III.4.3 – 4.5

LATIN AMERICAN EXHIBITION OF FINE ARTS, 1940


These three texts are excerpted from the catalogue of one of the earliest Latin American art exhibitions held in the United States, at the Riverside Museum in New York City (July 23–October 20, 1940), and sponsored by the New York World’s Fair Commission. An autograph by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)—thirty-second president of the United States—supporting efforts promoting “mutual understanding of the Americas” opens the exhibition catalogue, followed by an introduction by Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965) and a foreword by Leo Stanton Rowe (1871–1946), the directors of the 1939 New York World’s Fair and the Pan American Union, respectively. The exhibition was part of the U.S. government’s program to promote cultural exchange and to maintain influence in Latin America during World War II, as well as to perpetuate the idea of Latin America and the United States as part of the same, distinctive, and exemplary Pan American culture. However, the results of such exchanges, as exemplified by this exhibition catalogue [Latin American Exhibition of Fine Arts. July 23–October 20. Brazil. Ecuador. Mexico. Venezuela (New York: Riverside Museum, 1940)], often stressed the picturesque or folkloric aspects of Latin America and featured officially sanctioned artists, such as Candido Portinari of Brazil, or those from favored countries like Mexico and Venezuela with which the United States had the strongest economic and political ties.