David Rockefeller, Jr.: Hello, I'm David Rockefeller, Jr. Welcome to Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art.
By 1931, Diego Rivera was among the most famous artists in the world, and became only the second artist to be offered a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art. The Museum, founded only two years earlier, was one of the first institutions to exhibit the art of its time. Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Leah Dickerman:
Curator, Leah Dickerman: It's hard to get a sense of how extraordinary this exhibition was, to have a 45- year-old artist being shown at the new Museum of Modern Art. Retrospectives of living artists were still quite rare.
David Rockefeller, Jr.: Rivera shot to fame early in his career on the strength of larger-than-life murals completed in his native Mexico. His frescoes illustrated that country's violent colonial and revolutionary history in a modern-realist style that captured the public's imagination.
Because his murals couldn’t be moved, they presented a logistical problem for exhibitions, but also an opportunity for artistic innovation. Several weeks before the exhibition at MoMA, Rivera came to New York, and worked in a studio at the Museum, where created five freestanding frescoes, which he called portable murals.
The exhibition drew huge crowds and sparked national conversations about the relationship between art and politics. It remains a pivotal moment in the history of this Museum.
It’s also an event with deep ties to my family. My grandmother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was one of the founders of the Museum, an early patron of Diego Rivera's, and a driving force behind the 1931 exhibition.
Today you’ll see five of the original murals made for that exhibition, as well as material related to this extraordinary commission. Your guides on this tour will be Leah Dickerman and conservator Anny Aviram.