Making Art Panamerican: Cultural Policy and the Cold War by Claire F. Fox (review)

In Making Art Panamerican, Claire F. Fox argues that from the mid-1930s through the early 1970s, we can trace significant changes in PanAmerican aesthetic perspectives and hemispheric geopolitics by examining Cold War cultural diplomacy. Throughout the text Fox highlights the complexity of the conversation with Cold War aesthetics with the particular backdrop of Mexican muralism. She also references the homogeneity of corporate and national interest in hemispheric security and identity with actions that initially minimized fascism and eventually minimized communism. Fox is highly successful in describing the relationships and conflicts between various individuals and institutions in the visual art world. She traces changes in aesthetic movements through interactions between the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the birth of the Pan American Union visual arts division (PAU). She details the relationships between key stakeholders like Alfred Barr Jr. (MoMA), Gómez Sicre (Cuban artist and PAU director), and Nelson Rockefeller (politician, corporate leader, art enthusiast).

While the microcosm of these institutions is described with care, the larger world of Cold War politics is sometimes lost. At points, Fox is successful in putting the high art world in larger political context. For instance, she nicely describes the impact of both the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare on artists involved in the PAU. She convincingly explains that some artists, particularly Gómez Sicre, were impacted more by the Lavender Scare than the overarching fear of communism. While the artists’ political ideologies and identities were acceptable within the U.S. containment, their gender identities were not. While this discussion broached broader U.S. political and cultural policy, discussion of U.S. racial policy was omitted from much of the analysis. Including it would have enriched the readers’ understanding. During the early to mid-twentieth century, racial civil rights were clearly on the forefront of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. While Fox includes discussion of imperialism, ideology and geopolitics, contemporary U.S. racial policy and ensuing Cold War negotiations also needed to be addressed. This omission is clear especially in contrast to the most successful chapter in the monograph which does contain these topics.

In the last chapter, Fox analyzes the significance of the 1968 HemisFair held in San Antonio, Texas. While the event designers started with intent to focus on high art, because of negotiations around the policies of race, culture, ideology and economics, the HemisFair ends up including a variety of artistic expressions. The discussion presents an analysis of aesthetic and political interests from a variety of perspectives and traces how aesthetic movements and national identities were influenced and eventually presented to an international audience. It was an excellent analysis to complete the study.

Making Art Panamerican is a thoroughly researched study of important institutions in the high art world during the Cold War. It brings together themes of Cold War aesthetics and a PanAmerican identity that clearly need exploration. It is recommended reading for specialists in cultural diplomacy, Latin American Studies and art history.