PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Kathleen Berrin spent forty years as curator of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. During that time she developed national diplomacy exhibitions with Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, and Australia and curated over forty non-Western art exhibitions in which she has collaborated with major museums including the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. In 1986 she received a metal from the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia of the Government of Mexico for the return of Teotihuacan murals as well as the Peruvian Order of Merit for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts in 1988. She received a PhD in history at the University of California, Irvine, and is now a curator emeritus, an educator, and a cultural historian.
While so much has been written about the use of art in America’s ‘soft power’ arsenal after World War II, Kathleen Berrin’s study nevertheless breaks important new ground. Beginning with her focus on the pre-World War II period, the essential roles played by museum directors, curators, and donors, and the careful analysis of foreign art brought to the United States for display, Berrin significantly expands both the breadth and depth of our understanding of cultural diplomacy. This is an important and insightful work. -- Michael L. Krenn, professor of history, Appalachian State University, author of Fall-Out Shelters for the Human Spirit: American Art and the Cold War Exhibiting the Foreign demonstrates that art - and art exhibitions - matter. And not only in some vaguely humanistic sense but in their role they have played in America's foreign relations and soft-diplomacy. Kathleen Berrin spent a career working inside museums and she knows whereof she writes. Berrin is correct that this topic has been overlooked by scholars, and once you're finished with this book you will wonder how this important topic had been hiding in plain sight for so long. -- Steven Conn, W.E. Smith Professor of History, Miami University, author of Do Museums Still Need Objects American foreign policy in the Cold War played out on many more stages than traditional diplomacy. Kathleen Berrin’s fascinating and important book probes an often forgotten one: how American museums exhibited the art of other nations and in the process transformed themselves from marginal institutions to powerhouses of international cultural politics, often with the direct support of the U.S. government. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about art, museums, and American foreign relations. -- Lizabeth Cohen, author of Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age
Rogues' Gallery
The Rise (and Occasional Fall) of...
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