Safe Passage

The Museum of Modern Art’s first director, Alfred H. Barr Jr., spent his summer months in the 1930s traveling around Europe, planning exhibitions for the year ahead. Barr went on these research trips, which he called “campaigns,” with his wife, art historian Margaret “Marga” Scolari Barr. She was his sole translator of French, German, and Italian, and interpreted all of his communications with artists, collectors, and dealers. By the end of the decade, with the rise of Fascism, many people they met during these summer trips would be exiles, and the Museum, under the efforts of Marga Barr, would play a central role in getting them to safety.

During their 1933 European campaign, the Barrs witnessed the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German Chancellor. Seeing firsthand the sweeping anti-Semitic policies that directly victimized many of the artists he admired, and the censorship of modern paintings, Alfred wanted to make the American public aware of what was happening abroad. He was so disturbed that he penned nine articles under the title “Hitler and the Nine Muses,” describing the immediate threat faced by artists and intellectuals. Though he was certain that the press would immediately publish his work, he received countless rejections and struggled to get the word out. In a 1974 interview with Marga, she stated, “Nobody would believe that Hitler was the kind of person that he ultimately turned out to be. Nobody would believe it. Nobody would believe the content of what Alfred wrote.”[1]

The centuries-spanning scope of Fantastic Art made an ambitious argument for the contemporary work it introduced. Though it opened to much controversy, the exhibition (and MoMA’s acquisition of works from the show) was vital in legitimizing the featured artists and would ultimately save many of their lives. After the fall of Paris to the Germans in June 1940, the Museum began to receive numerous pleas from these artists for help in fleeing to the US. Looking back to this time, Marga commented that “Alfred and the Museum were the only American people of any kind of caliber that they knew. They didn’t have connections with collectors…. It just had to be the Museum and nobody else.”[3]

In early July 1940, Barr heard from a collector that Salvador Dalí had been arrested by Spanish authorities while trying to cross the Portuguese border, and that his life was in imminent danger. Barr immediately urged MoMA trustee Nelson Rockefeller to send a telegram to the American ambassador in Spain, asking him to intercede on the artist’s behalf. This ultimately proved to be unnecessary, as Dalí had only been temporarily detained in Spain, and had already made it to Lisbon. But shortly after arriving safely with his wife Gala in New York, Dalí sent a letter to Barr personally thanking him for all the Museum had done for them.

Marga worked closely with the Emergency Rescue Committee (the present day International Rescue Committee) and the leader of the Committee in Marseilles, Varian Fry (whom Barr had known since his Harvard days in the mid-1920s), to communicate with refugees and make sure all their documents were in order. Fry, who would ultimately be responsible for saving the lives of approximately 2,000 individuals, had been sent by the ERC to France in August 1940 on a mission to rescue Europe’s cultural and intellectual refugees. Barr supplied Fry with a list of prominent artists who were in danger, including Marc Chagall, who Breton claimed as a forefather of Surrealism, and Max Ernst. (Though many assume it was Ernst’s future wife, art collector Peggy Guggenheim, who primarily assisted him in his refugee case, it was Marga who secured his affidavit through Scottish writer and filmmaker Kenneth MacPherson.)

Marga also worked with American artist Kay Sage to help several of the artists’s Surrealist colleagues reach the US. Sage was in Paris when the war broke out, so she immediately began working with the French Minister of Education to plan a series of art exhibitions in New York that could be used as an impetus for emigration. With these exhibitions, she helped bring over her future husband Yves Tanguy, Gordon Onslow Ford, and Roberto Matta. She also worked with Marga on the case of André Masson and his family.

Sage had important connections in government that helped to expedite the visa process for many artists. Her cousin, artist David Hare, was married to Susanna Wilson, daughter of Secretary of Labor Mrs. Frances Perkins, whose department had been in charge of immigration cases until 1941. While Sage secured passages for André Breton, his daughter, and his wife, artist Jacqueline Lamba, Susanna signed their affidavits and Barr wrote two letters of reference. Marcel Duchamp, whose case was sponsored by The Museum of Modern Art, was also backed by Mrs. Perkins herself.

Not every artist wanted help. Though Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were approached by Fry and MoMA, both artists felt reluctant about leaving, concerned that if they left France, who would remain? Hugnet and Éluard also declined assistance offered by MoMA, choosing to actively fight in the Resistance. Sometimes the delays from the State Department were so long that artists ultimately changed their minds or were forced to find other solutions. Though green cards were prepared for Jean and Sophie Tauber-Arp, correspondence with Sophie’s sister reveals that they were afraid of traveling to the US. Instead, they fled to Switzerland, where Sophie tragically died in January 1943 from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. The Museum managed to secure a second affidavit for Fini, but instead she went to Monte Carlo to meet up with her lover. She spent the rest of the war years with him in Rome.

As this job would put him into contact with many political dignitaries, he was the perfect candidate to help Domínguez, Péret, and Varo. In her letter, Marga states, “Neither Mme. Tanguy nor I have any personal contacts in high official places in any of these republics and this is where you come in. What I would like from you would be that one day when you are being dined and wined by officials and are thinking what to say you should talk up these two people and see whether you could prevail upon the hosts to have a favorable cable sent for them to Marseille.” She then goes on to explain how Catlin could even bring up such a topic in casual conversation: “You can start the subject by saying: ‘Have you many refugees here?’ or ‘We in N.Y. try to do our best for refugees,’ or ‘We in the U.S. have been awfully lucky to get such swell and renowned refugees.’… It might be possible to make them realize that these two good and charming artists would be desirable. I trust your diplomatic talents and put my faith in you.” Ultimately, Domínguez was unable to leave Europe and spent the war years in Paris, but Péret and Varo did eventually find refuge in Mexico City.

The Surrealist artists mentioned here—many of whose works are currently on view in MoMA’s The Surrealist Object gallery—are only some of the refugees the Museum actively helped. Through the principal efforts of Marga Barr, The Museum of Modern Art would aid the cases of more than 40 political refugees during World War II, including artists Jacques Lipchitz, Bernard Reder, Teresa Żarnower, Ylla, Konrad Wachsman, Werner Graeff, Kurt Schwitters, Vasily Kandinsky, and Antoine Pevsner; critics and art historians John Rewald, Alois Schardt, and Siegfried Kracauer; and dealers Pierre Loeb, Hugo Perls, and Alfred Gold.