Arte Panamericano (Panamerican Art)

First, in a series of peace palaces built in the early 20th century, the Pan American Union began with a cultural diplomatic mission, and after World War II, its Visual Arts Section gained it leadership in the burgeoning hemispheric arts scene, proclaiming Latin America’s entry into the international community by forging connections between a growing group of middle-class art consumers on the one hand, and the concepts of citizenship and supranational political and economic liberalism on the other. Arte Panamericano (Panamerican Art) places the UPA‘s ambitious visual arts programs within the broader cultural context of hemispheric relations during the Cold War. Focusing on the institutional interactions between aesthetic movements, cultural policies, and public exhibition, Claire F. Fox argues that in the post-war years, the UPA‘s Visual Arts Section emerged as an important transfer point for hemispheric modernist movements and played a significant role in the consolidation of Latin American art as a continental object of study. In tracing the individual careers of cultural politicians and artists who crossed paths with the UPA during the first two postwar decades, such as Concha Romero James, Charles Seeger, José Gómez Sicre, José Luis Cuevas and Rafael Squirru, the book also records the trajectories and movements of sectors of the American and Latin American intellectual left during the interval between the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the New Deal and the beginning of the Cold War.