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Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Volume 13, 2013 - Issue 1: Contact
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Original Articles

Cultural Exchange in the Midst of Chaos: Theodore Sizer's Exhibition ‘Art of Australia 1788–1941’

Caroline Jordan
Pages 24-49 | Published online: 18 May 2015

  • Bernard Smith, Australian Painting Today (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1962), 3.
  • Some barks were so buckled that the outer layer of paint was peeling off. Repairs were ordered. Elodie Courter (Director of Circulating Exhibitions, MoMA) to H.O. McCurry (Director, NGC), 4 December 1941, ‘Exhibitions in Gallery: Art of Australia Exhibition 1942’, Ex 0352, Box 175, NGC Archive.
  • Sizer was ‘sorry to find not a single American painting in any of Australia's great art galleries. As far as he knew, the reverse was true.’ ‘USA Art Tour: 100 Paintings Chosen in Australia’, Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 24 February 1941. In fact, there were a number of American paintings in the national galleries of NSW and Victoria collections, at least. However, he may have been correct about Australian paintings in US collections.
  • Yale University Art Museum purchased Margaret Preston's Aboriginal Landscape (1941), which it deaccessioned in 1982 to the Art Gallery of South Australia. Yale still holds the gouache study. The Met purchased Russell Drysdale's Monday Morning (1938, lent to the exhibition by Maie Casey), Kenneth Macqueen's Cabbage Gums and Cypress Pines (1940), and Elaine Haxton's Early Colonial Architecture (1940); MoMA purchased William Constable's Design for an Aboriginal Ballet I (1939) and Peter Purves Smith's Kangaroo Hunt (1938, also from the Casey collection). According to ‘American Interest in Australian Art’, Army News (Darwin), 26 May 1944, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art purchased Lina Bryans's Port Phillip Bay (n.d.)—but, if so, it is no longer in the collection.
  • Simon Pierse, Australian Art and Artists in London: 1950–1965: An Antipodean Summer (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), 100, 115–18.
  • The New Zealand exhibition is virtually unknown and unexamined in the literature. I am currently preparing an article on it with Dr Rebecca Rice, Curator of Historical New Zealand Art, Te Papa.
  • Florence Anderson, ‘Introduction’, in Brenda Jubin, Program in the Arts 1911–1967 (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1968), 1–4. The Australian literature is not extensive. For an overview, see Michael A. White, ‘Carnegie Philanthropy in the Australia in the Nineteen Thirties: A Reassessment’, History of Education Review 26, no. 1 (1997): 1–24. On the impact of Carnegie ‘art sets’, see E. Chanin and S. Miller, Degenerates and Perverts: The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2005), 117–23. The present article forms part of a larger research project on Carnegie initiatives in the arts in Australia and New Zealand.
  • Sizer's nickname, see telephone memo, Keppel (hereafter FPK) and Emerson Tuttle, 13 November 1940, Series III Box 813 ‘Sizer, Theodore, 1935–60’, Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) Archives, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York.
  • CAS was founded in 1938 in Melbourne, and, by 1941, had branches in Sydney and Adelaide.
  • Sizer radio broadcast transcript, n.d. (ca. March 1941), Theodore Sizer Papers, ‘Misc. Australian Correspondence’ file, ‘Early and Art Gallery Correspondence A-D’, Group 453, Box 1, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
  • The only extended study of the exhibition comes from education: Louise Ryan, ‘Forging Diplomacy: A Socio-Cultural Investigation of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Art of Australia 1788–1941 Exhibition’ (MA diss., University of New South Wales, 2007). Mainstream art histories paid it little attention. It received one line in Bernard Smith's Place, Taste and Tradition: A Study of Australian Art since 1788, rev. ed. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1979), 72, and a bibliographic note in Bernard Smith, Terry Smith, and Christopher Heathcote, Australian Painting 1788–2000, rev. ed. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001), 600.
  • C. Hartley Grattan, Introducing Australia (New York: John Day, 1942).
