An Interview with Jack Masey [5 minutes 58 seconds]
Randolph Bell, of Floating Films, created a video exclusively for WSJ. magazine chronicling the American Exposition and the Moscow Kitchen Debates.
This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, a golden moment in Cold War one-upsmanship and cultural thaw. Most people know about the so-called “Kitchen Debate,” the heated exchange between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that took place in a model kitchen on the opening day of the fair. But most don’t have a clue of where or why it happened.
The exhibition ran from July 25 to September 4 in Moscow’s Sokolniki Park and it was packed every day with more than 50,000 wide-eyed Russian citizens. Jack Masey of the USIA was in charge of design and construction and it was Masey who brought in some of America’s most radical and avant-garde talents, including Buckminster Fuller, who designed a soaring geodesic dome that stood as a kind of ceremonial gateway and logo to the fair. (It was a 200-foot Kaiser aluminum dome with a gold anodized surface.) Masey, who had a good deal of experience organizing international trade fairs, managed to quietly work around the more conservative idealogues within the Eisenhower administration who would have preferred tributes to Abraham Lincoln and John Deere tractors...
Read entire article at The Wall Street Journal
This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, a golden moment in Cold War one-upsmanship and cultural thaw. Most people know about the so-called “Kitchen Debate,” the heated exchange between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that took place in a model kitchen on the opening day of the fair. But most don’t have a clue of where or why it happened.
The exhibition ran from July 25 to September 4 in Moscow’s Sokolniki Park and it was packed every day with more than 50,000 wide-eyed Russian citizens. Jack Masey of the USIA was in charge of design and construction and it was Masey who brought in some of America’s most radical and avant-garde talents, including Buckminster Fuller, who designed a soaring geodesic dome that stood as a kind of ceremonial gateway and logo to the fair. (It was a 200-foot Kaiser aluminum dome with a gold anodized surface.) Masey, who had a good deal of experience organizing international trade fairs, managed to quietly work around the more conservative idealogues within the Eisenhower administration who would have preferred tributes to Abraham Lincoln and John Deere tractors...