David Rockefeller, Jr.: While in Moscow, Rivera met Jere Abbott and Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Barr would soon become the founding director of The Museum of Modern Art, and Abbott the Museum’s first associate director.
At the time of their meeting, however, the Museum was not yet established.
Curator, Leah Dickerman: Barr and Abbott were two kids, really, not long out of college, who were making a grand tour of Europe to study the latest tendencies in contemporary art.
And Barr in particular was keen to meet Rivera when he heard that he was in Moscow. He knew of his reputation as a muralist and he made an effort to track him down.
There's a series of events that are reported in Abbott and Barr’s diaries about going to the movies with Rivera and looking at exhibitions with Rivera.
That's one of the greatest ironies of this trip to Moscow.
Here Rivera is, an official of the Mexican Communist Party, important enough to be on the Lenin Mausoleum podium, and at the same time he’s hanging out with these two post-college kids with ambitions to found a museum.
And it's clear that the trip had an impact. Within the first year after the Museum’s founding, Barr and Abbott offered a one-man exhibition to Diego Rivera.