III.4.6 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 838005
Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (1902–1981), founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), wrote this foreword to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition The Latin-American Collection of the Museum of Modern Art [(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1943), 3–4]. The catalogue was organized by Lincoln Kirstein, at that time MoMA’s consultant for Latin American art. Barr had spent the summer of 1942 traveling throughout South America, and Kirstein, in turn, had traveled to Mexico and Cuba during that same period. Both intellectuals sought artworks to augment MoMA’s holdings in the art of the region. Although Barr was aware of the museum’s main political motivation for expanding its encyclopedic collection of modern art, in his text he focuses primarily on how the acquisition of approximately two hundred Latin American works changed the character of the museum’s collection as a whole. According to Barr, such accessions not only signaled a new curatorial direction for the museum, but also generated excitement for the collection that he was entrusted to shape.
Thanks to the Second World War and to certain men of good will throughout our Western Hemisphere, we are dropping those blinders in cultural understanding which have kept the eyes of all the American republics fixed on Europe with scarcely a side glance at each other during the past century and a half.
In the field of art we are beginning to look each other full in the face with interest and some comprehension. As evidence of progress we believe this volume has a certain value—indeed a double value. First of all this is a record of the most important collection of contemporary Latin-American art in the United States, or for that matter in the world (including our sister republics to the south). As such it is a supplement to the catalog, Painting and Sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art (1942), which is devoted for the most part to the art of Europe and the United States. And, secondly, Lincoln Kirstein’s essay on the following sixteen pages may well be the first publication in English of a survey of the pictorial arts of Latin America during the previous three centuries, considered as a whole, and with frequent reference to our own art—a subject so vast, so complex and so unexplored that his short piece takes on the character of a pioneer venture. In this historical introduction Mr. Kirstein’s courage is admirable, but braver still are his brief summaries of the contemporary art of the modern republics; for though the period is shorter, the matter is even harder to condense—and the artists are alive. In any case it should be made clear that this book has been written and this collection assembled with full knowledge that both are tentative and incomplete.
The Museum’s interest in the Latin American field, although it has recently been intensified, began a dozen years ago with the Diego Rivera one-man show in 1931. This was followed by the exhibitions of Inca, Maya and Aztec art in 1933; Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art; Portinari of Brazil; and festivals of Mexican and Brazilian music, all in 1940; the Industrial Design Competition for the 21 American Republics, 1941; the results shown in the Organic Design exhibition, 1942; the United Hemisphere Poster Competition, 1942; and Brazil Builds, 1943. Each was accompanied by a more or less elaborate publication and most of them were sent on tour.
Exhibitions, concerts and competitions are, however, transitory, leaving only a memory—and a catalog or program. Aware of this, the Museum has been at work upon a less conspicuous but more permanent undertaking—the acquisition of a collection.
The Museum’s Latin American collection was begun in 1935 with Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s gift of [José Clemente] Orozco’s Subway, followed a year later by two large Riveras. In 1937 a trustee anonymously gave a remarkable group of four Orozcos, including the famous Zapatistas; and the same year Dr. Gregory Zilboorg presented the first of the Museum’s paintings by [David Alfaro] Siqueiros, a series to which Lieutenant Edward M. M. Warburg and the Estate of George Gershwin have also contributed.
Over a hundred drawings, watercolors and prints by Rivera and Orozco, the gift of Mrs. Rockefeller, increased the collection of Mexico’s “big three” which was further and greatly augmented in 1940 by the acquisition of Rivera’s Zapata, Siqueiros’ Ethnography and Orozco’s Dive Bomber, which the Museum commissioned. Other Mexican works were given by Major Merle Armitage, T. Catesby Jones and the Museum’s Advisory Committee.
The South American collection began in 1939 with the purchase of one of the best paintings by the Brazilian, [Candido] Portinari, whose government has recently given the Museum his large mural decoration, St. John’s Day. The most important sculpture in the collection is also Brazilian: Maria [Martin’s] Christ, the gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller. Leigh Athearn gave the first Bolivian painting and from the Cuban National Commission for Intellectual Cooperation came the first Cuban acquisition. Thus by the end of 1941 the Museum had some 70 Latin American works, a third of them prints, but by only 11 artists in four countries. Four artists were, however, of great importance and were magnificently represented: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros and Portinari.
In 1942 the collection was greatly expanded through a timely gift to the Museum of a considerable sum of money for purchases. With vision as well as generosity the anonymous donor of the Inter-American Fund stipulated that the money should be spent for works of interest or quality, quietly and without involvement in official complication or compromise. To make purchases under the terms of the Inter-American Fund Lincoln Kirstein went to South America in the winter and to Mexico and Cuba during that summer.
To detail these purchases here would be to anticipate the greater part of the catalog, but to give a brief idea of their importance it may be said that they include almost all the large group of Argentine works, all the Brazilian collection except the Portinaris; the Chilean, Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Colombian groups; more than half of the Uruguayan and Cuban sections and a large proportion of the work by the younger generation of Mexican artists. Thanks to the Inter-American Fund nearly 200 works of art have been added to the Museum Collection: 58 paintings and watercolors, 17 drawings, 3 pieces of sculpture, 6 prints and many posters.
Partly as a result of the stimulating effect of the Inter–American Fund, other donors have added a number of important gifts. The Honorable and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss have given one of the few pictures in this country by the Uruguayan master, Pedro Figari; and from Dr. Fresnedo Siri of Montevideo has come a painting by [Joaquín] Torres-García, another important Uruguayan. At the cogent suggestion of Señora Maria Luisa Gómez Mena of Havana, the distinguished surgeon, Dr. Ramírez Corría, most generously presented the Museum with paintings by two of the best Cuban artists, Ponce de León and Carlos Enríquez. Lieutenant Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr., has made it possible to purchase a number of excellent paintings, drawings and photographs by the younger Mexican artists, and Mrs. Edgar J. Kaufmann and Mr. Samuel A. Lewisohn have given additional works in the same category.
These recent purchases and gifts bring the Latin American collection to the following totals: Frescoes, 3; Oil paintings, 69; Watercolors, 31; Drawings, 35; Prints (signed proofs), 94; Posters and Broadsides, 49; Sculptures, 4; Photographs, 9; with a grand total of 293.
Even with these considerable numbers the collection must be considered incomplete. Unexpected exigencies of travel, caused by the War, prevented visits to many countries. Indeed, of the twenty other American republics ten are not yet represented at all and only one, Mexico, is shown at full length. In general there is too little sculpture—only one major piece and three heads—a lack to be explained in part by serious difficulties in transportation. Mr. Kirstein recommends the eventual acquisition of pieces by such sculptors as [José] Fioravanti of Argentina, Bruno Giorgi of Brazil, Ortiz Monasterio of Mexico. Photography is also inadequately represented. And among paintings Mr. Kirstein regrets particularly the absence of important compositions by certain of the Argentine masters; a major work by the Brazilian, [Lasar] Segall; and another painting by Figari.
Limitations of time, accessibility and funds have created certain regrettable omissions both of countries and of artists, but as it stands the Latin American division of the Museum Collection is rather more complete than the European—for the Museum now owns more Chilean paintings than British, more Brazilian than Italian; and if certain Latin American countries are not yet represented this is also true of important European countries.
However, the Museum Collection is not static but a dynamic affair, continually changing. Errors of omission will be repaired: errors of inclusion will be eliminated. To this field of friendly competition, to this company of living works of art, the Museum welcomes the new arrivals from the other American republics.
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