conference, see Richard Wright, The Color Curtain. A

Report on the Bandung Conference (Cleveland; New York: World Pub. Co., 1956). For a retrospective view, see See Seng Tan and Amitav Acharya, Bandung Revisited. The Legacy of the 1955 Asian-African Conference for International Order (Singapore: NUS Press, 2020). For a longer history of the origins of the Non-Aligned Movement, see Nataša Mišković, Harald Fischer-Tiné, and Nada Boškovska Leimgruber, The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War. Delhi, Bandung, Belgrade (London; New York: Routledge, 2014).

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17 Primarily concerned with rapid industrialization and collectivized agriculture, the first

five-year plan of the USSR was launched in 1928 under Joseph Stalin; twelve successive plans were conceived over subsequent decades, but the last was abandoned after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. 18 “President’s Special International Program Semi-Annual Report, Volume 5,” 1958,

44–45, RG 306, Entry# P 173: Office of Research and Assessment: Reports Relating to the Special International Programs: 1955–1975, Box 1, NARA, College Park, MD. The dates of the Small Industries Exhibition were as follows: New Delhi: December 1958–January 1959; Kolkata, then called Calcutta: March–April 1959; Chennai, then Madras: September 1959; Mumbai, then Bombay: February 1960; Colombo: January– February 1961; Accra: November–December 1961. 19 India’s and Ghana’s development plans were part of a series of centralized state

planning documents. India’s Second Five Year Plan envisioned a rapid shift to industrialization from agriculture through a closed economy and the active role of the state. Ghana’s Second Development Plan also anticipated expanding state-led industrial development, constructing a hydroelectric dam on the Volta River, and raising the yield of its chief export, cocoa. India Planning Commission, Second Five Year Plan, 1956; Paul Bareau, Roland Bird, and Andrew Shonfield, “India’s Second Five-Year Plan,” International Affairs 33, no. 3 (July 1957): 301–309. Second Development Plan (Ghana: Government Printer, 1959); J. H. Frimpong-Ansah, The Vampire State in Africa. The Political Economy of Decline in Ghana (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1992); Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame Nkrumah’s Politico-Cultural Thought and Policies. An African-Centered Paradigm for the Second Phase of the African Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2005). 20 The Ten Year Plan (Colombo, Ceylon: National Planning Council, 1959). 21 The Ten Year Plan, 393–405. 22 Jane Fiske Mitarachi, “Design as a Political Force,” Industrial Design 4, no. 2 (February

1957): 37–55. 23 The People’s Capitalism campaign was designed to provide ideological unity for 1950s

trade fairs that would cast President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Republican Party in a positive light, while distanced from both Senator Joseph McCarthy’s fanatical isolationism and Under Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Nelson Rockefeller’s proposed New Deal-esque foreign aid. It was also intended to counter Soviet rhetoric that framed socialism as “People’s Democracy” at other exhibitions. The new American messaging asserted that the complete freedom of choice enjoyed by Americans resulted in a growing classlessness, an abundance of goods, and a proliferation of labor-saving gadgets; the economy thrived through free competitive enterprise, free trade unionism, and limited government intervention; increased leisure time led to the popularity of DIY and self-improvement schemes, refuting the notion that technology was only accessible to the wealthy. Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty. Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997); Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain. Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Laura A. Belmonte, Selling the American Way. U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Greg Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front. The Soft Power of Midcentury Design (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Sarah Nilsen, Projecting America, 1958. Film and Cultural Diplomacy at the Brussels World’s Fair (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011).

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24 “It’s not Communism that Worries Me, but this Dangerous Concept of People’s

Capitalism!,” cartoon, Ceylon Daily News, May 2, 1957. “Ceylonese like our Ed Barnes,” The New York Times, May 27, 1957. 25 “President’s Special International Program Semi-Annual Report, Volume 5,” 5. 26 “Small Industries in Big Business,” Ceylon Observer, January 19, 1961. 27 The first show in New Delhi was called the US Solo Exhibit, with the “Small Industries

Exhibition” moniker coming into use only at Kolkata; even so, the Kolkata show was also referred to as the US Solo Small Industries Fair and Calcutta Trade Fair in American press. Fritz Berliner, director of the Small Industries Exhibition, counted the Colombo exhibition as the “fifth in a series” in Lankan newspapers. US magazine Ebony described the Accra show, however, as the “103rd in a six-year program by the Department of Commerce” (the USIA was not mentioned) and titled it the US National Exhibition. “President’s Special International Program Semi-Annual Report, Volume 5”; “Capitalist Show Is Put On The Road For India,” The Milwaukee Journal, December 4, 1958; “Hafner in Charge of Exhibit at Calcutta,” Soybean Digest, March 1959; “5 Grants for Wheat Research Total More than #dl28,000,” Tri-City Herald, March 10, 1959; “Greetings from Fritz Berliner,” Times of Ceylon, January 21, 1961; “U.S. Trade Fair in Ghana,” Ebony, November 1961. 28 The OITF took over exhibition-related activities of the Bureau of Foreign Commerce

(BFC). The BFC’s other functions were absorbed into the new Bureau of International Programs (BIP) in August 1961. The OITF was also transferred to a new Bureau of International Business Operations in 1961, which was consolidated with BIP in February 1963 to form the Bureau of International Commerce (BIC). BIC was amalgamated with the Bureau of Domestic and International Business Administration in November 1972, which was abolished in December 1977, with its functions transferred to the Industry and Trade Administration, which in turn became absorbed into the new International Trade Administration in January 1984, which remains in operation today. Robert B. Matchette, ed., Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1995). 29 “Small Industries to the Fore,” Times of Ceylon, January 21, 1961. 30 USIA reports on the exhibition in Kolkata, for example, describe in list-like form the

success of the “engine repair shop with Lemco, Tamco, Kwikway, and Sunnen machines, the Aro lubricator, and Saylor Beall compressor,” and the “adjacent clutch repair shop with Maremont clutch builder and Chicago brake reliner.” “Cabled Report from Calcutta,” 1959, RG 489: Records of the International Trade Administration: Prints: Photographs of U.S. Exhibits at Overseas Trade Fairs 1957–1965, Box 2, NARA, College Park, MD. 31 “U.S. Show Opens on Saturday,” The Sunday Times (Ceylon), January 15, 1961. The park

was named for British administrator G. W. R. Campbell, who took over the police force in British Ceylon in 1866 as its first Inspector-General, and who secured the space for public recreation. 32 “Work on U.S. Exhibition Almost Over,” Times of Ceylon, January 11, 1961. 33 Jack Masey, Cold War Confrontations. US Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural

Cold War (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2008), 61. 34 Mitarachi, “Design as a Political Force,” 50; Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty, 227–228. 35 Wijesoma, “Look, Papa, Eskimoes!,” cartoon, Times of Ceylon, January 24, 1961. 36 “A Ceylonese Designed It,” Times of Ceylon, January 20, 1961; “Popular U.S. Exhibit

Repeats Solo Trade Fair in Calcutta” (Department of Commerce, Office of

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International Trade Fairs, Public Information Office, February 24, 1959), RG 489-OF: Records of the International Trade Administration; Prints: Photographs of U.S. Exhibits at Overseas Trade Fairs 1957–1965, Box 2, NARA, College Park, MD. 37 “U.S. Trade Fair in Ghana,” Ebony, November 1961. 38 “Chicago Businessman’s First Impressions of Africa,” Muhammad Speaks, March 18,

1963. 39 Jack Masey, Cold War Confrontations; “Work on U.S. Exhibition Almost Over”;

“Doughnuts, Geodesic Domes and Circarama.” 40 Chuck Gabby, president of Western Wheat Associates, took pains to present wheat as

nutritionally superior to rice. “Rexburg Man to Head Wheat Exhibit at Fairs in India,” Idaho State Journal, August 28, 1959. Lankan newspaper readers were assaulted with claims like this one: “[E]nriched bread plays an essential role in the day’s diet. It supplies important amounts of food iron and three B-vitamins, plus food energy and protein. That’s why nutritionists recommend four or more servings of enriched or whole grain bread and cereals every day.” “Recipes from the Wheat Kitchen,” Times of Ceylon, January 30, 1961. This report mentions the exhibition in Bombay: 12th Semiannnual Report On Activities Carried On Under Public Law 480, 83D Congress, As Amended (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, August 12, 1960). 41 “Rexburg Man to Head Wheat Exhibit at Fairs in India.” Local newspapers in Ceylon

featured an economical kerosene bake oven, apparently able to operate continuously for sixteen hours with a few bottles of kerosene oil, that was demonstrated at the exhibition. It is possible this refers to the same object. “Recipes from the Wheat Kitchen.” 42 “Use of Northwest Wheat Growing in India,” Tri-City Herald, April 10, 1959. “Calcutta

Citizens Turning to Wheat,” Garden City Telegram, April 27, 1959. 43 Nick Cullather, The Hungry World. America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 44 At the end of 1960, privately owned vehicles in all of Sri Lanka numbered a little over

82,500. S. H. Steinberg, The Statesman’s Year-Book 1962 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1962), 494. 45 “Kennedy Will Send Message for Exhibition,” Ceylon Daily News, January 16, 1961. 46 “Minister Opens U.S. Exhibition,” The Sunday Times (Ceylon), January 22, 1961;

Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty, 110. 47 The People’s Capitalism campaign slogan was “Industry in the Service of Mankind.” US

Congress, House of Representatives, “Committee on Appropriations. Departments of State, Justice and the Judiciary Appropriations. Hearings 1963. Eighty-Seventh Congress, Second Session,” (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1962); Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty, 43, 51; Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 139. 48 From 1958 to 1961, the USIA sent the Circarama to accompany trade fairs in “strategic

locations,” resulting in an erratic and inefficient travel itinerary that was done away with for the India tour. US Congress, House of Representatives, “Committee on Appropriations, 1963”; “Circarama Film Show,” The Hindu, September 22, 1961; “Circarama Shows,” Times of India, December 7, 1961; “The Old Makes Way for the Crass,” The Hindu, September 16, 2002. 49 Nira Wickramasinghe, Metallic Modern. Everyday Machines in Colonial Sri Lanka (New

York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 18; Wickramasinghe, “Fashioning a Market: The Singer Sewing Machine in Colonial Lanka,” 154.

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50 “Kennedy Will Send Message for Exhibition.” 51 “Doughnuts, Geodesic Domes and Circarama.” 52 Mark Gerreyn, “Simple Simeon’s Small Industries Exhibition,” cartoon, Ceylon Daily

News, January 31, 1961; “ ‘In the Soviet Union, They Make It without the Hole!,’ ” cartoon, Ceylon Daily News, January 30, 1961. 53 “Doughnuts, Geodesic Domes and Circarama,” Ceylon Daily News, January 28, 1961. 54 First sent to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1950, they had also been shipped to Canada, Norway,

Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), as well as Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and South Korea by 1961. “Mondovi Product Going to Ceylon,” Winona Daily News, August 29, 1960; “Mondovi Sawmill on Exhibition at Ceylon Fair,” Winona Daily News, February 21, 1961; “You Might Call This an Industrial Town,” Winona Daily News, April 22, 1962. 55 “Mondovi Sawmill on Exhibition At Ceylon Fair”; “Mondovi Firm Given Award,”

Winona Daily News, April 27, 1962. 56 “Mondovi Product Going to Ceylon”; “Two Mondovians go to Ceylon,” Winona Daily

News, January 6, 1961; “Mondovi Sawmill on Exhibition at Ceylon Fair”; “Mondovians Win Praise for Ceylon Show,” Winona Daily News, March 13, 1961. 57 “Mondovians Win Praise for Ceylon Show.” 58 “You Might Call This an Industrial Town.” 59 Reyner Banham, A Critic Writes. Essays by Reyner Banham (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1996). 60 Banham’s precise words were, “development countries, especially in Africa.” Banham, A

Critic Writes, 115. 61 “United Tractor and Equipment Ltd,” advertisement, Times of Ceylon, January 21, 1961;

“Photo-Cinex Ltd,” advertisement, Times of Ceylon, January 21, 1961. 62 Among others, the Jacksons exhibited their portable sawmill at the Poznań

International Fair in June 1962. “Mondovi Firm to Exhibit in Poland,” Winona Daily News, March 21, 1962. 63 “Kennedy Will Send Message for Exhibition.” 64 “President’s Special International Program Semi-Annual Report, Volume 7”, RG 306

Entry# P 173: Office of Research and Assessment: Reports Relating to the Special International Programs: 1955–1975, Box 1, NARA, College Park, MD. 65 These ideas were also expressed by A. T. Ariyaratne, who in 1956 founded a counter-

cultural Lankan organization called the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement. It rapidly gained popularity in the latter half of the twentieth century, framing Buddhism as a practice of worldly engagement, not retreat, to engage in rural development projects. Today, it is a large and well-known nonprofit; relatedly, Sarvodaya USA was founded as a registered 501(c)(3) organization in 1988. 66 Michael John Gorman, Buckminster Fuller. Designing for Mobility (Milan; New York:

Skira, 2005); Hsiao-yun Chu and Roberto G. Trujillo, eds., New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 67 Jack Masey, Cold War Confrontations, 203.

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7 PAINTING FROM THE PACIFIC AND ARTISTIC EXCHANGE ACROSS THE PACIFIC, 1961 Ian Cooke

PAINTING FROM THE PACIFIC AS TRANSNATIONAL EXHIBITION Peter Tomory, the director of the Auckland City Art Gallery (ACAG), wrote in his 1961 foreword to the Painting from the Pacific catalog that the intention behind this exhibition was to bring together works from New Zealand, Australia, the West Coast of the United States, and Japan “to see whether the Pacific provided some common characteristic: perhaps light, or topography, or perhaps again, some indefinable element.”1 Tomory framed this as an experiment and concluded by stating “Whether this exhibition achieves its purpose or not, it will give considerable evidence of the vitality of contemporary painting in the Pacific.”2 Although the premise would be deemed a failure, Painting from the Pacific did offer New Zealanders a still rare opportunity to experience a range of recent art from different countries, and by including New Zealand art it gave, as one subsequent commentator observed, “for the first time . . . an international setting against which the local product could be judged.”3 From an institutional point of view, it was significant both as the first international exhibition organized by the ACAG and the first based on a specific hypothesis. Painting from the Pacific was also a transnational show, both in the idea behind it and in the network of international contacts that made it possible. It developed out of four particular shows displayed at the ACAG: Contemporary Australian

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Painting (1957), Eight American Artists (1958), Contemporary Japanese Art (1959), and Contemporary Australian Art (1960), as well as a first-time visit to New Zealand in 1956 by Dr. Grace McCann Morley, the director of the San Francisco Museum of Art (SFMA) and a consequent visit by Colin McCahon, the ACAG’s curator and one of New Zealand’s foremost modernist artists, to the United States in 1958, that created a relationship between these two institutions. Together, these interactions informed the development of the premise and created the contacts that Tomory would utilize to bring the show to fruition. The purpose of this chapter is to examine these interactions and the subsequent creation of transnational networks, considering how and why they developed, the wider geopolitical and cultural contexts in which they existed, and how these informed Painting from the Pacific. In doing so, it will add to the understanding of how such transnational networks operated—both the role of wider forces, including geopolitical shifts and cultural diplomacy, as well as the importance of individual efforts and relationships.

NEW ZEALAND’S SHIFTING GEOPOLITICAL RELATIONS Prior to the Second World War, New Zealand’s primary international relationship was with Great Britain.4 However, the reality of its geographic position in the South Pacific, and its vulnerability, was brought home by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and its rapid advance south culminating in the fall of Singapore, the site of Britain’s chief military base in South-East Asia, in February 1942.5 Consequently, in the immediate aftermath of the war, New Zealand’s main fear was the potential threat of a resurgent Japan.6 This anxiety was shared by Australia and the political consensus in both countries was that a substantial US presence in the Pacific would be the best guarantee against this.7 In terms of the Cold War, as the situation in Europe deteriorated, New Zealand and Australia aligned with their traditional allies, Britain and the United States, against the Soviet Union. Although the United States initially steered away from a formal alliance with New Zealand and Australia in this first phase of the Cold War, the communist takeover of China (1949) and the start of the Korean War (1950–1953) shifted its attention to the Asia-Pacific region. The United States now sought to arrange a nonpunitive treaty with Japan that would allow that country to rebuild and become a strong ally against Communism. This provided New Zealand and Australia with the opportunity to insist on a security guarantee from the Americans in exchange for supporting such a treaty. Consequently, in September 1951, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States signed the ANZUS Security Treaty, and a week later these countries were also signatories to the peace treaty with Japan.8 Following this, trade relations between New Zealand and Japan steadily increased and New Zealand’s attitude

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towards that country gradually developed away from fear and suspicion towards an emphasis on the benefits to be gained from closer relations.9 These political relationships would also foster cultural diplomatic efforts from the United States and Japan that would, in turn, play a role in the interactions that would lead to Painting from the Pacific.

NEW ZEALAND’S POSTWAR CULTURAL EXPANSIONS Just as the conclusion of the Second World War led to shifts in New Zealand’s geopolitical alignment, it also provided an opportunity for New Zealand society to reassess its priorities as it sought to move on from the trauma of war. One aspect of this was a desire for greater cultural engagement, which encompassed an increasing interest in art.10 This was facilitated in part through New Zealand’s growing international relations, which created more opportunities for displays of overseas art, and through developments at the ACAG that would make it the most progressive and proactive art gallery in New Zealand in the 1950s and into the 1960s. Throughout the 1950s, one of the most active suppliers of cultural material was the US government, through the United States Information Service (USIS) branch in Wellington.11 Its activities in New Zealand were related in part to concerns over growing anti-Americanism; an evaluation report sent to Washington, DC in September 1952 noted there had been “a disturbing deterioration of public opinion sympathetic to the United States and its aims.”12 In response, it put forward that one of its four main priorities would be to “make available to the New Zealand public a far greater quantity of superior cultural material.”13 Consequently, it would bring Grace Morley to New Zealand and supply various art exhibitions to art galleries around the country, including Eight American Artists in 1958.14 Other foreign governments also employed art as a form of cultural diplomacy and used the National Art Gallery in Wellington as a conduit for distribution. The New Zealand government funded this institution, and its position in the capital made it the natural place for foreign embassies and legations to approach. It was, however, developments at the ACAG that would be central to creating the context and opportunities that led to Painting from the Pacific. These owed much to the efforts of that institution’s first two professional directors, Eric Westbrook and Peter Tomory. The ACAG had opened in 1888 and at its inception was under the control of the City Librarian, a position held by John Barr from 1913 to 1952. Under his stewardship the ACAG hosted exhibitions, including shows from overseas, and he made acquisitions and gradual improvements to the gallery through funds provided by the Auckland City Council (ACC).15 Overall, however,

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the ACAG was held back by the lack of adequate staff and a coherent acquisitions policy, and a dispute over control of the gallery spaces. This situation changed after Barr announced his intention to retire in 1951 and the ACC decided to hire a fulltime professional director for the art gallery. This led to developments that made the ACAG the leading cultural institution in the country and laid the groundwork for its continuing importance. After advertising internationally, the ACC appointed Eric Westbrook, an Englishman whose previous roles included chief exhibition officer for the British Council and director of the Wakefield Art Gallery in Yorkshire. Westbrook secured funding from the ACC to continue improvements to the infrastructure of the building and to hire staff, developed a collections policy, and instituted a program of frequently changing exhibitions.16 After Westbrook’s resignation in 1955, the ACC appointed another Englishman, Peter Tomory, who had worked in art galleries in England and as an assistant regional director for the Arts Council of Great Britain, a public body promoting the fine arts. Tomory built on the changes initiated by Westbrook: he made international contacts, increased the professionalism of the staff, continued to develop local shows and bring in exhibitions from overseas, and created a formalized structure for the distribution of these around New Zealand.17 These, then, were the wider contexts in which the interactions that led to Painting from the Pacific took place. However, before looking at these interactions in greater detail, it is worth considering briefly the nature of the works in Painting from the Pacific in order to understand their relationship to the exhibitions that informed that show.

THE CONTENTS OF PAINTING FROM THE PACIFIC Painting from the Pacific consisted of thirty-five works from Japan, twenty-six from the US West Coast, and ten each from Australia and New Zealand. The vast majority of these were dated between 1955 and 1961 and there was an array of styles and subject matter, although depictions of landscapes and nature were most common. As such, it presented a variety of contemporary works to a New Zealand audience not overly familiar with recent international trends in painting. The Japanese section encompassed both traditional and “western style” painting; it included a number of landscapes, some figurative works, and several abstractions. The US West Coast section was divided into three geographical regions, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Northwest, and Los Angeles, and featured works that reflected current trends from each of these regions. There were paintings by artists associated with the Northwest School, Los Angeles artists associated with geometric abstraction and with the emerging avant-garde scene in that city, and by Bay Area Abstract Expressionists and figurative painters. The Australian section

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was also focused on recent artistic developments and included examples of expressionist figuration, geometric abstraction, and Abstract Expressionism alongside traditional landscapes. The ten paintings in the New Zealand section consisted of both semi-abstracted and expressionist landscapes as well as examples of pure abstraction.

PAINTING FROM THE PACIFIC: CREATING TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS The first event that facilitated the creation of the networks that would lead to Painting from the Pacific was the 1956 visit by Grace Morley to New Zealand. Morley’s trip was part of a global tour sponsored by the US State Department that took in countries in East and Central Africa, Asia, and the Pacific and was firmly based in the politics of the Cold War. The tour fell under the auspices of the State Department’s International Educational Exchange Program that sent specialists around the world, usually to developing nations, to impart their knowledge and experience.18 Morley was well-qualified for this program as she was a major figure in the museum world, both in the United States and internationally. Among numerous other roles she had been a member of the US State Department’s Advisory Committee on Art (1941–1945), the UNESCO head of museums (1947–1949), and helped create the International Council of Museums. The USIS in Wellington facilitated the inclusion of New Zealand on Morley’s itinerary, and her visit took in Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Auckland.19 At this last stop, McCahon hosted her at the ACAG.20 Fortuitously, her last day in the country coincided with Tomory’s first, and the two were able to meet for several hours.21 One outcome of this interaction was the organization of a visit in 1958 to the United States by McCahon. As part of his plans to increase the professionalism of the ACAG, Tomory wrote to Morley to ask for her support with sending staff to the United States to “widen their experience in the visual arts, and also in Art Museum methods.”22 He chose the United States because, in his words, “there is no country nearer . . . which can offer so much, both in professionally run Art Museums and in wealth of collections.’ ”23 Morley subsequently became instrumental in bringing McCahon to the US, where he traveled with his wife for almost four months, visiting over twenty-five cities across the country. Morley corresponded with the Commonwealth Fund of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which provided the money for McCahon’s travels,24 established an itinerary, and hosted him at the SFMA for around three weeks, where he worked alongside the staff. As a result, the SFMA was the natural institution for Tomory to approach to organize the US West Coast selection for Painting from the Pacific. McCahon’s time in the US would also be important in the formulation of the premise behind the exhibition.

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Morley’s visit and its consequences demonstrate how the interplay of various factors informed the development of the transnational networks that led to Painting from the Pacific. Her visit had its origins in Cold War cultural diplomacy, and more specifically in the aims of the USIS in New Zealand. However, its larger consequences were the result of personal relationships and individual efforts, including Tomory’s interest in developing international contacts, his desire to make the ACAG more professional, and Morley’s willingness to assist with this. Cultural diplomacy and Tomory’s proactive approach were also important to the display in New Zealand of Eight American Artists, one of the exhibitions that informed the premise behind Painting from the Pacific. Tomory had cultivated a relationship with the USIS in Wellington, and such was the positive impression he made that the US embassy described him as “Perhaps one of the outstanding boosters of American culture, particularly in the art field” and noted that he had “continually endeavored to secure works of American art.”25 This had demonstrated to the USIS that there was a demand for American art and provided an important venue for exposure, and was arguably a factor in its decision to tour Eight American Artists to New Zealand.26 This show featured works by four painters from the US Northwest and four sculptors from the New York area. The Seattle Art Museum had assembled it at the request of the USIA, which had asked that institution to select works by four painters based in the US Northwest (Guy Anderson, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Mark Tobey) for two shows, one to tour Western Europe and one to tour the Pacific.27 These artists had recently achieved a certain respectability and approval as part of a so-called school of Northwest art.28 This presumably made them acceptable for display under US government auspices, particularly given the various controversies that had to that point surrounded the display of abstract art overseas by the US government.29 The Pacific tour of the show began in South Korea, then traveled to Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia. The show opened in Wellington in December 1957, and then went to the ACAG in January 1958. The twenty-seven paintings in the show had a strong focus on the natural world, but also included works by Tobey that showcased his “white-writing” technique, an all-over style of painting that conveyed energy and movement through complex interconnections of line. Tomory also contacted both public institutions and private art galleries in his efforts to bring in exhibitions; the two Australian shows that informed Painting from the Pacific are examples of this. In 1957 he approached the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne to contribute and source paintings for Contemporary Australian Painting. This consisted of twenty-seven paintings, and Hal Missingham, the director of the AGNSW, wrote the catalog introduction. Missingham would be Tomory’s first port of call when he was looking for someone to select paintings for the Australian section of Painting from the Pacific. For the 1960 show Contemporary

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Australian Art, he engaged the directors of the privately owned Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. This featured eighty-six paintings and nine sculptures, and a catalog introduction by Australian artist and critic James Gleeson. The intention of these shows was to demonstrate the variety of recent work being produced by Australian artists, and both Missingham and Gleeson noted in the catalog the importance of exposure to overseas trends to the growing range of styles then present in Australian art. Together, the shows featured various renditions of landscapes, including depictions of the outback, examples of figurative work, and paintings by artists working in an abstract mode, including early Australian abstractionists and others who had taken inspiration from Abstract Expressionism. The other show that informed Painting from the Pacific, both its premise and in the development of contacts, was Contemporary Japanese Art. Like Eight American Artists, this was an exercise in cultural diplomacy; in this case the exhibition was an example of Japan’s efforts to rehabilitate its image following the Second World War in two countries that had been enemies but were now increasingly important political and economic partners. It toured first to Australia and then to New Zealand from 1958 to 1959 and was the result of discussions between the director of the NAG, Stewart Maclennan, and the Japanese Ambassador to New Zealand, and the director of the AGNSW, Hal Missingham, and the Japanese Ambassador to Australia. It was financed by the Japanese government with support from the Australian and New Zealand governments and the logistics were handled by the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and its vice-director, Atsuo Imaizumi, who also wrote the catalog introduction and would become Tomory’s contact for the Japanese section of Painting from the Pacific. The New Zealand leg of the exhibition consisted of 127 contemporary artworks, with the painting section comprised of thirty-one “traditional” works and thirtyfour “Western-style” oil paintings. The former was made up of representational works that utilized standard Japanese artistic conventions, techniques, and materials. The subject matter consisted primarily of animals, representations of landscapes, and depictions of figures. Stylistically, there was an economy of detail, subtle use of color, and a focus on line and design. The “Western-style” paintings featured naturalistic still lifes, landscapes, and figurative works as well as a selection of abstractions that showed the impact of twentieth-century artistic movements on Japanese art and how Japanese artists were adapting new forms of expression.

A “SYMPATHETIC LINK”: REGIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS These interactions were also important to the development of the premise behind Painting from the Pacific. Tomory began the foreword to the Painting from the Pacific catalog by referencing Eight American Artists, Contemporary Japanese Art,

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and the two Australian shows discussed above, writing that recent exhibitions from Australia, Japan, and the US West Coast had suggested a “sympathetic link” between artists from those places and New Zealand artists. He further stated that the purpose of Painting from the Pacific was to bring together work from these regions “to see whether the Pacific provided some common characteristic.”30 Tomory did not specify exactly what had been observed in the various shows to suggest a “sympathetic link,” but I would suggest that it was in part related to perceived similarities in subject and style between artists from overseas and New Zealand artists. First, landscapes and depictions of nature were a common feature of all the exhibitions discussed above, and were also a particular concern of New Zealand artists. In addition, staff at the ACAG may have seen similarities in the ways that artists from these countries were responding to new artistic trends as exposure to international art increased through exhibitions, books, magazines, and overseas visits. This was certainly an issue for a number of New Zealand artists who were grappling with the question of how to explore new styles while maintaining a sense of place. It was also something that Gleeson and Missingham highlighted in their respective catalog introductions to the Australian shows that had come to New Zealand, and it was a clear aspect of Contemporary Japanese Art, which divided its painting section into two, based on artists using traditional means and artists who were painting in a “western” manner. Colin McCahon also carried this interest in perceived artistic similarities with him to the United States. McCahon left Auckland in April 1958, not long after the display of Eight American Artists at the ACAG, and his first stop was San Francisco. There he wrote to Molly Ryburn, the administrative assistant of the ACAG, “I am told that S.F. is not like the rest of the country but a very different place. I think there is definitely something in common in Pacific Cities that makes the difference. I shall know when I’ve been East.”31 Moreover, following his return to New Zealand, McCahon “spoke of his curiosity as to whether the art produced in countries bordering on the Pacific might share any similar elements.”32 Such thoughts may also have been in part stimulated through conversation with Morley, who believed that art from the US West Coast was different to that of the rest of the country. In an interview conducted in 1960, as part of a discussion about modern American art, Morley argued that “there is a certain quality that comes from the place,” which she thought was related to the distinctive landscape of the West Coast, particularly its space and scale.33 These ideas were also related to Tomory’s own art historical approach that included a belief in the role of the environment in the art of a country or region.34 This had previously informed his discussion of New Zealand art, and Painting from the Pacific can be interpreted as an extension of this to a regionalist viewpoint. In suggesting that there might be commonalities between the art produced in regions on the Pacific Rim, Painting from the Pacific expressed a transnational view of culture. This represented a departure from how art had often been presented in

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exhibitions in New Zealand, both homegrown and from overseas, which generally focused on the concept of national characteristics in art. However, the exhibition also had clear limitations. It presented a restricted view of the Pacific, not giving consideration to the multitude of islands in that ocean, nor countries in SouthEast Asia or Central and South America that also bordered it. This narrow presentation can be related to the historian Arif Dirlik’s argument that “the Pacific” does not exist as an objective reality, but rather is a notion that shifts according to time, place, and historical circumstance. As he stated, “In a fundamental sense, there is no Pacific region that is an ‘objective’ given, but only a competing set of ideational constructs that project upon a certain location on the globe the imperatives of interest, power, or vision of these historically produced relationships.”35 From this perspective, Painting from the Pacific represented a particular view of the Pacific, one that corresponded to New Zealand’s specific interests and key geopolitical allies in the Asia-Pacific region at that time. In addition, the exhibition was primarily mediated through a Eurocentric lens. Tomory’s concern in his New Zealand selection was with artists working within a European painting tradition and consequently he did not include any Maori or Pacific Island art or artists. Similarly, the Australian selection did not include Aboriginal art or artists, nor did the US section have any Native American art or artists.

PAINTING FROM THE PACIFIC: DEVELOPMENT AND DISPLAY Painting from the Pacific developed out of the various interactions described above, but the immediate catalyst for the show was Tomory’s belief that, by 1960, opportunities to bring in exhibitions from overseas were in decline. As he noted in an interview with the New Zealand Herald in April 1960, the ACAG was reliant on overseas shows for its exhibitions program. However, he recognized that “Unfortunately our present sources are drying up and some of the larger organizations in Britain and America which handle prestige exhibitions are more interested in sending their shows on goodwill tours to non-democratic countries,” so that “the only thing to do is to go out and arrange our own.”36 Painting from the Pacific was one result of this new mentality. Consequently, in June 1960 Tomory sent letters to George Culler, the director of the SFMA who had replaced Morley, Hal Missingham of the AGNSW, and Atsuo Imaizumi of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, to solicit their involvement in the exhibition that would become Painting from the Pacific. In these letters, Tomory also expressed a desire to tour the exhibition to the contributing countries, and noted in his correspondence that copies of the letters were being sent to the relevant ambassadors and the Australian high commissioner “with the hope that the Governments concerned

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may facilitate arrangements and also provide sufficient help so that the exhibition could be toured to each country concerned.”37 Culler and Imaizumi both agreed to select works, but Missingham had to decline the offer due to other commitments.38 He did, however, suggest two alternatives to Tomory, one of whom, Laurie Thomas, agreed to make the Australian selection.39 The willingness of these people to contribute to Painting from the Pacific demonstrates the value of the networks that Tomory and the ACAG had built up through the various artistic exchanges outlined above. In addition, it is plausible that the involvement of Culler was in part stimulated by cultural diplomatic interests. The USIA in Washington, DC may have encouraged Culler to respond in a positive manner to Tomory in recognition of the value of maintaining cultural contacts despite its own inability to fulfill these. The USIA had become aware of the exhibition after the USIS in Wellington had forwarded Tomory’s letter to the US ambassador in New Zealand to Washington.40 Although the USIA replied to the USIS that they were unable to offer assistance due to budget constraints, the USIA also noted that it had communicated with Culler about the proposal.41 Tomory’s desire to tour Painting from the Pacific to the other countries is also significant given that exhibitions of New Zealand art overseas were at this stage rare, as a result of New Zealand’s lack of infrastructure to facilitate tours of art and a general lack of interest from other countries in hosting New Zealand art.42 It demonstrated that the ACAG wanted to make New Zealand a creator and exporter of exhibitions, rather than just a passive recipient. Unfortunately, despite interest from two Australian galleries, the exhibition would only tour around New Zealand.43 Painting from the Pacific was displayed first in Auckland in 1961, where it was well-received by the public, attracting an attendance of around 8,000.44 Tomory, quoted in the New Zealand Herald, noted how, “To our surprise these paintings— mostly abstracts—seem to have caught on with viewers . . . And they are popular not only with youngsters but with elderly people. All have found them stimulating.”45 The show then toured to Christchurch, Dunedin, and Wellington. In Christchurch, attendance totaled 1,590 over four weeks, which was a reasonable number for the Robert MacDougall Art Gallery, and its director noted the works were “both interesting and puzzling to most visitors.”46 The exhibition did not, however, fare as well in Dunedin. Annette Pearse, director of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, noted in a letter to Tomory, “We’ve had as much publicity as we could have had in the papers, but didn’t get the attendance we would have liked unfortunately, as it was an interesting exhibition mostly.”47 Although only installation shots of Painting from the Pacific at the ACAG exist (Figure 7.1–3), it appears that the display of the exhibition in each venue was different. This was in part because no one from the ACAG traveled with the show, so responsibility for the hang lay with each individual gallery director. At the

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FIGURE 7.1 Painting from the Pacific, 1961, installation view 1. E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Ta¯ maki.

FIGURE 7.2 Painting from the Pacific, 1961, installation view 2. E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Ta¯ maki.

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FIGURE 7.3 Painting from the Pacific, 1961, installation view 3. E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Ta¯ maki.

Dunedin gallery the works were divided by country, with two rooms devoted to the paintings from Japan, one room to the American works, and another to the New Zealand and Australian sections.48 There is no evidence of how the works were displayed in either Christchurch or at the NAG, though at the latter around a dozen of the larger pictures remained unhung because they did not have enough staff to handle them.49 As the installation shots from the ACAG attest, in Auckland the works were hung close together, some above each other, and not at a uniform height. They were also mixed together, and according to a report in the Auckland Star, this was “in order to dispel any idea of ‘competition’ between the countries involved.”50 In this regard, the hang was true to the concept of the show, allowing the viewer to make associations without preconceptions. Here, the catalog texts (if the catalog was purchased) represented the only guides to each country’s selection. It is also unclear whether labels were provided for the works, which might have identified the country of origin: none are visible in the installation shots. Most critics recognized the value of the show to the art-going public in New Zealand. Thomas Esplin, writing in the Otago Daily Times, called it “an aesthetic feast of colour and shape; a feast not a bit unusual for the galleries of Europe but certainly rare for Dunedin.”51 Nelson Kenny in the Christchurch Press concluded that “no-one with an interest in painting should miss it, because it is the best exhibition of modern painting to be shown here, and because it is going to have a

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big effect on the development of painting in New Zealand.”52 The main dissenting voice came from the conservative critic Eric Ramsden in Wellington’s Evening Post, who described the show as “in the main, an artistic shocker.”53 Overall, however, there was a general consensus that the show was not a success based on its premise.54 This was most fully addressed by Wystan Curnow, writing in the literary quarterly Landfall.55 Curnow argued that there was too much difference in the works on display and too much cultural disparity across the countries represented to suggest any broader connection. Tomory himself also acknowledged this, writing in an article that it “was an ambitious attempt, resulting in an exciting show, but one would be brave indeed to state that its aim was realized in any positive manner.”56 He did, however, advocate for the exhibition’s wider value, stating, “It is not important that it proves or disproves its point or that the European influence is still much in evidence for it is far more gratifying to know that this area of the world can produce a show of this high quality.”57 For Tomory, the show demonstrated the ability of the ACAG to put together an international exhibition and as such was a testament to the networks that he and the ACAG had developed.

A CONFLUENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCE Despite the various limitations of Painting from the Pacific, it nevertheless represents an important manifestation of, and testament to, the growth of New Zealand’s international artistic networks after the Second World War. Subsequently, the ACAG would continue to develop its own shows and other art galleries in New Zealand would increasingly follow its lead as they gained more funding and as the number and professionalism of their staff increased. In addition, Painting from the Pacific demonstrates how networks are shaped by a confluence of circumstance and opportunities. On a macro level, the exhibition owed its existence in part to, and also highlighted, New Zealand’s changing geopolitical relations since the Second World War, as it shifted away from Great Britain and towards a highly specific Asia-Pacific region. It was also stimulated and facilitated by cultural diplomatic activities that were directly related to these political shifts. The desire of the US government to foster good relations with its allies was one part of this, as was the Japanese government’s desire to build its relationship with a new ally with which it had recently been at war. On a local level, Painting from the Pacific owed much to the particular circumstances at the ACAG: a proactive director in Tomory with enough resources to bring in exhibitions and a willingness to make and utilize contacts. Finally, it was the result of individual relationships, the most notable being between Tomory, McCahon, and Morley. Without these, Painting from the Pacific may not have existed in the form it took, if at all.

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NOTES 1 Peter Tomory, foreword to Painting from the Pacific. Japan, America, Australia, New

Zealand, by Auckland City Art Gallery (Auckland: Pelorus Press, 1961) [1]. 2 Ibid. 3 Gordon H. Brown, “Directions in Recent New Zealand Painting: Two Views” in 10

Years of Painting in Auckland, 1958–1967, Auckland City Art Gallery (Auckland: Wakefield Press, 1968) [4]. 4 New Zealand had been a British colony since 1840 following the signing of the Treaty

of Waitangi with indigenous Maori chiefs. Up to the Second World War New Zealand had no diplomatic service, and its foreign policy was effectively run from London. With the advent of that conflict, New Zealand began to establish its own official diplomatic relations with other countries, starting in 1942 with the United States. 5 Malcolm McKinnon, Independence and Foreign Policy. New Zealand in the World since

1935 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993), 44. 6 See Ann Trotter, New Zealand and Japan 1945–1952. The Occupation and the Peace

Treaty (London: Athlone Press, 1990) for a full discussion of New Zealand’s postwar position with regard to Japan. 7 McKinnon, Independence and Foreign Policy, 53. 8 For a detailed discussion of the development of the ANZUS Security Treaty see

Thomas K. Robb and David James Gill, “The ANZUS Treaty during the Cold War: A Reinterpretation of U.S. Diplomacy in the Southwest Pacific,” Journal of Cold War Studies 17, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 109–157. 9 For New Zealand’s changing relationship with Japan, see Ann Trotter, “From Suspicion

to Growing Partnership: New Zealand and Japan,” in Malcolm McKinnon, ed., New Zealand in World Affairs, vol. 2, 1957–1972 (Wellington: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1991), 195–226. 10 For an overview of cultural developments in New Zealand after the Second World War,

see W. H. Oliver, “The Awakening Imagination,” in W. H. Oliver and B. R. Williams, eds., The Oxford History of New Zealand (Wellington: Oxford University Press, 1981), 430–461. 11 The USIS was part of the US government’s broader information program and was

responsible to the United States Information Agency (USIA), formed in 1953 to promote US interests to foreign publics by disseminating positive messages about the United States. For a full discussion of the USIS in New Zealand in the 1950s, see Ian Cooke, “Culture and Politics: Art, the Cold War, and the US Information Program in New Zealand,” Australasian Journal of American Studies 35, no. 2 (2016): 3–18. 12 US Embassy, Wellington to the Department of State, “USIS Evaluation Report for

December 1951–May 1952,” September 2, 1952; [1], 511.44/1–50, Box 2361; Central Decimal Files 1950–1954; General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59 (RG59); National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD (NACP, College Park, MD). 13 Ibid. 14 Other examples of shows brought to New Zealand by the USIS include Highlights of

American Painting and its follow-up, Twentieth Century Highlights of American

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Painting, both popular exhibitions of reproductions that were circulated to numerous countries. 15 For a history of the early years of the ACAG, see Ross Fraser, “The Gallery’s First Eighty

Years,” Auckland City Art Gallery Quarterly 49 (March 1971): 2–23. 16 Westbrook provided a comprehensive account of his time in charge in his “Report on the

Activities of the Auckland City Art Gallery between April 1952 and August 1955,” Information Files, HS 04/35, E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, New Zealand (hereafter cited as AAG Archives). The specifics and significance of the changes he instituted have been well-documented by Maria E. Brown, “The History and Function of the Auckland City Art Gallery in Constructing a Canon of Modernist New Zealand Art” (MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1999), 39–89. 17 Tomory set out his intentions and vision for the ACAG soon after his arrival in his

“Auckland City Art Gallery’s Director’s Report April 1956,” Information Files, HS 04/36, AAG Archives. For a full discussion of Tomory’s time at the ACAG, see Courtney Johnston, “Peter Tomory: The New Zealand Years, 1956–1968” (MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2004). 18 This program was run by the International Educational Exchange Service. For more

details on this, see Charles A. Thomson and Walter H. C. Laves, Cultural Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963), 112–114. 19 For a more detailed discussion of Morley’s New Zealand visit, see Cooke, “Culture and

Politics,” 6–8. 20 McCahon had been employed by Westbrook in 1953, and at the time of Morley’s visit

he was serving as acting director, prior to Tomory’s arrival. 21 There is no evidence that they had met previously. 22 Letter, Tomory to Morley, September 28, 1956, Records from 1956, Box 123, Folder 4,

Office of the Director 1935–1958, Administrative Records, SFMoMA Archives, San Francisco, CA. 23 Ibid. 24 The Carnegie Corporation’s Commonwealth Fund disbursed money specifically to

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. 25 US Embassy, Wellington to the Department of State, “Educational Exchange: FY 1959

Country Program Proposal,” June 27, 1957; 2, 5.11.443/1–257, Box 2138; Central Decimal Files 1955–1959, Record Group 59; NACP, College Park, MD. 26 For a full discussion of this exhibition see Cooke, “Culture and Politics,” 10–14. 27 “Introduction,” Folder: Catalog Copy, Acc. no. 2636–022, Seattle Art Museum Records

1913–1985, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division, Seattle, WA. This document does not specifically state that the USIA requested the inclusion of the sculptors, so this was likely a decision made by the Seattle Art Museum. 28 For further details on the idea of a Northwest artistic movement, see Laura Landau,

“Points of Intersection: Chronicling the Interactions of Tobey, Graves, Callahan, and Anderson,” in Laura Landau, ed., Northwest Mythologies. The Interactions of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson (Tacoma: Tacoma Art Museum, 2003), 26. 29 See William Hauptman, “The Suppression of Art in the McCarthy Decade,” Artforum

12, no. 4 (October 1973): 48–52.

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30 Tomory, foreword to Painting from the Pacific [1]. 31 Letter, Colin McCahon to Molly Ryburn, April 12, 1958, cited in Tony Green,

“McCahon’s Visit to the United States: A Reading of Letters and Lecture Notes,” Bulletin of New Zealand Art History 3 (1975): 22. 32 Gordon H. Brown, personal communication to Courtney Johnston, January 19, 2004,

quoted in Johnston, “Peter Tomory,” 104. 33 Grace McCann Morley, Art, Artists, Museums, and the San Francisco Museum of Art,

transcript of an oral history conducted 1960, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1960, 102. 34 For a full discussion of Tomory’s art historical approach, see Johnston, “Peter Tomory,”

111–168. 35 Arif Dirlik, “The Asia-Pacific Idea: Reality and Representation in the Invention of a

Regional Structure,” Journal of World History 3, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 56. 36 “Worthwhile Trip Planned,” New Zealand Herald, April 2, 1960. This was a clear

reference to the British Council (the organization responsible for sending out British culture overseas) and the USIS in New Zealand, the latter of which was no longer a reliable source due to budget cuts and an overall shift in the focus of the US information program towards the developing world. 37 Letter, Peter Tomory to Atsuo Imaizumi, June 10, 1960; Letter, Peter Tomory to Hal

Missingham, June 16, 1960; Letter, Peter Tomory to George Culler, June 16, 1960, all from Painting from the Pacific Exhibition File, AAG Archives. 38 Letter, Hal Missingham to Peter Tomory, June 30, 1960, Ibid. Culler replied to Tomory

on August 11, 1960 stating his willingness to select works. Imaizumi eventually confirmed his involvement in a letter to Tomory dated October 14, 1960, Ibid. 39 Letter, Thomas to Tomory, October 17, 1960, Ibid. Thomas had recently been the

director of the Perth Art Gallery and later became director of the Queensland National Gallery in Brisbane. 40 USIS, Wellington to USIA, “Proposed Exhibition of Pacific Paintings,” July 20,1960;

New Zealand [Folder 1/2]; 1959–1966 Records Concerning Exhibits in Foreign Countries; Records of the US Information Agency, Record Group 306; NACP, College Park, MD. 41 USIA to USIS Wellington, August 25, 1960, Ibid. 42 The first exhibition of New Zealand art to tour overseas traveled to the USSR in 1959.