  • Laurie Hergenhan, No Casual Traveller: Hartley Grattan and Australia—US Connections (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1995).
  • Nancy Underhill, Making Australian Art 1916–49: Sydney Ure Smith: Patron and Publisher (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991), 177; Ian McLean, White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 89–90; Nicholas Thomas, Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 128; Terry Smith, ‘Albert Namatjira and Margaret Preston: Changing and Unequal Exchange’, Transformations in Australian Art, vol. 2 (Sydney: Craftsman House, 2002), 74–91.
  • The famous phrase ‘Australia looks to America’ is from Prime Minister John Curtin's address, published in the Herald (Melbourne), 27 December 1941. By the late 1960s, ‘Looking to America’ in art was a dominant trend, with MoMA's abstract painting exhibition Two Decades of American Painting touring in 1967; The Field, an exhibition of Australian colour-field abstraction made for the opening of the new National Gallery of Victoria building in 1968; the Carnegie Corporation-sponsored visit to Sydney University of American art critic Clement Greenberg in 1968; and the Whitlam government's purchase of Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles (1952) for the National Gallery of Australia for a record sum in 1972.
  • ‘Says US to Be World Art Reservoir’, unidentified Los Angeles newspaper, 10 January 1941; ‘Expert Declares Paris Art Gone: Director of Yale Gallery Says Best Now Found in Films’, Los Angeles Times,10 January 1941, Theodore Sizer Papers 1940–54, MS 2271, National Library of Australia (NLA); ‘Art Galleries Must Be in Tune with Modern Problems, Says Professor from USA’, Telegraph (Sydney), 31 January 1941.
  • Humphrey McQueen, The Black Swan of Trespass: The Emergence of Modernist Painting in Australia to 1944 (Sydney: Alternative Publishing Co-operative, 1979), 160 (unnumbered footnote). Despite his alarm at the CCNY's influence on Australian art, McQueen, like Bernard Smith before him, chose to relegate mention of it to a single footnote.
  • Stephen H. Stackpole, Commonwealth Program 1911–1961 (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1963), 3–6.
  • Florence Anderson in Brenda Jubin, Program in the Arts.
  • James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World 1783–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 70.
  • FPK, Informal Report of the President on Visit to the Southern British Dominions, January—June 1935 (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1935).
  • ‘Carnegie Grants: Dr Keppel's Tour’, West Australian (Perth), 18 January 1936, 18.
  • Wesley Frost, American Consular Service, to FPK, 18 March 1935, Grant Files III A Box 10, ‘American Art Exhibition in Canada’, CCNY Archives.
  • FPK to McCurry, 27 April 1936, Grant Files 70A III A, ‘Canadian Art Exhibition in the Southern Dominions 1935–1939, 1955’, CCNY Archives.
  • McCurry to FPK, 27 May 1936, ‘Canadian Art Exhibition in the Southern Dominions 1935–1939, 1955’, CCNY Archives.
  • Eric Brown (then Director of NGC) to FPK, 30 December 1938, ‘Canadian Art Exhibition in the Southern Dominions 1935–1939, 1955’, CCNY Archives.
  • H.C. Richards (hereafter HCR) to FPK, 7 May 1940. Series III A Box 50, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives; J.S. MacDonald (hereafter JSM) to Richards, 2 January 1941, J.S. MacDonald Papers, MS 430/4/2, NLA. The relationship of the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, and American exhibitions is described in my, as yet, unpublished paper, ‘“A Means of Promoting Friendly Relations”: The Carnegie Corporation's Dominions Exhibitions and the American-Anglo World’.
  • The other was the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) founded by the Corporation in 1930. Stephen Stackpole, Commonwealth Program, 12.
  • Geoffrey Serle, ‘Murdoch, Sir Keith Arthur (1885–1952)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murdoch-sir-keith-arthur-7693/text13467; HCR to John Barr (Director, Auckland Art Gallery), 28 October 1940, ‘Miscellaneous: Art Collection of Australia and New Zealand Art: Proposed Exhibition in USA’, IA1 3019, Record no: 158/373, Archives New Zealand, Wellington.
