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The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art's
State Department Collection was acquired in 1948 as a result of
the dismantling of the controversial exhibition Advancing American
Art. This post-war exhibition, assembled by the U.S. State Department
in 1946, was organized to show the most advanced American art to
European and Latin American audiences. One-hundred seventeen oil
paintings and watercolors were purchased for the exhibition. After
a preview in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the works
traveled to the Carribean, France, and Czechoslovakia. The abstract
style of some of the works and the communist sympathies of several
artists created a controversy almost immediately--first in the press,
then in Congress. Eventually it turned into a political debate of
major proportions, threatening the Department's budget and prompting
then Secretary of State George C. Marshall to cancel the tour and
recall the exhibition. Upon its return, the works of art were put
in storage and eventually sold by the government as war-surplus
property. Thirty-six works (a large portion of the exhibition) were
purchased by The University of Oklahoma. An equal number went to
Auburn University; the remaining lots were divided and sold to various
public educational institutions. This acquisition was the Museum
of Art's, and the University's, first commitment to collecting contemporary
American art.
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