Subsequently, exhibitions of New Zealand art for display abroad were developed throughout the 1960s. 43 Tomory wrote to several Australian art galleries to ask if they would take the exhibition,

but as Thomas told him, “Unfortunately Queensland and New South Wales were the only two Australian galleries able to fit this exhibition in, so we have reluctantly had to abandon it.” Letter, Thomas to Tomory, August 11, 1961, Painting from the Pacific Exhibition File, AAG Archives. Culler had told Tomory that the SFMA’s 1962 schedule would not accommodate the exhibition. Letter, Culler to Tomory, August 3, 1961, Ibid. 44 “Touring Exhibitions,” n.d., Information Files, HS 04/56, AAG Archives. 45 “Art Gallery Popular in Lunch Hour,” New Zealand Herald, June 16, 1961. 46 “The Chairman’s Report to the Art Gallery Committee,” Minutes of a Meeting of the

Art Gallery Committee, September 5, 1961, Christchurch City Council Minute Books

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of Council Meetings—Councils and Committees, Christchurch City Council Archives, Christchurch, New Zealand. 47 Letter, Pearse to Tomory, October 4, 1961, Painting from the Pacific Exhibition File,

AAG Archives. 48 Thomas Esplin, “Aesthetic Feast of Colour, Shape,” Otago Daily Times, September 12,

1961. Esplin was an artist and lecturer in design at the University of Otago. 49 Eric Ramsden, “Abstractionists’ Field Day: ‘Shocker’ is Word for Art Show,” Evening Post,

November 17, 1961. Ramsden was a journalist and writer who had joined the staff of the Evening Post around 1945, becoming its diplomatic correspondent and art critic. He was well-known for his conservative views. 50 “Pacific Art,” Auckland Star, June 9, 1961. 51 Esplin, “Aesthetic Feast of Colour, Shape.” 52 Nelson Kenny, “Pacific Paintings Show Common Characteristic,” Press, August 5, 1961.

Kenny was an artist and art critic living in Christchurch who championed contemporary art. 53 Ramsden, “Abstractionists’ Field Day.” 54 For a detailed discussion of critical reactions to Painting from the Pacific, particularly in

relation to the premise, see Johnston, “Peter Tomory,” 106–109. 55 Wystan Curnow, “Painting in the Pacific,” Landfall 15, no. 3 (September 1961): 259–262.

Curnow was a recent English and History graduate from the University of Auckland and a regular visitor to the ACAG who had recently started writing exhibition reviews. 56 Peter Tomory, “Painting in the Pacific,” Home and Building, July 1, 1961, 56. 57 Ibid., 59.

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8 “A WHOLLY AMERICAN PLASTIC PACKAGE”: TRANSNATIONALISM, TECHNOLOGY, AND THEOLOGY AT THE VATICAN PAVILION IN THE 1964–1965 NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR Ethan Robey

The enormously popular, yet critically reviled 1964–1965 World’s Fair has been seen by historians as a kind of watershed in postwar American culture: a last gasp of an unruffled technocracy at a time of growing doubt in the project of Modernism.1 The fair was filled with demonstrations of technological wonders— IBM computers, AT&T picture phones, NASA rockets and the like—yet the second most visited display was the Vatican’s pavilion, featuring a fifteenth-century Michelangelo sculpture shipped from Rome.2 The Vatican had a long tradition of participating in world’s fairs stretching back into the nineteenth century. Prior to the 1964 New York fair, there had been Vatican pavilions at Brussels Expo 58 and at the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris.3 Yet the 1964 exhibition stands out as a contradictory display, shaped by a clash of ideas about the Church’s role in the world and by intersecting forces within the Church and without. A transnational enterprise, the pavilion was supported by a Roman Papacy working to modernize the Church yet shepherded into being by

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a deeply conservative New York Catholic establishment. The pavilion embodied the Church’s struggle to redefine itself within the media landscape of the mid1960s: at once a response to the eclipse of faith by technological certitude and an eager embrace of the consumerist apparatus of the technical world, leveraging the smooth, shiny surfaces of retail display to sell the idea of a Church newly engaged in worldly matters. While some clerics praised the spectacle of the exhibition as a fitting space-age frame for the Church’s universal message, others, including many lay critics, could not reconcile the consumerist sheen with their sense of the sacred. Nowhere was this clash more visible than in the display of Michelangelo’s Pieta (1499), the star exhibit of the Vatican pavilion. An Italian commentator derided the way the sculpture had been shipped to New York, wrapped in an “American plastic package,” which can be taken as a metaphor for the exhibit itself. Displayed behind a Plexiglas shield and admired by visitors on moving sidewalks, the display of the Pieta was a key example of the complex overlay of history, faith, technology, and consumerism at work in the pavilion: a centuries-old symbol of faith rhetorically, and literally, encased in modernity.

SETTING THE STAGE A Vatican pavilion at the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair served the interests of the Church in Rome, the Catholic hierarchy in America, and the fair’s American organizers. Robert Moses, New York’s great builder of public works, then in the waning years of his power, was the president of the Fair Corporation and encouraged the participation of religious organizations. Religion had never been excluded from American world’s fairs but the 1964 fair represented something of a shift in emphasis. Religious organizations had been represented at past exhibitions in the context of an international congress or in a shared space, such as the Temple of Religion at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair,4 but the 1964–1965 fair included eight standalone religious exhibits, of which the Vatican’s was by far the most prominent.5 Robert Moses trumpeted the presence of so many religions at the fair as a necessary ingredient in its message. Writing to the director of the Vatican pavilion, Moses maintained that the drive toward peace and understanding, the official theme of the fair, was not found solely in material progress, but “in the things of the spirit.”6 “We shall have plenty of evidences [sic] at the Fair of progress in science, business and government,” Moses wrote to Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York and the most powerful member of the Catholic hierarchy in America, “but man cannot live by bread alone.” Moses insisted in his correspondence that the Vatican’s display would be a moral center of gravity for the exhibition.7 In the lead-up to the fair, it became clear that the Vatican’s would be one of the most internationally relevant foreign pavilions as well. The 1964–1965 New York

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World’s Fair Corporation was hard-pressed to secure foreign participation after Moses had a falling out with the Bureau Internationale des Expositions, the international body that had regulated world’s fairs since the 1920s.8 Because of that, most major European countries did not erect pavilions in New York. After much negotiation, the Soviet Union backed out of the fair as well.9 This further increased the Fair Corporation’s interest in a Vatican pavilion—especially one with a popular attraction such as a major artwork.10 In 1960, Cardinal Spellman had arranged audiences with Pope John XXIII for a series of world’s fair officials, including Robert Moses, and that September the Pope announced his support of the idea of Vatican participation in the fair.11 The New York organizers pushed the Vatican to include some masterpieces from their collections and Rome reciprocated.12 In the spring of 1961, Count Enrique Galeazzi, the Governor of the Vatican, took Fair Corporation chair Thomas Deegan through the Vatican Museums to discuss which artworks the Church could send to New York.13 Rome initially agreed to send Raphael’s Transfiguration and the well-known ancient sculpture the Laocoön to the fair. Roland Redmond, the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who had been closely involved in the negotiations, seems to have been the first to suggest to Moses that they should ask Cardinal Spellman to urge the Vatican to loan Michelangelo’s Pieta instead, noting its preeminent place in the history of art, and, as Redmond put it, that “the deeply religious theme would . . . be most appropriate for the Vatican Pavilion.”14 After further lobbying by Spellman, Pope John agreed to send the Pieta and also a third-century CE Roman statue known as The Good Shepherd to the world’s fair pavilion.15 The Good Shepherd had been shown in New York before but the Pieta had not left Rome since it had been completed in 1499.16

THE AMERICAN PLASTIC PACKAGE Shipping the three-ton monolithic marble statue and its base proved no mean feat, and engendered a fair amount of controversy, becoming a kind of proxy for American cultural hegemony. Museum directors, editors, academics, and others vehemently objected to the idea, citing past damages the sculpture had sustained and cautioning against American hubris.17 For example, John Coolidge, Director of the Fogg Art Museum, asked Robert Moses, “Do we as Americans have the right to request that this most noble work of art be moved[?]”18 In response, Moses dismissively pointed out that the Holy See owned the Pieta and could do what they wanted with it.19 The controversy only intensified once the process of crating the sculpture began, folding into the debate a confrontation between American space-age technological mastery and old-world handicraft traditions. The traditional movers for the Vatican collection, Fratelli Montenovi, were charged with packing the

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sculpture, while an American team took responsibility for trans-Atlantic shipping and getting it safely to the fairgrounds. The Italians insisted on using natural materials for the packing: wrapping the marble in linen and cushioning it with sawdust and woodshavings. The American shippers argued for using plastics and other engineered materials. Montenovi angrily withdrew from the operation after the statue was taken off its base, leaving the packing, and the responsibility, entirely to the Americans.20 The Pieta was eventually packed in nested watertight cases, the marble statue itself ensconced within millions of beads of an expanded polystyrene trade-named Dylite. Extensive drop tests and stress measurements had been made, and the engineers had charts and graphs to prove the reliability of their materials.21 Followed by press photographers, the Pieta was trucked from Rome to Naples, then sailed to New York on the ocean liner Christoforo Colombo. To critics, the crated statue evoked images of consumer goods. “Michelangelo’s masterpiece” opined an English-language Italian newspaper, “will be transported to the United States tucked away in a wholly American plastic package.”22 On the other hand, souvenir publications included detailed descriptions of the careful packing of the statue, protected by the “most modern materials science has devised.”23 Similarly, a writer in a Catholic periodical professed faith that “in an age when man is orbiting the earth and returning safely on the dot,” certainly a statue could be shipped across the Atlantic without damage.24 Barrett McGurn, the Rome bureau chief of the International Herald Tribune, proposed privately to Charles Poletti, head of international pavilions at the fair, that any fears about the shipping of the statue could be countered with the argument that “the Michelangelo group cannot possibly be damaged in any way because of the miraculous devices for protecting such objects now developed by science.” He added, parenthetically, “I am not sure in detail just what these practices are but I am confident that you can convince critics that they are infallible,”25 his language of miracle and infallibility echoing, consciously or unconsciously, Catholic dogma. The near-religious confidence that American technological know-how would inevitably find a way, without the details of the processes necessarily being comprehensible to the layman—an unfettered faith in “black-box” technology— was integral to the modernist ideology expressed at the fair. Historian Michael Smith points out that the presentations of technology at the 1964–1965 world’s fair overwhelmingly assumed this same rhetoric of an inevitable and beneficent progress.26 General Motors’ Futurama II attraction, for example, moved visitors past animated dioramas of a moon base, an underwater hotel, and a nuclearpowered jungle road-building machine slicing through the wilderness with lasers and chemical defoliants, leaving an “elevated superhighway” in its wake.27 As Smith notes, “the exhibits offered no reasons why people should want to live on the moon or the ocean floor; nor did they have to.”28 By the time the Pieta reached New York, even before its elaborate staging was installed, it had already been appropriated into this same discourse of technological determinism.

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THE BUILDING Church officials in Rome ceded the design of the pavilion to the New York diocese, who hired Kiff, Colean, Voss & Souder Architects, a division of the storied New York firm York & Sawyer, specializing in institutional buildings such as hospitals, libraries, and public schools.29 Although there were no strict design guidelines, unlike at many earlier world’s fairs, exhibitors were expected to build pavilions in contemporary styles.30 The Vatican pavilion was oval in plan, surmounted by a circular lantern. Visitors entered the pavilion flanked by a long, curved wall, a modernist echo of Bernini’s colonnade embracing the piazza of St. Peter’s in Rome (Figure 8.1).31 The entrance corridor curved around one long side of the building and led into the Pieta display, an auditorium-like space, which took up one whole end of the oval. Above the main exhibit space was the cylindrical Chapel of the Good Shepherd, where the ancient Roman sculpture The Good Shepherd was exhibited. It was a consecrated space and services were practiced in the chapel throughout the duration of the fair. The chapel was lighted by large abstract stained glass windows, with a gilt, cast concrete roof topped by a gold-anodized aluminum cross, the materials themselves a statement about a modernizing Church.32 It was open to requests from any

FIGURE 8.1 Entrance to the Vatican Pavilion, New York World’s Fair 1964–1965. The gilded roof of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd can be seen on top, surmounted by the anodized aluminum cross. The large relief sculpture on the wall is The Communion of the Saints by Jonynas & Shepherd Art Studio. Source: Bill Cotter of worldsfairphotos.com.

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priests visiting the fair to perform a Mass at the pavilion, and thousands did.33 The Church insisted, however, that unless special arrangements were made, “all Masses at the Vatican Pavilion will follow the ‘New Liturgy’,” and be performed in English with the celebrant facing the congregation.34 Round churches diminished the spatial differentiation of the altar and were particularly well suited to a new emphasis on community within the Catholic Church. A round space needed fewer rows of pews, bringing the worshippers closer to the altar. The pavilion’s chapel had a pleated, thin concrete, self-supporting roof, leaving the interior space free of columns: a visually unified space for the new, participatory Mass.35 After the close of the fair, The Chapel of the Good Shepherd was dismantled and reconstructed as a stand-alone church, Saint Mary, Mother of the Redeemer in Groton, Connecticut. On the chapel’s rededication in 1968, the presiding bishop praised the modernist design as fitting in “perfectly with the spirit of the new liturgy.”36

THE NEW LITURGY The New Liturgy was a result of reforms the Church was pursuing in the years surrounding the World’s Fair. The pavilion and its exhibits were themselves compromises, reflecting both internal and international tensions. Only a few months after his election in 1958, Pope John XXIII announced his intention to convoke what would be the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.37 The Council, commonly known as Vatican II, began in 1962 and would continue into 1965 under John’s successor, Paul VI. The constitutions ultimately adopted by the Council promoted a new openness to interfaith dialogue and affirmed the Church’s responsibility to work toward social justice around the world. Pope John also strongly supported demystifying the liturgy and the rites of the Church, most notably by condoning the use of vernacular languages instead of Latin for the Mass, a move opposed by conservative clerics such as Spellman.38 In some respects, this aggiornamento (modernization) had been long in coming. Over the course of the century, the Catholic Church had felt tensions between a hierarchy that saw the Church as a bulwark against modernism and those dissenters who felt that the Church must take a stand in worldly matters. By the post-1945 era, these tensions had become exacerbated by new technologies of mass communication, including radio, television, and, by the 1960s, satellite broadcasts, as well as and by the growing global political polarization of the Cold War.39 The Roman Catholic Church had an international presence, but its policy interests were defined by pastoral goals rather than political ones. Without military or economic power to speak of, the Church relied on the soft power of claims of moral and cultural authority to further those interests.40 The Vatican’s participation in postwar world’s fairs, in Brussels in 1958 and in New York six years later,

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represented a further extension of its transnational role in the postwar world, underscoring the Church’s political/ecumenical interests. Relations between the Holy See and the United States had grown complicated after the Second World War. On the one hand, American mistrust of the power of the Catholic establishment shot down President Truman’s attempts to open diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1952, and, in the 1960 election, the Catholic John F. Kennedy had to make a point of his independence from Rome.41 On the other hand, the Church hierarchy was closely allied with American anticommunism. That the Vatican saw communism as an existential threat helped solidify the battle lines of the Cold War.42 Cardinal Spellman was a conservative in the realms of both American and Vatican politics. A staunch anti-communist, a war hawk, and an opponent of the American Civil Rights movement, he was a strong voice against the modernization of Vatican II. Although Pope John and Cardinal Spellman were foes, they knew how to use each other.43 Spellman had connections with the old guard and old money, such as the conservative Count Galeazzi, and he was a master of publicity. When Pope John had announced, in 1960, the Vatican’s planned participation in the world’s fair, he entrusted the arrangements in Rome to Galeazzi, and Amleto Cardinal Cicognani, the Vatican Secretary of State, another ally of Spellman’s.44 In the early-to-mid-1960s, the Popes moved ever further away from Spellman’s conservatism. Deeply shaken by the fear of a real war erupting between the superpowers, especially after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, John XXIII put the promotion of international peace before the containment of communism.45 Vatican Museums historian Rosalia Pagliarani argues that Pope John saw participation in the 1964 world’s fair and the eventual loan of the Pieta as proof of Vatican policy. With memories still fresh of the threats to fine art during the Second World War, the highly publicized, international cultural exchange acted as a declaration of faith that the world would remain at peace.46 The technical achievement of shipping and displaying the Pieta also worked into the Catholic Church’s own reassertion of its relevance in the world of the 1960s. Conservative art critic Frank Getlein wrote an essay on the shipping of the statue describing the endeavor as a story of technology working in the aid of faith and international unity.47 The Catholic News argued that the lesson of the Pieta was that “spiritual beauty” still had a place in the space age.48 As Pope John XXIII had mentioned at the ground-breaking for the pavilion, the Church’s participation in the fair was borne from a trust that science could help bring about social benefits parallel to religion, and that religion could still assert its authority within a technocracy. Indeed, one of the more important constitutions to come out of Vatican II was “Gaudium et spes” (Joy and Hope), which redefined the Church’s role within a culture driven, but also dislocated, by science, where “technology is now transforming the face of the earth, and is already trying to master outer space.”49 The doctrine rejected an older devaluation of lay science, stressing instead

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the Church’s active involvement with the modern world.50 However unintendedly, the press coverage of the shipping of the Pieta allowed it to embody both religious faith and faith in technological progress, a kind of resolution of the key concern of “Gaudium et spes.”

PACEM IN TERRIS In 1963, Pope John issued the encyclical “Pacem in Terris” (Peace on Earth). An excerpt from the encyclical graced the walls of the Vatican’s pavilion in New York, seemingly reinforcing the fair’s official slogan, “Peace through understanding.” “Pacem in Terris” stressed the commonality of humanity but was seen in Washington as dangerously conciliatory toward the communists.51 Under John XXIII and his successor Paul VI the Vatican turned toward a realpolitik engagement with communist countries, putting a strain on its relationship with the United States.52 In the mid-1960s, as the American presence in Vietnam escalated, Paul VI continued to move the Church from being an unwavering anti-communist ally of America to the world’s moral conscience.53 Dubbed the “Pilgrim Pope,” Paul VI was intent on expanding the presence of the Church in the world generally and was famously peripatetic.54 At the very end of the World’s Fair’s second season, on October 4, 1965, Pope Paul visited New York—the first time a sitting Pope had ever visited the Americas. During his brief time in New York, the Pope led a Mass in Yankee Stadium and delivered a speech to the United Nations, a plea for peace that was understood by many as a critique of American foreign policy and specifically of Spellman’s staunch support of the American military enterprise.55 Before leaving the city, the Pope, along with a host of dignitaries, including Cardinal Cicognani, Cardinal Spellman, and President Lyndon Johnson, visited the Vatican pavilion at the World’s Fair, conveniently on the way to the airport. The visit lasted less than an hour.56 The Vatican pavilion, intended to reflect a more worldly church yet largely organized by the more conservative New York diocese, embodied a transnational incongruity. The exhibits collapsed real and replica, high art and kitsch. The walls were adorned with contemporary religious art, replicas of architectural fragments, a multi-screen curved wall with changing slides of church activities, a replica of the tomb of St. Peter—“constructed in Rome under the supervision of the appropriate Vatican authorities,” assured the brochure—and a one-third-size photographic replica of Michelangelo’s frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, lent by Time-Life publications.57 There was a large photo-mural of the Vatican II Council in session and a collection of medals owned by Cardinal Spellman. A priest, the Rev. Gregory Smith, an editor of the Carmelite journal The Scapular, critiqued the confused message, asserting that a Vatican pavilion “should show a contemporary church looking toward the future,” but that reminders of a

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stifling hermeticism, such as Cardinal Spellman’s medals, undercut that mission. Above all, Smith wrote, he had to “question the wisdom that has made a Renaissance work of art” i.e., Michelangelo’s Pieta, the “central attraction” of the pavilion.58

JO MIELZINER STAGES THE PIETA Shortly after the loan of the Pieta had been confirmed, Cardinal Spellman formally proposed the task of designing a fitting display for Michelangelo’s sculpture to set designer Jo Mielziner.59 By the mid-1960s, Mielziner was the grand master of Broadway set design, having worked on over 200 major productions. He was also a devout Catholic. The grandson of a Rabbi, Mielziner had converted in the 1930s under the influence of the charismatic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, an innovator in religious broadcasting over radio and television.60 The pavilion’s planners reached out to Mielziner because they knew the Pieta needed to be activated by a theatrical setting, with a means for displaying it to as large an audience as possible. As Mielziner would later respond to critics of his design, “if the ‘Pieta’ were shown in a quiet corner—as a museum might exhibit it—not ten percent of the daily average attendance could even glimpse it.”61 Mielziner’s setting for the Pieta echoed the “selective realism” he was known for in stage designs, setting fragments of detailed realism within open, abstracted space.62 From the start, Mielziner envisioned a “simple, but beautiful background,” for the Pieta, and not any sort of reproduction of its usual setting in St. Peter’s.63 Rather than present the sculpture in art historical terms, Mielziner chose to emphasize its spiritual aspect—a setting for, as he put it, not “just a work of art, but for a devotional statue in a devotional atmosphere.”64 As elsewhere in the pavilion, new materials and technologies were at the forefront in the design, underscoring the image of a Catholicism for the space age. The setting was dark and contemplative. The sculpture sat at the base of a large cross, with a cloth draped across it, symbolizing Christ’s burial shroud. Both cross and shroud were deep blue and barely visible in front of floor-to-ceiling fireproof blue curtains. On either side of the sculpture, forty-eight hanging strings of electric lights in plastic cups twinkled like votive candles—specially made lenticular plastic inserts created a flickering effect65— while the marble itself was illuminated by a halo of spotlights above and banks of fill lights in front (Figure 8.2). Cardinal Spellman had insisted that the Pieta be protected by bullet-proof glass. After much consideration of materials, including some so experimental they could not yet be produced in sheets large enough for the job,66 Mielziner’s team of designers settled on half-inch-thick Plexiglas, durable enough to stop most potential attacks but as minimally visually intrusive as possible.67 As with the shipping, up-to-date man-made materials enveloped the Pieta and kept it safe,

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FIGURE 8.2 Michelangelo, Pieta (1499), as exhibited in the Vatican Pavilion, New York World’s Fair 1964–1965. Setting by Jo Mielziner. Source: Bill Cotter of worldsfairphotos.com.

allowing it to both retain a spiritual mystery and be perfectly visually accessible to a mass audience behind its plastic screen. To avoid dense crowds forming in front of the statue, Mielziner decided to keep visitors moving. The team looked into various designs of moving sidewalks, even consulting with United Airlines about their new baggage handling conveyor belts at Idlewild Airport.68 Ultimately, the pavilion used three walkways, each progressing at a different speed, carrying visitors past the sculpture. Visitors who wanted to contemplate longer could return to the room on a raised platform in the rear. Young Catholic women, in pillbox hats and smart crimson uniforms that echoed a Cardinal’s mozzetta and cassock, ushered visitors into and around the exhibition.69

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It was later reported that despite the throngs of visitors, the wait time to see the Pieta was never more than ten or fifteen minutes.70 The Pieta display also included a sound system playing liturgical music to help “condition” fairgoers, as Mielziner put it, for the spiritual experience.71 Visitors could buy a souvenir LP entitled “Music In The Vatican Pavilion” from the gift shop. The shop also sold commemorative spoons, rosaries, and a range of copyrighted small, plastic replicas of Michelangelo’s sculpture.72 Fair regulations were written to protect the several religions’ pavilions’ exclusive rights to sell “religious articles.”73 Whenever images of the Pieta showed up on souvenirs not sold by the Vatican, sales were quickly halted.74 The authorized souvenir Pietas came in clear plastic protective cases inside their cardboard boxes, coincidentally mimicking the plastic screen mediating the experience of the actual sculpture. The plastic souvenirs transformed the monumental public sculpture into a personal possession, memorializing the experience of being at the fair and the aura of the original and, for many, worked as private devotional objects.75 A visitor from New Jersey wrote to the pavilion staff that she felt “humble and proud” just to have a replica of the Pieta. “Looking at mine,” she enthused, “I always get a strange feeling inwardly.”76 In the 1964 season alone, the gift shop sold 372,039 Pieta replicas.77 As the publicity surrounding the shipping of the Pieta became symbolic of technology subtending faith, so too the high-tech staging of the statue was a material analogue of the Catholic humanism expressed in “Gaudium et Spes,” enframing the sacred within space-age futurism.78

REACTIONS The Vatican pavilion, especially the Pieta, proved immensely popular. Both Mielziner and the offices of the pavilion in New York received many letters of support. “You are to be congratulated much for the perfect setting you created for Michelangelo’s Pieta,” wrote one visitor to Mielziner, “You captured the sculptor’s conception completely and exactly!”79 Crucially, the setting of the Pieta was appreciated for the devotional mood Mielziner had hoped to achieve. The Tablet, the organ of the Diocese of Brooklyn, noted that “for some” the chance to see the Pieta “brought tears to eyes—for others, chills to the spine . . . it was a delightful and enthralling experience, and for most it was also a prayer-FULL experience.”80 Mielziner’s setting for the Pieta, with its theatrical lighting and music, the pavilion’s uniformed guides, and the gift shop replicas, seemed to others, however, to transform the sculpture into a cartoonish version of itself, in a context neither art historical nor spiritual, but simply commercial kitsch. For his part, Andy Warhol recognized the inherent commodification of the Pieta, and casually referred to the sculpture’s “Pop context.”81 The more controversial aspects of the Pieta display, especially the Plexiglas screen and the moving sidewalks, linked the

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Vatican pavilion to a consumerist viewer-object relationship. Moving sidewalks were an innovation first seen at world’s fairs in the late nineteenth century. By the 1960s, the moving sidewalk, though rarely installed in any public spaces, was firmly ensconced in popular-culture visions of future transit systems (along with the monorail, also featured at the 1964 world’s fair), perhaps most famously in the cartoon future world of The Jetsons, which premiered in 1962.82 Put off by these mechanisms of display, journalist John Leo, writing in the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal, was especially disappointed in the presentation of the Pieta, “hermetically sealed behind bullet-proof glass, bathed in a buttery light” while visitors are “spun past it on conveyor belts.”83 The New York Times’ art critic John Canaday was disgusted at “being carried along a moving belt, slaughter-house fashion,” past the Pieta.84 Critiques of the Pieta display by art historians and critics were savage. Canaday thought the sculpture looked “helpless and cold” in its “transparent vacuum.”85 Yale architecture professor Vincent Scully found the IBM pavilion far more religious, calling the Pieta’s setting “shameful.”86 One of the more florid denunciations came from Katherine Kuh, a former curator at the Art Institute of Chicago and art critic at the Saturday Review, who decried the “naïve gaudiness” of the installation. “Accompanied by twinkling electric candles, moving sidewalks, a plastic screen, canned music, chicly costumed usherettes, and an overdose of cold light,” she wrote, “the Michaelangelo [sic] is lost to us forever.”87 Some likened the pavilion itself to depersonalized commercial sites: an automat or the glitz of Las Vegas. Leo condemned the whole pavilion for trying to sell spirituality with cheap commercial techniques, bemoaning the pavilion’s “freefloating showmanship” and describing it as “awash in flickering slides, banners, posters, photos, medieval knickknacks and fatuous slogans—an ecclesiastical Automat to tempt the taste of any tourist.”88 Art critic Robert Hughes made a similar comparison, asserting that “the Vatican managed to imply that the Catholic Church had been specially invented for the World’s Fair by an impresario from Las Vegas.”89 The commercial trappings of Mielziner’s setting of the Pieta also came in for condemnation in the religious press. Some religious writers found the theatricality an inherent affront to the spiritual: an op-ed in the Denver Catholic Register, for example, lamented that the Pieta was “staged,” deeming the “Hollywood touch” of the display wholly unnecessary.90 Others, however, condemned the pavilion for only superficially embracing contemporary society and technology. A Msgr. John Clancy described the pavilion as a “faceless, mindless, heartless presence,” not at all projecting the image of a modern, engaged church. “The world seeks us,” the monsignor wrote, “and we give them reheated pablum.”91 Critiquing the showmanship of not only the Catholic Church, a 1964 review of the fair in the Christian Century decried the saccharine spectacles of all the religions’ pavilions, equating them with market-tested mediocrity: “If a whipped-cream-topped

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strawberry sundae with artificial flavoring represents to you a gourmet meal, a defizzed coke a connoisseur’s drink, and a Montovani album an aesthetic delight, the fair is for you.”92

FAITH IN THE SPACE AGE “What is a Church in the twentieth century,” asked an American Air Force Chaplain in 1966, “in the age of the atom and astronaut, in the age of ballistic missiles and electronic computers, in an age of expanding education and mass communication?”93 Critics who were disappointed with the Vatican pavilion had hoped it could be a transformational experience: the spiritual power of the Catholic religion refreshed for a space-age America. Despite being largely the brainchild of the conservative Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican pavilion was a transnational project and largely reflected the aggiornamento of a faith attempting to reconcile with modernity. The widespread publicity around the shipping and display of the Pieta transformed it into a symbol of history itself, of Rome reaching out from the past to the future. Who could miss the symbolism of the engineered steel crate containing the Michelangelo riding to the New World on a ship named after Columbus? Yet, instead of the technology amplifying the sculpture’s symbolic power, after being repeatedly wrapped in its “wholly American plastic package”—shipped in polystyrene beads, displayed behind Plexiglas, reproduced as plastic figurines sold in plastic sleeves—it seemed to many that little remained of the Pieta but the plastic wrapping.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Published with support from the George Dewey and Mary J. Krumrine Endowment.

NOTES 1 On contemporary and later assessments of the fair, see Lawrence R. Samuel, The End of

the Innocence. The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010), xiv, xvii. 2 The three most visited pavilions in the 1964 season were: General Motors “Futurama

II” (15,709,000); The Vatican (13,823,037); and Chrysler’s “Autofare” (10,909,000). Vatican Pavilion, New York World’s Fair 1964–1965, Report to the American Hierarchy ([New York], [1964?]) [2]. 3 On the history of Vatican participation in world’s fairs, see Micol Forti, Federica Guth,

and Rosalia Pagliarani, Revealing the Present Through History. The Vatican and International Expositions, 1851–2015 (Città del Vaticano: Musei vaticani, 2016). The Vatican pavilion in 1964–1965 was the first at an American World’s Fair.

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4 Unlike the 1964–1965 fair, no religious services were held on the grounds of the

1939–1940 exposition. Official Guide Book of the New York World’s Fair 1939 (New York: Exposition Publications, 1939), 102–103. 5 The religious exhibits were: the Mormon Church Pavilion; the Russian Orthodox

Greek-Catholic Church of America Pavilion; the Protestant and Orthodox Center (sponsored by the Protestant Council of the City of New York); the Billy Graham building; the Wycliffe Bible Translators’ 2,000 Tribes display; Sermons from Science (sponsored by the Christian Life Convention); the Christian Science Pavilion; and the Vatican Pavilion. Official Guide, New York World’s Fair 1964/1965 (New York: Time-Life Books, 1964), 64, 84, 113, 126, 128–130, 142, 145, 147–148. 6 Letter, Robert Moses to the Rt. Rev. Monsignor John J. Gorman, November 10, 1964,

New York World’s Fair 1964–1965 Corporation Records, Box 286, New York Public Library, New York, NY. [Hereafter cited as NYPL (box 286 unless otherwise indicated)]. 7 Letter, Robert Moses to Francis Cardinal Spellman, March 20, 1962, NYPL. 8 The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair technically violated three of the regulations of

the Bureau Internationale des Expositions (BIE): no one country was supposed to have an international exhibition more than once every ten years (New York’s would come only two years after Seattle’s Century 21 Exposition); a fair could not run more than six months; and a fair could not charge rent for foreign national exhibits. Whereas the BIE had been known to bend their rules, Moses’s arrogant dismissal of their protests led to the BIE withholding its sanction and even insisting that its member nations not participate in the New York fair. See Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker. Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 1093–1094. 9 The Soviet Union had a large pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair (removed for

the 1940 season) and the organizers of the 1964 fair were eager to have Moscow participate again. Negotiations were complicated by the USSR’s decision to cancel, in 1962, a planned 1967 World’s Fair in Moscow thus depriving the United States an opportunity to, in effect, answer a Soviet pavilion in New York with an American pavilion in Moscow. The ensuing diplomatic tensions prompted the Soviets to cancel their lease for space in the Flushing Meadows fair grounds. See Samuel, The End of the Innocence, 142–143. 10 Ibid., 144. 11 “For Release: Saturday, April 7, 1962,” NYPL. 12 Letter, Robert Moses to Mrs. Wallace K. Harrison, April 19, 1961; Letter, Robert Moses

to Thomas Deegan, April 28, 1961; Letter, Robert Moses to Thomas Deegan, May 1, 1961, NYPL. 13 Letter, Thomas Deegan to Robert Moses, April 18, 1961, NYPL. 14 Letter, Roland Redmond to Robert Moses, March 19, 1962, NYPL. 15 Letter, Robert Moses to Charles Poletti, March 28, 1962, NYPL. 16 The Good Shepherd was featured in a special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of

Art in New York, from May 23 to June 30, 1946. Michelangelo’s 1499 Pieta had been re-positioned several times within St. Peter’s Basilica over the centuries but had never before been transported out of Rome. 17 For example, Germain Seligman, “Shipping of the Pieta Queried,” The New York Times,

April 23, 1962; Frederick Hartt, “Bringing ‘Pieta’ Opposed,” The New York Times, May 7, 1962; John Coolidge, “Exhibiting ‘Pieta’ Opposed,” The New York Times, May 25, 1962;

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letter, John Coolidge to Robert Wagner, May 18, 1962, NYPL. Pagliarani notes that the Italian newspapers La Stampa and Il Messaggero were especially opposed to shipping the Pieta. Rosalia Pagliarani, “The 1960s and the International Perspective of the Church,” in Forti, Guth, and Pagliarani, Revealing the Present, 152. 18 Letter, John Coolidge to Robert Moses, May 18, 1962, NYPL. 19 Letter, Robert Moses to John Coolidge, May 21, 1962, NYPL. 20 Letter, John S. Young to Charles Poletti, April 13, 1964, Box 287, NYPL. 21 James B. Gordon, “Packing of Michelangelo’s ‘Pieta’,” Studies in Conservation 12, no. 2

(May 1967): 57–69. 22 Rome Daily American, April 3, 1964, quoted in John S. Young to Charles Poletti, April

13, 1964, Box 287, NYPL. 23 Official Guide Book, Vatican Pavilion, New York World’s Fair 1964–1965 ([New York]:

Vatican Pavilion, 1964), 6. 24 “A Rare Treat at the Fair,” Catholic News, May 5, 1962, quoted in Kristin Fedders, “Pop

Art at the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2005), 184. 25 Letter, Barrett McGurn to Charles Poletti, April 13, 1962, NYPL. 26 Michael L. Smith, “Making Time: Representations of Technology at the 1964 World’s

Fair,” in Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, The Power of Culture. Critical Essays in American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 223–244. 27 Official Guide, New York World’s Fair 1964/1965, 222. 28 Smith, Making Time, 239. 29 Also involved were the firms Luders Associates, who designed the exhibits, and Hurley

& Hughes. 30 Samuel, The End of the Innocence, xxii; Julie Nicoletta, “Selling Spirituality and

Spectacle: Religious Pavilions at the New York World’s Fair of 1964–1965,” Buildings and Landscapes 22, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 66. 31 Pagliarani, Revealing the Present, 164. 32 Catherine R. Osborne, American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2018), 83, 110. 33 Report to the American Hierarchy, [3]. 34 Rev. Joseph T. Lahey, form letter to participating clergy, n.d., NYPL; “Program

Arrangements at the Vatican Pavilion,” n.d., NYPL. 35 Osborne, American Catholics, 94–97. 36 “Our History,” Saint Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, accessed October 26, 2018, http://

www.stmarysgroton.org/about-us/our-history/. 37 Francis Rooney, The Global Vatican. An Inside Look at the Catholic Church, World

Politics, and the Extraordinary Relationship between the United States and the Holy See (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 103; John Cooney, The American Pope. The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman (New York: Times Books, 1984), 275. 38 Cooney, The American Pope, 275. 39 Thomas O’Dea, The Catholic Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 122.

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40 Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard, “A Diplomacy Unlike Any Other: Papal Diplomacy in

the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard, eds., Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 1994), 14–15. 41 Roy Domenico, “ ‘An Embassy to a Golf Course?’: Conundrums on the Road to the

United States’ Diplomatic Representation to the Holy See, 1784–1984,” in Margaret M. McGuinness and James T. Fisher, eds., Roman Catholicism in the United States. A Thematic History (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019), 114; Gerald P. Fogarty, “The United States and the Vatican, 1939–1984,” in Kent and Pollard, Papal Diplomacy, 232–234. 42 Kent and Pollard, “A Diplomacy Unlike Any Other,” 17. 43 Cooney, The American Pope, 276–277. 44 “For Release: Saturday, April 7, 1962,” NYPL. 45 Massimo Franco, Parallel Empires. The Vatican and the United States—Two Centuries of

Alliance and Conflict (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 81. The Soviet Union publicly agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba on October 28, 1962. The ground-breaking ceremony for the Vatican Pavilion was October 31, 1962. 46 Pagliarani, Revealing the Present, 150. 47 “Michelangelo Booked for Fair,” unidentified newspaper clipping, NYPL. 48 “A Rare Treat at the Fair.” 49 “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium Et Spes

Promulgated by His Holiness, Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965,” accessed April 16, 2020, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/ vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. 50 Michael G. Lawler et al., The Church in the Modern World. Gaudium et Spes Then and

Now (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), 51. 51 Franco, Parallel Empires, 81; “Pacem in Terris: Encyclical of Pope John XXIII on

Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty,” April 11, 1963, accessed April 16, 2020, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/ documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html. 52 Franco, Parallel Empires, 77–78. 53 Roy Domenico, “America, The Holy See and the War in Vietnam,” in Kent & Pollard,

Papal Diplomacy, 203–204. 54 Michael Collins, Paul VI: Pilgrim Pope (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018), 71. 55 Cooney, The American Pope, 290–293. 56 Press Release (n.d.), Box 287, NYPL. 57 “Guide to the Vatican Pavilion Exhibit at the New York World’s Fair” (brochure), NYPL. 58 “Priest Deplores Vatican Pavilion,” The New York Times, March 21, 1964. 59 Letter, John S. Young to Charles Poletti, June 15, 1962, NYPL. 60 On Fulton Sheen, see Christopher Owen Lynch, Selling Catholicism. Bishop Sheen and

the Power of Television (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1998). 61 Letter, Jo Mielziner to Monsignor Timothy Flynn, July 27, 1964. Jo Mielziner Papers,

*T-Mss 1993–002, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York, NY. [Hereafter cited as Jo Mielziner Papers]

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62 Mary C. Henderson, Mielziner. Master of Modern Stage Design (New York: Back Stage

Books and The New York Public Library, 2001), 67. 63 Letter, Jo Mielziner to Charles de Tolney [sic], January 4, 1962, Jo Mielziner Papers. 64 Jo Mielziner, “Designing the Setting and Lighting for Michelangelo’s ‘Pieta’,” April 10,

1963; Letter, Jo Mielziner to Lewis M. Isaacs, Jr., June 24, 1964, Jo Mielziner Papers. 65 Letter, Chuck Levy to Francis Booth, September 11, 1963; Letter, Francis Booth to

Clifford Golden, February 20, 1964, Jo Mielziner Papers. 66 Jo Mielziner, “Memo, Re: Protective Glass for ‘Pieta,’ ” March 14, 1963, Jo Mielziner

Papers. 67 “Specifications. Vatican Pavilion. New York World’s Fair—1964-1965. Pieta Display—

Room 104,” October 10, 1963, Jo Mielziner Papers. 68 Frederick H. Voss, Memorandum, Re: Vatican Pavilion, World’s Fair, June 7, 1962, Jo

Mielziner Papers. 69 Antonina Zielinska, “A Summer Working at the World’s Fair,” The Tablet, August 27,

2014. 70 Letter, Msgr. John J. Gorman to Stuart Constable, December 10, 1964, NYPL. 71 Miezliner, “Designing the Setting and Lighting.” 72 “Souvenirs of Your Visit to the World’s Fair,” sales list, NYPL. 73 Letter, Charles Poletti to Robert Moses, May 31, 1963, NYPL. 74 Letter, Charles Poletti to Martin Stone, September 1, 1964; Letter, Edward Kinney to

Martin Stone, January 28, 1965, NYPL. 75 On souvenirs, see Susan Stewart, On Longing (Durham and London: Duke University

Press, 1993), 137–138. 76 Letter, Theresa DePietro to Edward Kinney, July 2, 1964, NYPL. The Corporation

Records preserve many letters expressing similar sentiments. 77 Report to the American Hierarchy, [2]. 78 See Fedders, “Pop Art at the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair,” 185–186. 79 Letter, Harry de Metropolis to Jo Mielziner, July 1964, Jo Mielziner Papers. Emphasis in

original. 80 “New York World’s Fair 1964–1965,” The Tablet, undated clipping (November 1964?),

NYPL. 81 Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, POPism. The Warhol Sixties (New York: HBJ, 1980), 135. 82 On the history of moving sidewalks, see Matt Novak, “Moving Sidewalks Before The

Jetsons,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 11, 2012, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ history/moving-sidewalks-before-the-jetsons-17484942/. 83 John Leo, “A Pious Disaster,” Commonweal, May 15, 1964, 226. 84 John Canaday, “The Pieta and An Avalokiteshvara,” The New York Times, July 26, 1964. 85 John Canaday, “Setting for the ‘Pieta’: A Critique. Blue Lighting at Fair Gives Cold

Effect,” The New York Times, April 20, 1964. 86 Vincent Scully, “If This Is Architecture, God Help Us,” Life, July 31, 1964, 9. 87 Katherine Kuh, “The Day Pop Art Died,” The Saturday Review, May 23, 1964, 24. 88 Leo, “A Pious Disaster,” 226.

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89 Robert Hughes, “The Golden Grin,” The Nation, October 5, 1964, quoted in Robert A.

M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman, New York 1960. Architecture and Urbanism between the Second World War and the Bicentennial (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995), 1049. 90 “ ‘Staging’ the Pieta,” Denver Catholic Register, August 22, 1963, 4. 91 “Take It or Leave It Department,” The Pittsburgh Catholic, July 9, 1964, 4. 92 Martin E. Marty, “Religious Cafeteria,” Christian Century, June 10, 1964, 758–759,

quoted in Nicoletta, “Selling Spirituality and Spectacle,” 62. 93 Clifford Stevens, “Theology in the Space Age,” Liturgical Arts 34 (February 1966): 46.

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9 “THE GENTLE ART OF COOKERY”: EXHIBITING TRANSNATIONAL ANGLORUSSIAN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY DURING THE COLD WAR, 1967 Verity Clarkson

Soviet and British flags fluttering outside London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in February 1967 heralded the opening of Great Britain—USSR: An Historical Exhibition.1 This hastily assembled historical survey of documents, diplomatic gifts, and cultural artifacts linking Britain and Russia since the sixteenth century, endorsed by both governments and swiftly realized in less than six weeks as part of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin’s official visit, simultaneously invoked centuries-old diplomatic ties and functioned as a contemporary manifestation of mutually beneficial cultural diplomacy.2 Whilst it was commonplace for one nation to employ an exhibition to celebrate its cultural achievements in another’s territory, a jointly organized event showcasing cordial relations between two countries on either side of the Iron Curtain was comparatively rare.3 This collaborative display reframed an extensive display of manuscripts, treaties, and letters alongside a smaller selection of metalwork, portraits, costume, silver, and ceramics—which the Soviet ambassador claimed were “evidence of our very close and long-standing cultural and scientific ties”—repositioning periods of Anglo-Russian alliance as the norm.4 From its title to its structure, pre-revolutionary Russian history was subsumed into a narrative framed by the postrevolutionary USSR, glossing over times of mutual hostility and promoting a collaboratively constructed, mutually

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beneficial image that emphasized the two countries’ shared diplomatic and commercial histories.5 Accordingly, Great Britain—USSR epitomized a different mode of Cold War exhibition: an overtly transnational counterpoint to the confrontational national displays staged internationally since the late 1950s. Attracting over 43,000 visitors—almost three times the predicted estimate— Great Britain–USSR was unexpectedly popular.6 Architect Michael Brawne’s modern installation, in pale gray with red felt linings and gold lettering, housed long rows of documents, photographs, and paintings mounted in linear glazed wall displays. These were punctuated by triangular corner showcases containing more visually exciting three-dimensional objects, such as the magnificent Tudor silver leopard flagon loaned by the Hermitage that graced the poster.7 However, such objects—which also included a feathered swan ballet costume by Leon Bakst for Anna Pavlova, a uniform of the ninth Hussars and a clock-watch made for Peter the Great—were outnumbered by hundreds of documents and photographs, the majority of which were not listed in the catalog.8 Some of the exhibits were of such poor quality that some journalists queried the rationale for their inclusion. Despite Brawne’s installation looking “quite smart,” the V&A’s new director John Pope-Hennessy later reflected that the exhibition’s public popularity was “undeserved.”9 Many in the British press shared his judgment on its lack of visual interest but overall there was little consensus among critics. Some praised its “absorbing record of historical relationship in culture and trade,” whilst others took a more ambivalent stance.10 A number were affronted by how the exhibition glossed over recent international tensions, implying by omission that the Cold War was a transient historical blip and instead depicting centuries of international cooperation in culture and politics. Its narrative of longstanding and ongoing diplomatic friendship led to accusations that the British organizers were complicit in the Soviet Ministry of Culture’s propagandist historical narratives. Denys Sutton, editor of the prestigious art magazine Apollo, complained vehemently in his editorial “The Gentle Art of Cookery” that it was “moonshine to pretend that Anglo-Russian relations have always been cordial.”11 Sutton’s accusation of “cookery” offers a starting point to unpick this largely forgotten episode of Cold War “transnational entanglement” by considering different culinary metaphors as a way to explore the processes and outcomes of transnational cultural diplomacy and historiography in exhibition form.12 Utilizing both the conventional gastronomic meaning of the verb “to cook”—the preparation and combining of ingredients—and Sutton’s use as a synonym for dishonestly falsifying information, I examine the fine line between the blending together of Russian and British elements to construct an exhibition and their deliberate manipulation to create a supposedly misleading narrative. Drawing upon British archival material, this analysis explores how the negotiations for Great Britain— USSR illuminate the compromises and tensions, both ideological and practical,

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inherent in the processes of cultural diplomacy and transnational exhibition making.13 Considering a range of contemporary British reactions to the show, it questions the potential of exhibitions to reshape international historical narratives at a moment of 1960s Cold War détente.