  • Carl Bridge, ed., A Delicate Mission: The Washington Diaries of R.G. Casey 1940–42 (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2008), 4–5; Murdoch quote, ‘Note for File’, 29 January 1941, IA1 3019, Archives NZ.
  • Carl Bridge, A Delicate Mission, 5; Bridget Griffen-Foley, ‘“The Kangaroo Is Coming into Its Own”: R.G. Casey, Earl Newsom and Public Relations in the 1940s’, Australasian Journal of American Studies, 23, no. 2, December 2004: 1–20.
  • Carl Bridge, A Delicate Mission, 5–9.
  • See ‘Australian Legation’ file, ‘Early and Art Gallery Correspondence A-D’, Group 453, Box 1, Sizer papers, Yale.
  • Theodore Sizer (hereafter TS) to FPK, ‘A Confidential and Informal Report Regarding Proposed Exhibitions of Australian and New Zealand Art for the United States and Canada with Certain Observations and Recommendations’, ca. 1941, Series III D Box 3A ‘Grants: Travel Grants (S- W)’, CCNY Archives, 22.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid., 16.
  • E. Chanin and S. Miller, Degenerates and Perverts, 275. All the major state galleries were then termed ‘national’ galleries, but only the National Gallery of Victoria has retained the title.
  • J. Heenan to J. Barr, 21 January 1941, IA1 3019, Archives NZ.
  • Roger Warner and Judith R. Sizer, Theodore Sizer: A Centennial Album of His Life and Art, privately published, 1992, Group 453 Box 1, Sizer Papers, Yale.
  • ‘Says US to Be World Art Reservoir’, unidentified Los Angeles newspaper, 10 January 1941; Expert Declares Paris Art Gone: Director of Yale Gallery Says Best Now Found in Films’, Los Angeles Times, 10 January 1941, Sizer papers, NLA.
  • Richards to Trustees of Art Galleries in Australia, 21 December 1940, IA1 3019, Archives NZ.
  • JSM to Will Ashton, 30 December 1940, MacDonald papers, NLA.
  • JSM to Ashton, 30 December 1940; JSM to HCR, 2 January 1941, MacDonald papers, NLA.
  • TS, ‘Report, 2; Richard Haese, ‘Burdett, Basil (1897–1942)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/burdett-basil-5425/text9201.
  • HCR to JSM, 25 January 1941, MacDonald papers, NLA.
  • TS to FPK, 3 May 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • Bernard Smith, The Critic as Advocate: Selected Essays 1948–1988 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4; ‘The Fascist Mentality in Australian Art and Criticism’, first published in Communist Review, 1946, 44–51.
  • Lionel Lindsay, Addled Art (1942; revised and repr., London: Hollis and Carter, 1946).
  • JSM, ‘Report of Suggested Purchases from the Herald Exhibition’, 30 October 1939, quoted in E. Chanin and S. Miller, Degenerates and Perverts, 229–30.
  • Lionel Lindsay, Addled Art, ix.
  • Ibid.
  • Bernard Smith, Critic as Advocate, 4.
  • E. Chanin and S. Miller, Degenerates and Perverts, 171.
  • Lionel Lindsay, Addled Art, 24, 50. For the positive exceptions they made for certain women modernists, notably Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor, see Caroline Jordan, ‘Designing Women: Modernism in Art in Australia and The Home’, Art and Australia, 31, no. 2, Summer 1993: 200–7.
  • TS, ‘Report’, 3.
  • Ibid.
  • ‘Summary’ in ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid., 3–4.
  • Ibid., 4.
  • Sizer also visited Brisbane, Perth, Hobart, and Canberra on his tour; see TS, ‘Report’, 56.
  • ‘Museums Too Dull’, Sunday Telegraph (Sydney), 2 February 1941; ‘Out Among the People’, Advertiser (Adelaide), 28 February 1941: 19.
  • ‘Art Galleries Must Be in Tune with Modern Problems, Says Professor from USA’, Telegraph (Sydney), 31 January 1941.
