InterCultura
Encyclopedia
InterCultura, Inc., was a not-for-profit private foundation, based in Fort Worth, Texas
with offices in London
, England
, founded in 1982 by Gordon Dee Smith (president), J. Roderick Grierson (vice-president), Milbry Polk, and several other individuals for the purpose of furthering understanding among cultures by organizing and exchanging international art
exhibitions. Over the course of the next 15 years, InterCultura organized and brought to the U.S. over a dozen important exhibitions from countries as diverse as Ethiopia
, Japan
, Mexico
, Russia
, and many other nations. Exhibitions of American art
were sent abroad by InterCultura in exchange.
InterCultura's practice was to bring together the leading scholars with great objects of art to produce exhibitions of outstanding scholarship. InterCultura’s activities involved multi-project exchange programs supported by U.S. embassies in foreign countries to send U.S. art abroad in exchange for exhibitions from foreign national collections coming to the U.S.
The first major exhibition initiated by InterCultura was "The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art,"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=4856 which opened at the Kimbell Art Museum
in 1986. The Blood of Kings exemplified the InterCultura approach in that it was a presentation of ground-breaking scholarship, curated by two of the leaders of the group of scholars that had recently deciphered the Maya script
: Linda Schele
, of the University of Texas
, and Mary Miller
, of Yale University
. The exhibition demonstrated, through a never-before-assembled collection of ancient Maya art
borrowed from sources as diverse as the British Museum
and the Government of Honduras
, the imperative of an entirely new approach based on the decipherment of the Maya writing system. It revealed the Maya as real individuals - kings, queens, and royal dynasties as blood-thirsty and colorful as their Old World counterparts. The power of the exhibition was critical in the collapse of the old view of the Maya as peaceable mathematicians, and the emergence of the currently accepted picture of the Maya. The catalog remains a landmark addition to Maya scholarship and is widely cited.
Starting in 1987, at the dawn of the glasnost
era, InterCultura organized an exhibition titled "10 + 10: Contemporary Soviet and American Painters," the first exhibition of dissident or “non-official” art from the then-Soviet Union to be seen in US and Soviet museums. Following on this, in 1988 InterCultura negotiated the most extensive cultural exchange program ever signed between the then-Soviet Ministry of Culture and a private U.S. institution.http://www.gwu.edu/~mstd/Publications/2006/Ippolito_Writing%20Require.pdf Included was the most extensive exhibition presented in the US of the 19th century Russian group of painters called the Wanderers, titled "The Wanderers: Masters of 19th Century Russian Painting."http://www.barnsitegallery.com/fineartbooks/wanderers.shtml The InterCultura US-Soviet exhibition exchange program survived the change from the Soviet Union
to post-Soviet Russia, and the exchange concluded in 1993 with the most important exhibition of Medieval Russian art ever shown in the United States, a show of treasures from the Russian Museum
in St. Petersburg titled "The Gates of Mystery," http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/03/arts/art-view-opening-the-gates-of-a-russian-mystery.html?pagewanted=allhttp://www.lutterworth.com/lp/titles/gates.htmhttp://catalog.dclibrary.org/vufind/Record/ocm28571039/Details, which was also seen in the UK at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Other exhibitions organized by InterCultura included "The Art of Private Devotion: Mexican Retablo Painting,"http://www.kam.uiuc.edu/exhibitions/altars/retablos-biblio.html the first major exhibition of Ethiopian art borrowed from Ethiopian sources ever held in the U.S., titled "African Zion: Sacred Art of Ethiopia,"http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300059159 the first major exhibition of the art of American painter Robert Motherwell shown in Mexico, titled "Robert Motherwell: An Open Door,"http://www.bookfinder.com/dir/i/Robert_Motherwell,_1915-1991-La_Puerta_Abierta_the_Open_Door/9686084371/, a major exhibition of Georgia O'Keeffe
shown in Mexico and Japan, titled "Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern,"http://www.amazon.com/Georgia-OKeeffe-American-Charles-Eldredge/dp/0300055811, an exhibition of contemporary Japanese art, titled "Seven Artists: Aspects of Contemporary Japanese Art," and numerous additional shows on subjects ranging from modern Italian master drawings to Mexican dance masks.