TRANSNATIONAL COLD WAR DIPLOMACY The long-established trope of the bilateral “gladiatorial” exhibition, epitomized by US–Soviet confrontations at international expositions, has long dominated cultural Cold War historiography.14 Such influential narratives have conventionally focused on the US’s postwar promotion of culture around the globe, to the extent that Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried have suggested that that nation’s actions shaped not only perceptions of the cultural Cold War but also constrained the subsequent study of culture’s role in foreign relations.15 But increasingly there is recognition of the complexity of such encounters and the diversity of East–West cultural interactions both within and beyond the superpower binary. Calls for a more nuanced approach include Patrick Major and Rana Mitter’s early recognition of the “accommodation and restraint” displayed in cultural contacts across the Iron Curtain.16 Historian György Péteri’s transnational analysis of Eastern Bloc presence at international expositions notes not only confrontation but also convergence and interaction with the West.17 And Susan E. Reid’s exploration of the hidden “negotiation and cross-fertilization” underpinning the design of the Soviet Pavilion at the Brussels Expo in 1958 proposes that even a seemingly oppositional display depended to some extent upon “dialogic accommodation and transculturation” of Western culture.18 Moving beyond the US to focus on British attitudes in the late 1950s and early 1960s, historian Nicholas Barnett has observed not only that the Cold War was a generally peaceful period in Britain, but also the varied, ambiguous, and dynamic reactions to the Soviet Union despite the anti-communist bias of most of the mass media.19 These arguments for accommodation and compromise with the Soviet Union feed into this discussion of Great Britain—USSR, an exhibition that publicly proclaimed friendship between the two nations. The shift towards considering exhibitions—in all their many varieties—as transnational phenomena has also opened up more nuanced approaches with which to explore an explicitly collaborative museumbased exhibition like Great Britain—USSR. Studies of cultural diplomacy have often assumed a unidirectional, nation-focused model of influencer and influenced where a passive, foreign audience absorbs the intended soft power message.20 Art historians Andrea Meyer and Bénédicte Savoy’s work on transnationalism in museums emphasizes how this national “one-sidedness” has concealed the complex interrelations that have connected museums for centuries, via artifacts, display

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techniques, and dialogues between museum staff and government agencies. Focusing mostly on permanent displays, they argue that transnational museum histories need to be sensitive to the “reciprocal perceptions and transmissions” that cross international boundaries.21 An exhibition like Great Britain—USSR reveals the complexity of such interrelations and exchanges in a temporary, collaborative exhibition dependent upon reciprocity. Great Britain—USSR, though rare, was not unique, following similar jointly organized transnational exhibitions showcasing Russia’s “friendly relations” with France (1965) and Sweden (1966).22 The Anglo-Soviet iteration arose from discussions in summer 1965 to increase access to historic archives for scholars under the bilateral cultural agreement.23 The British Council, which oversaw official cultural exchanges, had initially been reluctant to take part, believing that a reciprocal historical show of “documents, books and personalia embellished with works of art” would have less propaganda impact in the Soviet Union than an exhibition of fine art.24 As it lay outside the British Council’s “normal resources,”25 it was only once its diplomatic significance was assured in late December 1966—with confirmation of Kosygin’s swiftly arranged official visit—that the British Council doubled its funding, predominantly to pay for external researchers and a purpose-made installation by Brawne.26 Kosygin’s visit in February 1967 was the first British trip by a Russian leader since Khrushchev and Bulganin in April 1956, occasioned by talks on British– Soviet cooperation27 and the temporary cease-fire in Vietnam.28 His attendance at the exhibition’s ceremonial opening formed part of a packed schedule of visits to industrial and cultural events in England and Scotland.29 The British Council’s new willingness to accede to the historical exhibition rested in great measure on the prospect of a reciprocal showing in Moscow, intended to influence Soviet citizens by demonstrating the historical development of Western freedoms. Planned for September 1968, with the transposed title USSR—Great Britain, it was ultimately canceled following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that August.30 By cooperating with the Soviet authorities over the London exhibition in early 1967, the British organizers had hoped they would receive similar concessions in Moscow at the never-realized return show.31 Short timescales and political import compelled the Foreign office and diplomatic staff in Moscow to undertake “complex and hurried negotiations” for the incoming London exhibition.32 Because the British Council was responsible for outgoing cultural manifestations, the Arts Council of Great Britain took on its organization, working directly with the V&A and Foreign Office.33 In addition to providing public arts funding in Britain, the Arts Council was also an exhibitions service: its Art Department assembled, mounted, and toured exhibitions of both domestic and international origin.34 On the Soviet side, the exhibition was organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, supported by the Soviet State Archives and Soviet Ministry of Culture. Arrangements were led by Igor N. Zemskov, Head

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of the Historic Diplomatic Directorate at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who came to Britain with a team of six Soviet experts in January 1967. The prospect of gaining access to important works of art normally inaccessible outside the USSR, notably the extensive collection of priceless Tudor and Stuart silver held at the Kremlin and Hermitage, was tantalizing. “There is no doubt,” John Morgan, Cultural Attaché in Moscow, enthused, “that if we were able to arrange this exhibition during the Kosygin visit we would have the pick of Soviet collections.”35 The opportunity to host such treasures also meant that the V&A was happy to agree to the Foreign Office’s last-minute request for a venue.36 PopeHennessy relished his role as cultural diplomat, participating not only in the Anglo-Soviet display but also in later Eastern Bloc loan exhibitions held at the V&A, including Hungarian Art Treasures (1967) and Baroque in Bohemia (1969).37 But those expecting to receive a panoply of treasures were disappointed. Despite the Soviet loans having an insurance value of £4.6 million, spectacular artworks were the exception in a display comprising hundreds of visually unappealing documents, many seemingly inconsequential.38 Some critics objected to the use of a major British museum to stage a low quality, politically motivated exhibition. Sutton found it “especially regrettable” that the V&A “through no fault of its own” should be involved with Great Britain—USSR, an exhibition that “does not reflect its otherwise high sense of standards.”39 Preliminary plans were rapidly drawn up around unconfirmed lists of exhibits.40 Aware of the need to mount the exhibition swiftly, the British Council immediately appointed Brawne as designer, stressing that “If [it] is to make any appeal to the public it must be presented well.”41 Brawne, a 1930s child émigré from Vienna whose father had briefly taught at the Weimar Bauhaus, trained as an architect in Britain before setting up his own practice in 1963. Later renowned for his architectural scholarship and his international public buildings, especially libraries, universities, and museums, the Arts Council frequently called upon Brawne for exhibition installations throughout the 1960s and 1970s.42 Great Britain—USSR was located in the V&A’s principal temporary exhibition gallery on the ground floor.43 At the Arts Council’s suggestion, Brawne’s layout followed a series of chronological periods, leading visitors through successive phases of Anglo-Russian relations.44 However, initial sketch plans, showing interlocking areas arranged from the Middle Ages through the eras of Peter the Great and Catherine II and concluding with a section covering the period 1914–1967, were modified at Soviet request. The 500m2 exhibition was expanded by a fifth,45 including a “little shrine” to Lenin focusing on his experiences and writings in England that encroached onto permanent exhibition space.46 More significantly, the 1941–1967 section was relocated to the entrance, explicitly aligning Russian history within a narrative of wartime friendship against a common foe.47 The exhibition title similarly reframed history by projecting the name of the postrevolutionary Soviet state back onto centuries of imperial Russian

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history. However, the title’s efficacy was moot in Britain, where organizers and public alike favored the term “Russian” to refer to all things Soviet.48

“IT WAS ALL DONE WITH SMILES” Sutton’s accusations of misleading “cookery” were in part due to the concessions given by each side during the selection of exhibits. The catalog described a process of “mutual give and take,” but where some saw blended compromise, he saw a falsified narrative.49 Unlike a conventional one-sided loan exhibition, each country submitted lists of exhibits relating to “Anglo-Soviet relations” from their collections for joint approval.50 Soviet lenders included important national collections at the Kremlin, Pushkin Museum, Bolshoi Ballet, and Hermitage.51 Dominated by historical documents—a vestige of the original 1965 archival exchange discussions—the Soviet proposal comprised letters from English kings, queens, and ambassadors, treaties, agreements concerning cultural and scientific relations, and Russian publications about English authors. These were supplemented by a smaller number of more visually attractive exhibits: photographs illustrating Anglo-Soviet relations and British works of art in Soviet museum collections: portraits, architectural drawings, Tudor and Stuart silver, cameos, and illuminated manuscripts (notably a copy of Bede’s eighth-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People from Leningrad that predated diplomatic contacts between the two countries).52 An array of potential British exhibits was quickly assembled to balance the Soviet contribution. In a hurried series of meetings across the new year period, the Arts Council brought together the V&A, British Council, and Foreign Office to coordinate arrangements with fifty-one lenders around Britain, ranging from private individuals to regional and national institutions like the Royal Collection, Imperial War Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Bodleian Library, and Goldsmiths Hall.53 There was no time to conduct a detailed survey of material in regional British museums, so lists were compiled from whatever could be found quickly.54 Rushing to fill the exhibition, both sides accumulated a surfeit of exhibits.55 When trimmed down, the final joint display totaled 617 artifacts, of which only 223 were listed in the catalog. Roughly two-thirds of the items shown were treaties, books, letters, journals, and photographs, mostly unrecorded in the official publication.56 The intense selection process was led on the British side by Michael Kauffmann, Assistant Keeper of Paintings at the V&A, and Elizabeth Davison of the Arts Council, who negotiated with Zemskov and the Soviet delegation in London from mid-January 1967. The Foreign Office’s official report tactfully noted “an exceptional spirit of co-operation, which enabled the very complicated and detailed negotiation to reach a successful conclusion.”57 Each side had the power of veto over potential exhibits and their descriptions.58 From the British press and

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archival record, it initially appears that the British negotiators, keen to accumulate goodwill for the future reciprocal exhibition in Moscow, often yielded to Soviet wishes in London.59 Such narratives of compromise—interpreted by some as capitulation leading to “cookery”—were later repeated in the British press. The Observer newspaper reported how any item that the Soviet organizers deemed “not acceptable”—for example, those directly connected to Tsar Nicholas II—was removed: Anglo-Russian relations were saved only by the determined though often bewildered cordiality of our side. In fact, more light is thrown on Russian attitudes by what you don’t see at the show . . . It was all done with smiles. But the Russians were as firm as we were pliant.60 However, this binary view of the negotiations—that the gracious British frequently conceded to rigid Soviet demands—is challenged by a more balanced analysis of the exhibition that notes the bias inherent in many British sources and instead recognizes accommodation and vetoes on both sides. Arguably, not only the Soviet but also the British curatorial teams employed “cookery” of both kinds—blending and falsifying—during their preparations. One of Sutton’s main criticisms concerned the exhibition’s failure to be “sufficiently historical”; that is, to create a blended, impartial narrative.61 Differing cultural expectations of history underpinned this discrepancy. The historian Evgeny Dobrenko characterizes Soviet history as a “process of ceaseless cultural erasing and re-writing” and the story of ancient Anglo-Russian relations presented at the V&A in 1967 demonstrated similar omissions, vetoes, and revisions.62 Such activities clashed with Sutton’s more fixed view of historical truth, especially concerning the recent past. His experiences in the British Foreign Office prior to becoming an art historian and critic,63 combined with a longstanding distaste for state intervention in the arts, may have exacerbated his indignation.64 Though both sides exercised their right to veto exhibits, each applied different criteria. The Arts Council omitted a number of items, typically documents and drawings, on practical or aesthetic terms: usually lack of space, or a vain attempt to reduce the proportion of flat exhibits.65 Contemporary political imperatives often guided the Soviet team’s rejections, and a number of historical artifacts suggested by the British were refused outright. The Soviet authorities were particularly sensitive about offending the French, given General de Gaulle’s recent withdrawal from NATO and efforts to encourage European independence from Washington.66 Consequently, items referencing the Napoleonic Wars over 150 years earlier were classed as “not politically acceptable.”67 Exhibits removed so late that they were already listed in the catalog included five nineteenth-century ceramic caricature jugs from Brighton Museum’s Willett Collection—including a Russian bear hugging Napoleon and the French emperor overwhelmed by the harsh Russian

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winter (“Jack Frost attacking Boney”)—that the Soviets deemed insulting to France.68 Conversely, a more recent war was highlighted in the exhibition: the Second World War, known as the Great Patriotic War in the USSR. Aiming to resurrect the spirit of the Anglo-Soviet “Wartime Alliance,” the opening section of the Great Britain—USSR prioritized friendly Anglo-Soviet relations in the period between 1941 and 1967, eclipsing the Cold War and echoing wartime pro-Soviet propaganda, such as the British Ministry of Information’s touring exhibition Comrades at Arms (1941–1942).69 This heavy emphasis on the “Wartime Alliance” telescoped the period since 1941. It prioritized a narrative of friendship and cooperation, glossing over periods where the relationship was less cordial. In part this was due to the continuing political and emotional import of the war in the USSR, a “founding myth of the late Soviet system.”70 It was also a convenient shorthand for cordial relations between Britain and Russia, striking a chord with those visitors who recalled the early 1940s when Britain “brimmed with an unprecedented enthusiasm for all things Russian.”71 Exhibits in this section included the Beaverbrook Foundation’s newspaper cartoons by David Low, depicting wartime solidarity between British and Russian soldiers. Yet these images of comradeship could also be controversial. The Russian side objected to any reference to Stalin or Stalingrad, meaning that one cartoon showing the siege of the city—renamed Volgograd in 1961 during de-Stalinization—was withdrawn.72 The only image of Stalin exhibited was an iconic photograph depicting the Allied leaders at Potsdam. The centerpiece of the Wartime Alliance section was the celebrated and hugely popular Stalingrad Sword, shown under its new name, the Sword of Volgograd (Figure 9.1). Presented in gratitude to the Russian people by King George VI in 1943 and making its first return trip to Britain, most British journalists referred to the “elegant blade” by its original moniker.73 Its homecoming prompted an outpouring of letters to the press and exhibition organizers. These reminiscences and poems revealed the intense emotions the sword continued to rouse among the British public.74 Attempting to smooth the hasty preparations, the British organizers selfcensored both to conform to what they imagined the Soviet side wanted and also to omit those artifacts they believed undermined the story of friendship. In asking “the Russians” to trust them to select appropriately, they could be over-cautious.75 Documents quietly excluded from the original Soviet request lists included unratified treaties like the 1921 Trade Agreement,76 which had “better be ignored” and, unusually, given the emphasis on the Second World War, the 1942 Treaty of Alliance that had been denounced in 1955.77 Perhaps unsurprisingly in an exhibition that alleged friendship and avoided mention of the Cold War, the later part of the 1941–1967 section was quite thin. Exhibits included a photo of Yuri Gagarin visiting Marx’s grave during his 1961 visit to London and the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The lack of any overt reference to postwar international tensions

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FIGURE 9.1 Premier Alexei Kosygin (center) inspects the Sword of Volgograd (Stalingrad Sword) at the opening of Great Britain–USSR: An Historical Exhibition, 1967. © TopFoto.

justified accusations of deliberate falsification: in displaying the 1963 Treaty, hostilities were reframed entirely by détente. But the surprising inclusion of British art historian Camilla Gray’s pioneering publication on Soviet revolutionary avantgarde art, The Great Experiment (1962), demonstrates that the Soviet manipulation was far from absolute. Though examples of the “formalist” art it surveyed were absent, it represented a tentative first step towards exhibiting art forbidden in the USSR with Soviet approval, preceding the Arts Council exhibition Art in Revolution (Hayward Gallery, 1971).78 Beyond the twentieth century section, the majority of Great Britain—USSR related to Russia’s prerevolutionary past. Exhibiting this “warehouse of ‘tradition’ ” was a delicate matter.79 The Soviet authorities permitted the British side to contribute imperial items that lent historical legitimacy to the call for closer AngloSoviet ties. Portraits like Godfrey Kneller’s Peter the Great (1698) from the Royal Collection and items from Catherine II’s Wedgwood imperial service at the British Museum highlighted ancient diplomatic and commercial connections. But any item relating to the “not acceptable” final Tsar, Nicholas II, was vetoed outright by the Soviet side.80 The Arts Council conceded, writing apologetically to prospective British lenders to explain that:

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Had the exhibition not been organized for the Foreign Office our attitude might have been rather different but I feel sure that you will understand the delicacy of the situation.81 Pope-Hennessy’s memoirs recall the “endless trouble” caused by one imperial Fabergé egg: It had a gold-enamelled imperial monogram and was lent by Her Majesty the Queen. It must be withdrawn, the Russians said. I explained that since it belonged to the Queen this was not possible. For the opening by Kosygin, however, it was reversed so that only the white back was visible. It was reversed once more, exposing the imperial monogram, when the Queen visited the exhibition.82 Interestingly, no such white Fabergé egg exists in the Royal Collection. This may be a misremembered reference to a red rhodonite egg with a bejeweled double eagle by Köchli (originally believed to be by Fabergé), or deliberate selectivity to craft a more engaging anecdote.83 Regardless, the V&A’s sleight of hand suggests that the British side, too, dabbled in cookery. In preparing the exhibition catalog, the British Foreign Office also employed compromise and deliberate omissions, creating a blended narrative acceptable to both Russian and British audiences. Kosygin’s imminent state visit meant that there was no time to produce a fully illustrated volume; instead, a 32-page booklet was produced listing the main non-documentary exhibits, augmented by a historical preface and brief introductory texts on the changing contexts of BritishRussian relations. Rohan Butler, the Foreign Office Historical Adviser, wrote the preface, whilst Dr. L. V. Anderson of the London School of Economics worked on the introductions.84 There was particular concern to avoid any controversy: tight timescales meant clearing the text with Moscow in advance was impossible and, as Robin Cecil of the Foreign Office noted, it would be a “major misfortune if the Russians requested withdrawal of the catalogue.” He advised the authors to avoid raising “too many awkward details,” suggesting that broad general statements about recent events would suffice as they would be “within the memories of many still living.”85 The plan was a success and the Soviet authorities only requested some “relatively minor” amendments to Butler’s preface.86 According to the British cultural attaché in Moscow, the careful writing “had been much admired in the Soviet Embassy, where some of the references to delicate periods in Anglo-Soviet relations had been regarded as masterly.”87 Nevertheless, Butler was pleased that his text retained a few subtle “lessons” about the political freedoms enjoyed by Marx and Lenin in England. He perceived his use of a four-dot ellipsis to indicate the omission of controversial sentences relating to the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 to be another minor victory.88 British critical comment, however, suggests that these compromises resulted in a “sketchy and rather eccentric” booklet.89

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“AN EXHIBITION WITHOUT SALT”? Sutton was not the only commentator to employ culinary metaphors in evaluating this historical exhibition. A panel member on a BBC Radio arts review program, critic Edward Lucie-Smith, neither condemned Great Britain—USSR’s trickery nor praised its blended Anglo-Russian narrative, instead concluding that this didactic display was rather bland: “an exhibition without salt.” He attributed the lack of flavor partly to the hasty preparation and “spirit of compromise,” but mostly to its explicitly diplomatic role, noting “a gingerliness” suffusing the exhibition in which “nothing bad [could] be said.”90 The exhibition’s blended, impartial narrative seemed bland against the wider, explicitly partisan context of the Cold War, an impression compounded by its overall visual appearance. In part, this flavorlessness resulted from the large number of documents displayed: one journalist observed that “a good deal of reading is needed to understand what is going on” (Figure 9.2).91 Unlike a more conventional visual art exhibition—and notwithstanding texts in Russian or Latin that demanded specific language skills—the many historic documents needed to be read and contextualized before the viewer could appreciate their significance.92 Efforts had been made by the British organizers to raise the overall quality of the display by increasing the proportion of “decorative” items, reducing the “inevitable bias” towards documents in an exhibition surveying diplomatic contacts.93 Both the Arts Council and

FIGURE 9.2 Kosygin and the Soviet delegation view some of the many documents displayed in Michael Brawne’s linear, wall-mounted cases, 1967. © TASS / TopFoto.

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Pope-Hennessy shared these concerns that a lack of “artistic” objects would lessen the show’s visual appeal and requested in vain that the Soviet organizers redress this imbalance.94 But the British selection also fell short: looking back, the British Council noted that both sides’ contributions lacked the strong visual identity required to make the display “more immediately attractive as a whole.”95 This absence of visual interest made Brawne’s installation particularly vital to viewers’ engagement with the exhibits.96 This subject particularly fascinated him: in his book The New Museum (1965), he had implored exhibition designers to exploit the “unique sense of immediacy” arising from a direct encounter with an actual object.97 Brawne’s plea for “immediacy” is echoed in literary historian Stephen Greenblatt’s later suggestion that exhibited objects connect with the viewer in two ways: by “resonance”—an artifact evoking the wider cultural world from which it emerged—or by “wonder”—the arresting uniqueness of the displayed object.98 At Great Britain—USSR, the preponderance of books, treaties, and letters could have suggested resonance with historic connections, whilst the more visually astonishing artifacts and images—like the Tudor silver—had the potential to provoke wonder. Yet planning such transformative encounters at Great Britain—USSR was complicated by an exhibit list verified only at the eleventh hour: an all-purpose installation was needed to accommodate the as-yet unconfirmed documents and artifacts.99 Although dress historian Stella Newton thought the exhibition was “brilliantly conveyed” and “not only digestible but unexpectedly beautiful,” most commentators agreed that the resulting show lacked flair.100 Critic and broadcaster John Holmstrom noted how the exhibition “failed to have any sort of artistic . . . presentational personality.”101 The Observer concurred, noting that despite the “irresistible fascination” of Anglo-Soviet relations it was a “hastily assembled” exhibition with “limited artistic appeal.”102 Even the magnificent silverware, which had been such an incentive for British organizers, failed to evoke universal wonder. The Soviet loan from the Kremlin and Hermitage comprised twelve hugely valuable English Tudor and Stuart silver pieces, very little of which survived in British collections, including the splendid leopard flagon (1600–1601) standing two feet tall. Whilst some thought it the visual “highlight” of the show, silver expert Charles Oman grumbled that the display “merely skimmed the collections” of the USSR.103 He thought that the absence of larger pieces from Leningrad like the throne of Empress Anne and four wine coolers rendered the display “commonplace.”104 The alleged refusal of the Soviet lenders to clean the silver also caused consternation. Art critic Ian Dunlop complained that it “robs their priceless collection of some of its splendour.”105 An editorial in the same newspaper agreed that it was unfortunate that “the Kremlin silver makes a poor showing, and looks as if it has not been cleaned since first acquired,” before quoting a commentator at Christie’s auction house in London: “Deep down they probably think it is bourgeois to make things glitter.”106 Longstanding anti-communist and semi-orientalist stereotypes in the press

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attributed this negligence to a combination of socialist ideology and cultural laziness. The speed with which this miscellany of objects was assembled was evident: documentary filmmaker Edgar Anstey thought some were “oddities” and his fellow critics at the BBC concurred.107 Some were of poor quality: Nigel Gosling complained that certain exhibits were “decidedly trivial” or “horribly ugly.”108 Author Margaret Drabble thought it neither informative nor entertaining, with “horrible” works of art “put together at random,” such as Pavlova’s “dead swan in a glass case” dress, loaned by the Museum of London.109 Here, bland tipped into banal. Perhaps The New York Times’s otherwise surprisingly positive review summed it up best: “Trivia vies with treaties.”110

RESHAPING HISTORICAL NARRATIVES? Great Britain—USSR: An Historical Exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore transnational processes of collaborative history-making at a moment of Cold War rapprochement. It is perhaps unreasonable to accuse an exhibition with explicitly diplomatic aims of being overtly politicized. Some commentators thought its bland content and display deliberately eschewed any political flavor. But others saw its selective, rewritten tale of Anglo-Soviet friendship, its inaccuracies and absences, as a provocatively ideological attempt to reshape historical narratives. Sutton’s criticisms of deliberately misleading “cookery” and a smooth, unconvincing narrative of amity were amongst the most vehement, but even those who praised the exhibition expressed misgivings about its political message. Some critics tried to set the record straight: The Observer noted that despite the cordial image presented, Anglo-Russian relations had been “challenging” for centuries, maintained predominantly by “vital political and commercial interests.”111 Those alliances had, like the exhibition itself, been conducted for pragmatic purposes. Great Britain—USSR demonstrates that, in a joint exhibition of Anglo-Soviet history, the two senses of the word “cookery”—to blend and to falsify—were inextricable. But as the cancellation of the return USSR—Great Britain exhibition following the events of August 1968 shows, ultimately wider political events shaped historical narratives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This chapter was developed from PhD research for the thesis The Organisation and Reception of Eastern Bloc Exhibitions on the British Cold War ‘Home Front’ c.1956–1979, supported by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award (University of Brighton / Victoria and Albert Museum, London). Image costs have been generously funded by the Centre for Design History (CDH), University of Brighton.

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NOTES 1 The exhibition ran from February 9 to April 2, 1967. The National Archives, UK

(henceforth TNA), Foreign and Commonwealth Office FCO/13/256, Terence Mullaly, “Kremlin Treasures in London,” Daily Telegraph, February 9, 1967. 2 TNA, British Council BW/64/66 “Protocol,” Moscow, August 2, 1965; Archive of Art

and Design, (henceforth AAD), Arts Council of Great Britain ACGB/121/459, Box 1 Telegram, Sir Geoffrey Harrison, British Ambassador, Moscow, to Foreign Office, December 20, 1966. 3 Anthony Cross, “Exhibiting Russia: The Two London Russian Exhibitions of 1917 and

1935,” Slavonica 16, no. 1 (April 2010): 30, https://doi.org/10.1179/13617421 0X12639903087098. 4 Mikhail Smirnovsky, “Preface,” in Rohan Butler, ed., Great Britain—USSR. An Historical

Exhibition (London: The Arts Council, 1967), 3. 5 Rohan Butler, “Introduction,” in Great Britain—USSR, 7–10. 6 AAD ACGB/121/459 Box 2 General, “Art Exhibitions Final Weekly Summary 3 April

1967”. TNA FCO/13/255 Letter, Robert Brash, Cultural Relations Dept., Foreign Office, to JAL Morgan, Cultural Attaché, Moscow, May 12, 1967. 7 AAD ACGB/121/459 Box 2 General, “Extras to Original Contract,” n.d. 8 TNA FCO/13/256 List of additional documents and photographs. 9 John Pope-Hennessy, Learning to Look. My Life in Art (London, New York: Doubleday,

1991), 187. 10 TNA FCO/13/256 “Anglo-Soviet Retrospect by our Museums Correspondent,” The

Times, February 9, 1967. 11 Denys Sutton, “The Gentle Art of Cookery,” Apollo, 85 (April 1967): 238–239. 12 Andrea Meyer and Bénédicte Savoy, “Towards a Transnational History of Museums,” in

Andrea Meyer and Bénédicte Savoy, eds., The Museum is Open. Towards a Transnational History of Museums (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 6. 13 Future research in the former Soviet archives may reveal new transnational insights in

this area. 14 Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty. Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the

1950s (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1997); Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain. Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan, Cold War Confrontations. US Exhibitions and their Role in the Cultural Cold War (Baden: Lars Müller, 2008). 15 Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried, “The Model of Cultural Diplomacy,”

in Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried, eds., Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2010), 15–16. 16 Patrick Major and Rana Mitter, “East is East and West is West? Towards a Comparative

Socio-cultural history of the Cold War,” Cold War History 1, no. 4 (2003): 17. 17 György Péteri, “Sites of Convergence: The USSR and communist Eastern Europe at

international fairs abroad and at home,” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 1 (2012): 3–12, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23248979.

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18 Susan E. Reid, “Cold War Cultural Transactions: Designing the USSR for the West at

Brussels Expo ’58,” Design and Culture 9, no. 2 (2017): 134–136, https://doi.org/10.1080 /17547075.2017.1333388. 19 Nicholas J. Barnett, Britain’s Cold War. Culture, Modernity and the Soviet Threat

(London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 2–8. 20 Gienow-Hecht and Donfried, “The Model of Cultural Diplomacy,” 16. 21 Meyer and Savoy, “Towards a Transnational History of Museums,” 2–5. 22 Held at the Hotel Monnet, Paris, 1965, the French exhibition was arranged at thirty

days’ notice. AAD ACGB/121/459 Telegram, Harrison to FO, December 20, 1966; TNA BW/64/66 CR13816. Letter, Alan Brooke Turner, Cultural Attaché, Moscow, to Richard Speaight, Cultural Relations Dept., Foreign Office, July 13, 1965. 23 TNA FCO/13/80 Cecil King, Foreign Office, “The Problems of Reciprocity in East-West

Cultural Exchanges, 3 March, 1967.” 24 TNA BW/64/66 John Hulton, Fine Arts Department, British Council, Minute, August

27, 1965. 25 TNA BW/64/66 Minute, E. N. Gummer, Controller, Books and Sciences, British

Council, to Brenda Tripp, Director East Europe Dept., September 8, 1965. 26 TNA BW/64/66 “Note of meeting held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 28

December, 1966” and “Summary of meeting, 28 December 1966”, January 2, 1967. 27 TNA FCO/28/366 Hansard House of Lords Official Report, vol. 280, no. 107, Monday,

February 13, 1967, Statement: Mr. Kosygin’s visit (Col. 34). 28 Geraint Hughes, “A ‘Missed Opportunity” for Peace? Harold Wilson, British Diplomacy

and the Sunflower Initiative to End the Vietnam War, February 1967,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 14, no. 3 (2003): 106–130. 29 Victoria and Albert Museum Archive (henceforth V&A) VX.1967.001 file 1 “Visit of

His Excellency Mr. AN Kosygin Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR 6–13 February 1967.” 30 TNA BW64/66 Minute, R. Duke, Deputy Controller Books, Arts and Sciences, to I. H.

Williams, Director East Europe Dept., July 7, 1966. 31 TNA BW/64/66 CR13816 Letter, Brooke Turner to Speaight, July 13, 1965. 32 TNA FCO/13/255 no.21 CRS 4/2 Despatch, George Brown, Secretary of State, to

Harrison, March 1, 1967. 33 Andrew Sinclair, Arts and Cultures. The History of the 50 Years of the Arts Council of

Great Britain (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), 76. 34 Eric W. White, The Arts Council of Great Britain (London: Davis-Poynter, 1975), 177. 35 TNA BW/64/66 18631 Letter, Morgan to Brash, December 22, 1966. 36 TNA BW/64/66 2929 Telegram, Foreign Office to Moscow, December 29, 1966. 37 Pope-Hennessy, Learning to Look, 187. Verity Clarkson, “Exhibiting Central European

Baroque Art in Cold War Britain: ‘the works themselves refute geographical separatism,’ ” Journal of Art Historiography 15, no. 12 (2016): 1–13, https:// arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/clarkson.pdf. 38 TNA FCO/13/254 Minute, Robin Cecil to King, January 17, 1967. 39 Sutton, “The Gentle Art of Cookery,” 239.

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40 AAD ACGB/121/459 Box 2 General, Sketch Plans. 41 TNA BW/64/66 USSR/700/2 Minute, Hulton, December 29, 1966; TNA BW/64/66

“Note of meeting held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 28 December, 1966” and “Summary of meeting, 28 December 1966,” January 2, 1967. 42 Peter Carolin et al., “Obituary. Michael Brawne: 1925–2003,” Architectural Research

Quarterly 7, no. 2 (2003), 107–112. 43 Anthony Burton, Vision and Accident. The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum

(London: V&A Publications, 1999), 212. 44 V&A VX.1967.001 “Points for discussion,” meeting January 5, 1967. 45 V&A VX.1967.001 “Summary of meeting on 12 January 1967 held to welcome the first

of the Russian delegates.” 46 TNA FCO/13/256 “Anglo-Russian Exhibits,” Yorkshire Post, February 4, 1967. 47 TNA FCO/13/255 no.21 CRS 4/2 Despatch, Brown to Harrison, March 1, 1967. 48 Barnett, Britain’s Cold War, 15. 49 John Pope-Hennessy and Gabriel White “Acknowledgments,” in Great Britain—USSR, 6. 50 TNA BW/64/66 CR1386/40 Letter, Brash to Morgan, December 7, 1966; TNA

FCO/13/253 Letter, Morgan to Brash, December 29, 1966. 51 Butler, Great Britain—USSR, 32. 52 TNA FCO/13/253 Letter, Morgan to Brash, December 29, 1966, Enclosure A

[translation]. 53 Butler, Great Britain—USSR, 32. 54 TNA FCO/13/256 USSR/646/3 Letter, J. D. K. Argles, British Council, to Morgan,

October 16, 1967. 55 V&A VX.1967.001 “Summary of meeting on 12 January 1967 held to welcome the first

of the Russian delegates.” 56 TNA FCO/13/256 List of additional documents and photographs. 57 TNA FCO/13/255 no.21 CRS 4/2 Despatch, Brown to Harrison, March 1, 1967. 58 TNA FCO/13/253 Letter, Morgan to Brash, December 29, 1966. 59 TNA FCO/13/255 no.21 CRS 4/2 Despatch, Brown to Harrison, March 1, 1967. 60 TNA FCO/13/256 “Editorial: Russians Veto Boney’s War,” The Observer, February 19,

1967. 61 Sutton, “The Gentle Art of Cookery,” 239. 62 Evgeny Dobrenko, “Between History and the Past: (Post-) Soviet Art of Re-Writing,” in

Gregory Freidin, ed., Russia at the End of the 20th Century. Culture and its Horizons in Politics and Society (Stanford University, 2000), 2–3, https://web.stanford.edu/group/ Russia20/volumepdf/dobrenko.pdf. 63 David Platzer, “Denys Sutton (1917–1991), Editor of Apollo (1962–1987),” The British

Art Journal 12, no. 3 (Winter 2011–2012): 82–90, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/41615247. 64 Denys Sutton, “The Flies of a Summer,” Apollo 82 (October 1965): 270–271. 65 AAD ACGB/121/459 (192) Box 1 File: Lenders A-G, Letter, Elizabeth Davison to W.

Carman, National Army Museum, February 14, 1967.

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66 John W. Young, Cold War Europe 1945–1989. A Political History (London and New

York: Edward Arnold, 1991), 15. 67 AAD ACGB/121/459 (192) Box 1 File: Correspondence, “Objects which are to be

omitted owing to objections from Soviet Officials,” January 16, 1967. 68 AAD ACGB/121/459 (192) Box 1 File: Lenders A-G, Letter, Gabriel White, Director

of Art, Arts Council, to Clifford Musgrave, Director, Brighton Art Gallery, February 15, 1967. 69 Jim Aulich, “Stealing the Thunder: The Soviet Union and Graphic Propaganda on the

Home Front during the Second World War,” Visual Culture in Britain 13, no. 3, (2012): 343–366. 70 Stuart Morcom, “Review Article: The Second World War in Russia,” Journal of

Contemporary History 42, no. 3 (2007), 525. 71 Claire Knight, “Mrs. Churchill Goes to Russia,” in Anthony Cross, ed., A People

Passing Rude. British Responses to Russian Culture (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2012), 253. 72 AAD ACGB/121/459 (192) Box 1 File: Lenders A-G, Letter, White to Lady Low,

January 19, 1967. 73 TNA FCO/13/256 Nigel Gosling, “Anglo-Russian Connections,” The Observer, February

12, 1967. 74 “Stalingrad Sword Comes Home,” The Times, February 2, 1967; V&A VX.1967.001 file

1, Letter, Rosalie K. Millar to V&A, February 6, 1967. 75 AAD ACGB/121/40 file 1.1 Letter, Robin Campbell, Arts Council, to John Field,

Cultural Attaché Moscow, August 20, 1970. 76 TNA Board of Trade BT/11/5931, “Anglo-Soviet Five-Year Trade Agreement: Third

Annual Review” General Brief, STT (62) 31, Note from BoT, 1962. 77 TNA FCO/13/253 Letter, Brash to Morgan, January 4, 1967. 78 Brawne’s innovative installation formed the backbone of Art in Revolution. Verity

Clarkson, “The Soviet Avant-Garde in Cold War Britain: The Art in Revolution Exhibition (1971),” in Simo Mikkonen, Giles Scott-Smith, and Jari Parkkinen, eds., Entangled East and West. Cultural Diplomacy and Artistic Interaction During the Cold War (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 15–38. 79 Dobrenko, “Between History and the Past,” 2–3. 80 AAD ACGB/121/459 (192) Box 1 File: Correspondence, “Objects which are to be

omitted owing to objections from Soviet Officials,” January 16, 1967. 81 AAD ACGB/121/459 (192) Box 1 File: Lenders A-G, Letter, White to Norman Cook,

Guildhall Museum, January 19, 1967. 82 Pope-Hennessy, Learning to Look, 186. 83 Caroline de Guitaut, Fabergé in the Royal Collection (London: Royal Collection,

2003), 27. 84 TNA BW/64/66, Note of meeting at the Victoria and Albert Museum, December

28,1966; Summary of meeting, December 28, 1966 dated January 2, 1967; note of meeting, January 5, 1967. 85 TNA FCO/13/253 Minute, Cecil to J. Sutherland, Northern Dept., January 13, 1967. 86 TNA FCO/13/253 CRS 4/2 Minutes of meeting, January 18, 1967.

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87 TNA FCO/13/254 Minute, Brash to Cecil, January 18, 1967. 88 TNA FCO/13/255 Butler, Foreign Office Historical Adviser, confidential report,

February 27, 1967. 89 TNA FCO/13/256 Gosling, “Anglo-Russian Connections.” 90 V&A VX.1967.001 Transcript of “The Critics,” BBC Home Service radio program,

February 19, 1967. 91 TNA FCO/13/256 Ian Dunlop, “Hands Across Europe,” Evening Standard, February 9,

1967. 92 Ekaterina Rogatchevskaia, “Revolution Collected and Curated ‘Russian

Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths’ at the British Library,” Slavic & East European Information Resources 19, nos. 3–4 (2018): 183, 189, https://doi.org/10.1080/15228886. 2018.1538862. 93 TNA FCO/13/256 USSR/646/3 Letter, Lilian Somerville, Director Fine Arts Dept.,

British Council, to various museums in the UK, n.d. 94 TNA FCO/13/255 Sutherland, response to minute from Brash, February 23, 1967. 95 TNA FCO/13/256 USSR/646/3 Letter, Argles to Morgan, October 16, 1967. 96 At that time it was unusual for the V&A to employ a professional designer for a

temporary exhibition. Burton, Vision and Accident, 213, 218. 97 Michael Brawne, The New Museum. Architecture and Display (New York: Praeger,

1965), 7. 98 Stephen Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder,” in Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine,

eds., Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 42. 99 AAD ACGB/121/459 Box 2 General, Letter, Michael Brawne to Beck & Pollitzer Ltd.,

January 18, 1967. 100 TNA FCO/13/256 Stella Newton, “Imperial Grandeur, Russian Flavour,” The

Guardian, February 9, 1967. 101 V&A VX.1967.001 Transcript of “The Critics.” 102 TNA FCO/13/256 Gosling, “Anglo-Russian Connections.” 103 TNA FCO/13/256 Dunlop, “Hands Across Europe.” 104 Charles Oman, “Great Britain—USSR: An Historical Exhibition,” Burlington

Magazine 109, no. 768 (March 1967), 183. 105 TNA FCO/13/256 Dunlop, “Hands Across Europe.” 106 TNA FCO/13/256 “Editorial: Unclean,” Evening Standard, February 9, 1967. 107 V&A VX.1967.001 Transcript of “The Critics.” 108 TNA FCO/13/256 Gosling, “Anglo-Russian Connections.” 109 V&A VX.1967.001 Transcript of “The Critics.” 110 TNA FCO/13/256 Anna Kisselgoff, “London Displays Bits of Russian History,” The

New York Times, February 21, 1967. 111 TNA FCO/13/256 Gosling, “Anglo-Russian Connections.”

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10 FROM FESMAN ’66 TO FESTAC ’77: COMPETING CURATORIAL STRATEGIES FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN ART AT PAN-AFRICAN FESTIVALS Lindsay Twa

The First World Festival of Black and African Culture (Le festival mondial des arts nègres, known as FESMAN) was staged by Senegal in April 1966. It was, as reported to Ebony magazine, “designed to illustrate the genius, the culture and the glory of Africa.”1 Thirty-six African nations and Black-diasporan groups curated exhibitions, and sent approximately 2,500 delegates—musicians, dancers, theater groups, writers, filmmakers, visual artists, and scholars—to this monumental month-long Pan-African festival that welcomed at least 20,000 visitors.2 Prior to Senegal’s event, there had been several prominent international Pan-African conferences that embraced culture as a unifying weapon against colonial and racist structures, but none had been hosted in Africa.3 In 1960, Senegal gained its independence from France. Three years later, its first president, writer-poet Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001), announced his plan for Senegal to host the festival, setting in motion its organization, which vastly outgrew all previous PanAfrican gatherings in size and scope.4 FESMAN became the organizational model for subsequent festivals, foremost its proclaimed successor: The Second Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), hosted by Nigeria from January 15 to February 12, 1977. Like FESMAN, FESTAC included a colloquium, exhibitions, literary readings, film

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screenings, and music, dance, and theatrical performances. With an estimated 17,000 representatives from approximately sixty different countries, and 500,000 spectators, however, FESTAC dwarfed Senegal’s monumental achievement.5 The massive scale of these Black cultural Olympiads would not be repeated, and they have mostly faded from memory. Both festivals, however, are now beginning to receive scholarly attention from an array of disciplines.6 This chapter will focus specifically on the curatorial histories of the African-American contemporary art submitted to each festival. As these events occurred abroad, both have received little attention in African-American exhibition histories. Yet, the US organizers for FESMAN ’66 and FESTAC ’77 saw these exhibitions as significant opportunities to raise the profile of African-American art domestically. At the same time, both exhibitions brought African-American visual art to a global stage and were powerful tools of transnational exchange. The African-American contemporary art contributions to FESMAN ’66 and FESTAC ’77 operate as historical bookends to the Black Power and Black Arts movements. Each exhibition had widely differing goals and results. The organization of the African-American contemporary art selection for FESMAN clearly reflected a US (and New York) mindset that was extremely conscious of maintaining its reputation as an arts world leader: the selection committee structure emphasized institutional authority and notions of “universal” quality, even as it sought to proclaim a place for African-American artists within the US and global art worlds. In the intervening years, Black artists and their communities became more mobilized, winning important battles against mainstream institutions that had long shut them out and founding new, more inclusive institutions and advocacy groups.7 By the time of FESTAC ’77, African-American artists could demand a much more horizontal organizational structure, with a selection process that valued radical inclusivity across the entire nation. The success of their exhibition became a key political tool in ensuring the arrival of the full US delegation in Lagos, furthering the transnational dialogues of all involved. Although FESMAN ’66 and FESTAC ’77 facilitated significant international presentations of African-American art, it was FESTAC that actuated, rather than merely represented, the transnational artistic network of a global Black community.

