Alastair Gordon: The American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959
[Alastair Gordon is a contributing editor for WSJ magazine.]
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.
George Nelson was invited to design the overall exhibition including the so-called “jungle gym,” an ingenious gridlike structure that served as a sprawling armature for all of the various products on display from high art to children’s toys and lady’s undergarments. (Plastic Tupperware bowls were given out as gifts—these were especially prized by Russian visitors to the fair.) It was all considered a soft but very real threat to Soviet security and was, in some ways, more dangerous than all those intercontinental missiles pointed at Moscow as the exhibition expressed the crazy variety, abundance and exuberance of the modern American marketplace. The fair was said to have been infiltrated by hundreds of KGB agents who were there to contain the brainwashing effects of American-style capitalism. (Many arrests were made for trumped-up and insignificant reasons.) Nelson also designed several freestanding clusters of fiber-glass parasols that served as protective canopies for a number of displays, including the daily fashion show that was particularly mobbed as young American volunteers paraded along the platforms modeling the latest sportswear fashions. There was also a beauty pavilion in which Russian women were able to get their hair, manicures and makeup done by Helena Rubenstein specialists. Rubenstein herself was on hand to show how to put it all together.
An exhibition of new American painting created a great deal of friction and not just among Soviet critics who felt the work was appalling. There were ruffled feathers within the U.S. State Department among those who felt that America was being misrepresented by the paint splatters and colorful smears of Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Philip Guston. They would have preferred Norman Rockwell’s depictions of wholesome American values...
Related video: Randolph Bell, of Floating Films, created a video exclusively for WSJ. magazine chronicling the American Exposition and the Moscow Kitchen Debates.
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.
George Nelson was invited to design the overall exhibition including the so-called “jungle gym,” an ingenious gridlike structure that served as a sprawling armature for all of the various products on display from high art to children’s toys and lady’s undergarments. (Plastic Tupperware bowls were given out as gifts—these were especially prized by Russian visitors to the fair.) It was all considered a soft but very real threat to Soviet security and was, in some ways, more dangerous than all those intercontinental missiles pointed at Moscow as the exhibition expressed the crazy variety, abundance and exuberance of the modern American marketplace. The fair was said to have been infiltrated by hundreds of KGB agents who were there to contain the brainwashing effects of American-style capitalism. (Many arrests were made for trumped-up and insignificant reasons.) Nelson also designed several freestanding clusters of fiber-glass parasols that served as protective canopies for a number of displays, including the daily fashion show that was particularly mobbed as young American volunteers paraded along the platforms modeling the latest sportswear fashions. There was also a beauty pavilion in which Russian women were able to get their hair, manicures and makeup done by Helena Rubenstein specialists. Rubenstein herself was on hand to show how to put it all together.
An exhibition of new American painting created a great deal of friction and not just among Soviet critics who felt the work was appalling. There were ruffled feathers within the U.S. State Department among those who felt that America was being misrepresented by the paint splatters and colorful smears of Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Philip Guston. They would have preferred Norman Rockwell’s depictions of wholesome American values...
Related video: Randolph Bell, of Floating Films, created a video exclusively for WSJ. magazine chronicling the American Exposition and the Moscow Kitchen Debates.