Museums at which InterCultura Exhibitions were shown include: Albright-Knox Art Gallery
(Buffalo), Art Institute of Chicago
, California Afro-American Museum (Los Angeles), Central Exhibition Hall (St. Petersburg, Russia), Cincinnati Art Museum
, Corcoran Gallery of Art
(Washington, D.C.), Dallas Museum of Art
, Davenport Museum of Art, DuSable Museum of African American History (Chicago), Field Museum of Natural History
, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
, Hayward Gallery
(London), Henry Art Gallery
(University of Washington), Kimbell Art Museum
, Milwaukee Art Museum
, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
, Museum of African-American Life & Culture (Dallas), Palacio de Bellas Artes
(Mexico City), Rufino Tamayo Museum (Mexico City), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
, Sarah Blaffer Gallery (Houston), Serpentine Gallery
(London), State Picture Gallery of Georgia (Tbilisi), The Art Museum, Princeton University, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black African Culture (New York), The Walters Art Gallery, Tretyakov Gallery
(Moscow), Victoria and Albert Museum
(London), Yokohama Art Museum (Japan), and others.
Following the departure of its president Gordon Dee Smith and vice president Roderick Grierson, after a decade and a half of creating and touring exhibitions, InterCultura was dissolved in 1996.
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
with offices in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, founded in 1982 by Gordon Dee Smith (president), J. Roderick Grierson (vice-president), Milbry Polk, and several other individuals for the purpose of furthering understanding among cultures by organizing and exchanging international art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
exhibitions. Over the course of the next 15 years, InterCultura organized and brought to the U.S. over a dozen important exhibitions from countries as diverse as Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, and many other nations. Exhibitions of American art
American Art
American Art is the debut album of the band Weatherbox. It was released on May 8, 2007 on Doghouse Records. The album received critical acclaim from several sources including underground music distribution company Smartpunk, who lauded the band's style:...
were sent abroad by InterCultura in exchange.
InterCultura's practice was to bring together the leading scholars with great objects of art to produce exhibitions of outstanding scholarship. InterCultura’s activities involved multi-project exchange programs supported by U.S. embassies in foreign countries to send U.S. art abroad in exchange for exhibitions from foreign national collections coming to the U.S.
The first major exhibition initiated by InterCultura was "The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art,"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=4856 which opened at the Kimbell Art Museum
Kimbell Art Museum
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, hosts a small but excellent art collection as well as traveling art exhibitions, educational programs and an extensive research library. Its initial artwork came from the private collection of Kay and Velma Kimbell, who also provided funds for a new...
in 1986. The Blood of Kings exemplified the InterCultura approach in that it was a presentation of ground-breaking scholarship, curated by two of the leaders of the group of scholars that had recently deciphered the Maya script
Maya script
The Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs or Maya hieroglyphs, is the writing system of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, presently the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered...
: Linda Schele
Linda Schele
Linda Schele was an expert in the field of Maya epigraphy and iconography. She played an invaluable role in the decipherment of much of the Maya hieroglyphics. She produced a massive volume of drawings of stelae and inscriptions, which, following her wishes, are free for use to scholars...
, of the University of Texas
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
, and Mary Miller
Mary Miller
Mary Ellen Miller is an American art historian and Dean of Yale College. In 1998, she was appointed as the Vincent Scully, Jr. Professor of the History of Art. In 2008, she was appointed as Sterling Professor at Yale...
, of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. The exhibition demonstrated, through a never-before-assembled collection of ancient Maya art
Maya art
Maya art, here taken to mean the visual arts, is the artistic style typical of the Maya civilization, that took shape in the course the Preclassic period , and grew greater during the Classic period Maya art, here taken to mean the visual arts, is the artistic style typical of the Maya...
borrowed from sources as diverse as the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
and the Government of Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
, the imperative of an entirely new approach based on the decipherment of the Maya writing system. It revealed the Maya as real individuals - kings, queens, and royal dynasties as blood-thirsty and colorful as their Old World counterparts. The power of the exhibition was critical in the collapse of the old view of the Maya as peaceable mathematicians, and the emergence of the currently accepted picture of the Maya. The catalog remains a landmark addition to Maya scholarship and is widely cited.