ORGANIZING THE US CONTRIBUTIONS TO FESMAN’S TRENDS AND CONFRONTATIONS The Visual Arts Committee (VAC), a subcommittee under the non-profit organization the US Committee for the First World Festival of Negro Arts, was charged with organizing the US contribution to FESMAN’s Exhibition of Contemporary Art: Trends and Confrontations. The VAC was highly attentive from

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the start that their selections would embody quality and distinction in order to demonstrate the long-standing history of African-American art and its participation in the ascendancy of US cutting-edge modernism. The committee sought to accomplish this through artistic and institutional expertise, and by establishing a formal selection process with national reach. The VAC set the goal of assembling a major exhibition of 75–85 artworks from approximately forty African-American artists. Dakar was to be a group show within a group show: the US selection would be viewed with other FESMAN delegations, but also needed to work as a coherent group as they planned for it to tour as a stand-alone exhibition following the festival, though this did not come to pass.8 The VAC’s selection of artwork, however, also needed to respond to FESMAN’s published aims, which included: “To make known the contributions of . . . ‘négritude.’ ”9 Decades before, Senghor had helped forge the complex philosophy of Négritude within the transnational network of 1930s Paris, which was a crossroads of Harlem Renaissance, Black francophone Caribbean, and African thought. Although there are as many contestations as definitions of it, Négritude championed, though didn’t always define, Black values and cultural expression as a form of resistance to the West’s violent history of domination. Senghor’s FESMAN was to be the triumphant demonstration of Négritude, which pre-festival documents noted as “A Negro’s pride in his race and a recognition of the Negro’s unique creative ability based on his African heritage.”10 Additionally, for what would become the Exhibition of Contemporary Art: Trends and Confrontations, pre-festival documents announced calls for contemporary artworks that “reflect the unity and originality of the present-day Negro world, through its most representative works of art.”11 Each delegation, therefore, needed to define Négritude and contemporary art, and then determine the highest quality works at the intersection of these terms. The VAC readily deemed contemporary art simply to mean work by living artists. Selecting works that demonstrated Négritude, however, was more problematic. The VAC co-chairman, Hale Woodruff, a preeminent AfricanAmerican painter and professor of art education at New York University, wrote a curatorial statement in October 1964. In “Criteria Governing the Selection of Works of Art: Written for the Visual Arts Committee,” Woodruff argued: “The emphasis upon high level quality shall take precedence over any other consideration . . . particularly . . . selecting or judging a work of art according [to] the stereotypical notions about ‘Negro’ quality, sentimentality, and romanticized clichés.” Woodruff challenged the identity politics that had often been applied as aesthetic criteria to the work of African-American artists: that was, evaluating an artist’s work strictly through a racialized lens, which produced tensions between universalism and particularism. Woodruff did not completely deny that there could be an identifiable ‘Negro quality’ in the work of African Americans. He argued, however, against a racial litmus test based on stereotypes: “to emphasize [Négritude] arbitrarily is to follow an esthetic ‘party line.’ ”12 Woodruff ’s curatorial manifesto interjected a

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strong cautionary note towards the philosophy that undergirded FESMAN, and, on a practical level, sought to reveal racial biases in the art world—biases that Woodruff, in writing this internal document, possibly saw in his colleagues on the VAC and US Organizing Committee as a whole. FESMAN’s organization, a significant international and national undertaking, inevitably produced criticisms. The appointment of white leadership at international, US committee, and subcommittee levels became a lightning rod for criticism before, during, and after FESMAN.13 The chair of the VAC was Mrs. Lawrence Copley Thaw, a Euro-American philanthropist and trustee of the American Federation of Arts. William S. Lieberman, Curator (and, in 1966, Director) of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, and Hale Woodruff served as co-chairs. The committee also included highly influential arts administrators from prominent institutions: Henry Geldzahler, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Roy Moyer, Director, American Federation of Arts; and Dr. James A. Porter, a painter, art historian, university gallery director, and Department Chair at Howard University in Washington, DC. In addition to Woodruff and Porter, the committee also included preeminent African-American artists: Charles Alston, instructor at the Art Students League and City College of New York; Jacob Lawrence; and Charles W. White, an instructor at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles. The VAC clearly exemplified expertise and authority in selecting artists for Dakar, though all of the institutional representatives, save for Porter, were European Americans, while the artist representatives were all African Americans. This committee structure, however, did represent an opportunity to facilitate an arts network that crossed racial and (on a more limited basis) geographic lines, that, while working towards the success of this international exhibition, was intended to impact positively the structures of the domestic art world through familiarity gained by this collaboration.14

US FESMAN CONVERSATIONS ERUPT Having determined its criteria, the VAC embarked on the major endeavor of identifying a nation-wide group of artists by contacting “various advisors in museums, galleries and schools across the country” for nominations of “great or promising” artists.15 Woodruff emphasized that the VAC’s process would help “discover and bring to recognition unknown artists.”16 Invited nominees would then submit images for the VAC’s consideration. By December 1964, the VAC reported that Woodruff, Alston, and Porter had nearly completed the list of artists to be invited to submit works for consideration, suggesting that the AfricanAmerican artists, rather than the white museum curators, initially led the process.17 A year later, however, Porter felt excluded from the final selection, and complained that with Woodruff and Copley Thaw “running things,” only New York painters

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and three or four sculptors would get to represent the United States.18 Porter’s charge that the NYC-centralized committee would only select New York artists was not quite accurate, though the committee did face significant challenges in accomplishing its curatorial vision. As for any major group exhibition, space allocation was a deep concern. Of the twenty-five to thirty participating countries, Dakar allotted a double-sized space to Nigeria, Brazil, and the US.19 At the late date of December 1965, however, the VAC discovered it had less than half the expected space, and needed to reduce the exhibition to approximately thirty-five artworks. Sixteen artists made it to the final selection: Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Barbara Chase Riboud, Emilio Cruz, Sam Gilliam, Richard Hunt, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, William Majors, Richard Mayhew, Norma Morgan, Robert Dennis Reid, Raymond Saunders, Charles White, Todd Williams, and Hale Woodruff.20 Many selectees were longstanding leaders, including all of the VAC committee artists: Woodruff, Alston, and Lawrence. They were joined by leading Abstract Expressionist Norman Lewis, and innovative painter Bearden, who had submitted new photomontages. This selection also included a wide range of styles and subject matter, from the welded and mixed-media non-objective sculptures of Hunt, Williams, and Riboud, to the high naturalism of Charles White’s drawing, Birmingham Totem (1964), an emotive response to the 1963 bombing of a Baptist church by a Ku Klux Klan splinter group that had killed four African-American children. Complementing this drawing, selections from Jacob Lawrence’s well-known John Brown series narrated the violent history of US rebellion in the face of racial inequities. Both White and Lawrence presented harsh realities beyond the generalized call for works of Négritude. Yet, within this selection, artists who engaged with more formal problems of visual art also had their place, from the experimental printmaking of Majors, to the hard-edge abstraction of Gilliam, and the lyrical, abstracted nudes of Cruz.21 The organization of the US contribution to Trends and Confrontations was a major accomplishment, but its legacy is shaded by several late-breaking controversies that will be key in understanding FESTAC as a direct curatorial response to FESMAN. Foremost, ten out of the sixteen visual artists quit just weeks before the festival opened. Six of the artists—Alston, Bearden, Lewis, Majors, Mayhew, and Woodruff—were members of Spiral, a New York-based AfricanAmerican artist group that had first formed in 1963 to discuss the role (if any) of race in their work and their responsibilities as artists.22 They were joined by Lawrence, Reid, Saunders, and White. The artists protested not receiving previously agreed upon honoraria, of which they had planned to donate one-half back as a travel scholarship to Africa for a young artist the following year.23 Although their artwork would be shipped to Dakar, there had never been any budget for the visual artists to attend the festival; they would have had to pay their own way. Woodruff, designated the official guest of the US State Department, was to be the sole

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representative to Trends and Confrontations. The visual artists contrasted this with the performers, whose company fees and travel costs were to be paid by the US Organizing Committee. The US Committee failed to meet its fundraising goals, and additional cuts needed to be made, including the honoraria. The artists’ protest underscored that the transnational experiences made possible by this largest-ever Pan-African gathering was the heart of the festival, not just the exhibits and performances. The artists enforced their point by trying to create a scholarship: if they could not attend, then at least they could send a worthy young artist to experience Africa the next year. Another controversy occurred, but received only brief mention in the press: VAC chair Copley Thaw stepped down after rejecting two of the committee’s choices.24 That the white chair with no curatorial experience could overrule the committee’s African-American artists exposed fissures of authority that broke along racial lines. The published exhibition catalog lists Woodruff as the lone committee chair, with Lieberman as co-chair, and no mention of Copley Thaw, thus striking from the public record her long-standing and influential role.25 It is uncertain which artists Copley Thaw rejected, though Woodruff mentions several in his draft for the FESMAN catalog, noting (without explanation) that they “could not include the works” of Eldzier Cortor, John Rhoden, John Biggers, and the late Horace Pippin. Woodruff notes also missing the younger generation of artists: Calvin Douglas, Alvin Hollingsworth, Rip Woods, and Tom Feelings.26 The absence of a larger number of younger artists occurred in many discipline areas for the US FESMAN delegation, and was another major critique of FESMAN overall.27 The much-reduced show did go on, but became Ten Negro Artists from the United States, as institutions still lent works from four of the protesting artists: Lawrence, Majors, Reid, and White (Figure 10.1). FESMAN’s Trends and Confrontations received lukewarm to hostile responses.28 An early member of the US Committee and VAC, James Porter attended the full month as a speaker to the colloquium, with his travel covered by Howard University. He was the only US art historian to record an extended response to the exhibition. Porter opened his essay, “ ‘Temperate’ and ‘Tropical’: Two Modes of Art Seen at Dakar,” by wondering how FESMAN’s espoused values might influence African-American artists into the future as he observed “broad differences of form and quality” between the work of African and African-American artists that “seemed both real and divisive.” This he found to be one of the “astonishing contradictions of Négritude.”29 Although he disparaged the entire display, Porter found the US selection to be the most problematic: as a group, the artwork exhibited an “excessive independence of facture” that “may add up to an intention to transcend the ‘artistic dialect’ of race experience through deliberate reaching for a dubious ‘universality’ of artistic expression.” Here, Porter quotes Woodruff from the published US FESMAN catalog that in turn reflected the VAC selection criteria manifesto. Porter thus

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FIGURE 10.1 Installation view of Ten Negro Artists from the United States: First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, 1966. Credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives. Image # SIA2018-007035.

challenges the curatorial strategy (which he had earlier been a part of) that favored universalism over “race experience.”30 For Porter, the FESMAN selection lost its power to testify to the lived experiences of African-Americans by emphasizing works that spoke only to the upper echelon of the US art world. The inclusion of Charles White’s Birmingham Totem or Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown series notwithstanding, the twice-reduced FESMAN exhibition tipped the balance to artists focused on formal aesthetics. In his essay, Porter questioned how the values embodied by FESMAN might become “points of departure for new work” and asked whether African and AfricanAmerican artists could achieve a “solidarity of sentiment” alongside individualism, where an artist’s “social concern [is] prominently expressed, not merely illustrated.” Porter identified such a solidarity in the generation of the 1930s, out of which Négritude was born, and in the members of Spiral, which had dared to critique FESMAN. Critiques of FESMAN, as exemplified by Porter’s review, and the first festival’s very real limitations in staffing and fundraising, became the cautionary tale that FESTAC ’77 sought to overcome, and also the vision that pulled FESTAC to its realization.

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FESMAN BECOMES FOIL TO FESTAC If FESMAN’s displays were meant to exhibit a global Black identity and connect this community, then FESTAC furthered the network by allowing the creators themselves to form and test these connections on a massive scale.31 FESTAC’s International Festival Committee (IFC) divided the world into sixteen zones. The North American Zone (NAZ) was to include Black diasporan groups in Canada, though in truth US participation dominated. The NAZ drew inspiration from FESMAN ’66, but also clearly positioned their organizational and curatorial strategies as a direct critique of its predecessor.32 Foremost, the presence of EuroAmericans in any leadership positions needed to be eliminated. An early FESTAC committee report proclaimed: “American Black participation in the Dakar Festival was determined by aliens whose knowledge of Black art/artists was superficial, Paternalistic and exclusive. This time will be different. This time Black people are in complete control.”33 The first organizational meeting in Chicago in June 1972 ensured Black leadership, with the election of Ossie Davis (1917–2005), a famous actor, author, director, and activist, as the NAZ Chairman. Author and editor Hoyt Fuller (1923–1981), an observer of FESMAN ’66 and Algiers’s more radical 1969 First Pan-African Cultural Festival, became Vice Chairman.34 The NAZ Board of Directors elected Jeff Donaldson (1932–2004) as Executive Director in March 1973. When Davis stepped down in April 1975, Donaldson became ChairmanDirector.35 A giant of his era, Donaldson was a visual artist, co-founder of the artist group AfriCOBRA, and earned the first PhD in African-American art history, in addition to being chair of the Howard University Art Department in Washington, DC. Under Donaldson’s leadership, the NAZ set the ambitious goal of having 2,000–2,500 artists and performers participate in Nigeria, and they would work to accomplish this through a horizontal structure that empowered regional art communities.36 The FESMAN Visual Arts Committee had attempted to create a nationally representative exhibition by engaging a national network for its initial nominations and the final ten exhibiting artists were more geographically diverse than the rest of the delegation.37 The US FESMAN delegation as a whole, however, favored New York-based performers and writers, and criticisms abounded.38 The NAZ selection process conscientiously redressed these by emphasizing inclusivity and geographic diversity. The NAZ divided the US into eight geographic zones, and any artist could apply directly to their Regional Directors, contrasting the FESMAN model of nomination by expert. To be as supportive as possible, there was also a “Court of Last Resort,” where applicants could contest regional decisions by petitioning the national Board of Directors directly.39 Beyond the NAZ selection structure, the application guidelines provided the most overt corrective to FESMAN’s white jurors and committees who sought the highest forms of art, but measured it through a litmus test of “universal” quality.

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Each NAZ region had autonomy in selecting participants, but each discipline was to have, at minimum, a three-person selection panel: 1

“a technical expert—a Black artist or scholar in the field”;

2

“a political expert—a Black individual conversant with politics from a world-view Black perspective”;

3

“a spiritual expert—a Black person with a background of appreciation for the form of expression.”40

Such careful designations of the jurors ensured not only disciplinary expertise, but also that a sense of racial solidarity in social concern and expression came to the fore in picking the delegation—echoing a response to Porter’s critical review of FESMAN’s contemporary exhibition. The US FESTAC application form also testified to an expanded definition of creative expression that was foremost Black-centered. Artists were asked to selfidentify their work under one of five “Categories for Participation”: a) African Traditional (African cultural “ ‘survivals’ . . . eclectically or spiritually adopted” by African Americans); b) Traditional Diaspora (“derived from African and European cultural experience but . . . reshaped . . . by the black sensibility to the American situation”); c) Contemporary Diaspora (“the most popular forms of present-day Black America,” but with balance between all aspects, e.g., “street culture,” and concert stage); d) Alternative Modes (“new concepts . . . on the ever-widening horizon of black cultural expression”); e) Other (left to the artist to define or describe).41 I highlight these extensive categories to emphasize that the FESTAC leadership and selection committees did not have a singular litmus for determining Black- or African-derived expressive practices, but rather recognized and encouraged a diversity of knowledge, practices, and modes of expression, all of which constituted Black identities and Diasporic experiences for its US delegation. The NAZ provided target participation percentages for these categories. “Contemporary Diaspora” would be up to half of all groups selected, with “Alternative Modes” to be a quarter of total participation selection. Donaldson called the latter “the most crucial of the total program concept” as the submission “must represent an unprecedented innovation on traditional African or AfricanAmerican image modes.”42 These category percentages addressed another critique of FESMAN: many had commented on the absence of younger (and more radical)

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African-American artists and intellectuals, and that FESMAN participation had constituted “mostly proven, well-known, overwhelmingly veteran scholars and artists,” as noted by Donaldson.43 FESTAC’s numerous delays challenged this regional structure and the selection plan was not carried out in all instances. For example, artist Charlotte Richardson Ka (b. 1942) met Donaldson through her association with the Chicago National Conference of Artists, an organization dedicated to the promotion and development of African-American visual art; she recalls Donaldson contacting her directly to participate. A co-founder of AfriCOBRA, painter Gerald Williams (b. 1941) attended the first FESTAC organizational meeting in Chicago. Donaldson and Williams both relocated to Washington, DC, where AfriCOBRA continued meeting; Donaldson invited the group to submit entries together.44 The records of artist and art historian Samella Lewis, a Far West Zone Regional Director, however, includes files of original applications noting these categories.45

FESTAC (ALMOST NOT) REALIZED The NAZ did not achieve its goal of 2,500 US participants due to numerous challenges, foremost fundraising. The US delegation of 482 participants, fifteen board members, and fifteen support cadre, however, was a major achievement, and represented “mainstream American trends as well as the broad blackstream movement.”46 Donaldson praised particularly the selection of visual artists. They, more than any other group, “comprised the most comprehensive microcosm of the horizontal and vertical dimensions of African-American cultural expression.”47 The 108 US artists represented not only the fine arts media found at FESMAN, but also photography, ceramics, weaving, and other crafts. They hailed from twenty-four states, ranged in age from twenty-one to seventy years old, and, astoundingly, a majority participated in the festival.48 On January 12, the first contingent of 212 delegates departed for Lagos. Even under normal circumstances, organizing the travel of such a vast group, in addition to performance equipment and artwork, would have presented huge logistical challenges. A crisis in funding, however, became one more key parallel between the realization of US participation in FESMAN and FESTAC. One great but little understood FESMAN controversy was the belief in State Department interference.49 The NAZ, however, did request a FESTAC start-up grant of $200,000 from the State Department, which was not funded.50 Donaldson later accepted a $50,000 State Department grant in 1975, when the State Department needed to cultivate positive US-Nigeria relations. FESTAC, according to Donaldson, became a “critical instrument of US-Africa policy implementation.”51 The NAZ tried to leverage this interest, hoping for a balanced array of government, corporate, and foundation support. Private funding never materialized and

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FIGURE 10.2 Marilyn Nance, “African-American Contemporary Art Exhibition of FESTAC ’77, with Valerie Maynard speaking to the Nigerian Press, and artists Reginald Jackson and Ernest Crichlow in the background.” Photograph © Marilyn Nance, The Marilyn Nance Archive, All Rights Reserved (File # 261–25A).

government funding went cold quickly. In 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger deprioritized FESTAC as a tool of soft-power diplomacy, shifting US focus towards a Southern African Policy. The NAZ continued petitioning for $200,000, one-third of the cost of sending the entire delegation, and rejected a late November 1976 offer to send up to fifty participants as these would have been selected by the State Department. After several weeks of high-level negotiations, Donaldson and the NAZ Board accepted the State Department’s “final” offer of $169,000 for a single charter flight for 262 participants. Donaldson took a “calculated risk” in accepting one plane, “reasoning that U.S. participants and Art work in Africa during the first two weeks of FESTAC would be essential strategically in securing support for a second contingency.” Donaldson and the board vowed to remain behind until travel for the second contingent could be secured.52 The great success of the US contemporary art exhibition in Nigeria enabled Donaldson to wield it as his own soft-power weapon to ensure the arrival of the second US contingent. The first US contingent arrived a few days ahead of the festival’s opening. The African-American contribution became a focal point of the popular contemporary art exhibition, constituting 25 percent of the exhibit (Figure 10.2).53 By late January, the NAZ was at an impasse with the State Department for a second charter. Contacting Ed Spriggs, Director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, who was the International Secretariat Senior Exhibitions Officer and

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acting US delegation director on the ground in Lagos, Donaldson requested the return of all of the artwork. Donaldson argued that without insurance and the presence of US participants (the first delegation was slated to return to the US halfway through the festival), he could not allow the artwork to remain. This provoked an immediate response from US ambassador to Nigeria, Donald B. Easum, who complained that removal would “leave a giant gap” in the exhibition for the final two weeks of the festival. Heated diplomatic conversations ensued, and on January 26, the State Department agreed to add sufficient funds for a second plane. The second contingent, upon very short notice, departed for Lagos on February 1, and the artwork remained on display for the entire length of the festival.54

US ARTISTS EXPERIENCE FESTAC In the FESTAC program, Nigerian Commander Fingesi laid out six festival objectives. The last, “to facilitate a periodic ‘return to origin’ in Africa by Black artists, writers and performers uprooted to other continents,” clearly shaped the spirit of US participation.55 Donaldson proudly reported that the 512-member contingent represented “the largest single movement of African-Americans from the new world to Africa in historical memory.”56 Participants keenly attested to the import of this reverse migration.57 Artist Charlotte Richardson Ka, for example, felt absolutely welcomed, and vividly remembers seeing cars painted with the message “Come Back Home African Americans.”58 “The Great Congress of the Black Spirit,” as Donaldson described FESTAC, required sending not only artworks, but also their creators, the ultimate redress of FESMAN. “I know we were there because of the exhibit,” reflected photographer Marilyn Nance (b. 1953), “but I feel that the exhibit was just an excuse to get there . . . the highlight was being there.”59 Nance served as the official photographer for the North American Zone delegation, and she amassed 1,500 images of the month-long event. Her personal archive, which includes not only her photographs but also journals, letters, and FESTAC printed ephemera, is one of the most allencompassing views of the experience of FESTAC ’77. The US artists indeed embraced all that FESTAC and the environs beyond Lagos had to offer. For example, Nance, along with artists Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Tyrone Mitchell, Winnie Owens, and David Stephens, made a multi-day road trip to Ife, Osogbo, and Benin City. They visited artists, workshops, and the Yaba College of Technology sculpture garden. They also attended a bronze pour and experienced village life. While visiting the pottery-producing village of Ipetumodu, Winnie Owens (b. 1949), an accomplished ceramicist, “astonished the potters’ guild with her mastery of traditional methods and was enthusiastically welcomed by elders”60 (Figure 10.3).

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FIGURE 10.3 Marilyn Nance, “Winnie Owens in Ipetumodu, with Iya Alamo, Agbo Folarin, and Napoleon Jones-Henderson in the background,” 1977. Photograph © Marilyn Nance, The Marilyn Nance Archive, All Rights Reserved (File # 259-31A).

This was Owens’s first visit to Africa, which she described as a “pilgrimage” and as “my first re-connection with home.”61 This connection to her African heritage also flowed through her identity as a ceramicist: “My impetus to find my heritage was an inherent belief that I (this ‘I’ encompassed all ancestral beings) came from a greater ceramic history than had been revealed to me at that time.”62 Owens’s previous ceramics education had frustratingly emphasized only the ceramic traditions of China, Japan, and England. Although Owens’s first hands-on study of Nigerian pottery techniques came in 1974 at the Haystacks Mountain School of Arts and Crafts in Maine, she would later cite that it was this first visit to Ipetumodu, enabled by being an American representative to FESTAC, that “was the beginning of my mission to educate the American ceramic community about the existence and significance of traditional African pottery.”63 Owens returned the following year with a National Endowment Craftsmen Fellowship. As an apprentice to the women of Ipetumodu, Owens gained technical expertise that would inform not only her artistic practice but also her research and teaching for the remainder of her career as a professor at Howard University. That Owens’s FESTAC experience launched a lifelong transnational artistic, research, and teaching practice certainly confirmed Donaldson’s justification as to why visual artists needed to be present at the festival. “In selecting visual artists as participants, rather than merely as exhibitors,” argued Donaldson, “. . . FESTAC ’77 would provide all artists with new perspectives, increase expressive options and . . .

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develop far reaching professional and aesthetic contacts on an international plane.”64 Indeed it did, and each FESTAC delegate would have his or her own transnational experience to tell. Painter Gerald Williams remembers very few details of the exhibition as a whole, though he does recall that the AfriCOBRA work was displayed together within the contemporary exhibition. Rather, his most memorable experiences came from wandering the city between FESTAC Village and the theater where the exhibition and performances were. He encountered local artists, and one invited him to his family’s home in Benin City, where Williams stayed for several days and saw traditional bronze casting practices.65 Following FESTAC, he joined the Peace Corps, spending two years in Kenya, and later became the Arts and Crafts Director for the United States Air Force. “Nobody knows [FESTAC] today,” Williams recently told an interviewer, “But . . . it had something to do with everything.”66 FESTAC may have been organized as its heir, but FESMAN also served as its foil. The US organizers for the FESMAN ’66 and FESTAC ’77 each saw the contemporary art exhibitions as opportunities for transnational dialogues, while also seeking to bring domestic recognition to African-American artists’ contributions to national cultural life. Both festivals also had significant challenges to overcome. By examining these two Pan-African festivals together, however, we can see how each carried within their structural organization and curatorial strategies significant differences in philosophy, goals, and outcomes. Foremost, as a group of assembled experts, the US FESMAN VAC curated objects that would exemplify US and African-American ascendancy in the contemporary art world and presumed that they would outpace their African and Black diasporan contemporaries. In contrast, the US committee for FESTAC ’77 curated people, showcasing artists in all their bewildering diversity, and more humbly recognized the festival in Nigeria as an opportunity, on an unprecedented scale, for exchange, dialogue, and experiencing connections to a global Black community. The spirit of FESTAC ’77 was an understanding that although it was the exhibitions and performances that brought the contingent together, it was the interactions amongst and between the delegations in Nigeria that was FESTAC’s foremost exhibit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported in part through the Augustana Research and Artist Fund.

NOTES 1 Hoyt W. Fuller, “World Festival of Negro Arts: Senegal Fete Illustrates Philosophy of

‘Négritude,’ ” Ebony (July 1966): 97. FESMAN ran April 1–24, 1966.

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2 David Murphy, ed., The First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar 1966, Contexts and

Legacies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 3–4, 28. Exact numbers of both participants and attendees have been difficult to verify. 3 For more on the Pan-African movement, see: Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism. A History

(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018); and Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora. Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). 4 David Murphy, “Introduction: The Performance of Pan-Africanism: Staging the

African Renaissance at the First World Festival of Negro Arts,” in Murphy, ed., The First World Festival of Negro Arts, 19; the organization of FESMAN has a complex history, as noted by Cédric Vincent in “ ‘The Real Heart of the Festival’: The Exhibition of L’Art nègre at the Musée Dynamique,” in Murphy, Ibid., 49, fn 10. 5 Arthur Monroe, “FESTAC 77—The Second World Black and African Festival of Arts

and Culture,” The Black Scholar 9, no. 1 (September 1977): 34; Morgan Kulla, “The Politics of Culture: The Case of Festac,” Ufahamu. A Journal of African Studies 7, no. 1 (1976): 166–192. The Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, charged with assembling and maintaining the archives of FESTAC, cites over 59 Black and African Countries and Communities; see: http://cbaacfestac77.org/. 6 See, for example, Andrew Apter, The Pan-African Nation. Oil and the Spectacle of

Culture in Nigeria (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Murphy, ed., The First World Festival of Negro Arts; and the Archive of Pan-African Festivals at the Institut interdisciplinaire d’anthropologie du contemporain, Paris, France. 7 See: Susan Cahan, Mounting Frustration. The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power

(Durham: Duke University Press, 2016); and Bridget Cooks, Exhibiting Blackness. African Americans and the American Art Museum (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011). 8 American Federation of Arts Papers [hereafter cited as AFA], B65 F27, Archives of

American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC [hereafter cited as AAA]. 9 Pre-festival booklet, “World Festival of Negro Arts,” Rockefeller Brothers Fund

[hereafter RBF], RG 3.1, B1047, F6378-6379, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY. 10 Ibid. For further analysis of Négritude, see: Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora;

Fuller, “World Festival of Negro Arts,” 100; and Murphy, The First World Festival of Negro Arts, vii, 3–16. 11 Pre-festival booklet, B7 F2, James A. Porter Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript,

Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA [hereafter cited as Porter Papers]. 12 Italics mine. All quotes from Hale Woodruff, “Criteria,” B53 F2, Porter Papers. 13 Fuller, “World Festival of Negro Arts,” 82, 86; Fuller, Journey to Africa (Chicago: Third

World Press, 1971), 93; Anthony Ratcliff, “When Négritude was in Vogue: Critical Reflections of the First World Festival of Negro Arts and Culture in 1966,” Journal of Pan African Studies 6, no. 7 (February 2014): 174–175; Charles Sanders, “Africans Disappointed in U.S. Negro Festival Showing,” Jet 30, no. 4 (1966): 18. In the case of “L’Art nègre” FESMAN’s traditional art exhibition, African and European commissioners operated in pairs to select and negotiate the lending of objects. This arrangement was meant “to even out the power relations between the various partners,”

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though the presence of white, especially French, experts produced tensions at the time and would later prompt much criticism (Vincent, “ ‘The Real Heart of the Festival,’ ” 47). Art historian Jody Blake notes that the pairing of white philanthropists with black academics at the US FESMAN national and subcommittee levels seems to have been done for fundraising purposes; Blake, “Cold War Diplomacy and Civil Rights Activism at the First World Festival of Negro Arts,” in Fine, Ruth and Jacqueline Francis, eds., Romare Bearden, American Modernist (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2001), 54. 14 Unfortunately, Lieberman did not include more African Americans in his next

curatorial projects. His new working relationship with artists Alston and Woodruff, however, allowed them greater access to call him out on his discrimination. See Lindsay Twa, “Revealing the ‘Trends and Confrontations’ of Contemporary AfricanAmerican Art through the First World Festival,” World Art 9, no. 1 (2019): 21–24. 15 Minutes of the US Committee, November 6, 1964, 9–10, B53 F2, Porter Papers. 16 Ibid. 17 US Committee Minutes, December 11, 1964, B53 F2, Porter Papers. 18 Letter, James Porter to Roy Sieber, December 11, 1965, B7F1; Letter, Porter to Della

Brown Taylor, October 10, 1965, B7F1, both Porter Papers. 19 Seymour Krawitz, January 21, 1966, B1F1, United States Committee for the First World

Festival of Negro Arts Press Agent’s Files, 1965–66, Sc MG 220 B1–2, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York, NY [hereafter cited as Schomburg]; FESMAN pre-festival booklet, 48, Porter Papers, B7F2. 20 AFA B65F27; “Latest Information as of March 6, 1966”, “Work of Sixteen American

Negro Artists are Selected by United States Committee for First World Festival of Negro Arts,” B1 F5, Schomburg. 21 For more on the selected artists, see Twa, “Revealing the “Trends and Confrontations,”

13–15. 22 Jeanne Siegel, “Why Spiral?” Art News 65, no. 5 (1966): 48–52, 67–68. 23 Richard Shepard, “10 Painters Quit Negro Festival in Dispute With U.S. Committee,”

The New York Times, March 10, 1966, 29. 24 Ibid. 25 Ten Negro Artists from the United States. First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar,

Senegal (New York: United States Committee for the First World Festival of Negro Arts, 1966). Exhibition catalog. 26 Hale Woodruff, “Preface,” draft for FESMAN catalog, Hale Woodruff Papers, reel 4222,

AAA. 27 Ratcliff, “When Négritude was in Vogue,” 174; Fuller, “World Festival of Negro Arts,”

102. 28 Jean Clay, “The Implications of Négritude: Commentary from Dakar,” Studio

International 172, no. 1 (1966); Fuller, “World Festival of Negro Arts,” 102; Sanders, “Africans Disappointed,” 17. 29 James Porter, “Temperate and Tropical: Two Modes of Art Seen at Dakar,” n.d., 1–2, B15

F10, Porter Papers. 30 Ibid., 4.

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31 Tobias Wofford, “Exhibiting a Global Blackness: The First World Festival of Negro

Arts,” in Karen Dubinsky et al., New World Coming. The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2009): 180–181. 32 “Minutes, American Zonal Committee Meeting, Second World Black & African

Festival of Arts & Culture,” February 3, 1973, 13, MSS 1132, B19 F7, Samella Lewis Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA [hereafter Lewis Papers]. 33 Meeting of Proposal Writing Committee, March 17–18, 1973, 4–5, B19 F7, Lewis

Papers. The committee included Samuel Evans, Karen Hill, Willie Willis, Cecil Hollingsworth, Hoyt Fuller, Juma Sultan, Melvin McCaw, Frank Lee, and Jeff Donaldson. 34 Jeff Donaldson, “FESTAC ’77 Documemoir: A Recount of Black American

Participation in the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture,” 9–10, B10 F5, Jeff Donaldson Papers, AAA. For more on Fuller, see: Samir Meghelli, “ ‘A Weapon in Our Struggle for Liberation’: Black Arts, Black Power, and the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival,” in Timothy Scott Brown and Andrew Lison, eds., The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision. Media, Counterculture, Revolt (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 180; Fuller, Journey to Africa. 35 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 13. 36 Initial participant numbers and goals published in early promotional materials, press

releases, and planning minutes; see: Jeff Donaldson, promotional photograph and bio, Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture 1972–1975, B19, F7, Lewis Papers. 37 Six of the ten were based outside of New York: Washington, DC (Gilliam), Chicago

(Hunt), and California (White and Saunders), France (Chase-Riboud) and Scotland (Morgan). 38 Donaldson described the 1966 US FESMAN delegation as being 99 percent New York

City-based in his “Documemoir,” 37. 39 Ibid.; Donaldson, “Memorandum to North American Zone Committee, on Progress

and Status Report since the June 23, 1972 Chicago Meeting,” section “Guidelines for Participation,” 5–6, B19 F7, Lewis Papers. 40 Donaldson, “Memorandum: . . . Guidelines for Participation,” 5. 41 “Categories for Participation,” B19 F7, Lewis Papers; see also Donaldson,

“Documemoir,” 89–90. 42 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 90. 43 Ibid., 8; see also Fuller, “World Festival of Negro Arts,” 103. 44 Author interview with Marilyn Nance, May 15, 2018, Brooklyn, New York; author

phone interview with Charlotte Richardson Ka, July 28, 2018; Gerald Williams, email correspondence, July 31, 2018. 45 B8 F19, B19 F7, Lewis Papers. Charlotte Richardson Ka holds a BFA from Carnegie

Mellon University and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been active as an exhibiting artist, gallerist, organizer, and arts educator in New York and Pittsburgh, and is currently opening MOKA Art Gallery in Pittsburgh. Gerald Williams actively participated in AfriCOBRA’s exhibitions, meetings, and manifesto, which helped define the visual aesthetic of the Black Arts Movement.

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46 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 49. 47 Ibid. 48 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” appendix I, 73–4, lists the following artist-participants:

**Charles Abramson, Tyrone Aiken, Ron Anderson, *Benny Andrews, Kwasi Asantey, **Ellsworth Ausby, *Romare Bearden, Nate Bellamy, Cleveland Bellow, David Bradford, James Breaux, **Viola Burley, *Margaret Burroughs, Nathaniel Bustion, **Carole Byard, Bernard Cameron, **James Camp, *Beni Casselle, *Houston Conwill, *Eldzier Cortor, **Adger Cowans, Robert Crawford, Ernest Crichlow, *Emilio Cruz, Burnis Day, Joseph Delaney, Mel Edwards, Kenneth Falana, Irma Francis, Kenneth Graves, *Donald Greene, Grace Hampton, *Henry Harris, **Barkley Hendricks, Mark Herring, Varnette Honeywood, *Earl Hooks, Reginald Jackson, Wadsworth Jarrell, *Benjamin Jones, Brent Jones, *Calvin Jones, **Napoleon Jones-Henderson, *John Kendricks, James King, Roy Lewis, **Valerie Maynard, Yvonne Cole Meo, Ashley Milburn, *Lev Mills, **Tyrone Mitchell, Willard Moore, *Clarence Morgan, Kofi Moyo, *Teixiera Nash, Seitu Nrullah, Yaounde Olu, **Ademola Olugebefola, Winifred [Winnie] Owens, Lorenzo Pace, Oliver Parson, Curtis Patterson, *James Phillips, Patricia Phipps, *Pamela Phox, *P. H. Polk, *Delilah Pierce, Ted Pontiflet, Georgette Powell, Noah Purifoy, **Abdul Rahman, Frederick Reid, Leon Renfro, Charlotte Richardson [Ka], Loïs Jones Pierre Noël, ***Faith Ringgold, *Haywood Rivers, *Clement Roach, Lethia Robertson, Betye Saar, **Charles Searles, Ed Sherman, Sika, Carroll Simms, *Moneta Sleet, Jr., *Alfred J. Smith, Jr., **Frank Smith, **Vincent Smith, Jim Smoote, Armando Solis, *Edgar Sorrells-Adewale, **David Stephens, John Stevens, **Nelson Stevens, **Della B. Taylor, Mildred Thompson, *James Van Der Zee, *Larry Walker, *Lamonte Westmoreland, Claudia Widdiss, Deborah Wilkins, **Gerald Williams, Grace Williams, William T. Williams, Ed Wilson, Stanley Wilson, *Wendy Wilson, Rip Woods, *Shirley Woodson (*exhibited in absentia; **ad hoc installation committee, ***erroneously omitted from Donaldson’s report). 49 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 9; see also Fuller, Journey to Africa, 93. For recent

scholarship on US government cultural funding as an arm of Cold War policy, see: Hugh Wilford, “The American Society of African Culture: The CIA and Transnational Networks of African Diaspora Intellectuals in the Cold War,” in Luc van Dongen, Stéphanie Roulin, Giles Scott-Smith, eds., Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War. Agents, Activities, and Networks (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 2000); Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer. How the CIA Played America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). 50 “Minutes: Second World Black and African Festival of Arts & Culture, American Zonal

Committee Meeting, Tarrytown, New York,” February 3, 1973, 9, B19 F7, Lewis Papers. 51 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 19. 52 Ibid., 17–29, above quote from page 28. 53 NAZ board members William Day (New York), Arthur Monroe (Regional Director for

the Far West zone and Art Exhibition Coordinator), and Henri Umbagi King (Regional Director for the Midwest zone and Art Exhibition Curator) coordinated the Lagos exhibition; installation assistance in Lagos came from cadre member Artie King and a volunteer ad hoc committee of nineteen artists. Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 33, 50; Gerald Williams, email correspondence, July 31, 2018. Artist Ted Pontiflet, however, has noted that it was primarily Arthur Monroe and himself who designed the exhibition layout and oversaw the installation (author phone interview, April 2, 2020).

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54 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 30–31. 55 FESTAC ’77 (London and Lagos: African Journal Limited, and the International

Festival Committee, 1977), 8. 56 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” “Author’s Preface” and 37. 57 Artists’ Post FESTAC Surveys, B9 F4, Donaldson Papers. 58 Author phone interview with Charlotte Ka, August 17, 2018. 59 Author interview with Marilyn Nance, May 16, 2018. 60 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 51; Nance interview, May 15–16, 2018. 61 Winnie Owens-Hart, “Traditions: Ipetumodu,” International Review of African

American Art 11, no. 2 (January 1994): 59; italics mine. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid.; Michael D. Harris, “Confluences: Ile-Ife, Washington, D.C., and the TransAfrican

Artist,” African Arts 30, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 40; and “Winnie Owens-Hart: Ceramic Artist: Passing on an Ancient Tradition,” Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design, accessed April 2, 2020, https://www.aicad.org/winnie-owens-hart/. 64 Donaldson, “Documemoir,” 50. 65 Gerald Williams, email correspondence, July 31, 2018. 66 Phillip Barcio, “For Gerald Williams, a Co-Founder of AfriCOBRA, Transnational

Black Aesthetics are as Relevant as Ever,” Hyperallergic, November 13, 2017, accessed April 2, 2020, https://hyperallergic.com/410635/gerald-williams-africobratransnational-black-aesthetics/.

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11 DESIGNING STABILITY: HONG KONG’S PAVILION AT EXPO 70 AND LOCAL EXPOSITIONS Daniel Cooper and Juliana Kei

In March 1970, Hong Kong sent its first official pavilion to a World Exposition. Expo 70, held in Osaka, was also the first such event in Asia and continued the celebrations that had begun a few years earlier when Tokyo hosted the 1964 Olympic Games. The Expo’s theme was “Progress and Humanity for Mankind.” Its 330-hectare site was meant to be an experimental model for cities of the future showcasing ambitious infrastructure projects such as the monorail and cable gondola transport system, whose precise locations were indicated on small, internally backlit translucent plastic maps.1 The preeminent Japanese architect Kenzo Tange designed the site’s masterplan and members of his Tange Lab, including emerging avantgarde architects Arata Isozaki, Kisho Kurokawa, and Kiyonari Kikutake, offered imaginative visions of the future. They did so—particularly in the corporate pavilions—by using experimental video, projection screens, sound work, and other multi-sensory displays, which they combined with moving inflatable structures.2 Hong Kong’s contribution stood apart from the futuristic flamboyance of the other pavilions. Its design emulated a sampan, a fishing boat with batwing-like sails specific to the South China Sea, which provided a look back at Hong Kong’s past. By 1970, the sampan was already a retrograde symbol of Hong Kong, long since replaced by commercial trawlers and container ships transporting goods around the world.3 Why did Hong Kong send a pavilion that was both out of step with the predominantly futuristic designs of the Expo and out of time with Hong Kong’s present? To answer these questions, we take a step back to look not only at the pavilion in Osaka but also the ones built for Hong Kong’s local trade fairs between

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1967 and 1973 as part of the colonial government’s response to the territory’s unprecedented social turmoil that erupted in 1967. The themes of these local pavilions included rational housing, education, and hygiene—all of which were also explored at Expo 70—presented in designs that were, unlike the pavilion in Japan, overwhelmingly Modernist. Through an in-depth exploration of the pavilions in Hong Kong and Osaka, and using Eric Hobsbawm’s notion of “the invention of tradition” to testify to the stability of a colony, this chapter analyzes the ways that the pavilions represented an attempt by the colonial government to form a cogent identity that represented both the people and their values to the world abroad.4 These pavilions connected the branches of colonial bureaucracy tasked with managing the territory and image of Hong Kong. Revisiting them, therefore, offers an example of what we term “design by bureaucracy”, exemplifying how design emerged from governmental agencies to define a population and present a stable and industrious image of Hong Kong life to prospective international partners.

THE “BERLIN OF THE EAST”: HONG KONG AS A STRATEGIC ADMINISTRATIVE ZONE In March 1967, the Information Service Department (ISD), part of the colonial government, announced its plan for Hong Kong to participate in Expo 70 and in so doing made Hong Kong the ninth pavilion to confirm its participation in the event.5 Hong Kong’s early acceptance was rewarded with a generously proportioned site near one of the west gates along the two main cross-expo avenues next to the British pavilion. Although Hong Kong’s Chamber of Commerce expressed concern about the Hong Kong pavilion’s “proximity to the fair’s exit,” the site was nonetheless larger and better positioned than those of former British colonies, such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Burma (Myanmar).6 Expo 70 press material advertised the fair by publicizing its ever-growing scale—“76 nations and one special administrative zone”—and specially singled out Hong Kong for notice.7 The so-called “administrative zone” stood out from the other corporate and government participants as neither a commonwealth colony, nor a region of another country. Grahame Blundell, administrative director of the pavilion, celebrated this unexpected publicity boon.8 Writing in a semi-regular bulletin that he sent to the Expo 70 planning committee in Hong Kong, Blundell reported “on every occasion that the ever-ascending total of participants was announced at any conference, Hong Kong was always mentioned specially by name [. . .] From the publicity point of view, this is an immense value to us.”9 While the exposure may have been valuable for publicity, the description of Hong Kong also served to situate the colony’s peculiar geopolitical status. The Expo organization committee in their description used “administrative zone” and

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“Crown Colony” interchangeably.10 The discrepancy may simply have been because Hong Kong was, in fact, part British territory and part colony. Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula were Britain’s territories in perpetuity under terms agreed at the end of the First and Second Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856– 1860). In 1889, at the Second Convention of Peking, the British “leased” the area north of Kowloon from the Qing government as a colony for ninety-nine years, renaming it the New Territories.11 The confusion of terms framing Hong Kong in press bulletins in the postwar era also reflected the colony’s uncertain political status. Since the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the British government had recognized that, should the Chinese People’s Liberation Army invade, Hong Kong would be “indefensible.”12 In 1949, the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, described Hong Kong as the “Berlin of the East,” emphasizing both the valuable and vulnerable aspects of its geopolitical position. This framing was part of an attempt to solicit United States military support to the British to help augment Hong Kong’s security, which amounted to more or less nothing.13 Not only was the United States unwilling to lend its support to secure Hong Kong, it also imposed a strict trade embargo on both China and Hong Kong at the outbreak of the Korean War. In doing so, the United States reduced Hong Kong’s stability, sustainability, and usefulness as an entrepôt for trade with China.14 Britain’s interest in, and ability to defend, Hong Kong further diminished as British attention turned to the Egyptian-Suez Crisis (1956–1957), as well as to conflicts in Indochina (1946– 1954), Malaya (1948–1960), and Korea (1950–1954).15 Meanwhile, Cold War geopolitics had the unintended consequence of boosting Hong Kong’s economic development as the latter half of the century began. The United States’ trade embargo accelerated Hong Kong’s nascent manufacturing hub into a full-scale industrial effort. Refugees fleeing the regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (1949) and later famine (1958–1961) brought capital and industrial knowhow that promoted the growth of labor-intensive and export-led industries.16 In 1961, the manufacturing industry employed over 43 percent of Hong Kong’s workers, nearly half of whom worked in the textile and garment industry.17 By 1970, Hong Kong’s light industrial manufacturing had grown exponentially and was on the verge of overtaking Japan as the world’s largest toy producer and exporter.18 Amidst the tensions characterizing the Sino–American relationship, Japan functioned as a reliable trading partner, a model of what an Asian industrial society could become, and a source of raw materials such as textile yarns and base metals for Hong Kong’s industries.19 As those industries grew, so too did income inequality. Hong Kong workers began protesting for better wages, safer working conditions, and affordable housing. In May 1967, influenced by the Cultural Revolution in China, factory workers began picketing factories to demand a government response to the class divisions rife throughout Hong Kong and exacerbated by industrial growth. The

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government’s first response was to send police to confront and quell the protesters, but police presence turned the protests into riots. By June the clashes had escalated, disrupting business as explosives killed several people. After two months of protests, Hong Kong’s economic standing in the world had begun to waver. While protesters and police continued to clash, the government started work on two plans. In one, the ISD pledged Hong Kong would participate in Expo 70, claiming in press releases that its pavilion would “have the effect of enhancing the image of Hong Kong overseas.”20 The second plan came only two weeks after the Expo 70 announcement when the ISD committed resources to Hong Kong Week, an event unprecedented in Hong Kong consisting of a hodgepodge of performances, exhibitions, and parades. Organized by the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, Hong Kong Week was first intended to stimulate local industries, but as the riots worsened it was hastily reframed as a community-oriented event celebrating Hong Kong’s peace and progress. That same month, as protests peaked, the ISD implemented yet another plan, this time to participate in the upcoming Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo (HKBPE). All of this happened against the chaotic backdrop of the colonial government’s plans to evacuate itself from Hong Kong if the protests worsened.21

HONG KONG WEEK AND HKBPE Histories of twentieth-century Hong Kong frequently identify the 1967 protests as a watershed for British colonial governance.22 The government introduced a series of reforms in education and housing, followed at once by anti-corruption campaigns.23 Design historian Matthew Turner suggests that these modernization projects caused a shift in the public’s conception of the colony, from a safe haven from China for a society of refugees, to a permanent home for 3.7 million residents.24 Turner notes that the term “Hong Kong People” was used for one of the first times by the Hong Kong government and institutionally in promotional materials for Hong Kong Week, testing the rhetoric of citizenship, community, and belonging.25 Clothing modeled in the week’s fashion shows and publications, for example, were conspicuously labeled “Made in Hong Kong” and were the nascent foundation for two cogent identities, one for objects and the other for people. At that time, “Hong Kong Goods” was a novel identity and was applied to products that, in a broad sense, could be described as manufactured in Hong Kong regardless of where the raw materials had come from. Likewise, the new term “Hong Kong People” was extended to a population of whom more than half had migrated from mainland China.26 Hong Kong Week’s slogan, “Hong Kong People Use Hong Kong Goods,” identified the people who made, used, and bought Hong Kong goods. We can read in this slogan a consolidation of territory, and a rupture between mainland people

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and Chinese-made goods. The claim also opened the door to assimilation, since consumption and production would be the means by which people were identified. “Hong Kong People Use Hong Kong Goods” was itself not a new slogan but, rather, an adaptation of the well-known “Chinese people use Chinese goods,” a phrase used in mainland China at the turn of the twentieth century to encourage Chinese people who had suffered from decades of foreign invasion and oppression to imagine a nation strengthened by modern industrialization.27 During the interwar era, the Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong incorporated the notion of Chinese goods into the marketing for the Brand and Product Expo (1938), which became a niche for the promotion of Chinese manufactured goods and represented the overseas Chinese merchant community in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.28 The planned use of production and consumption to form a new identity in the region for Hong Kong was thus based on the familiar attempts to do the same among emigrant Chinese communities in the region. In their subsequent pavilion in the HKBPE in late 1967, the ISD introduced new elements into their attempt in manufacturing a colonial identity through consumer culture. The ISD used pavilion architecture and graphic design to underscore the social welfare programs the colonial government was developing and, in some cases, already implementing around the territory. They employed Modernist architectural designs and explicitly sought out young architects who, by education or preference, had been influenced by foreign design. The records of many of these designers have vanished. Prominent among the extant records, however, is the work of Tao Ho, who studied at Harvard University and worked for Walter Gropius.29 Ho designed the 1970 HKBPE pavilion, which caused considerable upset in Hong Kong since he was not at the time a registered architect.30 His design consisted of a cluster of white circular volumes elevated on plinths that functioned as both the pavilion and the display: their internal walls were covered with diagrams and charts illustrating governmental spending and various initiatives in social welfare. The 1972 pavilion—the probable design of Donald Liao—followed a similar aesthetic path. It featured a white, flat-roofed circular volume marking the tenth anniversary of the territory’s first public housing scheme.31 Liao graduated from the architecture school at Durham University, and was, at the time, leading the Hong Kong government’s ambitious Ten-Year Housing Programme (1972) to build more public estates. His work also included the well-regarded public housing Wah Fu Estate.32 In these and other pavilions constructed for the Hong Kong government between 1967 and 1973, tenets of Modernist architecture were self-evident: white walls, flat roofs, and elevated volumes on plinths (Figure 11.1). Their designers also used orthogonal shapes, sans serif fonts, and the pavilions’ interiors were devoid of ornament. The visual message from the ISD, by way of these aspiring young architects, was cohesive: Hong Kong was well on its way to becoming a modern city with improved housing, education, and health and hygiene standards. The response from the ISD

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FIGURE 11.1 Hong Kong Government Pavilion in the 1967 Brand and Product Expo, Hong Kong. © Hong Kong Government Information Service Department Photo Library.

to the 1967 riots helped push Hong Kong from one kind of politics to another: from a Chinese diaspora community under laissez-faire colonial rule to “Hong Kong people”—a community living in a modern capitalistic society with increasing welfare provisions. Visitors to the ISD’s pavilion saw clearly the work of building a social-welfare state. Through diagrams, pie charts, and photographs showcasing government initiatives represented in rational displays, the restrained design and display of the government pavilions set them apart from their flamboyant commercial counterparts, which employed lavish neon lights, colorful banners, and enlarged models to sell their goods. In the 1967 HKBPE, for example, the pavilion for the Hoe Hin White Flower Oil Embrocation—a multi-storey structure—had a façade that featured a large picture of its oil bottle situated among dragons and other Chinese motifs. The China Paint Manufacturing Company pavilion advertised its

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products by similarly ostentatious means and placed on a plinth an enormous paint-can measuring eight meters high. Although the design languages differed, the government and commercial pavilions complemented each other: Hong Kong’s progress toward affluence depended on both government-led projects and the burgeoning consumer culture. Another actor that took part in the efforts in consolidating Hong Kong’s industry, image abroad, and identity was the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (TDC), a statutory corporation established in 1967 to promote the standing of Hong Kong-manufactured goods overseas. Positioned as the international marketing arm for Hong Kong manufacturers and service providers, the TDC worked closely with the local business community and was thus uniquely positioned to rapidly respond to the riots. The TDC’s primary role was as an advisory body for Hong Kong’s industries. It was meant to develop Hong Kong brands and designs and diversify Hong Kong industry, which at that point consisted predominantly of original equipment manufacturing (OEM) industries, such as factories that produced parts, and goods developed, designed, and marketed by other foreign companies.33 The TDC remit was to cultivate Hong Kong’s industrial products under Hong Kong’s own brands that would be recognized internationally in their own right. To do this, the TDC—a council of colonial bureaucrats—hired designers to produce clothing and light industry product designs that would serve as examples of the ability and range of manufacturers. Among the designers was Bernard (Nardi) Navetta, a multi-talented American designer who worked in graphic, interior, and clothing design, and who went on to design the Industrial Progress section of the Expo 70 pavilion.

