Three Centuries of American Art in 1938 was the Museum of Modern Art’s first international exhibition. With over 750 artworks on view in Paris, it was the most comprehensive display of American art to date in Europe and an important contributor to the internationalization of American art. MoMA Goes to Paris in 1938 explores how, at a time when the concept of artworks as “masterpieces” was very much up for debate, the exhibition expressed a vision of American art and culture that was not simply the rearticulation of prior surveys but an attempt at a new formulation. Caroline M. Riley demonstrates that the exhibition was not purely an art historical endeavor, but the work of nation building at the brink of international war in the politically turbulent 1930s, and the development of the idea that works of art can be diplomatic tools.
