“An important work that offers a compelling narrative charting the deployment of art within the framework of U.S. and South American relations during an intense historical moment whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.”—Alejandro Anreus, author of Luis Cruz Azaceta
“A comprehensive study about how and why U.S. agencies and institutions launched programs involving Latin American visual art, cinema, design, graphic art, and crafts during the World War II era. Herrera demonstrates how these interventions shaped future presentations of Latin American art in the United States, as well as broad currents of U.S.-based international exchange in the visual arts, for decades to come.”—Claire F. Fox, author of Making Art Panamerican: Cultural Policy and the Cold War
This book tells the little-known story of how the United States used modern art as a cultural defense strategy in South America during World War II. Organized by Nelson A. Rockefeller, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs supported traveling exhibitions of American paintings, furniture and poster design competitions for artists across both hemispheres, widespread distribution of films with South American themes, and circulation of Latin American art within the United States. These exchanges of art and ideas were meant to counter negative views of U.S. culture spread by Nazi and totalitarian sympathizers. Olga Herrera shows how the program was an unprecedented public-private model of support for the arts, a driving force in the emergence of a Latin American art market in the United States, and a foundation for global art networks still in place today.
A volume in the series Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