“76 NATIONS AND ONE SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE ZONE”: HONG KONG IN EXPO 70 Bernard Navetta’s work for the TDC shed light on the concerns of Hong Kong officials regarding representations of Hong Kong overseas. In 1967, when Navetta presented possible TDC logos, TDC officials and board members argued over whether Chinese elements should be combined with English-language elements in the design, and whether the two elements should be merged or remain distinct within one design.34 Eventually, a design was chosen that combined the Chinese characters for Hong Kong and the English spelling of Hong Kong, but the debate remained open. While the TDC labored over one logo design, Navetta was asked to design another: this time specifically for the pavilion at Expo 70. He used a visual language that was clearly both Western and modern, while his use of juxtaposing circular shapes to symbolize a pearl, a natural and local motif, evoked Hong Kong as the “Pearl of the Orient.”

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A mix of modern Western elements and Chinese characters is similarly characteristic of the design of the Expo 70 pavilion. Grahame Blundell, the exhibition director, chose Alan Fitch, a familiar name in Hong Kong due to the success of his design for Hong Kong’s City Hall (1958)—co-created with Ron Philip—as the architect of the pavilion.35 Fitch divided the Osaka interior into three sections highlighting themes of Social Progress, Industrial Progress, and Cultural Heritage, echoing some of the design and thematic components of the HKBPE. Other architects were put in charge of the different thematic sections and Wong Ng Ouyang & Associates, founded by the first graduates of the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Architecture in 1955, designed Social Progress.36 Ouyang had studied under Raymond Gordon Brown, a proponent of Modernist architecture who had previously worked for the Architectural Association in London.37 Bernard Navetta designed Industrial Progress, the second in the series of the three sections, where he dedicated most of the space to Hong Kong’s manufacturing and shipping industries. Christopher Haffner, who worked for the Scottish–Shanghai firm Spence Robinson and had attended the University of Liverpool, another school with a curricular history of Modernism dating back to at least the 1930s, designed Cultural Heritage.38 Inside the pavilion, visitors walked a zig-zag path through the first section as they were introduced to Hong Kong and its history. Against back-lit translucent plastic displays, visitors read the narrative of the metaphorical Mei Ching, the “Girl in the Crowd.” The story, written in black sans serif type on white translucent displays, was an attempt to encapsulate Hong Kong’s history through Mei Ching’s transformation and was told in multiple languages. Seen first as a fisherman’s daughter on a sampan—boats characteristic of the Tanka people, a minority group living on the shores of the South China Sea—she and her family were then shown standing in the shadow of Hong Kong’s architecturally imposing business district, a contrast emphasizing the vast changes that characterized both Mei Ching’s life and that of the city. The narrative continued as viewers watched Mei Ching leave her family’s fishing village to begin working in manufacturing, which transformed her into a “modern woman,” one in a crowd, and detached from her history. The story was simple and blunt. At the end of Mei Ching’s narrative arc, she transformed into a member of a crowd of people nearly indistinguishable from one another whose paths through life, so visitors were led to think, may have been similar to hers. At home in her urban environment, she had exchanged her fishergirl clothing—bamboo hat and samfu (a traditional two-piece shirt and trousers, like pajamas)—for a cheongsam, a mini-dress with a flat collar popular abroad and evocative of Hong Kong in its oriental and modern phases. Dressing Mei Ching in a cheongsam was noteworthy; by the 1960s the dress had become associated with cosmopolitanism, modernity, femininity, and financial independence.39 As such, Mei Ching was the embodiment of Hong Kong and its impressive ability to adapt to Western economic demands and tastes.40 Her idealized emancipation, signified

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by the wealth she gained from participating in the labor market, was, however, not the only narrative that the Hong Kong government wanted to convey. Early in the preparation for Expo 70, Blundell wrote to the ISD telling an alternative version of Mei Ching’s story from the one that was eventually shown in Osaka; sharing the same ending but differing in its development. In it, he described Mei Ching as a refugee from mainland China who first lived with her family in one of Hong Kong’s many perilous hillside huts. The government’s housing provisions helped her family rise in the world and, as visitors were told, thanks to the support of the state, Mei Ching had ended up in the Wah Fu Estate, an exemplar of Hong Kong’s public housing schemes at the time. Her father, in this version, worked there as a building contractor, making them both beneficiaries of Hong Kong’s new social provisions and an example of the contribution made by the labor of Hong Kong people to improve others’ quality of life.41 In Blundell’s telling, Mei Ching was transformed into a nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, a centerpiece of government support for the population and an image of Hong Kong’s architectural modernity.42 These components of modernization—housing, infrastructure, health and hygiene—were focal points along Mei Ching’s path and were similarly the highlight of the HKBPE pavilions. In his letter, Blundell stressed that Mei Ching and her family were all contributing to “the massive development projects that have given Hong Kong more land, more roads, more housing and social services, and more water.”43 It is not clear when or why the narrative of Mei Ching evolved from Blundell’s initial description to the version in the pavilion, but the changes highlighted a shift in strategy. In addition to stressing the Hong Kong government’s work on behalf of the territory’s population—the HKBPE’s core message—the story would have reminded visitors of the terrible conditions Hong Kong had largely left behind. The hillside huts mentioned in Blundell’s version were a reference to Hong Kong’s postwar housing history, including an infamous fire that swept across the Shek Kip Mei hillside on Christmas Day 1953. The fire left more than 50,000 people homeless and became a primary impetus for the government’s public settlement housing initiatives and eventually its public housing scheme.44 The progression from hillside hut to government housing was part of a shared heritage in Hong Kong, especially since the squatter population who lived in impoverished hillside housing had at one point made up more than 25 percent of the colony’s entire population.45 Hong Kong’s narrative of growth and transformation continued in Industrial Progress, the exhibition’s second section, which showcased products such as watches, cameras, and clothing manufactured in Hong Kong. The dynamism underlying much of Hong Kong’s manufacturing and trade success was not, however, reflected in the exhibits. Instead, the section consisted primarily of textual descriptions of Hong Kong industries as well as mannequins encased in Plexiglas. Cultural Heritage, the final and largest of the pavilion’s divisions, was a display of live traditional craft demonstrations that included jade-carving, black-wood furniture, and ivory.46 These

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performances, featuring prominently in the press material delivered by Blundell, were the focus of attention in the Japanese media’s coverage in Osaka of the Hong Kong pavilion.47 Fitch, the pavilion’s architect, placed the whole of the structure inside a reflective pool, complementing the boat-like building with its own sea to sail over and visitors were granted a full view of the sails that topped the pavilion as they left (see Figure 11.2). On the 2,300m2 site visitors were greeted by dragon dances, Cantonese pop music, fashion shows, traditional Chinese dances, and other daily performances on the pavilion’s platform. The emphasis on live demonstrations and performances, Blundell explained, was to capture the attention of visitors on holiday

FIGURE 11.2 The “bat-wing” sail on the Hong Kong Pavilion at Expo 70, Osaka. © Hong Kong Government Information Service Department Photo Library.

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FIGURE 11.3 Hong Kong Pavilion at Expo 70, Osaka. © Hong Kong Government Information Service Department Photo Library.

who would “naturally wish to enjoy themselves.”48 A popular Cantonese restaurant was housed at the other end of the building. The three-section exhibition was but one small part of the Hong Kong pavilion and its arrangement signified Hong Kong as a place for consumable pleasures and amusements (Figure 11.3). In addition to the platforms used for live performances, Fitch and Blundell also made a spectacle of the pavilion itself. The boat’s roofmounted batwings moved with the wind, creating a dramatic silhouette and shadow formations designed to be seen from above in the Skyway, a cable car system traversing the park grounds.49 To add dramatic flair, the ISD hired Cantonese fishermen dressed in samfu, as though they were going out to sea, to raise and lower daily the pavilion’s sails. But the role of the fishermen was not only theatrical but also functional, since they also raised typhoon signals ahead of storms in Osaka, transforming the ritual into a normal and pragmatic part of the Expo. Through its design and exhibits, Hong Kong’s pavilion pushed performance and spectacle to the forefront of visitors’ experience.

“JUST A BLOCKHOUSE WITH A LOT OF SAILS ON IT” In addition to persuading tourists to identify Hong Kong as a Far Eastern colony sustained by crafts and fishing—a small part of Hong Kong’s past—the pavilion’s

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design invented traditions by modifying and ritualizing existing customary practices.50 Given Hong Kong’s rapid modernization it is perhaps not surprising that the pavilion’s organizers leaned toward such a strategy in its first official appearance at an Expo, a location tied to the representation, expression, and symbolization of many kinds of (pseudo) national identities.51 Hong Kong’s pavilion, in its design and execution, was the pinnacle of this kind of invention. Presenting Hong Kong’s mythologized origins went beyond legitimizing colonial governance and laying foundations for economic expansion. It was a way to mediate its people’s peculiar geopolitical conditions and the framing of what it was for them to be “Chinese.” When sampans were used to fish they did so in the South China Sea, an area far from the historical seat of power of the Chinese ruling dynasties. The boats therefore marked the distinctness of these people from mainland Chinese culture and differentiated Hong Kong from the regimes of both the Republic of China in Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China on the mainland.52 The design of the pavilion sent a dual message: it distinguished Hong Kong from others by indicating that it was both a part of Chinese society and economically, politically, and culturally unique. Although Hong Kong’s effort to bring a vernacular symbol to Expo 70 resonated with Japanese and international visitors, the architectural establishment all but rejected it. Official souvenirs of the Expo—including matchboxes and postcards— celebrated the pavilion’s batwing sails, as did a special coin container fashioned into the shape of the pavilion’s fisherman donning his traditional hat and samfu commissioned by a Japanese bank.53 Even though the influential British magazine Architectural Design prominently featured the pavilion’s sails in a collage for their special issue “EXPO A-Z,” the pavilion was infrequently included in architectural journals outside the colony, and when it was mentioned the reviews were overwhelmingly negative.54 In Hong Kong, when the pavilion’s design was first revealed in 1968, comments from local architects ranged from “slightly unfortunate” and “undistinguished,” to “puerile” and “makeshift.”55 J. Prescott of the University of Hong Kong Department of Architecture derided the structure as “just a blockhouse with a lot of sails on it,” and as an architectural example was “just not on.”56 This discrepancy between the pavilion’s reception in architectural circles compared to that at the Expo reflects a distinction, suggesting that tourists and architects wanted different things from it.57 Critics in Hong Kong may also have been irritated by the design’s lack of originality: Hong Kong authorities had previously sent sampans and sails to various overseas trade shows, including the 1964 United States World Trade Fair in San Francisco and the 1966 Far East Festival at Macy’s in New York.58 Fitch’s retreat from Modernist designs established at Hong Kong trade fairs may have also contributed to the harsh criticism he received. Nevertheless, the concealing of the technological and industrial advances that made the design and performance of the pavilion possible also suggests the development of another way of exhibiting progress and stability.

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The invention of tradition and remaking of history for contemporary uses is a hallmark of postmodern culture as understood by historians such as David Lowenthal, who has labeled the kind of technique pursued by Fitch as “creative anachronism.”59 The Hong Kong pavilion unintentionally manifested postmodern tendencies in a myriad of ways: through Blundell and Fitch’s focus on performance and spectacle, and by shifting architecture into the world of icons. One could argue that these architectural strategies predated and prefigured the lessons that architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Stephen Izenour laid out in Learning from Las Vegas two years later.60 By enclosing the rectangular halls in the sampan, the designers framed Hong Kong as a place still best understood through a history of Orientalism and reduction to a simple made for consumer society.

RE-INVENTING TRADITIONS Although Blundell and Fitch did not intentionally devise a postmodern pavilion, the postmodern framework can be used to situate the Hong Kong pavilion at Expo 70 in the longer history of Hong Kong’s participation in international expositions. The content of the Cultural Heritage section—demonstrations of black-wood furniture-making, sails, embroidery, bamboo scaffolding, and rattan work—were little changed from the Hong Kong pavilion at the 1886 Indian and Colonial Exhibition.61 In subsequent world expositions Hong Kong’s exhibitions continued to engage in this perpetuation of myth, returning stubbornly to the past and the familiar characterization of Hong Kong. In the 1986 World Expo in Vancouver, architect Tao Ho moved away from the High Modernist aesthetics he had used in the 1970 HKBPE pavilion. Ho designed a yellow box wrapped in bamboo scaffolding—a craft and visual reference to Hong Kong’s building industry that echoed features used at the 1886 exhibition. He added mannequins resembling workers climbing around the bamboo, clearly linking his structure to the scaffolding used in Hong Kong construction. Ho also brought a dragon boat used in races in Hong Kong to the waters around Vancouver and added martial arts performances on bamboo stages.62 These examples demonstrate that regardless of the progress Hong Kong made as a shipping port, manufacturing base, and world financial hub, these tropes would persist. By comparing the 1970 Expo pavilion in Osaka and the HKBPE pavilions, we see two overlapping but different strategies in which design was used to project stability. The HKBPE government pavilions employed Modernist design and architecture to foster a welfare-state consensus and the construction of a “Hong Kong people.” This strategy, together with the contemporary government projects for housing, hygiene, leisure, and cultural developments adapted abstract Modernist language to form a new identity. In the Expos, designers relied on performance and spectacle to invent tradition, drawing visitors away from the

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more complicated demands of colonial rule and the volatile conditions in a modern industrial city. In doing so, the government repeatedly returned to ostensibly neutral motifs such as sails, bamboo scaffolding, and crafts that had been frequently reused and were now detached from Hong Kong’s ever-changing social, economic, and cultural conditions. The displacement of the former strategy by the latter highlights the short-lived attempt in devising a representation of Hong Kong that brought together colonial politics, modernisation, industrial progress, and everyday life. This change may be attributed to a wider postmodern shift in architectural culture, but also signposts a missed opportunity in articulating a vision of Hong Kong that acknowledges its complexities.

POSTSCRIPT As we write, Hong Kong is undergoing new and unprecedented social turmoil. Pro-democracy protests, known as the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, have continued unabated since March 2019, bringing to a head issues of nationalism, internationalism, and China’s infamous two-state solution. In light of the protest against repressive politics for a future that has not yet been articulated, we ask what kind of techniques will next be employed to represent Hong Kong? What will become of the “Hong Kong People,” born of necessity in 1967, and what design formulations—future facing or retrograde—will these events represent for Hong Kong?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research is an outcome of the M+/ Design Trust (Hong Kong) Research Fellowship 2015–2016. We are grateful to Mr. Kan Tai Keung and Mrs. Irene Ho for giving their time to answer our questions. This chapter would not have been possible without the patient guidance of the editors.

NOTES 1 “Expo ’70,” Architectural Review 148, no. 882 (August, 1970): 122. 2 Yuriko Furuhata, “Multimedia Environments and Security Operations: Expo 70 as a

Laboratory of Governance,” Grey Room, no. 54 (Winter 2014): 56–79. 3 The planning of Hong Kong’s Kwai Chung Container Terminal had already started in

1966 and the construction was completed in 1972. Kwai Chung in the 1980s overtook New York and Rotterdam as the busiest port in the world. Gillian Chambers, Supertrader. The Story of Trade Development in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 1989), 6.

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4 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1983). 5 Exposition Quarterly, no. 8 (1968), World Expositions Digital Collection, HMLSC_

AMD401, National Art Library, London. 6 Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Osaka Expo (Hong Kong: General

Chamber of Commerce, 1968). 7 Eventually the participants comprised 76 countries; 4 international organizations;

3 states, 2 cities, and 2 companies from the United States; 3 Canadian provinces; 1 German city; and Hong Kong. Grahame Blundell, EXPO 70 Bulletin No 12, 1969, ISD 26/147GR, Hong Kong Public Records Office, Hong Kong. 8 Peter Moss, No Babylon. A Hong Kong Scrapbook (Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse,

2006). 9 Grahame Blundell, EXPO 70 Bulletin No. 12, 1969, ISD 26/147GR, Hong Kong Public

Records Office, Hong Kong. 10 “Expo 70 All Colour Guide.” 1970, HMLSC_guide_AMD279a, National Art Library

World Expositions Digital Collection, London, UK. 11 John Mark Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,

2007), 67. 12 Chi-Kwan Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War. Anglo-American Relations 1949–1957

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 40. 13 Mark argues that Hong Kong’s problems in the Cold War were, in fact, more akin to

“the security dilemmas faced by the Scandinavian or Nordic countries—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland—and their roles in the US-Soviet rivalry.” These countries, caught between US power and close proximity to Russia, had little choice but to become “semi-allies” or “semi-neutrals.” Mark considers Hong Kong as another example of what might be called “reluctant allies” to the two sides of the Cold War divide. Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War, 40. 14 Tracy Steele, “Hong Kong and the Cold War in the 1950s,” in Priscilla Roberts and

John M. Carroll, eds., Hong Kong in the Cold War (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016), 92–116. 15 Mark, Hong Kong and the Cold War, 1. 16 Stephen Chiu and Tai-Lok Lui, “Hong Kong Manufacturing from Boom to Bust,” in

Hong Kong. Becoming a Chinese Global City (London, New York: Routledge, 2009), 25–55. 17 Other important industries in Hong Kong included plastics and small electronics. See

James Riedel, “The Hong Kong Model of Industrialization,” Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Kieler Diskussionsbeiträge, no. 29 (February 1973): https://www.econstor.eu/ bitstream/10419/48056/1/055872107.pdf; Gary S. Fields, “Industrialization and Employment in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan,” in Walter Galenson, ed., Foreign Trade and Investment. Economic Development in the Newly-Industrializing Asian Countries (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 333–375. 18 Riedel, “The Hong Kong Model of Industrialization,” 8. 19 In 1967, Japan was the second-largest supplier of material to Hong Kong, accounting

for 17 percent of all imports. It was also Hong Kong’s second greatest re-export market. Gary Cross and Gregory Smits, “Japan, the U.S. and the Globalization of Children’s

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Consumer Culture,” Journal of Social History 38, no. 4 (2005): 873–890. Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong Yearbook 1967, 39–60. 20 Grahame Blundell, “Hong Kong to Take Part in Japan World Exposition in Osaka, 1970.

30 Million Visitors expected, 1967, HKRS 43-1-5” (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Public Records Office). 21 Gary Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed. The 1967 Riots (Hong Kong: Hong Kong

University Press, 2009), 99. 22 Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed, 99. David Clayton, “The Riots and Labour Laws,” in

Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, eds., May Days in Hong Kong. Riots and Emergency in 1967 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press), 134. 23 Cheung, Hong Kong’s Watershed, 5. 24 Matthew Turner, “60’s/90’s: Dissolving the People,” in Matthew Turner and Irene

Ngan, eds., Hong Kong Sixties. Designing Identity (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1994), 15. 25 Turner, “60’s/90’s,” 15. 26 In 1961, when the first census was taken after the British reoccupation, the total

population was 3,129,000, out of which 1,643,000, or 52 percent of the population, were postwar immigrants. 27 Yongmei Wu and Pui-tak Lee, Graphic Images and Consumer Culture. Analysis of

Modern Advertising Culture in China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014), i. 28 Ip, Lan Chuen. An Overview of Manufacturing Industry and the Development of the

CMA Committee. Report. Hong Kong: The Chinese Manufacturers Association of Hong Kong, 1946. https://www.cma.org.hk/ (accessed June 21, 2021). 29 Danny Mok and Olga Wong, “Pioneering Architect Tao Ho, Known for Designing

Hong Kong Bauhinia Flag and Buildings such as the Arts Centre, dies at age 82,” SCMP , March 30, 2019. 30 “Government Pavilion Sets a New Standard,” Far East Architects & Builders (March

1970): 28–29. 31 The authors have been unable as yet to find documentation confirming Liao as

architect. 32 Kan Tai Keung (prominent retired designer) in discussion with the authors, June 15,

2017. Miles Glendinning, “Wah Fu Estate, Hong Kong,” Twentieth Century Society, accessed May 12, 2020, https://c20society.org.uk/building-of-the-month/wah-fuestate-hong-kong. 33 Chambers, Supertrader, 66. 34 Trade Development Council. Meeting Notes, February 13, 1967, HKRS160–1. Hong

Kong Public Records Service, Hong Kong. 35 The precast concrete structure took design cues from the International Style in

Europe and the United States and was bare of all ornament. Even before it opened its doors, it was perhaps Hong Kong’s best-loved Modernist building. Today architectural historians of Hong Kong herald City Hall as an attempt to symbolize government transparency and accountability through the generous use of glass in its façade that allows the activities inside to be at least superficially visible to the public.

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Charlie Q.L. Xue, Hong Kong Architecture 1945–2015. From Colonial to Global (Singapore: Springer, 2016), 39–50. 36 Wo Hei Lam and Robyn Beaver, Wong & Ouyang. Blueprints for Hong Kong (Victoria,

Australia: Mulgrave: Images Publishing Group, 2008), 173. 37 Christian Caryl, Building the Dragon City. History of the Faculty of Architecture at the

University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 14–15. Brown was a member of the Modern Architecture Research (MARS) Group, which was the chief proponent of Modernism in Britain in the interwar era. At the beginning of his tenure in Hong Kong, he invited J. M. Richards, the influential editor of the Architectural Review magazine, to comment on the curriculum and greet the students and staff. J. M. Richards, Memoirs of an Unjust Fella (London: Faber & Faber, 1980), 222–227. 38 Peter Richmond, Marketing Modernisms. The Architecture and Influence of Charles

Reilly (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 139–161.“Obituary: Christopher Haffner,” Church Times, August 9, 2013. Spence Robinson, originally named Stewardson & Spence, was first founded in Shanghai in 1921 by Scottish architects and had completed Modernist housing blocks—including the Jubilee Court in 1934—before its staff were sent to internment camps during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai (1937–1945). It relocated to Hong Kong in 1947. Edward Denison and Yu Ren Guang, Building Shanghai. The Story of China’s Gateway (London: John Wiley & Sons, 2006), 248. 39 Annie Hua-nung Chan, “Fashioning Change: Nationalism, Colonialism, and

Modernity in Hong Kong,” Post Colonial Studies. Culture, Politics, Economy 3, no. 3 (2000): 293–309. 40 Turner, “60’s/90’s,” 40. 41 Glendinning, “Wah Fu Estate, Hong Kong.” 42 Arthur E. Starling, Plague, SARS and the Story of Medicine in Hong Kong (Hong Kong:

Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 116–118. 43 Grahame Blundell, “Daily Information Bulletin: Girl in the Crowd, Picture Story of the

Chans for Expo 70, 1969”, ISD 606.43, Hong Kong Public Records Office, Hong Kong. 44 John J. Dwyer, “Urban Squatters: The Relevance of the Hong Kong Experience,” Asian

Survey 10, no. 7 (1970): 607–613. 45 Wai Chung Lai, “The Formation of Squatters and Slums in Hong Kong: from Slump

Market to Boom Market,” Habitat International 9, nos. 3/4 (1985): 251–260. 46 Daily Information Bulletin: “Wood Carving at Expo 70”, 1970, HKRS 43-1-57, Hong

Kong Public Records Office, Hong Kong. 47 “Demonstration of Coromandel,” The Daily Yomiuri, March 19, 1970; “Young

Craftsmen of Hongkong Exhibit Skills in Old Arts,” Japan Times, March 19, 1970. 48 Grahame Blundell, “Hong Kong Pavilion—Expo 70 Osaka Japan Architectural

Description & Design Considerations”, N.D., HKRS 43-1-57, Hong Kong Public Record Service, Hong Kong. 49 “Modifications to Hong Kong Pavilion,” Far East Architects & Builders, December 1968. 50 In the sense that Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger have described it. They explain

that ‘Invented tradition’ is the selected use of the past to signify continuity: it takes “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or

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symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition.” Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 1. 51 Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 6. 52 The PRC did not participate in Expo 70 and Taiwan presented an official “China”

pavilion, a high Modernist design with juxtaposed concrete and glass volumes. 53 Auction Item: Vintage EXPO “Osaka Expo: Hong Kong before Transformation,

Rakuten, June 2016. “Vintage EXPO “Osaka Expo: Hong Kong before Transformation,” Auction, Rakuten, June 2016, http://item.rakuten.co.jp/space-store/050768-k-kyo/. 54 “EXPO A-Z,” Architectural Design, June 1970, 285. 55 “Controversy over Design of H.K. Pavilion at Expo 70,” South China Morning Post,

February 10, 1968. 56 “One of the Best Sites for H.K. Pavilion at Expo 70,” South China Morning Post, January

8, 1968. 57 John Urry, The Tourist Gaze. Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London:

Sage, 1990), 8. 58 Chambers, Super Trader, 51, 61. 59 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1985), 384. 60 In it, they distinguished two forms of architecture—the “duck” and the “decorated

shed”—and framed debates on architecture for decades after. A “duck,” they wrote, uses its form to communicate its program while a “shed” uses signs. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1972). 61 Frank Cundall, Reminiscences of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition (London: William

Clowes and Son, 1886), 42–43. 62 Photograph of Hong Kong at Vancouver Expo 1986, 1986, item PA (4)1833 and PA (4)

1873. Hong Kong Information Service Department Photo Collection, Hong Kong.

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12 PHARAOH DIPLOMACY: THE SOFT POWER OF THE TREASURES OF TUTANKHAMUN Mario Schulze

In cities around the world, a 12-hour wait was not uncommon. In London, Chicago and New Orleans, lines formed for blocks, and in Washington DC, as if in anticipation of a rock concert, eager visitors camped out in sleeping bags to beat the huge crowds that descended on the museums each morning hoping for tickets.1 In Munich, when guards closed the gates due to overcrowding, some visitors even attempted to enter the exhibition through the museum windows.2 All of these attendees were hoping to catch a glimpse of Treasures of Tutankhamun—the international blockbuster exhibition featuring the 1922 discovery by British archeologist Howard Carter and his team of the virtually intact tomb of Tutankhamun, Egyptian pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom, who ruled for nine years until his death at the age of eighteen (1332–1323 BCE).3 By the end of the excavation in 1932, almost all the approximately 5,400 objects from the boy-pharaoh’s tomb had become the property of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (Egyptian Museum) in Cairo. Thirty years later, selected objects left Egypt to embark on two consecutive exhibition tours spanning six countries and thirty-six cities over twenty years (1961–1981). The exhibition was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the celebrated splendors in person and, for many, a visit was not complete without a trip to the museum shop afterwards. In these newly-installed emporia, visitors could purchase an array of Tutankhamun-related goods, among them ties featuring Tut-like patterns, whiskey bottles configured as the boy king, and campy t-shirts emblazoned with punny inscriptions ranging from “I Love my Mummy,” and “Struttin’ with

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Tut,” to the bawdy “Keep your Hands off my Tuts”. What the long lines and packed gift shops made clear to many at the time, among them the comedian Steve Martin, was that with this exhibition the relationship between museums and consumption had changed. Appearing on Saturday Night Live dressed in outlandish Egyptian garb, Martin zeroed in on the “King Tut” conflation of culture and commerce. “Now if I’d known, they’d line up just to see him,” Martin sang, “I’d’ve taken all my money and bought me a museum.”4 This chapter focuses on the Treasures of Tutankhamun (1972–1981) as a prime example of a transnational loan exhibition mediating international relations and politics with museum objects. During its tour, some fifty-plus delicate tomb artifacts— including the iconic gold mask, the throne, and an assortment of jewelry—were exhibited in the United Kingdom (London 1972); the Soviet Union (Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, 1973); the United States (Washington, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, and San Francisco 1976–1979); Canada (Toronto 1979); and, finally, the Federal Republic of Germany (Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Hanover, and Hamburg 1980–1981), where the exhibition was renamed Tutanchamun.5 The 1970s world tour remains the most popular exhibition tour to date, having broken attendance records at almost every participating museum—records that, for the most part, still stand today.6 In the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany, in particular, the exhibitions became a pop-cultural phenomenon dubbed by the popular press as “Tutmania,” “Tut Glut,” or “Mummy Madness.”7 The “King Tut” show, as it also became widely known, received extensive news coverage from tabloid and broadsheet newspapers alike. From television documentaries to the popular music charts, the boy king was ever present8 and the Tutankhamun exhibitions emerged as a new exhibition genre: “the ultimate blockbuster.”9 The Tutankhamun blockbusters of the 1970s mirrored numerous contemporary topics and debates: they were expressions of a new exhibition boom, exemplified the postmodern commodification of culture, and in the course of the exhibition publicly highlighted gender relations and racial identities.10 Most scholars commenting on the Tutankhamun exhibitions foreground not only the excitement they caused but also the resulting commercialization of participating museums and their cultural shift from temples to pleasure domes.11 My research, however, reflects on the exhibition from a different standpoint. It looks at the transnational relations involved in the Tutankhamun tour and analyzes some of the different political rationales and interests shaping it, including: global oil politics, the Middle East conflict, the branding of the Egyptian nation and its attempt to obtain foreign currency, and the international museum crisis of the 1960s and 1970s. By building on the arguments of American Studies scholar Melani McAlister, who contextualizes the exhibition within a postmodern framework, US popular and commodity culture, and the political agenda of the US in Egypt, this chapter demonstrates the connection between commercialization and international relations. Furthermore, it extends the work of McAlister and others, who have explored the diplomatic

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background stories of the exhibitions in one of the participating countries, and approaches the tour from the new angle of its transnationality.12 Hence, by focusing on the journey of the objects through several Western countries, it assesses the exhibitions as transnational instruments of soft power, rather than as primarily embedded in bilateral politics, and leads to a series of central questions: for which parties was the exhibition actually a soft power tool and, more specifically, can the commercialization of the lent objects during the tour be interpreted as an example of the “soft disempowerment” of Egypt (to use a term coined by sociologists Paul M. Brannagan and Richard Giulianotti)? In other words, did this attempt by Egypt to wield soft power yield the unintended consequence of depriving the nation of power over its own objects?13

“TUT—EGYPT’S SPECIAL AMBASSADOR” “Soft power” is usually defined as the ability to influence and to enforce national interests through attraction, persuasion, and agenda-setting rather than military or economic coercion. The lending and spending of museum objects through international loan exhibitions played an important role in the exercise of soft power throughout the twentieth century.14 The 1970s marked the probable peak of loan exhibition in terms of attendance and symbolic political power.15 The Tutankhamun exhibitions, in particular, were inextricably linked to international politics, with many news reports emphasizing that the exhibitions were not simply comprised of museum artifacts but rather objects of ambassadorial status. Newspapers celebrated the iconic gold death mask as the “King of Egypt” and representative of Egyptian state power. One German newspaper headline declared: “Tut—Egypt’s Special Ambassador.”16 Numerous state representatives negotiated, visited, discussed, and opened the exhibitions. As was reported in the US press, it was only at the express wish of President Richard M. Nixon that the country secured the exhibits from the Egyptian Museum. Likewise, in Germany it was only after the President of the Federal Republic, Walter Scheel, personally asked Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat for the exhibition on his 1976 state visit that the nation also received the objects. Other countries were less successful: Denmark, Italy, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden all requested, but were denied, a showing.17 The bilateral contacts, therefore, demonstrate how the exhibitions need to be framed as transnational diplomatic endeavors. Only an analysis of the different national, institutional, and personal interests involved, namely, those of the Egyptian, the US, the UK, and German governments as well as of the Western museums, can illustrate how soft power shaped and influenced the exhibition process.18 For the Egyptian government, sending ancient cultural treasures abroad served multiple purposes. The exhibitions were not only an obvious means of harnessing

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and promoting the cultural appeal of their country, but also a pragmatic way to offset its prevailing economic crises to obtain the foreign currency it sorely lacked. Moreover, they promoted the interrelated aims of nation branding and nation building. Tutankhamun was an iconic part of Egyptian national cultural heritage: the artifacts had been used in the imaginative and actual formation of an Egyptian nation-state ever since their discovery.19 But the international loan of these objects in the 1960s and 1970s promoted the interrelated aims of nation branding and nation building more systematically. As scholars such as Simon Anholt or György Szondi have demonstrated, nation branding promotes a country’s reputation abroad using well-known national features and landmarks to create an image that encourages tourism, exports, and foreign investment. Nation building, in contrast, is more domestically focused: the “top-down” formation or consolidation of a nation through language, culture, and collective historical consciousness.20 Egypt’s nation branding rested historically on what it considered to be its core identity as the home of high culture from which Western civilization derived. Therefore, since the 1960s the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, the government body responsible for all antiquities and archeological excavations (which later became the Egyptian Antiquities Organization), had allowed various national treasures and artifacts to tour the world.21 But Tutankhamun’s treasures were particularly suited for global nation marketing. Since Carter’s opening of the tomb, widespread Egyptomania gripped Europe and North America and encompassed fashion, design, art, advertising, and cinema.22 Fifty years later, “King Tut” sparked its robust revival, inspiring the work of, amongst others, comedians, musicians, directors, and designers.23 The loan of Tutankhamun objects also played a crucial role in Egyptian nation building. From the 1952 coup d’état of young Egyptian military leaders until the 1970s, Egypt underwent a period of nationalization marked by an attempt to gain greater independence from the former colonial powers and to represent this independence worldwide. During this process both Gamal Abdel Nasser (president 1956–1970) and Anwar Sadat (president 1970–1981) associated themselves, their actions, and the newly independent Egypt with the Pharaonic past. Nasser strove to propagate his anti-imperialist revolution as the rise of the Egyptian nation and therefore strove to connect himself with the country’s millennia-old history. Sadat, although pursuing different domestic and international politics from Nasser, continued to proliferate a nationalist passion. Known for his flamboyant personal style, the president often carried a command staff comparable to the ancient Egyptian key of life bestowed by the deities on the Pharaoh.24 Throughout modern Egyptian history, archeological heritage has long been a contested political field, intertwined with foreign and domestic policy.25 Excavations of ancient Egyptian cultural assets have consistently been used to propagate the policies of the respective political elites, but Tutankhamun played a special role. As archeologist Elliott Colla asserts, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb had already

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transformed Egypt’s national identity by making its Pharaonic past mainstream within political culture.26 The sovereignty of Egypt, founded in ancient times, transcended contemporary religious, regional, and social differences. With the exhibition of Tutankhamun’s treasures, the “new” Egypt could both refer to a common cultural history and stage itself as a vital cultural nation abroad, thus combining tradition with modernity and performing nation branding and nation building hand in hand. However, probably the most pressing incentive for Egypt to lend their ancient museum objects was financial: the country urgently needed hard currency to renew its tourist infrastructure.27 The budgetary deficit derived from the shortcomings of the Egyptian economy, a result of Nasser’s economic policies and his attempts to adapt the Soviet economic model of planned economic expansion.28 The early 1960s loan exhibitions of Tutankhamun artifacts generated considerable economic effect and were based on a practice of lending where a sum of the net proceeds, the exact calculation of which was a matter of negotiation, benefited the Egyptian Antiquities Organization. Mostly tied to cultural policy, the money helped to finance such projects as excavations around the Temple of Philae (1960–1980) and renovations in the Egyptian Museum. One of Nasser’s signature economic achievements, the building of the High Dam at Aswan, received substantial assistance as a result of the 1960s Tutankhamun exhibitions.29 Although the Soviets provided most of the primary funding and technical assistance for the dam itself, exhibition monies paid for the relocation of many ancient sites, such as Abu Simbel, which offered the potential for touristic development. As the Tutankhamun tours increased during the 1970s, money became an increasingly pressing issue. The unparalleled success of the 1972 London show, generating revenues of over $1.7 million, led to ever-higher expectations of the Egyptian lenders and triggered an unprecedented dynamic of commercialization.30 For the later US exhibition tour, Thomas Hoving, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acted as a chief negotiator with the Director of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, Gamal Mokhtar. Hoving agreed to guarantee an unprecedented revenue of $3.5 million, although the exact nature and the actual legal consequences of this agreement remain a matter of discussion.31 During that time, restrictive financial arrangements barred many US museums from charging entrance fees and necessitated that they raise the money exclusively through catalog sales, replicas, and reproduction licenses (Figure 12.1). The resulting profitmaking strategy of the Tutankhamun exhibitions can thus be seen as early and significant evidence of a changing economic landscape for museums in the 1970s and 1980s. The unprecedentedly popular US exhibitions earned more than $13.7 million in profits, with an astonishing $10 million supposedly benefiting the Egyptian Antiquities Organization.32 Given the huge sums involved, money increasingly became a bone of contention, with conflicting accounts about who ultimately profited from the exhibitions. The

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FIGURE 12.1 Catalog cover from the Treasures of Tutankhamun US exhibition, 1976– 1979. Staaliche Museen zu Berlin/Metropolitan Museum of Art. Egyptian National Museum, Cairo, Egypt. Photo © Boltin Picture Library/Bridgeman Images.

ubiquitous former Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass, for example, who organized a later exhibition tour with Tutankhamun objects in 2004–2005, denies that the US money ever reached its intended destination.33 Hoving later claimed, however, that “the department of antiquities got the money” and that the Egyptian government invested it in Eurobonds kept in an account on the Greek island of Rhodes.34 Regardless, financial suspicions already existed in the 1970s and caused increasing resentment among Egyptians. All in all, the US exhibitions (1976–1978) alone are said to have contributed well over $200 million dollars to local US economies. Moreover, the US museums themselves benefited in many different ways, with an increase in memberships, gift shop sales, and publicity that even paid advertising could hardly have matched.35 Overall, it remains an open question as to who benefited most from Tut’s bounty. Arguably, this growing resentment was one of the main drivers of the tour’s abrupt end, an end that was exacerbated by an incident involving the famous figure Selket, one of the central pieces of the US and German shows. During the installation of the Berlin exhibition in February 1980, installers enclosed the gilded wooden statue of the goddess within too small a protective glass hood, resulting in damage to the delicate scorpion affixed to her head (see Figure 12.2). Although the incident was documented and the scorpion restored, the public initially remained unaware of the mishap.36 But two months later, when the Egyptian newspaper Al

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FIGURE 12.2 The figure Selket during the installation of the Treasures of Tutankhamun Cologne exhibition, 1980. © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne.

Ahram reported the incident, a wave of indignation swept through the country. The report came at a time of growing Egyptian anti-Western sentiments and was deemed so egregious that even the Egyptian parliament addressed the topic.37 The damage to the statue, combined with the public outcry and rising doubts about the financial management of the exhibitions, tipped the scale. The attempt to use Tutankhamun as a soft power tool had sparked unintended consequences; as a result, the Egyptian Museum readjusted its lending policies and the objects remained in Egypt for the next twenty-three years.

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MUSEUM DIPLOMACY: THE INTERESTS OF THE WESTERN MUSEUM DIRECTORS Although the Tutankhamun collections belonged to Egypt, the directors and curators of the Western host museums played a leading role in conceiving and organizing the exhibition and thus needed little persuasion by the Egyptian government or the Egyptian Museum to take part. When I. E. S. Edwards, Curator of the Egyptian Department at the British Museum, heard about the preparations for a Tutankhamun exhibition in Paris in 1966, he immediately drew upon his extensive private and professional network to try to bring it to London.38 Not only did he reach out to the art director of the British Arts Council, Gabriel White, but also tried to contact the Egyptian Minister of Culture, Tharwat Okasha, directly while Okasha was in London for medical treatment. According to his account, Edwards went so far as to visit Okasha regularly in the hospital and during his convalescence in an effort to win his favor. Additionally, Edwards sought to secure the treasures through the French exhibition organizer, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, and used his contacts with influential British archeologists, such as Walter Bryan Emery, to build direct links to the Department of Antiquities. Similar battles were played out in Germany and the US. Peter Ade, Director of Munich’s Haus der Kunst (House of Art), and the aforementioned Thomas Hoving both fought ardently to secure the Tutankhamun objects for their museums throughout the 1970s. What exactly impelled the Western museum directors to long for these artifacts? For them, the Tutankhamun exhibition presented an opportunity for muchneeded museum renewal. From the 1960s onwards, museum professionals in Germany, the US, and other Western countries increasingly confronted the problem of the museum as an institution in deep crisis.39 Due to few visitors, lack of public presence, and limited government interest in cultural policy, both museum professionals and critics drew attention to the imperative for reform.40 As a result, there was increased emphasis on access and public engagement; the mass appeal of blockbuster exhibitions, such as Tutankhamun, were one of the many responses to this call. They were extremely successful in attracting huge visitor numbers and it was assumed that this would solve museums’ problems connecting with audiences.41 The institutional logic, blurring distinctions between accessibility and high attendance numbers, was later summarized by Philippe de Montebello, Hoving’s successor at the Metropolitan Museum. Recalling Hoving’s success in opening up the museum, de Montebello stated in a speech, quoting poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The caverns”—in other words museums— “heretofore largely measureless to man were transformed into stately pleasure domes, now accessible to all.”42 As the great power of Egypt’s objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb offered the potential to create blockbuster exhibitions, drawing record crowds, museum directors desperately yearned to borrow them.

