May 20, 2020
The end of the Cold War marked a turning point in American cultural diplomacy. For many “victory” in East-West struggle marked the ascendancy of an American Way and reduced the need for assertive public diplomacy advertising the superiority of Western culture. After the events of 9/11/2001 however, it became crucial for the United States to reinvigorate its soft power capacity, and to re-examine techniques of influence and attraction which had proven effective in the Cold War context. Use of film and music in propaganda and public diplomacy has been researched extensively by the likes of Robert Fyne, Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, and Penny Von Eschen. However, the importance of art has often been neglected in the history of public diplomacy. This is why I undertook research to clarify the connection between visual art and US diplomacy through examination of American art exhibitions organized in Poland after World War II.
I conducted research for my PhD thesis, “Art Exhibitions as a Tool of American Cultural Diplomacy Towards Poland, 1956-2016,” during a Kosciuszko Foundation sponsored residency at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, where I worked with Dr. Nicholas Cull. While at USC I travelled to Washington D.C. to conduct interviews with former United States Information Agency (USIA) employees and to conduct research the National Archives. This proved essential to my work, given the paucity of valuable source material in Polish archival collections.
American state promotion of fine art and artists for public diplomacy purposes has never been widely supported by public opinion. In 1947 a highly successful touring exhibition featuring American contemporary art titled Advancing American Art, was cancelled mid-tour (having been shown in New York, Paris, Prague, Havana and Port-au-Prince), amidst US domestic public outrage over the public expense of the show and perceived leftist politics of the art. The outcry over this exhibition put an end to such undertakings for more than a decade. Europe, however, craved modern American art. With Paris and London recovering from the destruction of World War II, Europeans looked to New York.
Poland was of special strategic interest for both the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the Cold War. Following the Second World War Poland was formally independent but squarely within the Soviet sphere of influence and a key part of the Soviet Bloc. While no art exhibitions were presented in the period immediately following the end of World War II when Poland was led by a pro-Stalinist regime, the Polish thaw of 1956 marked a cultural shift and more positive state interest in fine art. From 1956 to 2016 thirty-eight American art exhibitions were organized for showing in Poland. Many of these were the products of private philanthropic initiatives with both Polish and American state cooperation.
My doctoral research examined six of these exhibitions including three from the Cold War period and three from the twenty-first century for case study analysis. These exhibitions range from the 1976 show in Warsaw, 200 years of American Painting, which marked the US Bicentennial to Frank Stella and the Synagogues of Historic Poland, which was shown in Warsaw in 2016.
Deploying Graham Allison’s three analytical lenses to evaluate American foreign policy decision making (Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis), I created schemes illustrating the organizational construction of each exhibition. This enabled a clear comparison and revealed changes that have taken place in the organizational method of cultural diplomacy.
Based on my analysis I was able to draw several conclusions. Foremost, the diminishing role of the US agencies in the decision-making process became evident. I found that direct US state involvement in organizing art exhibitions in Poland vanished completely after the closing of the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1999. With the shutting down of the USIA, the US State Department coordinated public diplomacy initiatives through its newly-created Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs branch, and carried out art diplomacy via embassies and consulates in cities throughout the world. The US Embassy in Warsaw continues to play a role in organizing the cultural events, but this support is usually either promotional or financial.
At the same time as the nature of US efforts has changed, the role of Polish museums has risen significantly. Nowadays hosting museums are the most active parties in the organizational model, while during the Cold War they were largely passive venues for externally-organized shows.
The involvement of the Polish state was minimal and rather symbolic before 1989, which is surprising considering the program of strict censorship in Poland under the communist rule. Notably, my research reveals that foreign art was one of the few areas free from censorship adjustments in the period. In contrast, in recent history the involvement of the Polish state is significant. American art exhibitions receive more funding from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage than they do from American state and diplomatic entities.
My research also makes clear patterns of organizational and decision-making processes in American cultural diplomacy of the Cold War period. The same parties were involved in creating the exhibitions, with similar input. First and foremost, the American state was the initiating power behind the shows, even if its involvement in the creative shaping of the exhibitions was not always significant. Additionally all the shows from the Cold War period were compiled and curated by an American museum and hosted by the National Museum of Poland (sometimes with additional venues). The three shows I examined from the Cold War period differed mainly in the scope of engagement of the Polish state, which was much lower than anticipated.
The exhibitions I studied from the twenty-first century do not offer a possibility of creating a common model because the methods of organization, as well as institutions involved, differ significantly from show to show. There are several possible reasons for such a change. First, the American agenda for cultural diplomacy in Poland and organizational methods of its conduct changed significantly in the 1990s. The US victory in the cultural Cold War led to a drastic reduction in US engagement in eastern Europe—it was no longer of vital geo-political interest in the way it had been previously. Moreover, American cultural presence was more than aptly represented by Hollywood. Also, liberation from the communist influence opened up new possibilities for Polish cultural institutions, which were able to organize American art exhibitions themselves.
In the US in the 1990s there was an erosion of a strategic cultural diplomacy program and the USIA ceased to exist in 1999. By the twenty-first century US cultural diplomacy was nearly non-existent. The events of 9/11 have reinvigorated the need for cultural understanding in international politics. In the face of the US war on terrorism, Europe has not been a priority area for cultural diplomacy efforts. Diplomatic missions have relatively limited budgets for cultural activities and so they act mainly on a “target of opportunity” basis—funding or promoting already existing events as they come into play.
Lack of regular state involvement in cultural diplomacy activities in the form of art exhibitions results in incoherent organizational models. However, one common feature can be found: in recent years American art exhibitions in Poland are created mainly by Polish museums and galleries. American culture is still in high demand and curiosity in an “imagined American Way” is alive and well in contemporary Polish society. There would surely be more American art shows but without US state support the cost of insurance on modern art is usually beyond the reach of most cultural institutions, save for a few national ones, such as the National Museums in Warsaw and Cracow.
After assessing these six exhibitions, my conclusions resonate with patterns presented by Milton Cummings in Cultural Diplomacy and the United States Government: A Survey (2009). The embassies have no budgets for mounting exhibitions and local museums and galleries lack the resources to fill in the gap. Instead, privately-sponsored mass culture, from pop music to Hollywood cinema, is left to represent the United States culture to the people of Poland.
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Diana Stelowska completed a PhD in Political Science at University of Warsaw in 2018. Her dissertation is titled: Art Exhibitions as a Tool of American Cultural Diplomacy towards Poland, 1956-2016. She has degrees in International Relations (2009) and Art History (2014) from the University of Warsaw, where she majored in culture sponsorship and museum promotion in new media. Diana was a Kosciuszko Foundation Visiting Scholar in 2014-2015 at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California, under the supervision of Nicholas Cull. She specializes in the areas of Arts & Cultural Diplomacy, Polish-US relations, and Culture and Arts Promotion. She teaches American Art at the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw and works as a freelance social media specialist. In 2015 she published an article titled “Culture in International Relations: Defining Cultural Diplomacy” in the Polish Journal of Political Science. You can find her on Twitter: @dstelowska
