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"View Slideshow\n\nHarry S. Truman was a great president, but his views on modern painting left something to be desired. In 1947 he looked at Yasuo Kuniyoshi's portrait of a circus girl, one of 79 contemporary oils bought by the State Department to exhibit abroad, and said, \"If that's art, I'm a Hottentot.\" Reactionary newspaper columnists thundered about tax dollars being wasted, and the government quickly sold off the collection. Yet this inauspicious episode contained the germ of one of the State Department's most triumphant initiatives\u2014the Art in Embassies Program (AIEP), the enterprise that enables ambassadors to choose outstanding examples of American art to hang in their official residences for the term of their posting.\n\nFrom paintings and sculptures to prints, photographs, drawings and even Conceptual art; from Colonial portraits, Native American artifacts and Hudson River landscapes to Ashcan School cityscapes, commanding abstractions of the New York School and edgy collages from the artists of tomorrow, the AIEP offers an unparalleled resource to U.S. diplomats. Its placement of art in embassies not only enhances the physical appearance of the ambassador's residence but intro duces visitors to America's history and considerable artistic legacy. Says Helen Frankenthaler, whose canvases have hung in ambassadorial residences in Tokyo and Prague, \"Beautiful art is one of the finest ways to tell the truth.\"\n\nBased in Washington, D.C., the program has staff who call on artists, collectors, museums, galleries, foundations and corporations for loans of art and simultaneously manages a small permanent collection of its own. The AIEP is a radiant exception to the rule that when art becomes an instrument of politics, the consequences are usually not happy for art.\n\nThe AIEP was conceived during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, when creative achievement was recognized as vital to advancing American prestige. Selected to head this new endeavor in November 1963, Nancy Kefauver, the widow of Senator Estes Kefauver, was Kennedy's last appointment. She began her tenure in January 1964, eager to do \"something constructive about those bare white walls in the embassies abroad.\" In practical terms, Kefauver established a loan program because she had no in-house collection and no budget to start one.\n\nThe program is still largely based on loans and continues to depend on the benevolence of institutions and private citizens. In other words, lenders are not compensated. \"Yet,\" notes Anne Johnson, AIEP's director, \"people love to participate because it's an incredible opportunity to promote American art and artists abroad. It's visual diplomacy.\"\n\nAlong with making arrangements to borrow works, the program's curators and director collaborate closely with the ambassador in matching the art with the host country. This way the ambassador's own interests can play a key role. The embassy residence in Tokyo has housed a particularly sensitive thematic display of abstractions by Josef Albers, Morris Graves, Joan Mitchell, Isamu Noguchi and Kenzo Okada that suggested an artistic dialogue between East and West. Similarly, some years ago the American embassy in Paris (see Architectural Digest, July/August 1979) showcased, as Donna Hartman, the ambassador's wife, said, \"the French background in American art.\"\n\nIn 2002 approximately 3,500 original works of art are installed in the public rooms of about 180 embassy residences worldwide, and, says senior curator Virginia Shore, \"We continue to develop our resource base. We've found avenues to borrow any art we've ever requested if the facility meets the requirements for a high-value piece. In the last 10 years the value of the works on loan to us has increased from $30 million to $85 million, meaning that the quality has increased dramatically.\"\n\nMore striking than the scope of the program is its maturity. With its splendid track record, the AIEP exports the character and image of America, and, although there is plenty of traditional art available, the staff can also dare to be bold about it, all the while trying to be sensitive to the various cultures. The United States Embassy in Namibia, for example, included a forthright collection that confronted the African American experience, and the principal officer's residence in Cuba exhibited work by Cuban American artists who dealt with issues of exile. Art in embassies articulates what we value in our culture\u2014which is not merely the formal merits of order and unity but the enduring need to dissent and protest.\n\n\"Embassies represent a unique way for artists to become known,\" Frank Stella has said.\n\nArtists of the caliber of Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Roy Lichtenstein have loaned their own work unstintingly, and in April 2002 Stella lectured in Copenhagen as part of an outreach intended to broaden the audiences for these mini-exhibitions of American art. Commenting on the extraordinary exposure the program brings, Stella has said, \"Embassies represent a unique way for artists to become known in foreign countries.\u2026 To have had your work seen in Russia in the 1960s, for example, was important. It was a good feeling for me to be in the action'\u2014not to be shut out.\" Then, as now, U.S. embassies remain open windows through which American art is seen free and clear."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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