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THE CULTURAL DIPLOMACY OF OIL: THE US, BRITISH, AND GERMAN GOVERNMENTS’ INTERESTS IN EGYPTIAN RESOURCES The museums’ perspective only provides one side of the story in relation to the receiving nations, as other factors, including Cold War politics, came into play. While the museum directors conceived of the idea of a “Tut” show, searching for ways to organize a blockbuster, it was governmental politics which variously interfered, facilitated, or led to confusion during the process. To be clear, the museum directors were not simply political puppets, but, rather, were dependent on the cooperation of different government bodies in their own countries, as well as in Egypt. The diplomacy surrounding global oil politics and the Middle East conflict remained an inescapable backdrop, coloring the tour of the exhibits. Governmental foreign policies played a central role in the organization of the Tutankhamun tour. An agreement between Egypt and the respective governments underpinned each exhibition, and it was the borrowing countries themselves, not the museums, that shouldered the insurance costs of the objects. The British government, for example, indemnified the Egyptian government up to the cost of £9,060,000—an unprecedented sum—in the event of loss or damage to the treasures.43 In the United States, the Tutankhamun exhibitions became the first international art exhibition tour indemnified under the new “Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Act” that provided full credit of the United States Treasury in the event of loss or damage.44 Furthermore, only decrees by the Egyptian president himself could release the objects, and even the transport of the exhibits was politically framed, done under the sovereignty of the borrowing countries’ militaries. Egyptian and Western security forces continually guarded the objects and the Egyptians went so far as to insist that neither civil aircraft nor cargo planes were suitable for transportation. For the US exhibition tour, therefore, the United States government redirected the USS Milwaukee via Alexandria.45 The underlying intentions of the governments in West Germany, the UK, and the United States in helping their museums stage Tutankhamun blockbusters were less directly linked with the exhibition itself than were those of the Egyptian government. In fact, there was only one cultural exchange directly connected with the exhibition: the 1969 visit of the British Royal Ballet to Cairo. It was more important to the United States, the UK, and the Federal Republic of Germany—albeit to varying degrees—to strengthen Egypt’s ties with the West during the Cold War.46 Since Egypt was considered to be a constant threat to stability in the Middle East, and had become an important oil exporter during the 1960s and 1970s, the Western powers sought to improve diplomatic relations.47 The lending of ancient Egyptian cultural assets helped, because exhibitions nurture relations and test diplomatic contacts on

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“neutral” terrain. Peter Solmsson, the deputy ambassador-at-large for cultural affairs in the US State Department, who was responsible for the Tutankhamun tour and many other international loan exhibitions, explained: “[Exhibitions] are useful because they tend to normalize relationships. Over a period of time, as the number of cultural contacts increases, projects which at one time might have been considered impossible gradually become relatively routine and the occurrence of special difficulties is much more infrequent.”48 For Solmsson, exhibitions had the potential to create trust and establish communication channels on the basis of which other negotiations could become possible. In what ways were the Tutankhamun exhibitions intended to promote diplomatic exchanges, underwrite commercial relationships, and signal the mutual interests of the participating countries? The background of the German tour clearly illustrates the interests of the Western governments. It confirms how the chances of obtaining the Tutankhamun exhibition were a direct effect of oil politics and new developments in the Middle Eastern conflict. When Peter Ade first inquired in 1972 about the possibility of bringing Tutankhamun to Munich, he met politically motivated resistance from the German embassy in Egypt.49 Yet only a little more than a year later, Ade was informed by the cultural attaché at the embassy, Helga von Strachwitz, that the chances of receiving the objects had “significantly improved.”50 This was due to new developments in the relationship between Egypt and West Germany, among them the reinstated financial assistance for Egypt and the renewed Egyptian hopes that the Federal Republic, under Chancellor Willy Brandt, would at least participate in a solution to the Middle East conflict.51 But most influential, however, was the 1973 Yom Kippur War (or October War)—fought against Israel by a coalition of Arab states headed by Egypt and Syria—and its aftermath. In a major political shift after the war, Egyptian President Sadat introduced his “Infitah” program, which cut off the Soviet Union as Egypt’s main ally and reoriented and opened the country to the West (including West Germany).52 The Yom Kippur War was also the main trigger for the first Middle Eastern oil crisis, which led to a new pro-Arab diplomacy in West Germany.53 Surprisingly, it was Egypt in particular, a featherweight among the oil states, which seemed to be of importance to the West German government. Arguably, this had something to do with the new collaboration between the Egyptian government and the largest German oil producer, Deminex.54 The politics underpinning the German, British, and US exhibitions were of course very different, but they all shared similar stories of rapprochement with Egypt. The highs and lows of the diplomatic relations embedded in the Middle East conflict and stories of direct institutional affiliations with government agencies and multinational oil companies—the US oil giant Exxon, for example, donated $150,000 to fund the US exhibitions—were certainly involved.55 These stories of the political influence on staging the exhibitions indicate that they were not just the outcome of Egyptian financial hopes and museum directors’ efforts to obtain valuable loans, but, rather, were part of the broader diplomatic process where their

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conception and economic policies intertwined. Yet, the Tutankhamun exhibitions did not only depend on diplomacy but also enforced Western national interests.

OBJECT DIPLOMACY: WESTERN APPROPRIATION OF EGYPTIAN MATERIAL CULTURE The habit of Westerners appropriating Egyptian art has a long history. It ranges from souvenirs taken by the early colonial explorers and Napoleon’s lootings that now fill the Louvre, to the more recent thefts from persecuted minorities such as the Copts or the Jews. In the nineteenth century, archeologists from the UK, France, and Germany filled museum stores with their excavated, often plundered, artifacts. The Tutankhamun exhibitions of the 1970s reiterated this old hierarchy of Egypt as a supplier of art treasures for the West, but in a new way. The mass marketing of the Tutankhamun objects via blockbuster exhibitions was a different form of appropriation: commodifying not the ancient artifacts but the market for their contemporary reproductions. The West claimed ownership of the image of the objects.56 In order to understand this new twentieth-century form of appropriation, we must again return to the exhibition organizers in the receiving museums. What sort of relation with the Egyptian treasures did they consider as self-evident? Peter Ade, I. E. S. Edwards, and Thomas Hoving had different backgrounds and visions of what the museum was and could be. For all three, however, there was a common attitude regarding the organization of exhibitions of Egyptian artifacts. Through their knowledge, institutional position, or experience with ancient objects, they assumed to have a legitimate power of disposition over the use, management, and exploitation of Tutankhamun’s grave finds, although this manifested itself in completely different forms. Particularly illustrative in this context is an episode from the object selection process for the US tour. It is not only told in Hoving’s memoirs, which tended to exaggerate his adventures for posterity, but also reiterated by Solmsson of the State Department in a later interview.57 Hoving claims that he selected the fifty-five objects at his own discretion and that, in doing so, he only followed his instincts and his aesthetic judgment: “I selected what looked great. Simple as that.”58 Christine Lilyquist, the curator of the Egyptian Department at the Met who went with Hoving to Cairo, tried to introduce the Egyptological point of view, but Hoving just “didn’t listen,”59 thus underlining his dominance as a museum director and faith in his own vision. In other words, Hoving prided himself as having made judgments on the basis of visual impact rather than expertise in ancient Egyptian culture. In particular, the selection of Selket, one of the highlights of the exhibition as well as the catalyst for its demise, reflected Hoving’s attitude towards Egyptian heritage; an attitude that revealed the power relation between Egyptian lenders and, in this case, US borrowers. After a first list with fifty-five objects had been compiled, Hoving

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insisted on an additional change. He wanted to include in the exhibition one of the four gilded wooden goddesses surrounding Tut’s canopic shrine, the ones provocatively recalled by Hoving in his memoir as “wearing skin-tight ‘nightgowns.’”60 Director of the Egyptian Museum Abd El-Qader Selim and his assistants, who remain unnamed in Hoving’s and Solmsson’s accounts, protested emphatically, claiming that it was attached to the shrine and therefore impossible to separate. Seemingly at odds with any sort of museum “best practices,” Hoving purportedly proposed “a wager”—“If I . . . could lift out the goddess Selket, could I have it for the show?”—offering the Egyptian Museum staff a dinner in the best restaurant in Cairo if he could and two dinners if he could not. The glass case was removed, and as Solmsson remembers, “Dr. Hoving . . . grabbed one and pulled it off.”61 Self-satisfied and implicitly bragging about his reputation as a womanizer,62 Hoving declared after her release: “It was obvious that she [Selket] wanted to come with me.”63 Hoving united in his person the proficient art historian, the collector, the salesman, and the urbane bon vivant.64 As historian Meredith Hindley writes, he was “an avid and skilled raider of the world’s art, exploiting government connections and ‘smugglers and fixers’ to beg, borrow, and buy what others might have stolen.”65 As the embodiment of an art dealer succeeding the colonial conquerors, Hoving’s violent “grabbing” of Selket is reminiscent of similar object trades from the colonial period that brought multiple artifacts into Western museum collections.66 Hoving, however, could not appropriate the objects permanently in a material sense. But, importantly, this “grabbing” was not only a symbolic appropriation in defiance of the Egyptian museum staff but also part of an economic appropriation of the image of the objects. The selection of the objects, including the Selket, entailed the production of casts intended for sale in the museum gift shop (see Figure 12.3). With these casts, the Metropolitan Museum produced high-quality object reproductions that generated huge revenues, from which (as discussed earlier) the Egyptian lenders only received a mere fraction. In the end, Hoving’s instincts proved correct: the Selket—priced at $1,500 USD—became one of the top sellers.67 Hoving’s act of forcibly borrowing the Selket was mirrored by the millions of visitors to the official museum shops and the numerous pop-up gift stands dotting the fronts of museums. They offered reproductions of the Selket and other objects from the exhibition of different qualities and price points, such as T-shirts, mugs, stickers, and even sleeping bags. In Berlin, reflecting on the abundance of offerings, the German tabloid BZ suggested that anyone could “Bring the Golden King to your home!”68 The craze for Tutankhamun merchandise even became a target of satire. Steve Martin told the Saturday Night Live audience in mock seriousness that he believed it a “national disgrace the way we have trivialized [the exhibition] with trinkets and toys and posters.”69 Arguably, the blockbuster exhibition Treasures of Tutankhamun made it possible to fulfill the craving for the accumulation of goods from a foreign world thanks to the replicas promoted in a Western mass-consumption culture. In the end, it was the museums in the US and the local economies in the UK,

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FIGURE 12.3 Reproductions of the Selket sold in US museum shops during Treasures of Tutankhamun, 1976–1979. © Boehm Porcelain.

the US, and Germany, rather than that of Egypt, that were in fact the profiteers of this extraordinary cultural heritage.

WHOSE POWERS? The Tutankhamun exhibitions of the 1970s were deeply embedded in the diplomatic and commercial relationships between Egypt, the UK, and the US, as well as West Germany. While the exhibition served as a soft power tool for all governments involved, it did not have the intended consequences for all of them. Egypt’s interests lay primarily in nation building, nation branding, and the procurement of foreign currency. In the end though, a large part of the revenue did not reach the Egyptian government, and—weighing heavier still—their museum objects were appropriated as reproductions and monetized as such. Although Egypt remained the legitimate keeper of almost all objects found in Tutankhamun’s tomb and could thus dictate the terms of lending, the museums in the Western countries used the reproductions of the objects to overcome their own crisis. By doing so, the Western museums recreated structures of colonial dominance in new forms. The Tutankhamun exhibition updated the historical practice of bringing objects and resources from Egyptian soil to the West. The Tutankhamun tour

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reflected post-colonial relationships, where hierarchies continued to exist and were maintained, even though they were no longer based on direct violence and subjugation rules. The politicians and the museum directors promoted a conception of Egypt as a supplier of resources for the West, a belief that corresponded with their contemporary political agenda in the Middle East. Soft power and disempowerment in the context of the Tutankhamun exhibitions took the shape of a reproduction Selket, a figure that could be “grabbed” by all Western exhibition visitors.

NOTES 1 This chapter is a supplement and continuation of my article on object diplomacy in the

German Tutankhamun exhibition, published in 2018 in a special forum on “The Object as Ambassador” in the journal Representations. Some passages are taken from this in a revised form. Mario Schulze, “Tutankhamun in West Germany, 1980–81,” Representations 141 (2018): 39–58. 2 Peter Schmalz, “Fluch der Pharaonen krabbelt schon,” Die Welt, November 15, 1980. 3 For an overview on Tutankhamun and the excavation see Nicholas Reeves, The

Complete Tutankhamun (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990). 4 Steve Martin and the Toot Uncommons: “King Tut” (7” vinyl single, Warner Bros.,

1978). 5 The tour ended abruptly. Twenty-three years later a new exhibition was opened in

Switzerland and Germany, and, recently, 150 artifacts from the tomb were gathered together on what was marketed as their “final world tour.” Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however, Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh ended prematurely after its second stop at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Christina Riggs, “Boy-King Bling. The Treasures of Tutankhamun, Accompanied by Myth, Nostalgia and a Consumer Wonderland,” Times Literary Supplement, November 8, 2019. 6 The exhibition attracted 1.6 million visitors to the British Museum, 1.25 million

visitors to the LACMA, and 1.3 million visitors to the Cologne City Museum. 7 Cf. Zahi Hawass, Auf den Spuren Tutanchamuns (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche

Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 2015), 220. 8 In addition to numerous news articles, the TV documentary “Tut. The Boy King”

(1978) with Orson Welles and later the TV movie The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb (1980) were produced on the occasion of the exhibition. 9 Thomas Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993),

401. For standard literature on the blockbuster phenomenon in the museum world, see Emma Barker, “Exhibiting the Canon: The Blockbuster Show,” in Emma Barker, ed., Contemporary Cultures of Display (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 128. 10 Cf. Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters. Culture, Media, & U.S. Interests in the Middle

East since 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Mario Schulze, “Tutanchamun fotografieren—Zur Produktion eines Ausstellungsstars,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 39, no. 4 (2016): 331–349. 11 Barker, “Exhibiting the Canon,” 128.

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12 The Egyptian tourism expert Asaad Zaki focused on the exhibition in the British

Museum, the historian Meredith Hindley explained what she calls the diplomatic gesture leading to the US tour, and I considered the exhibition tour from a German perspective. Asaad Ali Zaki, “Tutankhamun Exhibition at the British Museum in 1972. A Historical Perspective,” Journal of Tourism Theory and Research 3, no. 2 (2017): 79–88; Meredith Hindley, “King Tut: A Classic Blockbuster Museum Exhibition That Began as a Diplomatic Gesture,” Humanities 36, no. 5 (September/October 2015): 1–12; Schulze, “Tutankhamun in West Germany, 1980–81,” Representations 141, no. 1 (2018): 39–58. British archeologist Christina Riggs has explicitly used the term “Tutankhamun’s soft power” in her analysis of Harry Burton’s excavation photographs, in which she also touches on the complex politics behind several of the exhibitions. Christina Riggs, “Photographing Tutankhamun: An Introduction,” in Photographing Tutankhamun. Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and the Archive (London, New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019), 1–40. 13 The sociologists Paul M. Brannagan and Richard Giulianotti coined the term “soft

disempowerment” based on the recent example of Qatar’s bid for the football world cup. Paul Michael Brannagan and Richard Giulianotti, “Soft Power and Soft Disempowerment: Qatar, Global Sport and Football’s 2022 World Cup Finals,” Leisure Studies 34, no. 6 (2015): 703–719. 14 Stephan Waetzoldt, “Motive, Ziele, Zwänge: Die Ausgangslage,” in Institut für

Museumskunde, ed., Ausstellungen—Mittel der Politik? (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1981), 15–23, 22. For more recent and more general research on soft power and cultural diplomacy see Jessica Gienow-Hecht and Mark Donfried, Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (New York: Berghahn, 2010), 3–29. Joseph Nye coined the term in 1990; Joseph Nye, “Soft Power,” in Foreign Policy 80, no. 3 (1990): 153–171. 15 In the 1970s, exhibitions such as the Splendors of Dresden (1978), Scythian Gold from

Russia (1975), the Gold of Ancient Colombia (1974), Early Irish Art (1977), and many more toured major museums around the world. El Dorado: The Gold of Ancient Colombia, from the Museo del Oro in Bogotà, for example, traveled for two years to ten US venues, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. The other exhibitions went on similar tours and all also stopped at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 16 “Tut—Ägyptens Sonderbotschafter,” Südschleswiger Heimatzeitung, February 23, 1980. 17 Letter, A. Bammer to Peter Ade, August 22, 1975, Folder “Tutanchamun_A-D,” Archive

of the Artists’ Association, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany. 18 The actual political potency of loan exhibitions in Cold War diplomacy is an often-

discussed topic. See, for example: Alice Goff, “The Splendor of Dresden in the United States, 1978–79,” Representations 141, no. 1 (2018): 20–38. 19 Brian Parkinson, “Tutankhamen on Trial: Egyptian Nationalism and the Court Case

for the Pharaoh’s Artifacts,” The Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 44 (2008): 1–8. Cf. the British and French colonial connection to antiquities: Daniel Malcolm Reid, “Remembering and Forgetting Tutankhamun: Imperial and National Rhythms of Archaeology, 1922–1972,” in William Carruthers and Egypt Exploration Society, eds., Histories of Egyptology. Interdisciplinary Measures (London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2014), 157–173. 20 Cf. Nation branding and building with cultural exchange programs in the arts in the

times of the Cold War: Christian Saehrendt, Kunst im Kampf für das “sozialistische

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Weltsystem.” Auswärtige Kulturpolitik der DDR in Afrika und Nahost (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017), 7–37. 21 Exhibitions like 5000 Years of Egyptian Art (1961–1962) or Nofretete Echnaton

(1976–1978) toured Europe and the US. 22 Concerning the Tutankhamun hype in the 1920s, see: Judith Wettengel,

“Tutanchamun—das ‘Riesenshowgeschäft’ um den ‘Superstar aus dem alten Ägypten,’ ” in Wolfgang Wettengel, ed., Mythos Tutanchamun (Nördlingen: Wolfgang Wettengel, 2003), 18–45. 23 Cf. Hawass, Auf den Spuren Tutanchamuns, 220–224; Schulze, “Tutanchamun

fotografieren,” 332. 24 Robert Tignor, Egypt. A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010),

274–277. 25 Cf. William Carruthers, “The Planned Past: Policy and (Ancient) Egypt,” Egyptian and

Egyptological Documents, Archives, Libraries 4 (2015): 229–240. 26 Elliott Colla, Conflicted Antiquities. Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 177. 27 Being the first part of the Middle East to become a real tourist destination, mass

tourism remained an important feature of Egypt’s economy even under Nasser. Matthew Gray, “Economic Reform, Privatization and Tourism in Egypt,” Middle Eastern Studies 34, no. 2 (1998): 91–112, 92. 28 Tignor, Egypt, 271. See also Ali Hillal Dessouki, “The Primacy of Economics: The

Foreign Policy of Egypt,” in Bahgat Korany et al., eds., The Foreign Policy of Arab States. The Challenge of Change (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 156–185. 29 Lucia Allais, Designs of Destruction. The Making of Monuments in the Twentieth

Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 219–251. 30 See “Income and Expenditure Account,” Tutankhamun Exhibition 1972–Volume I,

AES Ar. 797, 426, British Museum Archive, London, UK. 31 Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance, 411; Cable, Hoving to Mokhtar, Box 43, Folder 6,

Contracts Franklin Mint, 1975–1976, Thomas Hoving Records, 1935–1977, Metropolitan Museum Archives, New York, NY. 32 Grace Glueck, “The Tut Show Gives a Midas Touch to Almost Everyone but the

Viewer,” The New York Times December 24, 1978. 33 Robin Pogrebin and Sharon Waxman, “King Tut, Set for 2nd U.S. Tour, Has New

Decree: Money Rules,” The New York Times, December 2, 2004. See also Hawass, Auf den Spuren Tutanchamuns, 220. 34 Hawass, Auf den Spuren Tutanchamuns, 220. 35 For overall profits and membership counts see Glueck, “Midas Touch.” 36 “Condition Report on the Unpacking of the Tutankhamun Treasures in Berlin,”

February 25, 1980, SMB-ZA, 12763 AMP, Central Archive of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany. 37 See “Ägypter schlagen Alarm: Die Berliner haben unsere goldene beschädigt,” BZ , April

14, 1980. Rainer Wagner, “Angeknackste Göttin in der Tut-Ausstellung,” Welt, April 15, 1980. For the discussions in the Egyptian Parliament, see Letter from Hans-Joachim Hille to Auswärtiges Amt, June 10, 1980, PAAA, Zwischenarchiv, 155226, Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin, Germany.

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38 See for this and the following, I. E. S. Edwards: “Preface”, n.d., AES Ar. 797, British

Museum Archive, London, UK. 39 Most prominently Duncan Cameron, “The Museum, a Temple or Forum,” Curator 14,

no. 1 (March 1971): 11–24. 40 For more information on the museum crisis and the subsequent reform concepts, see:

Anke te Heesen and Mario Schulze, “Einleitung,” in Mario Schulze, Anke te Heesen, and Vincent Dold, eds., Museumskrise und Ausstellungserfolg. Die Entwicklung der Geschichtsausstellung in den Siebzigern (Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2015), 7–17. 41 There is no study known to me from this time that tried to measure the success of

blockbuster exhibitions with groups that have typically avoided museums, such as low-income earners. 42 Philippe de Montebello, “Speech at the Thomas Hoving Memorial at Metropolitan

Museum of Art,” April 5, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLC2UR-_KNM. 43 Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of

the United Arab Republic concerning the Tutankhamun Exhibition, July 28, 1971, AES Ar. 797, British Museum Archive, London, UK. 44 The US Congress passed the new law in December 1975 to help cover insurance costs

related to hosting international exhibitions. 45 See Letters from Thomas Hoving, Box 44, Folder 2, “Exhibition Travelling,”

Thomas Hoving Records, 1935–1977, Metropolitan Museum Archives, New York, NY. 46 Marvin Weinbaum, “Egypt’s ‘Infitah’ and the Politics of US Economic Assistance,” in

Middle Eastern Studies 21, no. 2 (1985): 206–222, 210. 47 Michel Thomas Halbouty, Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade, 1978–1988 (Tulsa:

American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1992), 238. 48 Grace Glueck, “Are Art Exchanges a Game of Propaganda?,” The New York Times,

September 26, 1976. 49 Letters between Hans-Georg Steltzer and Peter Ade, August 18 and September 13,

1972, Folder “Tutanchamun_A-D,” Archive of the Artists’ Association, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany. The diplomatic relations between the two countries had broken off due to the official recognition of Israel by the Federal Republic. 50 Letter, Helga von Strachwitz to Ade, December 4, 1973, PAAA, Zwischenarchiv,

123989, Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin, Germany. 51 Letter, Steltzer to Auswärtiges Amt, February 12, 1973, AAPD (Akten zur Auswärtigen

Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Files on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany], published by the Institute of Contemporary History [IfZ] on behalf of the Federal Foreign Office) 1973, I, Dok. 49. 52 Sadat made no secret of his “pro-German attitude,” as he told the German Minister of

Economic Cooperation, Erhard Eppler, during his visit to Germany shortly after the war. Letter, Federal Minister Erhard Eppler to Auswärtiges Amt, November 21, 1973, AAPD 1973 III, Dok. 384. 53 On the oil politics of West Germany see: Rüdiger Graf, Öl und Souveränität:

Petroknowledge und Energiepolitik in den USA und Westeuropa in den 1970er Jahren (Berlin: Oldenbourg, 2014), 239–241.

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54 In February 1974, Egypt eventually agreed to the exploration of oil reserves in the Red

Sea by Deminex. See Records of the Federal Foreign Office on Petroleum Policy, B102/275321, BArch (Bundesarchiv [Federal Archives]), Koblenz, Germany. 55 See “Funding,” Box 44, Folder 6, Thomas Hoving Records, 1935–1977, Metropolitan

Museum Archive, New York, NY. 56 The interconnections of appropriation and commodification are manifold and their

relation to power is, to say the least, complicated. See, for example, Deborah Root, Cannibal Culture. Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). 57 See for this and the following: Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance, 404, 410 and Peter

Solmsson, “Interview with Peter Solmssen about the First King Tut Exhibition,” interviewed by de Young staff, de Young Museum Podcast, https://www.famsf.org/blog/ podcast-interview-peter-solmssen-about-first-king-tut-exhibition. 58 Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance, 404. 59 Ibid., 404. 60 Ibid., 410. 61 Solmsson, interview. 62 For example, Owen McNally, “Ego Guides Pen of Man who Turned Met Around,”

Hartford Courant, January 31, 1993. 63 Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance, 410. 64 The art critics and journalists writing about Hoving paint his personality in this way.

For example, see Paula Span, “Thomas Hoving’s Artful Revenge,” Washington Post, September 17, 1986; McNally, “Ego Guides Pen,” and Rupert Cornwell, “Thomas Hoving: Maverick Museum Director who Transformed the Met in New York,” The Independent, December 17, 2009. 65 Hindley, “King Tut.” 66 For many examples of the appropriation strategies during the times of colonialism in

Africa, see Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle commissioned by the President of the Republic of France (Paris, 2018). 67 Press release, “Extensive Selection of Related Publications and Merchandise to be

Offered for Sale at Treasures of Tutankhamun Exhibition,” Box 5, Folder 16, Irving MacManus Records, 1975–1979, Metropolitan Museum Archive, New York, NY. 68 “Holen Sie sich den goldenen König in die Wohnung,” BZ , February 18, 1980. 69 Martin, “King Tut.”

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13 A “TROPIC-PROOF CONTAINER EXHIBITION”: THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS IN CONFIGURING DESIGN, A DUTCH CASE STUDY Joana Meroz

In 1956, art historian Hans Jaffé defended his PhD thesis on De Stijl, in which he examined how the “geographical whole” of the Netherlands participated in molding the visual characteristics of the group’s artistic production.1 Such environmental determinism (the idea that physical settings causally determine human behavior and hence cultural forms) has been thoroughly discredited by the design historical community on account of its implicit cultural essentialism. The problem with this approach is that, as design historian John A. Walker clarifies, it reduces “a heterogeneous artistic heritage, a complex history of hundreds of years . . . to a few stylistic and formal characteristics, which are then ‘explained’ in terms of a set of presumed essential factors of the national culture and the physical environment.”2 More recently, design historians have added another layer of criticism to environmental determinism by showing how the very idea that national design canons are products of their territorial environment is often little more than a marketing strategy based on self-exoticization.3 Generalizing causal correlations between environmental conditions and cultural forms is a speculative undertaking at best and a means to naturalize

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colonialism, imperialism, and racism at worst; yet the overall conclusion that such factors are by definition irrelevant to our understanding of design is too simplistic. Indeed, in recent discussions of culture, scholars across disciplines have been investigating how environmental aspects (broadly defined as encompassing temperature, humidity, wind, light, architectural layout, and infrastructures, among others) can play a crucial role in enabling cultural practices to develop into particular forms and to acquire certain meanings in specific places. For instance, anthropologist Tim Ingold has shown how willow’s material specificities and wind directions set the conditions for the basket shapes that human hands can weave.4 Similarly, sociologist Terence E. McDonnell has examined how the ability of cultural artifacts to symbolize what they were intended to is contingent upon the interaction between their material properties and physical settings.5 For example, based on fieldwork in Ghana he demonstrated that when the AIDS red ribbon’s dyes fade into pink due to exposure to tropical sunlight, this material transformation changes the artifact’s symbolic content, making it no longer interpretable as a symbol for AIDS but for breast cancer research instead. More recently, sociologist Fernando Domínguez Rubio has revealed how built environments, such as the layout of museum buildings, determine which artworks can be displayed where and therefore participate in shaping the narratives that curators can present in their exhibitions.6 Advancing from these insights, this chapter reassesses whether, and if so how, environmental factors may play a role in the production, circulation and interpretation of design, yet without falling prey to determinism, essentialism, or state-centrism. To this end, design exhibitions —in that they come into being at the intersection of materials, physical settings and processes of symbolic construction—form a particularly suitable unit of analysis. As a case study, this chapter will examine the traveling exhibition Dutch Design for the Public Sector II (1978, hereafter Dutch Design II ), one of the first design exhibitions organized in the context of Dutch postwar cultural diplomacy.7 It will show how a range of climatic and infrastructural conditions helped shape the idea of “Dutch design” that this exhibition constructed and disseminated abroad. This chapter starts by discussing how the global rise of postwar cultural diplomacy was problematic for the Dutch government because other countries often requested exhibitions on Dutch culture that were materially incompatible with environmental conditions abroad. It moves to consider how, in the 1970s, design started being used in Dutch exhibitions meant for international cultural exchange. This was because design exhibitions’ material property of plasticity made them better-suited to withstand physical conditions overseas. Next, the chapter addresses the role of environmental conditions in defining the types of artifacts and narratives that could be exhibited and globally circulated as Dutch design, taking as a case study Dutch Design II . The exhibition’s archival material (minutes of meetings, letters and notes, design briefs and sketches, communications

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with production and transportation companies) supplemented with oral history provides a wealth of information on how material properties and environmental conditions abroad shaped the exhibition and its narrative of Dutch design. It concludes by reflecting on the significance of taking environmental factors into our accounts of how exhibitions participate in shaping certain meanings for design in particular places.

DUTCH CULTURAL DIPLOMACY BETWEEN IMMUTABILITY AND MOBILITY For postwar cultural diplomacy to work, culture had to travel abroad. This may seem obvious, but it proved to be a challenge for the Dutch government in the case of material culture. To begin with, for much of Dutch history the state had distanced itself from cultural promotion, considering this to be chiefly civil society’s concern.8 This attitude started changing after the Second World War, when the government began to view an active cultural politics as necessary to promote “goodwill” towards the Netherlands abroad.9 In the context of the Cold War, moreover, the government started regarding international cultural exchange as essential to reducing tension and conflict among nations.10 Accordingly, the Dutch government started participating more deliberately in organizing and financing international cultural activities, as evidenced by its signing of bilateral cultural agreements.11 Such agreements, which specify the cultural exchange between two countries, became one of the most widespread instruments of postwar cultural diplomacy worldwide. In 1946, the Netherlands signed its first agreement with Belgium; by 1970, the number had increased to around twentytwo.12 Their proliferation prompted the government finally to formalize its involvement with international cultural exchanges in an explicit and overarching international cultural policy document published in 1970.13 However, such agreements caused logistical, financial, and material difficulties for the Dutch government, particularly in the exchange of the visual and applied arts. Advancing from a nineteenth-century understanding of culture as “high culture,” countries often requested exhibitions of paintings by renowned Dutch seventeenth-century masters, such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Vermeer.14 The limited number of such artworks restricted the number of cultural exchanges that the Netherlands could provide at any one point in time, while the costs involved in sending masterpieces abroad was exorbitant.15 According to international agreements, the sending country was frequently expected to bear the costs for insurance and the international transport of exhibitions; given the value of such pieces, these added up to substantial sums.16 Masterpieces’ fragility furthermore meant that they often could not withstand long-distance travel or the environmental conditions of the institutions in many host countries, thereby also limiting the

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geographical reach of Dutch soft power.17 Indeed, recurrent exposure to light and vibration as well as variations in temperature and humidity damaged the artworks, so to preserve their physical integrity abroad meant undertaking potentially expensive measures.18 For example, to ensure appropriate acclimatization of a 1978 exhibition of original Rembrandt etchings in Indonesia, it was necessary to install no fewer than fifteen air-conditioners in the gallery where they were shown.19 In sum, to be a useful tool of soft power, an artifact had to be able to withstand material degradation while being exposed to different and changing environmental conditions. These restrictions greatly constrained the authorities responsible for Dutch cultural diplomacy in the instrumentalization of the visual and applied arts.20

DESIGN EXHIBITIONS AS “PLASTIC DIPLOMACY” In the course of the 1960s, UNESCO broadened the narrow definition of culture to a more anthropological and democratic one that included “civilization as a whole.”21 Accordingly, the Dutch government adjusted its own definition of national culture to include, “in addition to the arts and sciences, a greater variety of expressions of our people than in the past.”22 Adopting this broader understanding enhanced Dutch cultural diplomacy since it greatly increased the domestic cultural supply. Crucially, it also allowed those responsible for organizing and implementing Dutch cultural exchanges to leave the masterpieces at home while developing different circulating exhibition programs that included other types of artifacts with material properties better suited to long-distance travel and foreign environmental conditions. Given the restrictions and requirements that material and environmental conditions imposed on the mobilization of Dutch culture, since the 1970s exhibitions meant for international cultural exchange started including design as an “alternative” yet “attractive” substitute for masterpieces.23 As the minutes of the meetings of the Dutch committees responsible for coordinating and organizing the international exchange of fine and applied arts exhibitions at the time reveal, they deemed design artifacts’ material properties to be more compatible with foreign environmental conditions than conventionally defined forms of culture.24 Accordingly, the committees started developing new exhibition strategies that included design instead of artifacts such as oil paintings and antique applied arts. One strategy was to switch the focus of exhibitions from works by great masters to thematic exhibitions and hence from original masterpieces to realia.25 Doing so was certainly part of a wider historical shift towards social history and everyday life; but this approach also dovetailed with the Dutch government’s material need for a broader understanding of culture that included sturdier and more cost-effective artifacts. Another strategy was to send documentary exhibitions augmented by original yet

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relatively inexpensive works, such as models or furniture pieces, with the idea that they would make the exhibitions more interesting. To fulfill foreign requests for ever-popular Piet Mondrian exhibitions, for example, they made a documentary exhibition available instead.26 The final strategy was to focus on design rather than art: for example, the Dutch government agreed to celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations with the United States of America in 1982 through a retrospective exhibition on De Stijl, with the provision that “the focus would be on the design aspect, such as architectural drawings, furniture and applied arts.”27 Design exhibitions, in that they were relatively cheaper to transport and to insure—lightweight and compact, durable and portable—could be described as having the material property of plasticity. Plasticity meant that design exhibitions were more amenable to long-distance travel and more compatible with a range of different environmental conditions than conventionally-defined forms of culture. Design exhibitions therefore emerged as highly advantageous for Dutch postwar cultural diplomacy since they enabled the mobilization and preservation of national culture in more diverse locations. They thus permitted the enactment of a more financially viable, geographically extensive, and physically reliable type of postwar soft power cultural diplomacy, which I describe as “plastic diplomacy.”28 So far, I have considered how design exhibitions became a useful form of Dutch cultural diplomacy given their plasticity, which is to say, their material ability to adapt to differing environmental conditions. To understand how environmental conditions furthermore contributed to defining the specific types of design that could be exhibited abroad, the places they could be circulated to, and hence also the types of narratives about Dutch design that these exhibitions could tell, I will now examine the specific case of the internationally traveling exhibition Dutch Design I.

DESIGNING MOBILITY AND MOBILIZING DESIGN In the early 1970s, the Government Advisory Committee for the Coordination of Exhibitions of Dutch Applied Arts Abroad (which between 1966 and 1973 was responsible for coordinating international exhibitions in the field of design within the framework of Dutch international cultural policy) received a request from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, for an exhibition on Dutch “public design.” The Committee offered to organize it as part of their countries’ bilateral cultural treaty.29 To this end, it appointed a small curating team and Gert Dumbar as designer of the exhibition Dutch Design for the Public Sector I (Dutch Design I).30 Dumbar was then a partner at Tel Design, one of the main design agencies in the Netherlands during the 1960s, known for its informal approach and expressive tongue-in-cheek designs that made “serious” governmental and large-scale private companies appear more friendly and accessible to the

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public. The house style designed by Tel Design for the Dutch Railways in 1968, with its controversially cheerful chrome-yellow trains, dynamic logo, and compelling wayfinding system and pictograms, perfectly exemplifies the bureau’s design attitude. In 1977, Dumbar left the company to establish Studio Dumbar, which gained international acclaim for its many large-scale projects, such as the house style of the Dutch police.31 So what was the meaning of “public design” in that context? “Public design” generally refers to products that serve the needs of people in public space. The term can however be interpreted in both a broad and narrow sense. The broad understanding of public design refers to citizens’ own interventions in public space to address their perceived needs., such as the construction of playgrounds where lacking. In contrast, the narrow understanding denotes the products commissioned by (semi-) governmental organizations from professional designers to be used in public services and amenities, such as street signs and benches, train timetables and carriages, stamps and banknotes. Since Dutch Design I was initially only expected to tour within Europe (and therefore not to incur substantial transport costs), the curators had leeway to develop a rather voluminous and comprehensive exhibition that represented both understandings of public design.32 Accordingly, Dutch Design I included several examples of design implemented by public service companies (the narrow understanding), such as a full-size clock commissioned by the Dutch Railways. But the curators were also explicitly critical of the gaps in the government’s design policies.33 The exhibition therefore also included many examples of citizen interventions that attempted to redress government inaction vis-à-vis inadequate public spaces and services (the broad definition), such as a full-size White Car: a pioneering, free, car-sharing project that aimed to reduce urban traffic congestion caused by private automobiles34 (Figure 13.1). After premiering at Denmark’s Louisiana in 1973, Dutch Design I toured Europe for nearly four years.35 Concomitantly with his work for this exhibition, Dumbar started making plans for a sequel to open in Indonesia.36 Dumbar had personal and professional ties with the country as he had been born there and had maintained close contacts with the art academy in Bandung.37 The rapprochement with Indonesia through cultural exchange was a priority for the Dutch government at the time.38 DutchIndonesian cultural relations had a strained history given centuries of colonial interactions: the Dutch establishment of the United East Indies Company (VOC) in 1602 and its trade monopoly in the territory that is now Indonesia, the Dutch colonization of those territories as the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia’s bitter struggle for independence from the Netherlands between 1945 and 1949, and Indonesia’s severing of all diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1956.39 The restoration of these ties in 1968 was accompanied by the establishment of a bilateral cultural agreement that same year.40 The diplomatic context was therefore very receptive to Dumbar’s plan, and the committee advising the implementation

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FIGURE 13.1 Overview of Dutch Design I at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, 1973. C/O Pictoright Amsterdam 2019. © Gert Dumbar.

of Dutch-Indonesian cultural relations agreed to support its development into an international traveling exhibition that would premiere in Indonesia and that could subsequently be used to fulfill other Dutch bilateral cultural agreements.41 Given the material and financial costs of transporting an exhibition to Indonesia and beyond, the agreement specified that the Netherlands would be offering Indonesia a “simpler,” “limited version” of Dutch Design I.42 A different curating team was appointed, again with Dumbar as exhibition designer.43 Their brief specified the design of a flexible yet sturdy exhibition that was adaptable to the physical, financial, climatic, infrastructural, and logistical constraints imposed by frequent international transport to yet-to-be-determined destinations, starting with Indonesia, for a duration of about four years.44 Creating a design exhibition that maximized the mobility of Dutch culture while minimizing its deterioration during its tour can be viewed as a clear example of plastic diplomacy. Dumbar accommodated this set of requirements by amplifying the plasticity of the design both in and of the exhibition—which is to say, by working with the properties of compactness, lightness, robustness, versatility, resilience, affordability, and disposability to maximum effect. For instance, to reduce packaging and the necessity of paying for storage, Dumbar designed the display as folding screens that fit into crates, while the crates themselves were used as part of the display. To make the exhibition adaptable to different, still unknown places, Dumbar also designed the display as a simple, light, intuitive, and collapsible modular system that could easily be put together by

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locals, thereby dispensing with the need to send along an expensive Dutch supervisor (Figure 13.2).45 To withstand the climatic conditions of Indonesia and of any other country the exhibition might travel to, the display design made extensive use of clear Perspex sandwich frames to encase and protect the artifacts on show from humidity. For the panels, Dumbar even developed a new composite material of plastic and aluminum that was compact, light, fire resistant, sturdy and, most significantly, “tropic-proof ”, which is to say, impervious to sweltering tropical conditions.46 These turned out to be sensible measures; indeed, they ensured that Dutch Design II emerged unscathed after spending several weeks in its crates, under the baking sun in an Indonesian port, before being cleared by customs authorities.47

FIGURE 13.2 Dutch Design II ’s display was designed so that it could be adapted to any number of foreign environments. Sketches by Gert Dumbar, c. 1977–1978. C/O Pictoright Amsterdam 2019. © Gert Dumbar.

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On a communication level, it was necessary for the exhibition both to preserve and to convey its own character irrespective of the specificities of the settings where it would be shown. This entailed creating a strong and clearly recognizable visual identity that would stand out from different surroundings, as well as to withstand them. Dumbar tackled this problem through the systematic use of striking colors and physical elements, such as the recurrent use of red accents and large wingnuts. On the other hand, the necessity of conveying the exhibition’s distinctiveness and message to a wide and diverse audience of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds imposed the opposite requirement: that it be polysemic or, in other words, relatively open to interpretation. To this end, Dumbar emphasized direct sensory rather than verbal communication by keeping captions to a minimum and by making the display design visually stimulating, open, and inviting to the public to touch and “use” the material on show.48 For example, Dumbar hung railway booklets from chains in front of the exhibition display to encourage visitors to leaf through them. One of the anticipated consequences of this interactive format was the wear and tear of the products on display, necessitating their periodic substitution.49 Nevertheless, replacing railway timetables, telephone books and stamps (which were, after all, mass produced, inexpensive, lightweight, and compact) was relatively cheap and easy (Figure 13.3). In sum, the amplification of the exhibition’s plasticity guaranteed the integrity of Dutch culture as it toured abroad, not only by protecting it from the elements

FIGURE 13.3 Overview of Dutch Design II at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Netherlands, 1978. C/O Pictoright Amsterdam 2019. © Gert Dumbar.

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but also by deliberately factoring in the necessity of regularly updating it by making use of resilient yet disposable content. But how did such practical considerations impact the narrative of Dutch public design that the exhibition could construct and circulate abroad?

DUTCH DESIGN AS HUMANE MODERN GRAPHIC DESIGN The curators of Dutch Design I were able to present a comprehensive narrative that encompassed both narrow and broad understandings of public design because the volume, weight, and climatic stipulations of European travel permitted the inclusion of a wide range of examples of design objects. However, the physical constraints of long-distance travel and the Indonesian environment meant that Dutch Design II needed to be much smaller than its predecessor and so its content had to be substantially pared down. Thus, while Dutch Design I had included bulky artifacts such as a full-sized White Car, Dumbar had to trim the exhibition content down to largely two-dimensional artifacts that could be folded neatly into crates which fitted into transportation containers.50 (For this reason, the curators often referred to Dutch Design II as the “container exhibition.”51) It also meant that the curators had to adjust the exhibition’s narrative of Dutch public design into one that could be supported by fewer artifacts and predominantly of one specific type: graphic design. Correspondingly, they pruned Dutch Design I’s comprehensive narrative to include only the narrow definition of public design (to recap: products from professional designers commissioned by (semi-) governmental organizations to be used in public services and amenities). Consequently, Dutch Design II came to showcase (mostly) graphic design by four Dutch public service providers renowned for their design policies at the time: the Dutch Railways, the Dutch Postal and Telecommunications Service, the State Printing and Publishing Office, and De Nederlandsche Bank. The curators were concerned, however, that their adherence to the narrow understanding of public design would invite criticism. As this narrow definition inherently refers to products of the state for the implementation of state policies, it could quite easily be associated with a propagandist totalitarian state’s control of cultural production. Yet this is exactly the opposite of the message that the curators aimed to convey: indeed, one of their main goals was for the exhibition to show to the world that “democracy in art needn’t be an alibi for dictatorship.”52 Therefore, the curators proposed a specific interpretation of the exhibition’s state-sponsored public design that I would like to call “humane modernism.” What is humane modernism? The curators viewed public design’s most important function as mediating the communication between service providers and the public by visually and tangibly formulating messages so that the public

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could easily understand them.53 Therefore, the curators maintained, clarity ought to be one of public design’s indispensable and overarching principles. However, although the curators thereby subscribed to modernist principles of functionality and clarity, they nevertheless reasoned that those qualities were not the only ones necessary for public design to perform adequately: to this end, pleasure, surprise, and creativity were also crucial. Indeed, the curators held that “interesting shapes, intriguing shapes, pleasant, funny or even beautiful shapes” actually enhanced design’s functionality by breaking visual repetition and automatism, and by seducing viewers to look at the information provided with heightened interest and curiosity.54 Accordingly, the curators were interested in projects that were neither anti-modernist nor postmodern but instead explored a “gentle” inflection of modernism by combining clarity with humor, rationality with pleasure, company requirements and user needs—all of which can aptly be described as “humane modernism.”55 Examples of humane modernist designs featured in the exhibition included the wayfinding system implemented by the City Hall in Hoorn, where expressive and narrative photography of two people performing a variety of actions was used to show the way; the Dutch Railways train timetable’s combination of eminent legibility with comical cartoons;56 banknotes with special-purpose tactile recognition aids for the blind;57 a hospital wayfinding system composed of the illustration of a brightly-colored ball comically bouncing off the other institutional signage;58 and the graphic design of acts of the Lower House and Party programs meant to facilitate their scrutiny by ordinary citizens.59 Hence, while the exhibition’s title—Dutch Design for the Public Sector—implied that the exhibition was a faithful representation of public design as it was generally implemented in the Netherlands, it in fact showcased only one specific approach to public design in that country: humane modernism. Dutch Design II toured locations in the Netherlands, Indonesia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom until around 1985. As an international traveling exhibition operating as cultural diplomacy, Dutch Design II was intended to communicate a particular narrative of national culture abroad. Yet as we have seen, this was not simply an arbitrary symbolic construction by curatorial intentions, design strategies, and political agendas. Instead, the exhibition emerged as a constellation of specific materials, artifacts, and narratives pieced together as solutions to the concrete difficulties of moving and preserving Dutch culture abroad. Indeed, besides being shaped by cultural diplomatic imperatives, the exhibition and its articulation of Dutch design were also the literal products of the interactions between material and environmental circumstances: tropical conditions that required the use of plastic and new composite materials in the display design, financial limitations that encouraged the selection of replaceable and affordable mass-produced artifacts, and container restrictions that motivated a narrative of Dutch public design as humane modern graphic design.

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REAPPRAISING THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS What Dutch Design II proposed as Dutch design was not a straightforward representation of design practices of the Netherlands, of things made in that country and subsequently transported around the world. Instead, it was constituted in relation not only to transnational human political agendas but also to materials and environmental conditions. Neither the design brief nor all the design solutions offered in the case of Dutch Design II were unique; to be sure, factors such as weight, dimensions, and climatic conditions have been standard concerns in the design featured in and of internationally traveling (design) exhibitions.60 However, what is distinctive about this study, and what makes it relevant beyond this particular case, is its reappraisal of the relevance of environmental factors in how exhibitions participate in the construction, circulation, and interpretation of design. While recent scholarship on national design has tended to leave environmental circumstances out of consideration, this study demonstrates that such conditions actually can play influential, if unexpected, roles in the construction, circulation, and interpretation of design. For example, it has shown that environmental factors do not causally determine but, in interaction with artifacts’ specific material characteristics, allow or disallow narratives about design to be construed in particular forms and in particular places. Moreover, while traditional histories of national design have tended to discuss the environment as if it coincided with territorial borders, this study has illustrated that environmental conditions can also act upon design on a transnational scale. These points are important (if evident) because they imply that accounting for such circumstances in our investigations does not necessarily lead to either determinism, essentialism, or state-centrism, as Walker and others have feared. On the contrary, precisely because environmental factors operate at different scales, their examination offers a powerful means of escaping reductive interpretations. While a thorough reconceptualization of environmental circumstances—their meanings, functions and our approaches to them—in relation to design is therefore in order, this brief study has yielded some theoretical and methodological considerations that might serve as starting points to this end. Traditional histories of national design can be said to have taken an idealist stance by deciding in advance what the relevant environmental factors are and how they affect design, which has resulted in determinism, essentialism, and state-centrism. By contrast, an empirical approach such as the one I have pursued here can help avoid these pitfalls. It entails suspending predetermined notions about what counts as environmental aspects, and instead allowing a case’s empirical material to reveal which particular, idiosyncratic, and unexpected circumstances happen to have (had) an impact on the constitution of design in particular ways. As such, while the term “environment” seems to imply a view of the world as separate from and

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external to humans, the empirical approach advocated here in fact also challenges the researcher to suspend any automatic dualism to identify how the relationship between humans, design, and the world is conceptualized each case anew. On a theoretical level, such an empirical approach means refraining from attempting to come to any definitive, fixed, and ahistorical definition of environmental factors and instead viewing their meaning as variable and contingent to the case at hand. Additionally, and more broadly, this study has shown how exhibitions can function as ideal settings for examining the role of environments in processes of symbolic construction. Indeed, attending to how the materials in and of exhibitions interact with local environments provides invaluable insights into how some meanings come to be created and circulated, while others are hindered from doing so. This chapter suggests that understanding exhibitions as sites of transnational exchange has much to gain by considering not only the interactions among people, things, interpretations, and materials, but also by considering their environmental circumstances.

