Berit Potter

In 1935 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA, formerly the San Francisco Museum of Art) became the first museum dedicated to the exhibition of American and European modern art on the Pacific Coast of the United States. Although rarely recognized for its involvement with Latin American art, SFMOMA was one of the earliest centers in the U.S. for collecting and exhibiting works by artists from Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean. This dissertation will focus on SFMOMA’s founding director, Grace McCann Morley, and her ambitious efforts to broaden the definition of American art by collecting and exhibiting Latin American art, and promoting cultural exchange between the Americas. 

Morley endeavored to nurture inter-American understanding by organizing exhibitions of U.S. art for Latin American audiences and Latin American art for circulation in the U.S. Important exhibitions to be addressed in this dissertation include the Latin American pavilion at the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1940, Exposición de Pintura Contemporánea Norteamericana of 1941, and the U.S. section of the third São Paulo Biennial in 1955. Morley, a monumental yet little known figure in the history of art, promoted marginalized artists from the Americas including women artists, artists working on the Pacific Coast of the U.S., and, the main focus of this dissertation, Latin American artists. By organizing exhibitions for exchange between Latin American countries and the U.S., Morley established a presence for these underrepresented groups within the increasingly international art world of the 1940s and ’50s.