Despite the publication date, this is for-real.
From JSTOR Daily, April 1, 2020:
The number of MoMA-CIA crossovers is highly suspicious, to say the least.
In the mid-twentieth century, modern art and design represented the liberalism, individualism, dynamic activity, and creative risk possible in a free society. Jackson Pollock’s gestural style, for instance, drew an effective counterpoint to Nazi, and then Soviet, oppression. Modernism, in fact, became a weapon of the Cold War. Both the State Department and the CIA supported exhibitions of American art all over the world.The preeminent Cultural Cold Warrior, Thomas W. Braden, who served as MoMA’s executive secretary from 1948-1949, later joined the CIA in 1950 to supervise its cultural activities. Braden noted, in a Saturday Evening Post article titled “I’m glad the CIA is ‘immoral’” that American art “won more acclaim for the U.S. …than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have bought with a hundred speeches.”
The relationship between Modern Art and American diplomacy began during WWII, when the Museum of Modern Art was mobilized for the war effort. MoMA was founded in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. A decade later, her son Nelson Rockefeller became president of the Museum. In 1940, while he was still President of MoMA, Rockefeller was appointed the Roosevelt Administration’s Coordinator of Inter-American affairs. He also served as Roosevelt’s Assistant Secretary of State in Latin America.
The Museum followed suit. MoMA fulfilled 38 government contracts for cultural materials during the Second World War, and mounted 19 exhibitions of contemporary American painting for the Coordinator’s office, which were exhibited throughout Latin America. (This direct relationship between the avant-garde and the war effort was well suited: The term avant-garde actually began as a French military term to describe vanguard troops advancing into battle.)In the battle for “hearts and minds,” modern art was particularly effective. John Hay Whitney, both a president of MoMA and a member of the Whitney Family, which founded the Whitney Museum of American Art, explained that art stood out as a line of national defense, because it could “educate, inspire, and strengthen the hearts and wills of free men.”Whitney succeeded Rockefeller as President of the Museum of Modern Art in January 1941, so that Nelson could turn his entire attention to his Coordinator duties. Under Whitney, MoMA served as “A Weapon of National Defense.” According to a Museum press release dated February 28, 1941, MoMA would “inaugurate a new program to speed the interchange of the art and culture of this hemisphere among all the twenty-one American republics.” The goal was “Pan-Americanism.” A “Traveling Art Caravan” through Latin America “would do more to bring us together as friends than ten years of commercial and political work.”
When the War ended, Nelson Rockefeller returned to the Museum, and his Inter-American-Affairs staffers assumed responsibilities for MoMA’s international exhibition program: René d’Harnoncourt, who had headed Inter-American’s art division, became the Museum’s vice president in charge of foreign activities. Fellow staffer Porter McCray became the Director of the Museum’s International Program....
....MUCH MORE
Possibly related:
