{"title":"Brancusi, Romania and the United States: a love story in the summer of ’69","authors":"J. Vernon","doi":"10.3828/sj.2022.31.2.05","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nBetween 1969 and 1970, the first international retrospective devoted to Constantin Brancusi was hosted by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and Gemeentemuseum den Haag. In 1970 the first retrospective of Brancusi’s work in his native Romania was held at Muzeul de Artă R.S.R., Bucharest. This article establishes for the first time that these exhibitions were part of a single project, facilitated by an unprecedented exchange of loans between American museums and the institutions of a socialist republic. Based on extensive archival research, the article details the conflicting interests of the scholars, curators and state officials involved in the project, the geopolitical moment that made it possible, and the ideological contest over the meanings and values represented by Brancusi’s sculpture that lay at its very core. In particular, it brings to light the compromised position occupied by the exhibition’s curator, the American Brancusi scholar Sidney Geist, and the research he conducted in Romania in the mid-1960s; the diplomatic efforts of the Guggenheim’s director Thomas M. Messer, working in concert with members of the US State Department; and the peculiar status of Brancusi as a cultural figure under Nicolae Ceauşescu.","PeriodicalId":21666,"journal":{"name":"Sculpture Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sculpture Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2022.31.2.05","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Between 1969 and 1970, the first international retrospective devoted to Constantin Brancusi was hosted by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and Gemeentemuseum den Haag. In 1970 the first retrospective of Brancusi’s work in his native Romania was held at Muzeul de Artă R.S.R., Bucharest. This article establishes for the first time that these exhibitions were part of a single project, facilitated by an unprecedented exchange of loans between American museums and the institutions of a socialist republic. Based on extensive archival research, the article details the conflicting interests of the scholars, curators and state officials involved in the project, the geopolitical moment that made it possible, and the ideological contest over the meanings and values represented by Brancusi’s sculpture that lay at its very core. In particular, it brings to light the compromised position occupied by the exhibition’s curator, the American Brancusi scholar Sidney Geist, and the research he conducted in Romania in the mid-1960s; the diplomatic efforts of the Guggenheim’s director Thomas M. Messer, working in concert with members of the US State Department; and the peculiar status of Brancusi as a cultural figure under Nicolae Ceauşescu.
1969年至1970年间,纽约所罗门·R·古根海姆博物馆、费城艺术博物馆、芝加哥艺术学院和哈格美术馆举办了第一届康斯坦丁·布兰库西国际回顾展。1970年,Brancusi在其祖国罗马尼亚的第一次作品回顾展在布加勒斯特的Muzeul de ArtăR.s.R.举行。这篇文章首次证明,这些展览是一个单一项目的一部分,这得益于美国博物馆和社会主义共和国机构之间前所未有的贷款交换。基于广泛的档案研究,这篇文章详细描述了参与该项目的学者、策展人和国家官员之间的利益冲突,使其成为可能的地缘政治时刻,以及围绕布兰库西雕塑所代表的意义和价值观的意识形态之争。特别是,它揭示了展览策展人、美国布兰库西学者西德尼·盖斯特所占据的妥协立场,以及他20世纪60年代中期在罗马尼亚进行的研究;古根海姆博物馆馆长托马斯·M·梅塞尔与美国国务院成员合作的外交努力;以及布兰库西作为尼古拉·齐奥塞斯库领导下的文化人物的特殊地位。