Art Interrupted

In 1946, J. LeRoy Davidson began assembling a collection of contemporary American paintings for a project known as Advancing American Art to show the world what his countrymen could do in modern art. By 1948, those works had been auctioned off to buyers across the nation and Davidson forced to resign, his position abolished and the entire project a laughingstock in the media. "Art Interrupted: Advancing American Art and the Politics of Cultural Diplomacy" reunites nearly all of the paintings Davidson purchased, recreating his original proposed exhibition and investigating the U.S. State Department's use of fine art as a valuable tool in the Cold War. Organized by the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma and supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Henry Luce Foundation, this exhibition draws from the permanent collections of ten museums, private collectors and other public institutions and includes all but ten images from Advancing American Art.

Essays by Scott Bishop, Robert Ekelund, Danielle Mohr Funderburk, Dennis Harper, J. Andrew Henley, Jessica Hughes, Marilyn Laufer, Paul Manoguerra, Daniel Scott Neil, Heather Read, Sunny Stalter Pace and Mark Andrew White.

Publishing Date: July 2012

280 pages; (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0915977789