Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art
November 13, 2011–May 14, 2012
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Diego Rivera was the subject of MoMA’s second monographic exhibition (the first was Henri Matisse), which set new attendance records in its five-week run from December 22, 1931, to January 27, 1932. MoMA brought Rivera to New York six weeks before the exhibition’s opening and gave him studio space within the Museum, a strategy intended to solve the problem of how to present the work of this famous muralist when murals were by definition made and fixed on site. Working around the clock with two assistants, Rivera produced five “portable murals”—large blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime, and wood that feature bold images drawn from Mexican subject matter and address themes of revolution and class inequity. After the opening, to great publicity, Rivera added three more murals, now taking on New York subjects through monumental images of the urban working class and the social stratification of the city during the Great Depression. All eight were on display for the rest of the show’s run. The first of these panels, Agrarian Leader Zapata, is an icon in the Museum’s collection.
This exhibition will bring together key works made for Rivera’s 1931 exhibition, presenting them at MoMA for the first time in nearly 80 years. Along with mural panels, the show will include full-scale drawings, smaller working drawings, archival materials related to the commission and production of these works, and designs for Rivera’s famous Rockefeller Center mural, which he also produced while he was working at the Museum. Focused specifically on works created during the artist’s stay in New York, this exhibition will draw a succinct portrait of Rivera as a highly cosmopolitan figure who moved between Russia, Mexico, and the United States, and will offer a fresh look at the intersection of art making and radical politics in the 1930s. MoMA will be the exhibition’s sole venue.
Organized by Leah Dickerman, Curator, Painting and Sculpture.
The exhibition is made possible in part by BBVA Bancomer, with major support provided by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA).
The Museum acknowledges generous funding from David Rockefeller, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, and The Mexican Friends of Rivera: Dr. Abraham Franklin and Gina Diez Barroso de Franklin, Roberto and Aimée Servitje, Yvonne Dadoo de Lewis and Martin Lewis, Marie Thérèse Hermand de Arango, Juan Beckmann Vidal and Doris Legorreta de Beckmann, Timothy Heyman and Malú Montes de Oca de Heyman, and Enrique Norten.
Special thanks to our hotel sponsor, Hôtel Americano, Chelsea, New York.
Additional support is provided by the Consulate General of Mexico in New York and by the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.
Support for the publication is provided by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art and by The Museum of Modern Art's Research and Scholarly Publications endowment established through the generosity of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Edward John Noble Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Perry R. Bass, and the National Endowment for the Humanities' Challenge Grant Program.
Related Events
Upcoming
Past
Diego Rivera: From Mexico to Manhattan: Rivera at Rockefeller Center
Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art, this three-part lectures series addresses the culture and politics of early-20th-century Mexico, the influence of the Mexican Revolution on Rivera, and the controversial mural Rivera was commissioned to create for Rockefeller Center.
Rivera at Rockefeller Center
Daniel Okrent, author of Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center (2003), explores one of the most notorious instances of art destruction in 20th-century America—the commission of a mural by Rivera for Rockefeller Center and its eventual removal.
Daniel Okrent's 40-year career has encompassed nearly every form of mass media. In book publishing, he was an editor at Knopf, Viking, and Harcourt. In magazines, he founded the award-winning New England Monthly and was chief editor of the monthly Life. In newspapers, he was the first public editor of The New York Times. On television, he has appeared as an expert commentator on many network shows, and he talked more than any other talking head in Ken Burns's Baseball. On film, he was featured in the documentaries Wordplay and Silly Little Game, appeared in a speaking role in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, and had what he calls "a mumbling role" in Lasse Hallstrom's The Hoax. Online, he headed Time Inc.'s internet efforts in the late 1990s, and has recently given in to the dubious charms of Facebook. But all that, he says, was preparation for what he most wanted to do: write books. His work, beginning with Nine Innings in 1985 and proceeding through the 2010 publication of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, prompted novelist Kevin Baker to write in Publishers Weekly that Okrent is "one of our most interesting and eclectic writers of nonfiction over the past 25 years." Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition was named the 2011 best book on American history by the American Historical Association. His book Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, from which he will draw for his MoMA lecture, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2004.