NOTES 1 Hans L. C. Jaffé, De Stijl 1917–1931. The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art

(Amsterdam: J. M. Meulenhoff, 1956; Leiden: DBNL, 2008), 7. Citations refer to the DBNL edition. Interestingly, a year earlier, BBC Radio broadcast a series of lectures by architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner entitled The Englishness of English Art, in which Pevsner similarly argued that English art was shaped not only by key individuals but also by the English landscape and climate. Nikolaus Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art (London: Penguin, 1978). 2 John A. Walker, Design History and the History of Design (London: Pluto, 1989), 119–125. 3 Kevin Davies has shown this to be the case with exhibitions on Finnish design in the

1950s, and I have shown the same with exhibitions on Dutch design since the 1990s. Kevin Davies, “ ‘A Geographical Notion Turned into an Artistic Reality’: Promoting Finland and Selling Finnish Design in Post-war Britain c. 1953–1965,” Journal of Design History 15, no. 2 (2002); Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, “Exhibiting Confrontations: Negotiating Dutch Design between National and Global Imaginations,” Journal of Design History 29, no. 3 (2016); Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz. “Three Dutchnesses of Dutch Design: The Construction of a National Practice at the Intersection of National and International Dynamics” in Penny Sparke and Fiona Fisher, eds., The Routledge Companion to Design Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 469–481; Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz and Rachel Griffin, “Open Design: A History of the Construction of a Dutch Idea,” The Design Journal 15, no. 4 (2012): 405–422. 4 Tim Ingold, Making. Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (London/New

York: Routledge, 2013), 22–24. 5 Terence E. McDonnell, “Cultural Objects as Objects: Materiality, Urban Space, and the

Interpretation of AIDS Campaigns in Accra, Ghana,” American Journal of Sociology 115, no. 6 (2010): 1800–1852.

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6 Fernando Domínguez Rubio, “Preserving the Unpreservable: Docile and Unruly

Objects at MoMA,” Theory and Society 43, no. 6 (2014): 617–645. 7 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s. 8 Commentators explain this attitude as the result of two factors. First, “The country’s

origin as a confederate republic without strong central leadership has had the effect that the government usually works in a decentralised manner.” Edwin van Meerkerk and Quirijn Lennert van den Hoogen, “An Introduction to Cultural Policy in the Polder,” in Edwin van Meerkerk and Quirijn Lennert van den Hoogen, eds., Cultural Policy in the Polder. 25 Years of the Dutch Cultural Policy Act (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 11. Second, the “pillarisation” of Dutch society (its vertical separation into groups according to politico-denominational beliefs: Catholic, Protestant, social-democratic, and liberal) meant that cultural activities historically were linked to the “pillars” rather than to the nation-state. Council of Europe/ERICarts, Lisa van Woersem, Compendium. Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe. Country Profile: The Netherlands (January 2014), http://catalogus.boekman.nl/pub/P14-0502. pdf. I have previously published on the Dutch government’s international cultural policy on design in Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, “The International as National: The Role of International Cultural Policy in the Construction of Dutch Design as Conceptual” in Helena Barbosa and Ana Calvera, eds., 9th ICDHS Conference Tradition, Transition, Trajectories. Major or Minor Influences? (Aveiro: UA Editora), 569–574; Ibid. “Exhibiting Confrontations”; and Ibid. “Three Dutchnesses.” 9 G. J. van Heuven Goedhart and H. F. L. K. van Vredenburch, Overheidsvoorlichting.

Rapport der adviescommissie overheidsbeleid inzake voorlichting, ingesteld 6 maart 1946 (‘s-Gravenhage: Staatsdrukkerij, 1946): 11. 10 Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, and

Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk Ministerie van Cultuur, Nota betreffende de internationale culturele betrekkingen, Tweede Kamer, zitting 1970–1971, 10916 (1970): 2. 11 Toine Minnaert, interview by the author, August 25, 2017. 12 There is some ambiguity as to the precise number, see: Alex P. Schmidt and Yvonne C.

L. M. van Dongen, Buitenlands cultureel beleid. Een terreinverkenning; Werkdocument W 23 (‘s-Gravenhage: Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR), 1987), 24; cf. Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken et al., Nota, 2. 13 Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken et al., Nota. 14 Ary de Vries [director of the Mauritshuis in The Hague], Annex to “Remarks about

Exhibition Policy” to Mr. J. F. M. J. Jansen [Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences], Amsterdam, January 25, 1957, pp. 6–7, inv. 103, access no. 2.14.69, The National Archive, The Hague, the Netherlands. 15 Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken et al., Nota, pp. 3–4; Coördinatie-commissie

buitenlandse tentoonstellingen [the Coordination Committee for Exhibitions Abroad], “Verslag,” June 22, 1971, p. 2, inv. 514, access no. 2.14.76, The National Archive. 16 Box 85, archive BBKB, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Amersfoort,

The Netherlands. 17 As the archive of the Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen gebonden

kunsten [The Government Advisory Committee for the Coordination of Exhibitions of Dutch Arts and Crafts Abroad] makes clear, this is a recurrent concern when

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considering sending Dutch exhibitions abroad. See: inv. 514, access no. 2.14.76, The National Archive. 18 Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen, “Verslag,” April 27, 1976, inv.

514, access no. 2.14.76, The National Archive. 19 J. R. Voûte, “11e reisverslag aan de leden van het Gennotschap Nederland-Indonesië,”

July 3, 1978, p. 2, inv. 2534, access no. 2.27.19, The National Archive. Indonesia was certainly not the only country that made it difficult for the Netherlands to use their old masters as cultural exchange capital, however: to the committees coordinating the exchange of Dutch culture, any country whose museums they viewed as insufficiently equipped to guarantee artworks’ physical integrity was unsuitable. 20 For a divergent interpretation of the suitability of oil paintings as objects of cultural

exchange and circulation, see: Domínguez Rubio, “Preserving the Unpreservable”. 21 Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken et al., Nota, 3. 22 Ibid. Word order modified for ease of reading. 23 Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen, “Verslag,” November 30, 1971,

p. 2, inv. 514, access no. 2.14.76, The National Archive. 24 See the archives of the Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen and

Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen gebonden kunsten, inv. 514, access no. 2.14.76, The National Archive. 25 Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen, “Verslag,” November 30, 1971,

p. 2, inv. 514, access no. 2.14.76, The National Archive. 26 Ibid., “Verslag,” April 27, 1976, p. 3. 27 Ibid., “Verslag,” September 11, 1978, p. 2. 28 The concept of plasticity proposed in this chapter was inspired by Bruno Latour’s

discussion of immutable mobiles. Bruno Latour, “Visualisation and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands,” Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present vol. 6 (1986): 1-40. 29 Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen gebonden kunsten, “Verslag,”

May 17, 1971, p. 1, inv. 514, access no. 2.14.76, The National Archive. 30 The curating team consisted of Hein van Haaren (head of the Dutch Postal and

Telecommunications Service and a prominent actor in the field of design in the Netherlands), Loek van der Sande (director of the Dutch Industrial Design Council), Benno Premsela (an influential Dutch designer), and Bertie Stips-van Weel (committee secretary). The exhibition’s archival sources do not provide information concerning why these actors were chosen as curators, nor how their backgrounds influenced their individual roles in making decisions about the exhibition. Therefore, I refer to them collectively as the “curators.” 31 Wibo Bakker, Droom van helderheid. Huisstijlen, ontwerpbureaus en modernisme in

Nederland, 1960–1975 (Rotterdam: 2010, 2011). 32 Rolf Mager, “Tweede reizende tentoonstelling van Studio Dumbar over vormgeving

voor de Nederlandse overheid,” Adformatie 6, nos. 30/31 (August 3, 1978): 10–11. 33 Kees Broos, Dutch Design for the Public Sector I (exhibition poster and catalog for the

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark) (1973). 34 The White Car was developed by Luud Schimmelpennink in 1974, so presumably the

exhibition (which opened a year earlier), included a full-size prototype. Frederike

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Huygen, “Earning Money with a Jack of All Trades,” in Gert Staal and Hester Wolters, eds., Holland in vorm (‘s-Gravenhage: Stichting Holland in vorm, 1987), 131. 35 Over the years, the exhibition was shown mainly is museums, but also at fairs, town

halls, and other public buildings in the following cities: Aalborg, Aarhus, Odense, and Sønderborg (Denmark), Zurich (Switzerland), Zagreb (Croatia), Dortmund, Stuttgart, Erlangen, Essen, Düsseldorf, and West Berlin (Germany), and Eindhoven (the Netherlands), among others. Box 1, archive BBKB, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 36 Concerning Dumbar’s proposal for the second exhibition, see: letter, Gert Dumbar to

Walter Jungkind, November 6, 1974, inv. Tel01508, box Tel255, archive Tel Design, The Dutch Archive of Graphic Designers/NAGO, Haags Gemeentearchief, and letter, Gert Dumbar to Th. H. Oltheten, February 4, 1974, inv. Tel01508, box Tel255, archive Tel Design, The Dutch Archive of Graphic Designers/NAGO, Haags Gemeentearchief. 37 Gert Dumbar, interview by the author, February 12, 2014, The Hague. 38 Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken et al., Nota, 4. 39 Duco A. Hellema, Dutch Foreign Policy. The Role of the Netherlands in World Politics,

trans. Murray Pearson (Dordrecht: RoL, 2009). 40 Schmidt and Van Dongen, Buitenlands cultureel beleid, 24. 41 Commissie van Advies voor de Tenuitvoerlegging van het Cultureel Verdrag tussen

Nederland en Indonesië, “Beknopt verslag,” October 24, 1977, p. 6, inv. 2534, access no. 2.27.19, The National Archive; Commissie van Advies voor de Tenuitvoerlegging van het Cultureel Verdrag tussen Nederland en Indonesië, “Verslag,” November 29, 1977, p. 3, inv. 2534, access no. 2.27.19, The National Archive. 42 Letter, C. G. Eckhart to de Ambassade voor Pers- en Culturele Zaken, May 2, 1977, box

5, archive BBKB, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands; letter, Th. H. Oltheten to Gert Dumbar, February 28, 1974, inv. Tel01508, box Tel255, archive Tel Design, The Dutch Archive of Graphic Designers/NAGO, Haags Gemeentearchief. 43 The curating team comprised Gijs van Tuyl (director of the Office for Fine Arts

Abroad), Ewout Bezemer (who had succeeded Van Haaren as head of the Department of Aesthetic Design of the Dutch Postal and Telecommunications Service), Kees Broos (curator at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag specialized in graphic design), and Felix Ebbers (Deputy Head of the Information and Communication Department for Foreign Affairs, Study Visits and Congresses of the Central Division for International Relations of the Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Social Work). Also in this case, the exhibition’s archival material doesn’t reveal their individual importance in making decisions concerning the exhibition, and for this reason I refer to them collectively as the “curators.” 44 The exhibition’s archival material suggests that Dutch Design II remained in circulation

as late as 1982 or 1983. 45 Letter, C. Overdijking to Directie Culturele Samenwerking en Voorlichting Buitenland,

January 24, 1975, box 5, archive BBKB, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 46 Mager, “Tweede reizende tentoonstelling,” Dutch Design for the Public Sector II press

release, box 5, archive BBKB, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 47 Dumbar, interview by the author.

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48 “Tentoonstelling: Design voor de overheid in Nederland,” p. 2, inv. Tel01508, box

Tel255, archive Tel Design, The Dutch Archive of Graphic Designers/NAGO, Haags Gemeentearchief. 49 Letter, Evert Rodrigo to Ulf Moritz, January 15, 1982, box 4, archive BBKB, The

Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 50 “Beknopt verslag van de bespreking op 3 oktober 1977 bij de DEV over de

tentoonstelling Dutch Design (2),” p. 2, box 85, archive BBKB, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 51 Box 5, archive BBKB, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 52 “Kort verslag naar aanleiding van bespreking d.d. 31 augustus 1977 op CRM inzake

‘Dutch Design II,’ ” box 5, archive BBKB, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 53 Ewout Bezemer et al., Dutch Design for the Public Sector II (exhibition poster and

catalog) (The Hague: Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Social Work, 1978). 54 Ibid. 55 Dumbar refers to this idea of humane modernism as “modernism with a smile.” Gert

Dumbar, interview by Joana Meroz, 12 February 2014, The Hague. 56 Design: Tel Design’s graphic designers (Gert Dumbar and Gertjan Leuvelink) in

collaboration with the Dutch Railways, c. 1968. 57 Design: R.D.E. Oxenaar for the Nederlandsche Bank in collaboration with the printers

Joh. Enschede en Zonen Imp., n.d. 58 Design: Studio Dumbar for the Westeinde Hospital, n.d. 59 Design: Staatsdrukkerijk- & Uitgeversbedrijj (SDU), n.d. For more information about

these projects, see: Ibid. and Kees Broos, “Dutch Design for the Public Sector,” Graphis 35, no. 206 (1979/80). 60 For an extended consideration of the relevance of environmental factors in the

shaping, mobility, and interpretation of international exhibitions, see Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, “Transnational Material Politics: Constructions of Dutch Design, 1970–2012” (Unpublished PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2018).

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CHAPTER 1 Abramson, Larry. “Art of Camouflage.” In Larry Abramson. Paintings 1975–2010. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum, 2010. Allais, Lucia. Designs of Destruction. The Making of Monuments in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Altshuler, Bruce. Salon to Biennial. Exhibitions that Made Art History, Volume 1: 1863– 1959. New York: Phaidon, 2008. Ballas, Gila. New Horizons. The Birth of Abstraction in Israeli Art. Tel Aviv : Modan, 2014. Betts, Paul. “The Bauhaus as Cold-War Legend: West German Modernism Revisited.” German Politics & Society 39 (Summer 1996): 75–100. Caute, David. The Dancer Defects. The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War. London: Oxford University Press, 2005. Çelik, Zeynep. “Le Corbusier, Orientalism, Colonialism.” Assemblage 17 (Spring 1992): 58–77. Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. London: Zed Books, 1986. Chinski, Sara. “Silence of the Fish: The Local and the Universal in the Israeli Art Discourse.” Theory and Criticism 4 (Autumn 1993): 105–122 [Hebrew]. Di Martino, Enzo. The History of the Venice Biennale, 1895–2005. Venice: Papiro Arte, 2005. Drosos, Nikolas. “Modernism and World Art, 1950–72.” In Chelsea Haines and Gemma Sharpe, eds. “Art, Institutions, and Internationalism: 1945–1973.” Special issue, ARTMargins 8, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 55–76. Efrat, Zvi. The Object of Zionism. The Architecture of Israel. Leipzig: Spector Books, 2019. Fields, Jill. “Was Peggy Guggenheim Jewish? Art Collecting and Representations of Jewish Identity In and Out of Postwar Venice.” Nashim. A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 25 (Fall 2013): 51–74. Jachec, Nancy. Politics and Painting at the Venice Biennale, 1948–64. Italy and the Idea of Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Kaufman, Asher. Reviving Phoenicia. The Search for Identity in Lebanon. London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 2004. Le Corbusier. Voyage d’Orient, English edition. New York: Phaidon, 2002. Martini, Vittoria. “A Brief History of I Giardini: Or a Brief History of the Venice Biennale seen from the Giardini.” Translated by Jennifer Knaeble, in Muntadas/On Translation: I Giardini. Barcelona: Actar, 2005.

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CHAPTER 2 Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Cooper, Nicola. France in Indochina. Colonial Encounters. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001. Dominguez, Virginia. “Of Other Peoples: Beyond the ‘Salvage’ Paradigm.” In Discussions in Contemporary Culture No. 1, edited by Hal Foster, 131–137. Seattle: Dia Art Foundation and Bay Press, 1987. Frankum, Ronald Bruce. Operation Passage to Freedom. The United States Navy in Vietnam 1954–1955. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007. Goscha, Christopher. Vietnam. A New History. New York: Basic Books, 2016.

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CHAPTER 5 Banham, Reyner. “Neoliberty. The Italian Retreat from Modern Architecture.” The Architectural Review 747 (1959): 231–235. Bekaert, Geert. “Un volto sincero. Le pavillon italien.” In L’architecture moderne à l’Expo 58. “Pour un monde plus humain”, edited by Rika Devos and Mil De Kooning, 128–143. Brussels: Fonds Mercator, 2006. Capitanucci, Maria Vittoria. Agnoldomenico Pica, 1907–1990. La critica dell’architettura come “mestiere”. Benevento: Hevelius edizione, 2002. Crowley, David. “Humanity Rearranged: The Polish and Czechoslovak Pavilions at Expo 58.” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 19, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2012): 88–105. Devos, Rika. Modern at Expo 58. Discussions on Post-war Architectural Representation. Ghent: Faculteit Ingenieurswetenschappen, 2008. Devos, Rika, Alexander Ortenberg and Vladimir Paperny, eds. Architecture of Great Exhibitions 1937–1959. Messages of Peace. Images of War. Surrey/Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. Fabbri, Marcello et al., eds. Architettura urbanistica in Italia nel Dopoguerra. Rome: Gangemi, 1986, 356–372. Goldhagen, Sarah Williams and Réjean Legault, eds. Anxious Modernisms. Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture. Montréal and Cambridge, MA : CCA and The MIT Press, 2000. Kirk, Terry. The Architecture of Modern Italy, Volume 2. Visions of Utopia, 1900–Present. London and New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. Lobsinger, Marie Louise. “Monstrous Fruit: The Excess of Italian Neo-Liberty.” Thresholds 23 (January 2001): 44–51. MacKeith, Peter and Kerstin Smeds. The Finland Pavilions. Finland at the Universal Exhibitions 1900–1992. Tampere: Kustannus Oy City, 1993. Marone, Raffaele. “L’allestimento del museo al Castello Sforzesco di Milano, tra il pensiero di E. N. Rogers e la pratica costruttiva di BBPR .” Rassegna di Architettura e Urbanistica XXXIX , nos. 115–116 (2005): 112–131. Masey, Jack and Conway Lloyd Morgan. Cold War Confrontations. US Exhibitions and their Role in the Cultural Cold War. Baden: Lars Müller, 2008. Masina, Lucia. Vedere l’Italia nelle esposizioni universali del XX secolo 1900–1958. Atti della Summer School EXPOsizioni. Milan: Educatt 2016. Olivié, Jean-Luc, Glasklar. Festschrift für Helmut Ricke. Düsseldorf/Petersberg: Museum Kunstpalast/Michael Imhof Verlag, 2013.

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CHAPTER 6 Apter, Emily S. Unexceptional Politics. On Obstruction, Impasse, and the Impolitic. London; Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2018. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. Banham, Reyner. A Critic Writes. Essays by Reyner Banham. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. Belmonte, Laura A. Selling the American Way. U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame. Kwame Nkrumah’s Politico-Cultural Thought and Policies. An African-Centered Paradigm for the Second Phase of the African Revolution. New York: Routledge, 2005. Brown, Rebecca M. Displaying Time. The Many Temporalities of the Festival of India. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. Calvino, Italo. Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1985–86. Translated by Patrick Creagh. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1988. Castillo, Greg. Cold War on the Home Front. The Soft Power of Midcentury Design. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Chu, Hsiao-yun and Roberto G. Trujillo, eds. New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Clifford, James. Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1999. Cullather, Nick. The Hungry World. America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2010. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1984. De Landa, Manuel. A New Philosophy of Society. Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum, 2006.

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de Silva, C. R. The American Impact on Sri Lanka. Colombo: American Studies Association of Sri Lanka, 1989. de Silva, Kingsley M. A History of Sri Lanka. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2005. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Frimpong-Ansah, J. H. The Vampire State in Africa. The Political Economy of Decline in Ghana. Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press, 1992. Ghobrial, John-Paul A , ed. “Global History and Microhistory”. Past & Present 242, Issue Supplement 14, November 2019. Gorman, Michael John. Buckminster Fuller. Designing for Mobility. Milan; New York: Skira, 2005. Haddow, Robert H. Pavilions of Plenty. Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. Hixson, Walter L. Parting the Curtain. Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Kodikara, S. U. “Major Trends in Sri Lanka’s Non-Alignment Policy after 1956” Asian Survey 13, no. 12 (December 1973): 1121–1136. Martyn, John H. Martyn’s Notes on Jaffna. Chronological, Historical, Biographical. Tellippillai, Sri Lanka: American Ceylon Mission Press, 1923. Masey, Jack. Cold War Confrontations. US Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War. Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2008. Matchette, Robert B. Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States. Washington, DC : National Archives and Records Administration, 1995. Mathur, Saloni, ed. The Migrant’s Time. Rethinking Art History and Diaspora. Williamstown, MA : New Haven, CT: Clark Art Institute; Distributed by Yale University Press, 2011. Millhauser, Steven. “The Fascination of the Miniature.” Grand Street 2, no. 4 (Summer, 1983): 128–135. Miškovicˇ, Nataša, Harald Fischer-Tiné, and Nada Boškovska Leimgruber. The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War. Delhi, Bandung, Belgrade. London; New York: Routledge, 2014. Nilsen, Sarah. Projecting America, 1958. Film and Cultural Diplomacy at the Brussels World’s Fair. Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2011. Olson, Richard Stuart. “Expropriation and International Economic Coercion: Ceylon and the ‘West’ 1961–65.” The Journal of Developing Areas 11, no. 2 (January 1977): 205–226. Pieris, Anoma. “Modernity and Revolution: The Architecture of Ceylon’s TwentiethCentury Exhibitions.” In Third World Modernism. Architecture, Development and Identity, edited by Duanfang Lu, 141–164. New York: Routledge, 2011. Sheren, Ila N. Portable Borders. Performance Art and Politics on the U.S. Frontera since 1984. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. Stewart, Susan. On Longing. Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993. Tan, Seng and Amitav Acharya. Bandung Revisited. The Legacy of the 1955 Asian-African Conference for International Order. Singapore: NUS Press, 2020. Wickramasinghe, Nira. “Fashioning a Market: The Singer Sewing Machine in Colonial Lanka.” In Cultures in Motion, edited by Daniel T. Rodgers, Bhavani Raman, and Helmut Reimitz, 134–164. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Wickramasinghe, Nira. Metallic Modern. Everyday Machines in Colonial Sri Lanka. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014.

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CHAPTER 7 Auckland City Art Gallery. Painting from the Pacific: Japan, America, Australia, New Zealand (exhibition catalog). Auckland: Pelorus Press, 1961. Brown, Maria E. “The History and Function of the Auckland City Art Gallery in Constructing a Canon of Modernist New Zealand Art.” MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1999. Cooke, Ian. “Culture and Politics: Art, the Cold War, and the US Information Program in New Zealand.” Australasian Journal of American Studies 35, no. 2 (2016): 3–18. Dirlik, Arif. “The Asia-Pacific Idea: Reality and Representation in the Invention of a Regional Structure.” Journal of World History 3, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 55–79. Johnston, Courtney. “Peter Tomory: The New Zealand Years, 1956–1968.” MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2004. Landau, Laura, ed. Northwest Mythologies. The Interactions of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. Tacoma: Tacoma Art Museum, 2003. McKinnon, Malcolm. Independence and Foreign Policy. New Zealand in the World since 1935. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993. Oliver, W. H. “The Awakening Imagination.” In The Oxford History of New Zealand, edited by W. H. Oliver and B. R. Williams, 430–461. Wellington: Oxford University Press, 1981. Robb, Thomas K. and David James Gill. “The ANZUS Treaty during the Cold War: A Reinterpretation of U.S. Diplomacy in the Southwest Pacific.” Journal of Cold War Studies 17, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 109–157. Trotter, Ann. New Zealand and Japan 1945–1952. The Occupation and the Peace Treaty. London: Athlone Press, 1990. Trotter, Ann. “From Suspicion to Growing Partnership: New Zealand and Japan.” In New Zealand in World Affairs, vol. 2, 1957–1972, edited by Malcolm McKinnon, 195–226. Wellington: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1991.

CHAPTER 8 Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker. Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. Collins, Michael. Paul VI: Pilgrim Pope. Collegeville, MN : Liturgical Press, 2018. Cooney, John. The American Pope. The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman. New York: Times Books, 1984. Domenico, Roy. “ ‘An Embassy to a Golf Course?’: Conundrums on the Road to the United States’ Diplomatic Representation to the Holy See, 1784–1984.” In Roman Catholicism in the United States. A Thematic History, edited by Margaret M. McGuinness and James T. Fisher, 108–129. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019. Fedders, Kristin. “Pop Art at the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2005. Forti, Micol, Federica Guth, and Rosalia Pagliarani. Revealing the Present Through History. The Vatican and International Expositions, 1851–2015. Città del Vaticano: Musei vaticani, 2016. Franco, Massimo. Parallel Empires. The Vatican and the United States—Two Centuries of Alliance and Conflict. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Henderson, Mary C. Mielziner. Master of Modern Stage Design. New York: Back Stage Books and The New York Public Library, 2001. Kent, Peter C. and John F. Pollard, eds. Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age. Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 1994.

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CHAPTER 9 Aulich, Jim. “Stealing the Thunder: The Soviet Union and Graphic Propaganda on the Home Front during the Second World War.” Visual Culture in Britain 13, no. 3, (2012): 343–366. Barnett, Nicholas J. Britain’s Cold War. Culture, Modernity and the Soviet Threat. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. Brawne, Michael. The New Museum. Architecture and Display. New York: Praeger, 1965. Burton, Anthony. Vision and Accident. The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: V&A Publications, 1999. Carolin, Peter et al. “Obituary. Michael Brawne: 1925–2003.” Architectural Research Quarterly 7, no. 2 (2003), 107–112. Clarkson, Verity. “Exhibiting Central European Baroque Art in Cold War Britain: ‘the works themselves refute geographical separatism’.” Journal of Art Historiography 15, no. 12 (2016): 1–13, https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/clarkson. pdf. Clarkson, Verity. “The Soviet Avant-Garde in Cold War Britain: The Art in Revolution Exhibition (1971).” In Entangled East and West. Cultural Diplomacy and Artistic Interaction during the Cold War, edited by Simo Mikkonen, Giles Scott-Smith, and Jari Parkkinen, 15–38. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018.

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CHAPTER 10 Adi, Hakim. Pan-Africanism. A History. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Apter, Andrew. The Pan-African Nation. Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Barcio, Phillip. “For Gerald Williams, a Co-Founder of AfriCOBRA, Transnational Black Aesthetics are as Relevant as Ever.” Hyperallergic, November 13, 2017, accessed April 2, 2020, https://hyperallergic.com/410635/gerald-williams-africobra-transnational-blackaesthetics/. Blake, Jody. “Cold War Diplomacy and Civil Rights Activism at the First World Festival of Negro Arts.” In Romare Bearden, American Modernist, edited by Ruth Fine and Jacqueline Francis, 43–58. Washington, DC : National Gallery of Art, 2001. Cahan, Susan. Mounting Frustration. The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. Cooks, Bridget. Exhibiting Blackness. African Americans and the American Art Museum. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011. Edwards, Brent Hayes. The Practice of Diaspora. Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. Harris, Michael D. “Confluences: Ile-Ife, Washington, D.C., and the TransAfrican Artist.” African Arts 30, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 34–45. Kulla, Morgan. “The Politics of Culture: The Case of Festac.” Ufahamu. A Journal of African Studies 7, no. 1 (1976): 166–192. Meghelli, Samir. “ ‘A Weapon in Our Struggle for Liberation’: Black Arts, Black Power, and the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival.” In The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision. Media, Counterculture, Revolt, edited by Timothy Scott Brown and Andrew Lison, 167–184. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Murphy, David, ed. The First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar 1966, Contexts and Legacies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016. Owens-Hart, Winnie. “Traditions: Ipetumodu.” International Review of African American Art 11, no. 2 (January 1994): 58–60. Ratcliff, Anthony. “When Négritude was in Vogue: Critical Reflections of the First World Festival of Negro Arts and Culture in 1966.” Journal of Pan African Studies 6, no. 7 (2014): 167–186. Saunders, Frances Stonor. Who Paid the Piper? CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London: Granta Books, 2000. Twa, Lindsay. “Revealing the ‘Trends and Confrontations’ of Contemporary African-American Art through the First World Festival.” World Art 9, no. 1 (2019): 5–26. Wilford, Hugh. The Mighty Wurlitzer. How the CIA Played America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. Wilford, Hugh. “The American Society of African Culture: The CIA and Transnational Networks of African Diaspora Intellectuals in the Cold War.” In Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War. Agents, Activities, and Networks, edited by Luc van Dongen, Stéphanie Roulin, Giles Scott-Smith, 23–34. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

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CHAPTER 11 Carroll, John Mark. A Concise History of Hong Kong. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Caryl, Christian. Building the Dragon City. History of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. Chambers, Gillian. Supertrader. The Story of Trade Development in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 1989. Chan, Annie Hua-nung. “Fashioning Change: Nationalism, Colonialism, and Modernity in Hong Kong.” Post Colonial Studies. Culture, Politics, Economy 3, no. 3 (2000): 293–309. Cheung, Gary. Hong Kong’s Watershed. The 1967 Riots. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Chiu, Stephen and Tai-Lok Lui. Hong Kong. Becoming a Chinese Global City. London, New York: Routledge, 2009. Clayton, David. “The Riots and Labour Laws.” In May Days in Hong Kong. Riots and Emergency in 1967, edited by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Cross, Gary and Gregory Smits. “Japan, the U.S. and the Globalization of Children’s Consumer Culture.” Journal of Social History 38, no. 4 (2005): 873–890. Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong Yearbook 1967, 39–60. Denison, Edward and Yu Ren Guang. Building Shanghai. The Story of China’s Gateway. London: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. Fields, Gary S. “Industrialization and Employment in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.” In Foreign Trade and Investment. Economic Development in the NewlyIndustrializing Asian Countries, edited by Walter Galenson, 333–375. Madison, WI : University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Furuhata, Yuriko. “Multimedia Environments and Security Operations: Expo 70 as a Laboratory of Governance.” Grey Room, no. 54 (Winter 2014): 56–79. Glendinning, Miles. “Wah Fu Estate, Hong Kong.” Twentieth Century Society, accessed May 12, 2020, https://c20society.org.uk/building-of-the-month/wah-fu-estate-hongkong. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Lai, Wai Chung. “The Formation of Squatters and Slums in Hong Kong: from Slump Market to Boom Market.” Habitat International 9, nos. 3/4 (1985): 251–260. Lam, Wo Hei and Robyn Beaver. Wong & Ouyang. Blueprints for Hong Kong. Victoria, Australia: Mulgrave: Images Publishing Group, 2008. Lowenthal, David. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Mark, Chi-Kwan. Hong Kong and the Cold War. Anglo-American Relations 1949–1957. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004.

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CHAPTER 12 Allais, Lucia. Designs of Destruction. The Making of Monuments in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Barker, Emma, ed. Contemporary Cultures of Display. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Brannagn, Paul Michael and Richard Giulianotti. “Soft Power and Soft Disempowerment: Qatar, Global Sport and Football’s 2022 World Cup Finals.” Leisure Studies 34, no. 6 (2015): 703–719. Carruthers, William. “The Planned Past: Policy and (Ancient) Egypt.” Egyptian and Egyptological Documents, Archives, Libraries 4 (2015): 229–240. Carruthers, William and Egypt Exploration Society, eds. Histories of Egyptology. Interdisciplinary Measures. London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2014. Colla, Elliott. Conflicted Antiquities. Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2007. Cornwell, Rupert. “Thomas Hoving: Maverick Museum Director who Transformed the Met in New York.” The Independent, December 17, 2009. Dessouki, Ali Hillal. “The Primacy of Economics: The Foreign Policy of Egypt.” In The Foreign Policy of Arab States. The Challenge of Change, edited by Bahgat Korany et al., 156–185. Boulder, CO : Westview Press, 1991. Gienow-Hecht, Jessica and Mark Donfried. Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy. New York: Berghahn, 2010. Goff, Alice. “The Splendor of Dresden in the United States, 1978–79.” Representations 141, no. 1 (2018): 20–38.

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Graf, Rüdiger. Öl und Souveränität. Petroknowledge und Energiepolitik in den USA und Westeuropa in den 1970er Jahren. Berlin: Oldenbourg, 2014. Gray, Matthew. “Economic Reform, Privatization and Tourism in Egypt.” Middle Eastern Studies 34, no. 2 (1998): 91–112. Halbouty, Michel Thomas. Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade, 1978–1988. Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1992. Hawass, Zahi. Auf den Spuren Tutanchamuns. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 2015. Hindley, Meredith. “King Tut: A Classic Blockbuster Museum Exhibition That Began as a Diplomatic Gesture.” Humanities 36, no. 5 (September/October 2015): 1–12. Hoving, Thomas. Making the Mummies Dance. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. McAlister, Melani. Epic Encounters. Culture, Media, & U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2005. Nye, Joseph. “Soft Power.” Foreign Policy 80, no. 3 (1990): 153–171. Parkinson, Brian. “Tutankhamen on Trial: Egyptian Nationalism and the Court Case for the Pharaoh’s Artifacts.” The Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 44 (2008): 1–8. Reeves, Nicholas. The Complete Tutankhamun. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Riggs, Christina. “Boy-King Bling. The Treasures of Tutankhamun, Accompanied by Myth, Nostalgia and a Consumer Wonderland.” Times Literary Supplement, November 8, 2019. Riggs, Christina. Photographing Tutankhamun. Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and the Archive. London, New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. Root, Deborah. Cannibal Culture. Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference. Boulder, CO : Westview Press, 1996. Saehrendt, Christian. Kunst im Kampf für das “sozialistische Weltsystem.” Auswärtige Kulturpolitik der DDR in Afrika und Nahost. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017. Sarr, Felwine and Bénédicte Savoy. Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle commissioned by the President of the Republic of France. Paris, 2018. Schulze, Mario. “Tutanchamun fotografieren—Zur Produktion eines Ausstellungsstars.” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 39, no. 4 (2016): 331–349. Schulze, Mario. “Tutankhamun in West Germany, 1980–81.” Representations 141 (2018): 39–58. Span, Paula. “Thomas Hoving’s Artful Revenge.” Washington Post, September 17, 1986. te Heesen, Anke and Mario Schulze. “Einleitung.” In Museumskrise und Ausstellungserfolg. Die Entwicklung der Geschichtsausstellung in den Siebzigern, edited by Mario Schulze, Anke te Heesen, and Vincent Dold, 7–17. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2015. Tignor, Robert. Egypt. A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Weinbaum, Marvin. “Egypt’s ‘Infitah’ and the Politics of US Economic Assistance.” Middle Eastern Studies 21, no. 2 (1985): 206–222. Wettengel, Judith. “Tutanchamun—das ‘Riesenshowgeschäft’ um den ‘Superstar aus dem alten Ägypten’.” In Mythos Tutanchamun, edited by Wolfgang Wettengel, 18–45. Nördlingen: Wolfgang Wettengel, 2003. Zaki, Asaad Ali. “Tutankhamun Exhibition at the British Museum in 1972. A Historical Perspective.” Journal of Tourism Theory and Research 3, no. 2 (2017): 79–88.

CHAPTER 13 Bakker, Wibo. Droom van helderheid. Huisstijlen, ontwerpbureaus en modernisme in Nederland, 1960–1975. Rotterdam: Uitgevrij 010, 2011.

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Davies, Kevin. “ ‘A Geographical Notion Turned into an Artistic Reality’: Promoting Finland and Selling Finnish Design in Post-war Britain c. 1953–1965.” Journal of Design History 15, no. 2 (2002). Hellema, Duco A. Dutch Foreign Policy. The Role of the Netherlands in World Politics. Translated by Murray Pearson. Dordrecht: RoL, 2009. Huygen, Frederike. “Earning Money with a Jack of All Trades.” In Holland in vorm, edited by Gert Staal and Hester Wolters. ‘s-Gravenhage: Stichting Holland in vorm, 1987. Ingold, Tim. Making. Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Jaffé, Hans L. C. De Stijl 1917–1931. The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art. Amsterdam: J. M. Meulenhoff, 1956; Leiden: DBNL , 2008. Latour, Bruno. “Visualisation and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands.” Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present vol. 6 (1986): 1–40. McDonnell, Terence E. “Cultural Objects as Objects: Materiality, Urban Space, and the Interpretation of AIDS Campaigns in Accra, Ghana.” American Journal of Sociology 115, no. 6 (2010): 1800–1852. Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, Joana and Rachel Griffin. “Open Design: A History of the Construction of a Dutch Idea.” The Design Journal 15, no. 4 (2012): 405–422. Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, Joana. “The International as National: The Role of International Cultural Policy in the Construction of Dutch Design as Conceptual.” In 9th ICDHS Conference Tradition, Transition, Trajectories. Major or Minor Influences?, eds. Helena Barbosa and Ana Calvera, 569–574. Aveiro: UA Editora, 2014. Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, Joana. “Exhibiting Confrontations: Negotiating Dutch Design between National and Global Imaginations.” Journal of Design History 29, no. 3 (2016). Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, Joana. “Three Dutchnesses of Dutch Design: The Construction of a National Practice at the Intersection of National and International Dynamics.” In The Routledge Companion to Design Studies, edited by Penny Sparke and Fiona Fisher, 469–481. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, Joana. “Transnational Material Politics: Constructions of Dutch Design, 1970–2012.” PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2018. Rubio, Fernando Domínguez. “Preserving the Unpreservable: Docile and Unruly Objects at MoMA.” Theory and Society 43, no. 6 (2014): 617–645. van Meerkerk, Edwin and Quirijn Lennert van den Hoogen, eds. Cultural Policy in the Polder. 25 Years of the Dutch Cultural Policy Act. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. van Woersem, Lisa. Compendium. Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe. Country Profile: The Netherlands (January 2014). http://catalogus.boekman.nl/pub/P14-0502.pdf. Walker, John A. Design History and the History of Design. London: Pluto, 1989.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Harriet Atkinson, PhD, is a design historian and researcher at University of Brighton’s Centre for Design History. She is currently Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project “ ‘The Materialisation of Persuasion’: Modernist Exhibitions in Britain for Propaganda and Resistance, 1933 to 1953” and has written extensively on the history and theory of exhibitions. Verity Clarkson, PhD, is a design historian and Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research explores post-war visual and material culture, investigating transnational connections between arts organizations, government bodies and audiences with a particular focus on the organization and reception of exhibitions. She has published on post-1945 exhibitions, trade fairs, and art historiography in the context of British Cold War cultural diplomacy. Ian Cooke is an independent scholar currently living in the United States. He graduated in 2016 from the University of Auckland, New Zealand with a PhD in Art History on “Art-related Encounters and Interactions: Contact and Exchange between New Zealand and the United States, 1955 to 1974.” He has published articles on the artistic relationship between New Zealand and the United States that have appeared in Art New Zealand, Australasian Journal of American Studies, and Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. Daniel Cooper is a writer and editor. He was an M+ Design Trust Fellow and, along with Juliana Kei, is the fellow at the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust. He cocurates a gallery in New York City. Rika Devos is an engineer architect trained at Ghent University, where she obtained her PhD (2008) with a dissertation on modern architecture at Expo 58. She is now Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the Université Libre de Bruxelles and teaches contemporary history and theory of architecture, history of construction and architecture studio. Her research interests focus on exhibition architecture, postwar architecture culture in Belgium, and selected

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themes in construction history including collaboration in building, and the introduction of new materials and technologies. She co-edited Architecture of Great Exhibitions 1937–1959. Messages of Peace, Images of War (Ashgate, 2015). Chelsea Haines, PhD, is a historian of global modern and contemporary art and architecture. Her research focuses on histories and theories of museums, exhibitions, and the politics of display, with a specialization in Israel-Palestine and the Middle East. Her current book project explores the role of art exhibitions in Israeli nationbuilding from 1948 to 1965. Her research has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, New York Public Humanities Fellowship, and a Presidential Research Fellowship at The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She teaches at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Katarzyna Jeżowska, PhD, is a historian with a particular interest in the design history of Eastern Europe. She works as a lecturer at the UNSW in Sydney, where she is responsible for a comprehensive programme in the history and theory of design. She earned her doctorate from the University of Oxford. Her ongoing research concerns the relationship between design and political narratives, industrial exhibitions, and design diplomacy. Juliana Kei is a lecturer at the Liverpool School of Architecture. Her current research looks into how the technocratic visions in 1960s Britain underpinned the creation of the term “built environment.” As part of the Hong Kong Design History Network, she curated the Hong Kong Pavilion in the London Design Biennale, June 2021. Sarah A. Lichtman, PhD, is Dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory and Associate Professor of Design History at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York. She is co-editor (with Pat Kirkham) of Screen Interiors. From Country Houses to Cosmic Heterotopias (Bloomsbury, 2021) and has published widely on design and gender. Lichtman currently serves as the Managing Editor of the Journal of Design History. Joana Meroz, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Design Culture, History and Theory at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research bridges design culture studies, cultural policy research, the environmental humanities, and ethnographic theory. Her publications include the forthcoming edited volume Rereading Design in the Anthropocene / Relendo Design no Antropoceno (Zazie Edições), the co-edited Journal of Design History special issue “Beyond Dutch Design: Material Culture in the Netherlands in an Age of Globalization, Migration and Multiculturalism”, and contributions to The Design Journal, Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, Kunstforum, Design Culture: Object and Approach (Bloomsbury), and the Routledge Companion to Design Studies (Routledge), among others.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Serena Pacchiani obtained her Masters in Contemporary Art History at the University of Siena. In 2019 she successfully defended her PhD on the Italian pavilion at the Universal Exhibition of Brussels in 1935, a study supported by a scholarship from the University of Florence, in collaboration with the Université Libre de Bruxelles, subsequently winning the 2021 prize from the “Accademia di Scienze e Lettere la Colombaria” (Florence) for best doctoral thesis. She writes for the culture section of an online newspaper and participates in numerous scientific publications and international conferences. Rujana Rebernjak, PhD, is a cultural historian researching the material and visual culture of state socialism in postwar Eastern Europe. She is the Contextual and Theoretical Studies Leader at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Her research to date explored the role of architecture and design in shaping the experience of self-management in postwar Yugoslavia. She is working on a book and exhibition project about the intersections between digital technology, techno-utopianism and environmental design in 1960s and 1970s Yugoslavia. She holds a PhD in History of Design from the Royal College of Art/ V&A Museum. Ethan Robey, PhD, is Associate Teaching Professor of Art History at the Pennsylvania State University. His research centers on 19th- and 20th-century art, design, and material culture, with a special interest in spectacles, display, and exhibitions. His publications include contributions to The American Bourgeoisie. Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century; Inventing the Modern World. Decorative Arts at World’s Fairs, 1851–1939; and Expanding Nationalisms at World Fairs. Identity, Diversity and Exchange, 1855–1914, which he co-edited with the late David Raizman. Prior to his appointment at Penn State, Robey was the Associate Director of the Master’s Program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parsons School of Design and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Mario Schulze, PhD, is a Nomis Fellow at the University of Basel. His articles on the Tutankhamun exhibition were developed during post-doctoral research with the ‘Image Knowledge Gestaltung’ research cluster of the Humboldt University in Berlin. He is the author of the book Wie die Dinge sprechen lernten. Eine Geschichte des Museumsobjektes 1968–2000 (How Things Learned to Speak. A History of the Museum Object 1968–2000), which is based on his doctorate (awarded by the University of Zurich in 2017). Nushelle de Silva is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She holds a SMArchS, also from MIT, and a BA in Architecture from Princeton

CONTRIBUTORS

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University. Her dissertation examines how international logistical and administrative protocols for moving art across borders established after WWII shaped the design of circulating museum exhibitions in the latter half of the twentieth century. Her doctoral research has been supported by the MIT Department of Architecture, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Design History Society, among others. Lindsay J. Twa, PhD, is Professor of Art and Humanities Division Chair at Augustana University, Sioux Falls, SD, USA. She is also the Director of the Eide/ Dalrymple Gallery, where she has curated over 100 exhibitions. She holds a B.A. in Studio Art and Music from Concordia College, Moorhead, and a PhD in Art History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel. Her publications include the book Visualizing Haiti in U.S. Culture, 1910–1950 (Ashgate & Routledge) and articles in American Art, Journal of Haitian Studies, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, World Art, and Gradhiva: revue d’anthropologie et d’histoire des arts. Jennifer Way, PhD, is Professor of Art History at the University of North Texas. Her teaching and research focus on the period since 1900, emphasizing social meanings and uses that people make of art, craft, design, photography, collections, and exhibitions. She is the author of The Politics of Vietnamese Craft: American Diplomacy and domestication (Bloomsbury, 2019) and the forthcoming Craft, Wellness, and Healing in Contexts of War (Routledge). Her professional activity and teaching topics are chronicled on her website, https://jenniferwayphd-arthistory.com. Jonathan M. Woodham is Emeritus Professor in the History of Design at the University of Brighton and has been involved in research, editorial, consultancy, publishing, and supervision since the mid-1970s. He has published well over 100 books, articles and chapters and has been invited to speak, facilitate, review, examine, and teach in more than thirty countries worldwide. Best known amongst his publications is Twentieth Century Design (1997), selling more than 55,000 in the English language with additional successful editions in Korean (2007) and Chinese (2012). His Oxford Dictionary of Modern Design (2005) became part of Oxford Reference Online and was very substantially expanded and updated in 2016. He is still working on a major pluralist history of British design since 1915 that also addresses implications of cultural diversity alongside issues relating to devolution.