Starting in 1987, at the dawn of the glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
era, InterCultura organized an exhibition titled "10 + 10: Contemporary Soviet and American Painters," the first exhibition of dissident or “non-official” art from the then-Soviet Union to be seen in US and Soviet museums. Following on this, in 1988 InterCultura negotiated the most extensive cultural exchange program ever signed between the then-Soviet Ministry of Culture and a private U.S. institution.http://www.gwu.edu/~mstd/Publications/2006/Ippolito_Writing%20Require.pdf Included was the most extensive exhibition presented in the US of the 19th century Russian group of painters called the Wanderers, titled "The Wanderers: Masters of 19th Century Russian Painting."http://www.barnsitegallery.com/fineartbooks/wanderers.shtml The InterCultura US-Soviet exhibition exchange program survived the change from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
to post-Soviet Russia, and the exchange concluded in 1993 with the most important exhibition of Medieval Russian art ever shown in the United States, a show of treasures from the Russian Museum
Russian Museum
The State Russian Museum is the largest depository of Russian fine art in St Petersburg....
in St. Petersburg titled "The Gates of Mystery," http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/03/arts/art-view-opening-the-gates-of-a-russian-mystery.html?pagewanted=allhttp://www.lutterworth.com/lp/titles/gates.htmhttp://catalog.dclibrary.org/vufind/Record/ocm28571039/Details, which was also seen in the UK at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Other exhibitions organized by InterCultura included "The Art of Private Devotion: Mexican Retablo Painting,"http://www.kam.uiuc.edu/exhibitions/altars/retablos-biblio.html the first major exhibition of Ethiopian art borrowed from Ethiopian sources ever held in the U.S., titled "African Zion: Sacred Art of Ethiopia,"http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300059159 the first major exhibition of the art of American painter Robert Motherwell shown in Mexico, titled "Robert Motherwell: An Open Door,"http://www.bookfinder.com/dir/i/Robert_Motherwell,_1915-1991-La_Puerta_Abierta_the_Open_Door/9686084371/, a major exhibition of Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
shown in Mexico and Japan, titled "Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern,"http://www.amazon.com/Georgia-OKeeffe-American-Charles-Eldredge/dp/0300055811, an exhibition of contemporary Japanese art, titled "Seven Artists: Aspects of Contemporary Japanese Art," and numerous additional shows on subjects ranging from modern Italian master drawings to Mexican dance masks.
Museums at which InterCultura Exhibitions were shown include: Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...
(Buffalo), Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, California Afro-American Museum (Los Angeles), Central Exhibition Hall (St. Petersburg, Russia), Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum
The Cincinnati Art Museum is one of the oldest art museums in the United States. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies. Its collection of over 60,000 works make it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Midwest.Museum founders debated locating...
, Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
(Washington, D.C.), Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art is a major art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, USA, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In 1984, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Arts District, Dallas, Texas...
, Davenport Museum of Art, DuSable Museum of African American History (Chicago), Field Museum of Natural History
Field Museum of Natural History
The Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...
, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History is located on 1600 Gendy Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76107 in the city's Cultural District. It was opened in 1945 as the Fort Worth Children's Museum and moved to its current location in 1954. In 1968, the museum adopted its current name...
, Hayward Gallery
Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...
(London), Henry Art Gallery
Henry Art Gallery
The Henry Art Gallery is the art museum of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it was founded in 1927 and was the first public art museum in the state of Washington. The...
(University of Washington), Kimbell Art Museum
Kimbell Art Museum
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, hosts a small but excellent art collection as well as traveling art exhibitions, educational programs and an extensive research library. Its initial artwork came from the private collection of Kay and Velma Kimbell, who also provided funds for a new...
, Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee Art Museum
The Milwaukee Art Museum is located on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Beginning around 1872, multiple organizations were founded in order to bring an art gallery to Milwaukee, as the city was still a growing port town with little or no facilities to hold major art exhibitions...
, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth was first granted a Charter from the State of Texas in 1892 as the "Fort Worth Public Library and Art Gallery", evolving through several name changes and different facilities in Fort Worth...
, Museum of African-American Life & Culture (Dallas), Palacio de Bellas Artes
Palacio de Bellas Artes
The Palacio de Bellas Artes is the most important cultural center in Mexico City as well as the rest of the country of Mexico...
(Mexico City), Rufino Tamayo Museum (Mexico City), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
, Sarah Blaffer Gallery (Houston), Serpentine Gallery
Serpentine Gallery
The Serpentine Gallery is an art gallery in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, central London. It focuses on modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions, architecture, education and public programmes attract approximately 750,000 visitors a year...
(London), State Picture Gallery of Georgia (Tbilisi), The Art Museum, Princeton University, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black African Culture (New York), The Walters Art Gallery, Tretyakov Gallery
Tretyakov Gallery
The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection,...
(Moscow), Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
(London), Yokohama Art Museum (Japan), and others.
Following the departure of its president Gordon Dee Smith and vice president Roderick Grierson, after a decade and a half of creating and touring exhibitions, InterCultura was dissolved in 1996.