Diego Rivera: From Mexico to Manhattan: Rivera and Mexico
Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art, this three-part lectures series addresses the culture and politics of early-20th-century Mexico, the influence of the Mexican Revolution on Rivera, and the controversial mural Rivera was commissioned to create for Rockefeller Center.
Rivera and Mexico
Journalist and writer Elena Poniatowska discusses the social and political atmosphere in which Rivera lived and worked and how it shaped his artistic practice in Mexico and beyond.
Elena Poniatowska Amor was born in 1932 in Paris, France, of Polish and Mexican descent. She has lived in Mexico since 1942. Educated in Mexico and the United States, she began her literary career as a journalist with the daily Excelsior in 1953, and has since contributed articles, essays, and chronicles to major newspapers including Novedades, la Jornada, El Financiero, El Día, El Nacional, and The News, and for such magazines as Siempre, Revista Mexicana de Literatura, Punto, Proceso, Nexos, Vuelta, Fem, and Revista de la Universidad.
Poniatowska has lectured widely in Mexico the United States, and has made presentations at Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Paris, and Lyon. As a visiting professor she has taught at universities in Texas and Florida, as well as at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Stanford, and on the University of California campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles. In Mexico, she has been recognized with the Javier Villaumutia award, a distinction she declined, and was twice honored with the Mazatlan Award for Literature (in 1972 and 1992). She is the first woman to have received the national award for journalism (1979) and holds such distinctions in this field as the El Porvenir (1986), the Manuel Buendia (1987), and the national Juchiman awards. Her work was recongnized in Colombia with the Premio Internacional Proartes in 1997 and, in Chile that same year, with the Gavriela Mistral awards. She has been granted fellowships by the Centro Mexicana de Excritores (1957), the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (1993), and the Guggenheim foundation (1994), among others. In additon, Ms. Poniatowska is the recipient of two Doctor Honoris Causa distinctions from the universities of Sinaloa and Mexico State in Mexico, and she holds a Doctorate in Humane Letters from the New School for Social Research in New York and another from Atlantic University in Florida. Her work has been translated into English, French, Italian, German, Polish, Danish, and Dutch.
Diego Rivera: From Mexico to Manhattan: The Revolutionary Life and Times of Diego Rivera
Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art, this three-part lectures series addresses the culture and politics of early-20th-century Mexico, the influence of the Mexican Revolution on Rivera, and the controversial mural Rivera was commissioned to create for Rockefeller Center.
The Revolutionary Life and Times of Diego Rivera
Historian Alan Knight discusses Diego Rivera within his historical context, both in Mexico and as an international figure. Special attention will be paid to examining how the constructive, post-1920 phase of the Mexican Revolution, with its emphasis on state-building and social reform, created opportunities for Rivera and his fellow muralists, especially as the infant revolutionary regime sought political legitimacy by means of public didactic art. This discussion charts the fruitful—though frequently contentious—relationship that ensued, as Rivera tackled the major themes of the revolutionary project: land and labor reform, anticlericalism, nationalism, and indigenismo (the official valorization of Mexico's Indian history and culture). In addition, Knight considers Rivera's key role in the evolving relationship between revolutionary Mexico and the United States.
Alan Knight is Professor of the History of Latin America at Oxford University, where he is a Fellow of St Antony's College and former director of the Latin American Centre. He previously held posts at the University of Essex, UK, and the University of Texas at Austin. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Leverhulme Research Reader, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His research focuses on modern Mexico, and his publications include The Mexican Revolution (2 vols., 1986), which won the Beveridge and Bolton prizes of the American Historical Association; and Mexico: From the Beginning to the Spanish Conquest and Mexico: The Colonial Era (2002), two volumes in a proposed trilogy. He has also co-edited books on the Mexican oil industry, Mexican boss politics, and superstition in history, and he has published articles dealing with diverse aspects of Latin America, both past and present. He is currently working on a history of Mexico in the 1930s.
Diego Rivera. Agrarian Leader Zapata. 1931. Fresco, 7' 9 3/4" x 6' 2" (238.1 x 188 cm). The Museum of Modern Art. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund
Related Publications
Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art
Leah Dickerman and Anna Indych-López
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MoMA courses offer adults the rare opportunity to study modern and contemporary art with leading art specialists during and after public hours in the Museum's galleries and multimedia classrooms.
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