CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Steler, Thais Olmos |
|---|---|
| Title | A New Museum for a New Order: The Political Foundations of the Museum of Modern Art of Sao Paulo |
| Summary | This research has as its primary object of study the initiatives promoted by Nelson A. Rockefeller (1908 - 1979) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York to encourage the creation of the Museo de Arte Moderna in São Paulo (MAM-SP), Brazil, and the way in which geopolitical interests played a role in the formation of MAM-SP’s collection. It discusses the period from 1943, when Lincoln Kirstein, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), traveled to Latin America to acquire art and enrich MoMA’s collection of art from the region, to 1949, when MAM-SP opened; this includes Rockefeller’s visit to São Paulo in 1946 and his donation of fourteen artworks that were safeguarded until the opening of the Museum. This brief period was one in which intense international interest was focused on the region; its starting point, 1943, marks the point at which Brazil joined the Allies in World War II; Rockefeller’s visit to the country in 1946 heralded the postwar interest in sustaining this alliance, and the period culminates with the founding of the Museum, in 1948, which opened in 1949 with a symbolic exhibition of abstract art, signalling the aesthetic debates and struggle for influence that continued to resonate during the Cold War period. Chapter One discusses Lincoln Kirstein’s visit to Latin America in 1942, when MoMA sent him to acquire work from the region for their collection. It identifies and describes what motivated Kirstein’s purchases, the aesthetic qualities that were privileged, and how the international scenario influenced his curatorial choices. Chapter Two focuses on the opposite trajectory; in 1946, Rockefeller donated work by European emigré artists and younger US artists to Latin America to support the creation of private modern art museums in Brazil. The analysis of the aesthetic qualities of this group of artworks reveals the values they represented, allowing us to examine to what extent a cultural and political agenda defined the prevailing aesthetic preferences of this donation and, ultimately, the collection. The research concludes by assessing the role that Rockefeller’s donation, the values that modernist art itself represented and its hosting at both MAM-SP played in both promoting American values of cultural pluralism and democracy and preparing the ground in Brazil to incentivize a modernist cultural landscape that would flourish from 1951 onwards with the São Paulo Bienal. |
| Supervisor | Macrea-Toma, Ioana |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/steler_thais.pdf |
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