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INDEX

abstract art 22, 25, 29, 31, 141, 193 Abu Simbel 231 Academy of Applied Arts, Zagreb 81 Accra 115, 119, 122 Ade, Peter 234, 236 African-American art at Pan-African festivals FESMAN ’66 189, 190–5 FESTAC ’77 189–90, 196–202 AfriCOBRA (artist group) 196, 198, 202 afterlife of exhibitions 8 agriculture as political tool 123 Al Ahram (newspaper) 232–3 Alamo, Iya 201 Aldrich, Chester Holmes 26 Allais, Lucia 22 Alston, Charles 192, 193 American Ceylon Mission 117 American Federation of Arts 192 America the Beautiful (film) 123 Ammannati, Bartolomeo 110 Anderson, Guy 140 Anderson, L. V. 180 Anderson, Sean 5 Anholt, Simon 230 Anstey, Edgar 183 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, Hong Kong 222 antiquities as exhibits 228, 230, 232–3, 237–8 ANZUS Security Treaty 136 Apollo (magazine) 172 Appadurai, Arjun 3, 4 Appropriate Technology (AT) movement 127 appropriation of material culture 237–9

archeology of exhibitions 8 Architects’ Journal (periodical) 105 Architectural Association, London 216 Architectural Design (periodical) 86, 220 Architectural Review (periodical) 105 architecture Hong Kong 210, 213, 216, 221 Israel 25–9 and nationalism 99 Neoliberty 98, 102, 103, 105, 106 postmodern 221, 222 Vatican pavilion 157–8 Yugoslavia 81–3, 87 see also Italy, pavilion at Brussels Expo 58 L’Architettura: Cronache e Storia (periodical) 99, 105 archiving of exhibitions 8 Ardon, Mordecai 25 Arhitektura (Architecture; periodical) 80, 83, 91 art, contemporary, see contemporary art Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney 140, 141, 143 Arti Applicate e Forme Industriali in Polonia (Applied Arts and Industrial Forms in Poland), in Milan Triennale catalog 64–5 Art Nouveau (style) 102 Arts Council of Great Britain 138, 174, 234 Great Britain–USSR exhibition 175, 176, 177, 179–80, 181–2 Art Students League of New York 192 assemblage, theories of 116 Association of Painters and Sculptors in the Land of Israel 23, 24 exhibition, Tel Aviv, 1948 24

287

Aswan Dam 231 Auckland City Art Gallery (ACAG) 137–8, 139, 140, 143, 144, 145, 146, 146, 147 Auckland City Council 137–8 Australia 136, 138–9, 140, 141 bakery exhibit 122–3, 124, 125 Bakst, Leon 172 Bal, Mieke 1 Bandaranaike, Sirima 117 Bandaranaike, SWRD 117, 118 Bandung 118 Banham, Reyner 105, 110, 126 Barcelona Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) 8 Barcelona International Exhibition, 1929 6 Barnett, Nicholas 173 Baroque in Bohemia exhibition, 1969 175 Barr, John 137, 138 Bauhaus (architectural school) 29, 81 BBPR studio (architects) 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 108 Bearden, Romare 193 Beaux-Arts Classicism (architectural style) 26 Beaverbrook Foundation 178 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History 176 Belgium 247 Belgrade 118 Benin City 202 Bennett, Jane 116 Bennett, Tony 3 Ben Zvi, Zeev 24 Berlin, Treasures of Tutankhamun (exhibition) 232, 238 Bernardi, Bernardo 87, 90 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 157 Betts, Paul 29 Bevin, Ernest 211 Bien Hòa Cooperative School of Ceramics 49 biennials and biennales, boom in 4 Biggers, John 194 bilateral cultural agreements, use of 247 Bill, Max 81 Binyanei HaUma (International Convention Center), Jerusalem 27

288

INDEX

Black Americans 5 Black-diasporan and African art, see African-American art at PanAfrican festivals Black, Misha 104 blockbuster exhibitions 234 block press exhibit 126–7 Blundell, Grahame 210, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221 Bodleian Library, Oxford 176 Bogota, Inter-American Housing Center 126 Bolshoi Ballet 176 Brannagan, Paul M. 229 Braque, Georges 23 Brawne, Michael 172, 175, 181, 182 Bregovac, Zdravko 91 Brighton Museum 177–8 British Museum 179, 234 Brown, Denise Scott 221 Brown, Raymond Gordon 216 Brussels Expo 58 (Brussels World’s Fair) Circarama 123 Soviet pavilion 173 Vatican pavilion 153, 158–9 Yugoslav pavilion 78, 80–6, 82, 84 see also Italy, pavilion at Brussels Expo 58 Brzozowski, Tadeusz 63 Buddhism 117 Buić-Bonetti, Jagoda 90 Bujakowa, Maria 63 Bulganin, Nikolai 174 Bureau Internationale des Expositions 155 Butler, Rohan 180 BZ (newspaper) 238 Cairo 235 Egyptian Museum (Museum of Egyptian Antiquities) 227, 231, 233, 238 Callahan, Kenneth 140 Campbell Park, Colombo 121 Canaday, John 164 Carnegie Corporation of New York 139 car repair and driving exhibit 123 Carter, Howard 227 Casabella-continuità (periodical) 66, 100 Catherine II, Empress 179

Catholic News (periodical) 159 Cecil, Robin 180 Çelik, Zeynep 28 censorship and omissions 177, 178–80 Ceraj, Iva 88 ceramics English 177–8 Nigerian 200–1 Polish 62, 63–4, 66 Ceylon, see Sri Lanka Ceylon Observer (newspaper) 120 Ceylon Petroleum Corporation 118 Chapel of the Good Shepherd, Vatican pavilion 157, 157 Chennai 119 cheongsam dress 216 Chicago 48, 196 Chicago International Trade Fair, 1950 82 Chicago Merchandise Mart 41 Chicago National Conference of Artists 198 Chicago World’s Fair, 1893 117 China Paint Manufacturing Company pavilion 214–15 Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong 213 Chinski, Sara 24 Christchurch 144 Christian Century (periodical) 164 Christie’s (auction house) 182 Christoforo Colombo (ship) 156 Chug (Circle; group of architects) 26 Cicognani, Amleto 159, 160 Cinva-Ram block press exhibit 126–7 Circarama, cinema 123–4 City College of New York 192 Clancy, John 164 climate 248, 252 see also environmental factors, role in design clothing, Hong Kong 216 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 234 Colla, Elliott 230–1 College Art Association (CAA) 1–2 Cologne, Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition 233 Colombo 115, 119, 121, 122, 124, 126 Campbell Park 121 Colonial Exhibition, Paris, 1931 47

colonialism decolonial approaches 4 Netherlands 250 Southeast Asia Survey Exhibition 40, 41–2, 44–7, 52 Treasures of Tutankhamun (exhibition) 238, 239–40 commercialization of museums 228, 231 commodification of reproductions 237 Commonweal (periodical) 164 Compagnia Nazionale Artigiana (National Craft Company) 66 Comrades at Arms exhibition, 1941-1942 178 Comunità (periodical) 66 consumerism museums and 228, 238–9 and national identity 213–14 religion and 154, 163–4 Yugoslavia 86–7, 91–2 contemporary art African-American 193–5, 200–2 Israel 23–5, 29–32 Pacific region 135–6, 138–9, 140–3 Contemporary Art: Trends and Confrontations exhibition, 1966 190–4 Contemporary Australian Art exhibition, 1960 140–1 Contemporary Australian Painting exhibition, 1957 140 Contemporary Japanese Art exhibition, 1959 141, 142 Contigiani, Raffaele 87 Coolidge, John 155 Corriere della Nazione (newspaper) 65–6 Cortor, Eldzier 194 Council of Urbanists of Yugoslavia 89 Council of Women’s Associations of Yugoslavia 87 Čovjek i prostor (Man and Space; periodical) 80, 85 craft diplomacy 39–42 crafts Hong Kong 217–18, 221 Poland 59–71 Vietnam 39–52 creative standardization (design concept) 90

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Crichlow, Ernest 199 Croatian Association of Artists 80 Cruz, Emilio 193 Culler, George 143, 144 cultural diplomacy, see politics and cultural diplomacy culture, definition 248 curatorial networks 139–41, 234 curatorial strategies 29–32, 191–5, 196–8 Curnow, Wystan 147 Czechoslovakia, pavilion at Milan Triennale 65 Davidson, Jane Chin 8 Davison, Elizabeth 176 Davis, Ossie 196 De Carlo, Adolfo 106 decolonial approaches 4 Decorators & Furnishers Ltd (firm) 122 Deegan, Thomas 155 de Gaulle, Charles 177 Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) exhibition, 1937 8 DeLanda, Manuel 116 Delano, William Adams 26 Deleuze, Gilles 116 della Masse, Angelo 65–6 Deminex (oil company) 236 de Montebello, Philippe 234 Denegri, Ješa 81 Denmark 229 Denver Catholic Register (periodical) 164 Designers and Decorators Guild of South Florida 47 design exhibitions 248–9 Design History Society (DHS) 1–2 De Stijl (art movement) 245, 249 Deutscher Werkbund (association of craftspeople) 81, 86 development plans 119 Dharmapala, Anagarika 117 Dionne-Krosnick, Arièle 5 Dirlik, Arif 143 display techniques 44–6, 50–1, 144–5, 253 display technologies 161–3, 164, 248, 251–2, 252 Dobrenko, Evgeny 177 documents as exhibits 176, 177, 181, 181–2 domestic environments as exhibits 86–91

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INDEX

Domínguez Rubio, Fernando 246 Dominguez, Virginia 41–2 Domus (periodical) 100, 107, 108 Donaldson, Jeff 196, 197, 198, 199–200, 201–2 Donfried, Mark C. 173 Douglas, Calvin 194 Drabble, Margaret 183 Drop City, Colorado 127 Dumbar, Gert 249–50, 251, 252, 252, 253 Dunedin Public Art Gallery 144, 146 Dunlop, Ian 182 Durham University 213 Dutch Design for the Public Sector I exhibition, 1973 249–50, 251, 254 Dutch Design for the Public Sector II exhibition, 1978 250–7, 252, 253 Džamonja, Dušan 84 Eames, Charles 51 Eames, Ray 51 East Germany, pavilion at Porodica i domaćinstvo 87 Easum, Donald B. 200 Ebony (magazine) 122, 189 École de Paris (artist group) 30 economic incentives and benefits of exhibitions 7, 231–2 Edwards, I. E. S. 234 Egyptian Antiquities Organization (formerly Department of Antiquities) 230, 231 Egyptian Museum (Museum of Egyptian Antiquities), Cairo 227, 231, 233, 238 Egypt, soft power of Treasures of Tutankhamun 227–40, 232, 233, 239 soft power 229–33, 239–40 Western interests and appropriation 234–7, 237–9 Eight American Artists exhibition, New Zealand,1958 137, 140 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 39, 49 Elizabeth II, Queen 180 Emery, Walter Bryan 234 Emporium (periodical) 110 Engel House, Tel Aviv 26–7 ENIT (Ente Nazionale Italiano par il Turismo) 110

environmental factors, role in design 245–57 cultural plastic diplomacy 247–9 Dutch Design for the Public Sector exhibitions 249–55 Eshkanian, Reuben 48 Esplin, Thomas 146 L’Espresso (periodical) 99 European universalism 21–2 Evening Post (Wellington; newspaper) 147 Exat 51 (group of artists and architects) 81, 84 exhibitionary complex 3 Exhibition of Contemporary Art: Trends and Confrontations 190–1, 194 Exhibition of Regained Territories, Wrocław, 1948 61–2 exhibitions Barcelona International Exhibition, 1929 6 Baroque in Bohemia, 1969 175 Chicago International Trade Fair, 1950 82 Chicago World’s Fair, 1893 117 Colonial Exhibition, Paris, 1931 47 Comrades at Arms, 1941-1942 178 Contemporary Art: Trends and Confrontations 190–4 Contemporary Australian Art , 1960 140–1 Contemporary Australian Painting , 1957 140 Contemporary Japanese Art , 1959 141, 142 Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) 1937 8 Dutch Design for the Public Sector I, 1973 249–50, 251, 251, 254 Dutch Design for the Public Sector II, 1978 250–7, 252, 253 Eight American Artists, 1958 137, 140 Exhibition of Contemporary Art: Trends and Confrontations 190–1, 194 Exhibition of Regained Territories, Wrocław, 1948 61–2 Expo 58, Brussels (see Expo 58, Brussels) Expo 70, Osaka 209–10, 215–22, 218, 219

Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1925 46–7, 63, 86, 103 Exposition Internationale, Paris, 1937 153 Far East Festival, Macy’s, New York, 1966 220 First Pan-African Cultural Festival, Algiers, 1969 196 First World Festival of Black and African Culture (FESMAN), 1966 189–96, 195, 196, 197–8, 202 Great Britain–USSR: An Historical Exhibition, 1967 171–83, 179 Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo (HKBPE) 212–15, 214 Hong Kong Week 212–13 Hungarian Art Treasures, 1967 175 Indian and Colonial Exhibition, 1886 221 International Housewares Show, 1956 41 Jeshyn International Fair, Kabul, 1956 121 Milan Triennale, 9th, 1951 68 Milan Triennale, 11th, 1957 59–71, 62, 86, 91 Milan Triennale, 12th, 1960 70–1 New York World’s Fair, 1964-1965 153–65, 157, 162 Painting from the Pacific, 1961 135–47, 145, 146 Porodica i domaćinstvo (Family and Household) 78, 86–91, 89 Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America 5 Second Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), 1977 189–90, 196–202 Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition, 1956 40, 41, 43–8, 45, 46 Stan za naše prilike (Housing for our Means), Ljubljana, 1956 86, 91 Stockholm International Fair, 1949-1950 82 Ten Negro Artists from the United States, 1966 194, 195 Treasures of Tutankhamun 227–40, 232, 233

INDEX

291

United States Small Industries Exhibition, Colombo, 1961 115–28, 121, 124, 126 United States World Trade Fair, New York, 1958 40, 41, 48–51, 50 United States World Trade Fair, San Francisco, 1964 220 Venice Biennale, 1948-1952 19–33 Vienna International Trade Fair, 1949 82 Die Wohnung (The Dwelling), Stuttgart, 1927 86 World Expo, Vancouver, 1986 221 Zagreb Fair, 1958 78, 86 Expo 58, Brussels Circarama 123 Italian pavilion 97–111, 104, 108, 109 Soviet pavilion 173 Vatican pavilion 153, 158–9 Yugoslav pavilion 78, 80–6, 82, 84 Expo 70, Osaka 209–10, 215–22, 218, 219 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1925 46–7, 63, 86, 103 Exposition Internationale, Paris, 1937 153 Exxon (oil company) 236 Fabergé eggs 180 Fano, Angelo 24, 25 Far East Festival, Macy’s, New York, 1966 220 fascism, Italy 98, 108, 109 Federation of Hong Kong Industries 212 Feelings, Tom 194 Feigin, Dov, Canaanite Woman 23 FESMAN (First World Festival of Black and African Culture), 1966 189–96, 195, 196, 197–8, 202 FESTAC (Second Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture), 1977 189–90, 196–202, 199 Fingesi, O. P. 200 Finland 67–8 First Pan-African Cultural Festival, Algiers, 1969 196 First World Festival of Black and African Culture (FESMAN), 1966 189–96, 195, 196, 197–8, 202 First Yugoslav Council on housing 91 Fitch, Alan 216, 218, 219, 221

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INDEX

Fleishman, Avrom 44, 45 Flouquet, Pierre-Louis 101 Folarin, Agbo 201 Food For Peace program 123, 124 foodstuffs 122–3 formalist art 179 formalist structuralism 102 Foster, Nicola 8 France, Soviet Union and 177–8 Fratelli Montenovi (moving specialists) 155–6 Frenkel, Yitzhak 23 Fromm, Erich 99 Fuller, Buckminster 121, 127 Fuller, Hoyt 196 furniture and housewares as exhibits Poland 64, 66 Southeast Asia 41, 43–8, 48–51 Yugoslavia 86, 89, 90, 91 Gagarin, Yuri 178 Galeazzi, Enrique 155, 159 Galjer, Jasna 82, 88 Gałkowski, Helena 68, 69 Gałkowski, Stefan 68, 69 Gandhi, Mohandas K. 127 Gardella, Ignazio 101 “Gaudium et spes” (Joy and Hope; constitution from Vatican II) 159, 163 Gauguin, Paul 28 Geldzahler, Henry 192 Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Netherlands 253 General Motors 156 Geneva Accords 42 geodesic domes 121–2, 127 George VI, King 178 Germany, East 87 Germany, pavilion at Barcelona International Exhibition 1929 6 Germany, West 229, 236 Getlein, Frank 159 Ghana 119 Giedion, Siegfried 81 Gienow-Hecht, Jessica 173 Gilliam, Sam 193 Giovannini, Giovanni 101 Giulianotti, Richard 229

Giurgola, Romaldo 45, 45, 46 gizmos 126 glass 65, 71 Gleeson, James 141, 142 Golakowska, Wanda 63 Goldhagen, Sarah Williams 100 Goldsmiths Hall, London 176 Gomułka, Władysław 61, 67 The Good Shepherd (sculpture) 155, 157 Gosling, Nigel 183 graphic design 254–5 Graves, Morris 140 Gray, Camilla 179 Great Britain British Council 138, 174, 175, 182 and Egypt 235 Foreign Office 174, 176, 177, 180 and Hong Kong 211, 212 Ministry of Information 6, 178 and New Zealand 136 Royal Ballet 235 Royal Collection 176 see also Arts Council of Great Britain Great Britain–USSR: An Historical Exhibition, 1967 171–83, 179 censorship and omissions 176–80 Cold War diplomacy 173–6 lack of “artistic” objects 181–3 Greenblatt, Stephen 182 Greenhalgh, Paul 5 Gropius, Walter 87, 213 Groton, Saint Mary, Mother of the Redeemer church 158 Grześkiewicz, Helena 63 Grześkiewicz, Lech 63 Guattari, Félix 116 Guggenheim, Peggy 31 Gutman, Nahum 23, 24 Haaretz (newspaper) 25 Haffner, Christopher 216 Hall, Stuart 4 Hambantota 126 Handicraft Development Center 48 Hannerz, Ulf 44 Hansen, Oskar 71 Harvard University 213 Haus der Kunst (House of Art), Munich 234

Hawass, Zahi 232 Haystacks Mountain School of Arts and Crafts, Maine 201 Hebrew University, Jerusalem 24 Heichal HaTarbut (Frederick Mann Auditorium), Tel Aviv 27 Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, Tel Aviv 27 Helsingin Sanomien (newspaper) 68 Helsinki 123 Hentley Garments (firm) 124 Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg 176, 182 Hindley, Meredith 238 Hobsbawm, Eric 210 Ho Chi Minh 42 Hoe Hin White Flower Oil Embrocation pavilion 214 Hollingsworth, Alvin 194 Holmstrom, John 182 Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce 210 Chinese Manufacturers’ Association 213 City Hall 216 Information Service Department (ISD) 210, 212, 213–14 Queen Elizabeth Hospital 217 Trade Development Council (TDC) 215 University of 216, 220 Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo (HKBPE) 209–10, 212, 213–15, 214 Hong Kong pavilion at Expo 70 218, 219 pavilion 215–22 political context 210–12 Hong Kong Week 209–10, 212–13 Hoorn City Hall 255 Ho, Tao 213, 221 housing as exhibit 88–91, 89, 126–7, 213, 217 Hoving, Thomas 231, 232, 234, 237–8 Howard University 192, 194, 196, 201 Hryniewiecki, Jerzy 69 Hughes, Robert 164 humane modernism 254–5 Humlebæk, Denmark, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art 249, 251 Hungarian Art Treasures exhibition, 1967 175

INDEX

293

Hunt, Richard 193 Husarski, Helena 63 Husarski, Roman 63 Idlewild Airport, New York 162 Imaizumi, Atsuo 141, 143, 144 Imperial War Museum, London 176 Indian and Colonial Exhibition, London,1886 221 Indonesia 248, 250 industrial design 65, 69–71, 84–5, 87–91, 107 Industrial Design (periodical) 44, 47–8, 86 Industrijsko oblikovanje (Industrial Design) (periodical) 77 Ingold, Tim 246 Institute of Industrial Design, Poland 64 insurance of exhibits 235, 247 Inter-American Housing Center, Bogota 126 International Council of Museums 139 International Exhibition, Barcelona, 1929 6 International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, Paris,1925 46–7, 63, 86, 103 International Fair, Kabul, 1956 121 International Fair, Stockholm, 1949-1950 82 International Housewares Show, 1956 41 International Style (architectural style) 51 International Trade Fair, Chicago, 1950 82 International Trade Fair, Vienna, 1949 82 Ipetumodu 200–1, 201 Isozaki, Arata 209 Israele (periodical) 23–4 Israel Museum, Jerusalem 20, 33 Israel, pavilion at Venice Biennale, 1948-1952 19–33 contributing artists 23–5 curatorial strategy 29–32 national modernism 32–3 the Pavilion building 25–9, 26, 27 universalism 21–2 Italy 87, 229 pavilion at Paris Exposition 103 Italy, pavilion at Brussels Expo 58 97–111, 104, 108, 109 criticism of 103–6 design process 101–3

294

INDEX

interior 106–7 modernism and vernacular architecture 98–100 new scenario for exhibition 107–10 Ivančević, Radovan 81 Ivanjek, Željko 86–7 Izenour, Stephen 221 Jachec, Nancy 21, 29 Jackson, Clinton and Willard 125, 126 Jackson, Reginald 199 Jaffé, Hans 245 Jaffna 117 Janco, Marcel 23, 30 Japan 136, 138, 140, 141 Expo 70, Osaka 209–10, 215–22 Jerusalem Binyanei HaUma (International Convention Center), 27 Hebrew University 24 Israel Museum 20, 33 Mount Scopus 24 Jeshyn International Fair, Kabul, 1956 121 The Jetsons (cartoon) 164 Joedicke, Jürgen 99 Johnson, Lyndon 160 John XXIII, Pope 155, 158, 159, 160 Jones-Henderson, Napoleon 200, 201 Jonklaas, Terry 122 Jonyas & Shepherd Art Studio, The Communion of the Saints 157 Ka, Charlotte Richardson 198, 200 Kahana, Aharon 24 Kanvinde and Rai (architecture firm) 122 Kardelj, Edvard 88 Karmi, Dov 26 Kauffmann, Michael 176 Kekkonen, Urho 67 Kenar, Antoni 64, 66, 68 Kennedy, John F. 42, 123, 159 Kenny, Nelson 146–7 Khrushchev, Nikita 174 Kiff, Colean, Voss & Souder Architects 157 Kikutake, Kiyonari 209 Kirkham, Pat 51 Kissinger, Henry 199 Klee, Paul 81 Klein, Christina 42

Kneller, Godfrey, Peter the Great 179 Köchli, Friedrich 180 Kolb, Eugen 22, 25, 29–30, 31–2 Kolkata 119, 122 Kosygin, Alexei 171, 174, 179, 180, 181 Kotarbińska, Julia 63 Krasiński, Maciej 62 Kremlin, Moscow 176, 182 Kritovac, Fedor 77 Kuh, Katherine 164 Kurokawa, Kisho 209 Kuryluk, Karol 61 Ład Artists’ Cooperative 63, 68 Landfall (periodical) 147 Laocoön (sculpture) 155 Larson, Jack Lenor 48 laundry equipment as exhibit 124 Lawrence, Jacob 192, 193, 194 John Brown series 193, 195 League of Communists of Yugoslavia 91–2 Le Corbusier 26, 27, 28–9, 81 Legault, Réjean 100 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 175, 180 Leo, John 164 Levy, Leon 51 Levy, Lionel 51 Lewis, Norman 193 Lewis, Samella 198 Leykam, Marek 61–2, 68, 69 Liao, Donald 213 Lieberman, William S. 192, 194 Lilly Dache (retailers) 49 Lilyquist, Christine 237 Liverpool, University of 216 local involvement in exhibitions 122, 124–5 Lodge, Henry Cabot 47 Lombardo, Ivan Matteo 59 London Architectural Association 216 British Museum 179, 234 Goldsmiths Hall 176 Imperial War Museum 176 Museum of London 183 National Portrait Gallery 176 Treasures of Tutankhamun (exhibition) 231, 234

Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) 171, 174, 175, 176, 180 Los Angeles County Museum of Art 8 Los Angeles, Otis Art Institute 192 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark 249, 250, 251 Louvre museum, Paris 237 Low, David 178 Lowenthal, David 221 Luccichenti, Amedeo 101 Lucie-Smith, Edward 181 McAlister, Melani 228 McCahon, Colin 136, 139, 142, 147 McDonnell, Terence E. 246 McGurn, Barrett 156 machinery, see technology and machinery Maclennan, Stewart 141 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney 141 Macy’s (department store) 44, 220 Major, Patrick 173 Majors, William 193, 194 Malevich, Kazimir 81 Martin, Steve 228, 238 Marx, Karl 178, 180 Masey, Jack 121, 122, 127 Masson, André 31 Matta, Roberto 31 Mayhew, Richard 193 Maynard, Valerie 199 Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria 140 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 231, 234, 237 Meyer, Andrea 173–4 Michelangelo, Pieta 153, 154, 155–6, 159, 161–5, 162 middlebrow culture 42 Mielziner, Jo 161, 162, 163 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 6 Milan Palazzo dell’Arte al Parco 62 Torre Velasca 102, 106 Milan Triennale, 9th, 1951 68 Milan Triennale, 11th, 1957 86, 91 catalog 64–5 see also Poland, pavilion at 11th Milan Triennale, 1957 Milan Triennale, 12th,1960 70–1

INDEX

295

Miljački, Ana 92 Milwaukee (ship) 235 Mishory, Alec 24 Missingham, Hal 140, 141, 142, 143, 144 mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission) 42 Mitarachi, Paul J. 45, 45, 46 Mitchell, Tyrone 200 Mitter, Rana 173 modernism humane 254–5 Israel and 20–1, 23–4, 25–9, 29–31, 32–3 New York World’s Fair 156 and religion 153 US 191 and vernacular design 28–9, 60, 65–71, 98–100 modernist architecture Hong Kong 210, 213, 216, 221 Israel 25–9 Vatican pavilion 157–8 Yugoslavia 81–3, 87, 91 Moholy-Nagy, László 81 Mokady, Moshe 30 Mokhtar, Gamal 231 Monaco, Vincenzo 101 Mondrian, Piet 81, 249 Moretti, Luigi 98, 106, 108, 109, 110 Morgan, John 175 Morgan, Norma 193 Morley, Grace McCann 136, 137, 139, 142, 147 Moscow Kremlin 176, 182 Pushkin Museum 176 Moses, Robert 154, 155 Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 24 moving sidewalks 164 Moyer, Roy 192 Mumbai 119, 122 Munich, Haus der Kunst (House of Art) 234 Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) 8 Museum of London 183 Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) 6, 69, 192 Good Design program 41 Reconstructions exhibition 5

296

INDEX

museums crisis 234 Mutnjaković, Andrija 83, 90 Nance, Marilyn 199, 200, 201 Napoleonic Wars, ceramics 177–8 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 230, 231 National Art Gallery, Wellington 137, 141, 146 national design 245–6, 256 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 140 national identities 5, 6–7, 99 Egypt 230–1 Finland 68 Hong Kong 210, 213–14, 215–19, 220, 221 Israel 19–33 Italy 98, 103–5, 110–11 Poland 59, 70–1 and universalism 21–2 Yugoslavia 77–8 National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 141, 143 National Portrait Gallery, London 176 Navetta, Bernard 215, 216 Nazione, La (newspaper) 66 Nazism 8, 29 Négritude (movement) 191, 194, 195 Nehru, Jawaharlal 118 Neoliberty (architectural style) 98, 102, 103, 105, 106 Netherlands De Nederlandsche Bank 254 and Egypt 229 Government Advisory Committee for the Coordination of Exhibitions of Dutch Applied Arts Abroad 249 Postal and Telecommunications Service 254 railways 250, 254, 255 State Printing and Publishing Office 254 Netherlands, Dutch Design for the Public Sector exhibitions cultural diplomacy 247–8 public design 248–55 networks 7 Black artists’ 190, 191, 192, 196 curatorial 135–6, 139–41, 147, 234

Neues Österreich (newspaper) 66 New Delhi 119 New Horizons (art movement) 25 New Liturgy, Roman Catholic Church 158–60 Newton, Stella 182 New York City 49 Art Students League 192 City College 192 Coliseum 40, 41, 44, 45, 50, 52 Idlewild Airport 162 Macy’s 44, 220 Metropolitan Museum of Art 231, 234, 237 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 5, 6, 41, 69, 192 Studio Museum, Harlem 199 Yankee Stadium 160 New York Times (newspaper) 49, 164, 183 New York World’s Fair, 1939-1940 154 New York World’s Fair, 1964-1965, see Vatican pavilion at New York World’s Fair, 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair Corporation 154 New Zealand, see Painting from the Pacific, 1961 New Zealand Herald (newspaper) 143 Ngo Dinh Diem 42, 50, 50 Ngo Dinh Nhu 42 Nicholas II, Tsar 177, 179 Nigeria, Second Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), 1977 189–90, 196–202 Nixon, Richard M. 229 Nkrumah, Kwame 118 Noblecourt, Christiane Desroches 234 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) 118–19 Northwest school (art movement) 140 Novi Zagreb 87 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 1963 178–9 Observer (newspaper) 177, 182, 183 oil politics 235, 236 Okasha, Tharwat 234 Olivetti (company) 106, 108 Olivetti, Adriano 66 Oman, Charles 182 Opium Wars 211 Orientalism 30, 42, 52, 221

Osaka, Expo 70 209–10, 215–22, 218, 219 Otago Daily Times (newspaper) 146 Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles 192 Otterlo congress 106 Owens, Winnie 200–1, 201 Oxford, Bodleian Library, 176 “Pacem in Terris” (Peace on Earth; encyclical) 159 Pacific Rim, Painting from the Pacific exhibition, 1961 135–47 packaging of artworks and exhibits 155–6, 251–2, 254 Pagliarani, Rosalia 159 Painting from the Pacific, 1961 135–47, 145, 146 context 135–8, 139–43 development and display 138–9, 143–7 Palazzo dell’Arte al Parco, Milan 62 Pallucchini, Rodolfo 19, 21, 23 Pan-African festivals, see AfricanAmerican art at Pan-African festivals pandemic-age exhibitions 13–14 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, 1925 46–7, 63, 86, 103 Exposition Internationale, 1937 153 Louvre museum 237 Passanti, Francesco 28 Paulick, Richard 87 Paul VI, Pope 158, 160 Pavlova, Anna 172, 183 Pavolvić, Boro 85 Pawłowski, Andrzej, Kineformy (Cinéforms) 64 Pearse, Annette 144 People’s Capitalism exhibition 120, 123 People’s Republic of China 118, 211, 213 performance and spectacle 217–19, 221–2 Persitz, Alexandre 105 Perugini, Giuseppe 101 Péteri, György 173 Peter the Great 172, 175, 179 Petrucci, Franco 110 Philippines 140 Philip, Ron 216 Piacentini, Marcello 98, 107, 108, 109, 110 Pica, Agnoldomenico 103–5

INDEX

297

Picelj, Ivan 82 Pippin, Horace 194 plastic diplomacy 249, 251 plasticity 249, 253–4 Plutyńska, Eleonora 63 Poelzig, Hans 81 Poland 229 Institute of Industrial Design 64 Poland, pavilion at 11th Milan Triennale, 1957 59–71, 62 context 60–1 exhibits 61–5 Polish reviews 69–70 12th Triennale, 1960 70–1 Western critiques 65–8 Poletti, Charles 156 Polish News Agency 69 politics and cultural diplomacy 6–7, 173–4 Great Britain and USSR 173–80, 183 Hong Kong 210–12, 222 Milan Triennale 60–1 Netherlands 247–9, 255 New Zealand 136–7, 147 Poland 60–1 Treasures of Tutankhamun (exhibition) 229–33, 235–6, 239–40 US and Sri Lanka 117–18, 127–8 US and Vatican 159–60 US and Vietnam 39–43, 51–2 Venice Biennale 21–2 Yugoslavia 77–8 Pollock, Jackson 31 Pomian, Krzysztof 1 Ponti, Gio 108 Poor, Henry Varnum 43 Pope-Hennessy, John 172, 175, 180, 182 Porodica i domaćinstvo (Family and Household), exhibition 78, 86–91, 89 Porter, James A. 192–3, 194 Portoghesi, Paolo 98, 102 post-colonial relationships 240 Post Impressionism 28, 30 postmodernism 221, 222, 228 Prescott, J. 220 Press (Christchurch; newspaper) 146–7 Projekt (periodical) 68, 69 public design 250, 254–5 Pushkin Museum, Moscow 176

298

INDEX

Quaroni, Ludovico 101, 106, 108 Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hong Kong 217 racial bias 192 Radić, Zvonimir 82 Rai, Shaukat 122 Rajewski, Czesław 62 Ramirez, Raul 126 Ramsden, Eric 147 Raphael, Transfiguration 155 Rašica, Božidar 81 Ray, Man 31 Rechter, Zeev Engel House, Tel Aviv 26–7 Israel Pavilion 26–9 Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America exhibition, 2021 5 Redmond, Roland 155 Reid, Robert Dennis 193, 194 Reid, Susan E. 173 religious exhibits at world’s fairs 154 Rembrandt 247, 248 reproduction of artifacts 237, 238, 239 restaging of exhibitions 8 Retailing Daily (periodical) 48 Rhoden, John 194 Rhodes 232 Riboud, Barbara Chase 193 Richards, J. M. 97 Richter, Vjenceslav 80–3, 82, 83, 91 Ricoeur, Paul 20 Ritter, William 28 Robert MacDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch 144 Robinson, Spence 216 Rock, Thomas P. 122 Roebuck & Co. (retailers) 49 Rogers, Ernesto Nathan Italian pavilion, Expo 58 100, 102, 103, 106, 110 on Polish craftsmanship 60, 66–7 Roman Catholic church, see Vatican pavilion at New York World’s Fair, 1964-1965 Romanian pavilion at Milan Triennale 65, 66 Rousseau, Henri 28 Royal Ballet 235

Royal Collection, Great Britain 176, 179, 180 Rozbicki, Michal 52 Rubin, Reuven 23, 24, 28, 30–1 The Artist’s Family 31 First Fruits 30–1, 32 Russel Wright Associates (RWA) 40, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50 Ryburn, Molly 142 Sadat, Anwar 229, 230, 236 SAICA (Società Anonima Italiana Costruzioni e Arredamenti) 110 Saint Mary, Mother of the Redeemer church, Groton 158 Saint Petersburg, Hermitage Museum 176, 182 salvage, concept 41–2, 46 sampans 220, 221 Sandberg, Willem 33 San Francisco 142, 220 San Francisco Museum of Art (SFMA) 136, 139, 143 Saturday Review (periodical) 164 Saunders, Raymond 193 Savoy, Bénédicte 173–4 sawmill exhibit 125–6, 126 scalar dynamic 3 Scapular (periodical) 160–1 Scheel, Walter 229 Schumacher, E. F. 127 Scott, Eugene H. 122 Scully, Vincent 164 Sears (retailers) 49 Seattle Art Museum 140 Second Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), 1977 189–90, 196–202, 199 Second Convention of Peking 211 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (Vatican II) 158, 159, 160 Second World War 6, 7, 10, 21, 23, 29, 33, 85, 141, 178 Seelmann-Eggebert, Ulrich 66 self-management (Yugoslav political and social system) 77–80, 85–92, 88–9, 91–2 Selim, Abd El-Qader 238 Selket (statue) 232–3, 233, 237–8, 239

Senegal, First World Festival of Black and African Culture (Le festival mondial des arts nègres, FESMAN) 189–96 Senghor, Léopold Sédar 189, 191 sewing machines as exhibit 124, 124 Sharett, Moshe 25 Sharon, Arieh 26, 29 Sheen, Fulton J. 161 Shemi, Menachem 24 silverware as exhibit 182 Simon, Yohanan 24 Singapore 136 Singer sewing machines 124 Sinisgalli, Leonardo 106, 109, 110 sinteza (synthesis of art forms) 81–3, 90 Sitlani’s (laundromat) 124 smallness, as political strategy 119–20, 125–7, 127–8 smallness, concept 116 Smith, Gregory 160–1 Smith, Michael 156 socialism and design 87–91 self-management 77–80 socialist realism 61, 81, 82 soft power 229–33 see also politics and cultural diplomacy Sokorski, Włodzimierz 61 Solmsson, Peter 236, 237, 238 The Song of Roland (poem) 63 Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) 42 Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition, 1956 40, 41, 43–8, 45, 46 South Korea 140 South Vietnam, see United States’ Vietnamese craft diplomacy Soutine, Chaim 30 souvenirs 160, 163, 220, 227–8, 237, 238 Soviet Union (USSR) and Egypt 231, 236 and France 177–8 Milan Triennale 60–1 Ministry of Culture 174 Ministry of Foreign Affairs 174 New York World’s Fair 155 pavilion at Brussels Expo 58 173 and Sri Lanka 117, 118

INDEX

299

State Archives 174 see also Great Britain–USSR: An Historical Exhibition, 1967 Spain 6, 229 Spellman, Francis 154, 155, 158, 159, 160, 161 Spiral (artist group) 193, 195 Spriggs, Ed 199 Sri Lanka Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) 117, 118 Ten Year Plan 119 United National Party 117, 118 see also United States Small Industries Exhibition, Colombo, 1961 Srnec, Aleksandar 82, 86, 90 Stalin 61, 78, 80, 81, 178 Stalingrad Sword (Sword of Volgograd) 178, 179 La Stampa (newspaper) 101 Stan za naše prilike (Housing for our Means) exhibition, Ljubljana, 1956 86, 91 Stematsky, Avigdor 23, 24 Stephens, David 200 Steubenville Pottery 41 Stile Liberty (style) 102 Stockholm International Fair, 1949-1950 82 Strachwitz, Helga von 236 Streichman, Yechezkel 23, 24 Strižić, Zdenko 81 Studio Dumbar (company) 250 Studio Museum, Harlem 199 Studio za industrijsko oblikovanje (Studio for Industrial Design, SIO) 91 Stuttgart, Die Wohnung (The Dwelling) exhibition 1927 86 Surrealism 31 Sutton, Denys 172, 175, 176, 177, 183 Svijet (The World) (periodical) 86 Sweden 174, 229 Świat (newspaper) 69 Sword of Volgograd (Stalingrad Sword) 178, 179 Sydney Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) 140 Macquarie Galleries 141 Szondi, György 230

300

INDEX

Tablet (Diocese of Brooklyn periodical) 163 Tacca, Pietro 110 Tafuri, Manfredo 106 Tagger, Siona 23 Tange, Kenzo 209 Tanka people 216 technology and machinery Italian pavilion at Expo 58 107 Small Industries Exhibition 119, 122–7 Vatican pavilion at World’s Fair 153–4, 155–6, 159, 161–3, 164 Yugoslav pavilion, Expo 58 84–5 Telakowska, Wanda 64 Tel Aviv Association of Painters and Sculptors in the Land of Israel exhibition 24 Engel House 26–7 Heichal HaTarbut (Frederick Mann Auditorium) 27 Helena Rubinstein Pavilion 27 Museum of Art 25, 27, 31 Tel Aviv Bauhaus (architectural style) 29 Tel Design (company) 249–50 Temple of Philae 231 Ten Negro Artists from the United States exhibition, 1966 194, 195 textiles as exhibits 62, 63, 64, 66, 68, 90 Thaw, Mrs. Lawrence Copley 192, 194 third way socialism 79 Thomas, Laurie 144 Time (magazine) 44 Time-Life publications 160 Tito, President 78, 80, 81, 89 Tobey, Mark 140 Toikka-Karvonen, Annikki 60, 67, 68 Tokyo, National Museum of Modern Art 141, 143 Tomaselli, Cesco 105 Tomory, Peter 135, 137, 138, 139–40, 141–2, 143–4, 147 Torre Velasca, Milan 102, 106 trade fairs, US use of 118–20 tradition, invention of 210, 220, 221 transnationalism, overview 2–3 transporting of artworks and exhibits 155–6, 235, 247, 251–2, 254

Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition, see Egypt, soft power of Treasures of Tutankhamun Trends and Confrontations exhibition 190–4 Truman, Harry S. 159 Trybuna Ludu (newspaper) 69 Turner, Matthew 212 L’Unità (newspaper) 103 United Airlines 162 United Nations 47, 160 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 22, 28, 139, 248–9 United States Advisory Committee on Art 139 Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act 123 Air Force 202 Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Act 235 cultural Cold War studies 173 Department of Commerce 120, 125 and Egypt 229 Food for Peace program 123 Foreign Agricultural Service 120 and Hong Kong 211 Information Agency (USIA) 120, 127, 140 Information Service (USIS) 137, 139, 140 International Educational Exchange Program 139 and Netherlands 249 and New Zealand 136, 137, 139–40 and Nigeria 198 Office of International Trade Fairs (OITF) 120, 125 Office of War Information 6 pavilion at Venice Biennale 26, 26 Saigon Operations Mission 48 and Sri Lanka 117–18 trade fairs, use of 118–19 Treasury 235 Tutankhamun exhibitions 231, 232, 235, 237–8, 239 and the Vatican 159 Vatican pavilion at New York World’s Fair, 1964-1965 153–65

and Vietnam (see United States’ Vietnamese craft diplomacy) Visual Arts Committee (VAC) 190–4, 196 West Coast, paintings 138, 142 World Trade Fair, New York, 1958 40, 41, 48–51, 50 World Trade Fair, San Francisco, 1964 220 United States Small Industries Exhibition, Colombo, 1961 115–28, 121, 124, 126 exhibition design and contents 121–7 Lankan-US relations 117–18 smallness as political strategy 119–20, 125–7 US use of trade fairs 118–19 United States, State Department and craft diplomacy 39, 40–3, 47, 48, 50, 51 and FESMAN 193, 198–200 International Educational Exchange Program 139 United States’ Vietnamese craft diplomacy 39–52 Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Survey Exhibition, 1956 43–8 World Trade Fair, 1958 48–51 universalism 20–1, 21–2, 32–3, 194–5 US Consultants Incorporated (firm) 48 USSR–Great Britain (exhibition) 174 Uyemura, Ken 48 Uyemura, Michiko 48 Vancouver, World Expo 1986 221 Vatican II (Second Vatican Ecumenical Council) 158, 159, 160 Vatican pavilion at New York World’s Fair, 1964-1965 153–65, 157, 162 Michelangelo’s Pieta 155–6, 161–5 pavilion design 157–8 religious context 158–61 Venice Biennale, 1948-1952, see Israel, pavilion at Venice Biennale, 1948-1952 Venturi, Robert 221 vernacular design 28–9, 60, 65–71, 97–8, 100

INDEX

301

Veronesi, Giulia 110 vetoing of exhibits 177, 178 Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) 171, 174, 175, 176, 180 Vienna International Trade Fair, 1949 82 Vietnam, see United States’ Vietnamese craft diplomacy Vjesnik (The Herald; periodical) 88 Vogel, Sabine B. 4 Vukmanović-Tempo, Svetozar 83, 85 Wakefield Art Gallery 138 Walker, John A. 245 Wallance, Don 43 Wallerstein, Immanuel 22 Walt Disney, Circarama 123–4 Washington, DC 198, 226 Weber, Emil 80 Wellington 140, 144 National Art Gallery 137, 141, 146 Westbrook, Eric 137, 138 West Germany 99, 229, 235, 236, 239 White Car (exhibit) 250 White, Charles W. 192, 193, 194 Birmingham Totem 193, 195 White, Gabriel 234 Williams, Gerald 198, 202 Williams, Todd 193 Wilson, Mabel O. 5 W. & J. Sloane (retailers) 49 Die Wohnung (The Dwelling exhibition), Stuttgart, 1927 86 Wojciechowski, Aleksander 69 women, in Yugoslavia 87 Wong Ng Ouyang & Associates (architects) 216 Woodruff, Hale 191–2, 193–4 Woods, Rip 194 World Expo, Vancouver, 1986 221 World’s Fair, Brussels, 1958, see Brussels Expo 58 (Brussels World’s Fair) World’s Fair, New York, 1964-1965 153–65, 157, 162 World’s Parliament of Religions 117 World Trade Fair, New York, 1958 40, 41, 48–51, 50

302

INDEX

World Trade Fair, San Francisco, 1964 220 Wright, Russel 40–1, 47 see also Russel Wright Associates (RWA) Wrocław, Exhibition of Regained Territories, 1948 61–2 Yankee Stadium, New York 160 Yom Kippur War 236 York & Sawyer (architectural firm) 157 Yugoslavia Council of Urbanists 89 Council of Women’s Associations 87 and Egypt 229 First Yugoslav Council on housing 91 League of Communists 91–2 pavilion at Chicago International Trade Fair, 1950 82 pavilion at 11th Milan Triennale 65, 66, 86, 91 pavilion at Stockholm International Fair, 1949-1950 82 pavilion at Vienna International Trade Fair, 1949 82 Yugoslavia, self management exhibit at Brussels Expo 58 77–92 Brussels pavilion 80–6, 82, 84 Porodica i domaćinstvo (Family and Household) exhibition 86–91, 89 Zagreb Academy of Applied Arts 81 University of 81 Zagreb Fair, 1958 78, 86 Zaritsky, Joseph 24, 25 Painting After Braque 23 Still Life with a Reproduction of Matisse 23 Zemskov, Igor N. 174–5, 176 Zevi, Bruno 99, 105, 106 Ziegler, Adolf 8 Zionism, impact on art and exhibitions 30–1, 32–3 Zukin, Sharon 79 Życie Warszawy (newspaper) 69