III.3.4 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1059380
On March 21, 1943, at the request of the Instituto Cultural Peruano-Norteamericano, José Sabogal spoke on Radio Nacional in Lima about his impressions of a recent trip he had taken to the United States. At that time, he was director of that city’s Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes and had been invited to the United States by the Bureau of Cultural Affairs of the Department of State as part of a cultural promotion program instituted during World War II. Always a consummate diplomat, Sabogal politically praises the countless feats of engineering and the public works system in the United States, as well as U.S. efforts to organize the display and collection of the cultural patrimony of other nations. [SEE DOCUMENT III.4.9 FOR A 1946 CHECKLIST OF TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS OF LATIN AMERICAN ART AVAILABLE THROUGH THE INTER-AMERICAN OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C.]. The radio broadcast ends with Sabogal calling for the United States to establish a pre-Columbian and Native art museum to house treasures from across the Americas, noting that many such treasures were already in the possession of major U.S. museums. He also addresses the possibility that the Instituto Cultural Peruano-Norteamericano, where he presented this address, pursue the establishment of laboratories and a library in order to become a center for [Latin] American studies and research. This transcription of “Impresiones de mi visita a Estados Unidos de Norteamérica” is included in Obras literarias completas [José Sabogal (Lima: Ignacio Prado Pastor Editor, 1989), 426–28].
AFTER JUST SEVENTY-TWO DAYS in this gigantic country filled with populous cities, traveling enormous distances by railway without command of the English language, my visual impressions—that is to say those having to do with the arts realm—have intensified. Perhaps my need to see everything has replaced, in part at least, that great bond of direct language that is the psychological nuance of man. At last [my experience] was like that of the ancient civilizations whose language we ignore in favor of the remains they have left us, given that the visual arts are the most exalted language of all; in this great nation of the United States where the construction work is tremendous, I had a vast expanse to observe and critique. My geographical sense of the continent has grown during this trip. Now I possess a more complete appreciation of the nature of our America: from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the North to South; the plentiful rivers, the immense summits, the lakes as big as seas, the mirror of Lake Titicaca. The briny mirror of the Great Salt Lake; the abundant foliage created by nature and the foliage carved out by man’s powerful will. And on this stage of the New World, I have seen, in their own setting, the original native peoples and the men of the modern era: the Hispanic-Saxons.
My mental panorama of America has made me appreciate the greatness of the artworks of all eras. In the epoch of ancient civilizations, the pre-Colombian cultural triangle of the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas stands out. In the era of Mediterranean culture, the Hispanic creative spirit has left its mark from California to the River Plate region, with works so energetic that we, their descendents, have yet to surpass them. And in these modern times, it is the men of the North that raise a continent of cities linked by highways of iron and networks of magnificent roads. From this vigorous constructive effort, begun so powerfully in the past century, the expressive works born of the technique and functional North American spirit become as bridges for my understanding. Each stage in the perfection of the United States’ technique has been marked by [the construction of] an enormous bridge. The final years of the nineteenth century were marked by the Queensboro, Williamsburg, and Brooklyn bridges in New York. Their style was typical of the nineteenth century, both ornate and monumental. The last bridge over the East Hudson River—the Washington Bridge—is very much of the twentieth century; its steel sings the glory of its beautiful mathematical lines and of the people who have mastered [the use of] metals. And then there is the Bridge of Gold, the Golden Gate [located in] beautiful San Francisco Bay; the largest in the world, it was inaugurated with a magnificent art exhibition linked quite logically to the artistic vision of the great work itself and to engineering, which in the end also becomes art. . . .
I must say that museums are responsible for having preserved the great works of the world, the art of all eras and of all parts of the globe. This thought leapt to my mind when I considered the destruction, which is every day more intense, of the cultural centers of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Egypt and its fantastic art—were Cairo to be destroyed the best examples of Egyptian art could still be found in Boston, Chicago, New York, and other places in the American Union, and thus they would be saved from the cataclysm of war. The United States has been systematically collecting examples of world art, [perhaps due] to the organizational bent of the North Americans, and many private and national collections have found refuge in the museums of this nation. Thus it is a given that in the National Gallery of Washington you will see the best of this century’s modern French art—still the property of France although under the care of this great museum. The architecture of the U.S. museums is without a doubt the best in the world, and these great centers of art radiate an extraordinary cultural dynamism. The citizens visit these [museums], and the works travel; they are engaged with works of art in architecture, painting, sculpture, engraving, as well as music. The North American man responds deeply and cooperatively to the work of cultural education; faithful attendance is the best form of collaboration for a laborer, while a man of fortune should donate money, art collections, and even fund museum buildings worth millions.
In all the museums I have visited, I have admired the “Native American” art section, [in particular] the energetic wood sculptures of Alaska and the diverse creations of the Pueblo, Navajo, and Arizonan Indians, as well as those of other [tribes] that preserve their authentic cultures in the United States. [I have also appreciated] works by the Toltecs, Aztecs, Tarascos, and the Mayans as well as marvelous Incan and Parakan cloths, and the refined artistic ceramics of my own ancient native Peruvian culture. These are my impressions of art in the United States. . . .
I would like to take advantage of this opportunity that was so kindly offered to me to insist upon an initiative suggested to me by the magnificent trove of continental art in the United States. It was in this country that I came to the idea of gathering together all the art of the ancient native peoples in America into one museum that would be especially constructed for it. I should like to see contemporary artists from all the nations of the Americas collaborate on the museum; that in this grand building there should be laboratories, a library, and whatever else is needed to make it a potent center for American studies. And in light of our mutual recognition of this nascent movement toward the spiritual integration of America, I believe that a memorial to the ancient art of the hemisphere should be erected, and I likewise believe that it should be in the United States because of its valuable art collections of the ancient indigenous cultures, as well as for its energetic constructive spirit and for its powerful economic capacity. . . .
Another civilization, [one comprised of] Hispanic men of Mediterranean temperament, interposed itself, and after three centuries, [those men] at last became today’s modern Americans. Our modern art did not begin yesterday with only the individual works of four Peruvian painters of the nineteenth century who were linked to the workshops of Paris and Rome. In my understanding, our modern art begins with the era initiated in [the Battle of] Cajamarca in 1533 [which marked the end of the Incan Empire]. And the works of architecture, sculpture, painting, and of civil and religious themes are rich and varied, and [they reflect the] interesting process of our evolution. What is missing is our Comprehensive Museum, the one that will contain the artworks of all the ancient native peoples, [as well as] the work of the Mediterranean and of the contemporary era. . . .
That spirit of affirmation and confidence in the future is the spirit that is felt in this great country I have just visited.