  • TS, ‘Reports, 4.
  • ‘Paintings for USA: Trustees’ Doubts’, Argus (Melbourne), 28 February 1941, 7.
  • ‘Melbourne's Art Treasures for US Despite War’, Sun (Melbourne), 26 March 1941.
  • Draft of letter, JSM to TS, 4 March 1941, MacDonald papers, NLA; JSM to TS, 3 March 1941. ‘Misc. Australian Correspondence’ file, Sizer papers, Yale.
  • TS, ‘Report’, 18.
  • Ibid., 4.
  • TS to Florence Anderson, Administrative Assistant, CCNY, 15 November 1941, in Ann Stephen, Andrew McNamara, and Philip Goad, eds., Modernism and Australia: Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917–1967 (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2006), 404–5.
  • ‘Modern Art Museum: Artists Support Plan’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 March 1941, 6; ‘“Modern” Art Galleries: Challenge to Patrons’, Argus (Melbourne), 26 February 1941; TS, ‘Report, 2, 17, 37.
  • R. Haughton James, ‘Art for Export (letter to the editor), Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 1941: 4.
  • A.M.E. Bale, ‘Letters to the Editor’, Argus (Melbourne), 11 February 1941, 7: A.M.E. Bale, ‘Art Show in US’ (letter to the editor), Argus, 13 February 1941: 2.
  • John Reed, ‘Art Show for US’ (letter to the editor), Argus (Melbourne), 12 February 1941: 5.
  • ‘US Art Show Request Rejected’, Herald (Melbourne), 7 February 1941; ‘Art Selectors Rebuffed: Modernists Refuse to Submit Works’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 1941: 17.
  • F.C. Hinder, ‘Art for Export’ (letter to the editor), Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 1941: 9; Albert Tucker, ‘Modern Art (letter to the editor), Argus(Melbourne), 15 February 1941: 2; ‘Modernist Rebuffs Art Selectors: Exhibition for USA’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1941: 11.
  • John Reed to Rah Fizelle, 19 February 1941, PA 1168 Box 11/18, ‘CAS Mainly 1941–2’, File 1B, Reed Papers, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne (SLV).
  • Ibid.
  • Richard Haese, Rebels and Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art (Melbourne: Allen Lane, 1981), 68.
  • Peter Bellew to TS, 29 December 1941, ‘Misc. Australian Correspondence’ file, Sizer papers, Yale.
  • See CAS exhibition catalogues 1940–2 in ‘Contemporary Art Society (Vic.) 1939–1949: Australian Gallery File’ and ‘CAS (NSW): Australian Gallery File’, SLV.
  • The Contemporary Group exhibited at Farmers’ department store, Sydney and Sizer probably attended, since the invitation is in Sizer's papers, NLA.
  • TS, ‘Report’, 5.
  • For an exhibition history of Aboriginal art, see Ian McLean, ‘Aboriginalism: White Aborigines and Australian Nationalism’, Australian Humanities Review, no. 10, May 1998; Daniel Thomas, ‘Aboriginal Art: Who Was Interested?’, Journal of Art Historiography, no. 4, June 2011.
  • Marjorie Barnard, ‘This Australia’, in Art of Australia 1788–1941, ed. Sydney Ure Smith (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York and Museum of Modern Art, 1941), 9; TS to Frances Henry Taylor (hereafter FHT), 16 April 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • W.J. Rushing, Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde (Austin: University of Texas, 1995), 97–120. Exhibition dates were 22 January-27 April 1941. Sizer was in Australia and New Zealand from 28 December 1940, and returned to New Haven via New York on 2 April 1941, so he may have seen it.
  • W.J. Rushing, Native American Art, 212n57.
  • Robert J. Foster, ‘Art/Artefact/Commodity: Installation Design and the Exhibition of Oceanic Things at Two New York Museums in the 1940s’, Australian Journal of Anthropology, no. 23 (2010): 129–57, 134–5.
  • W.J. Rushing, Native American Art, 114.
  • D'Harnoncourt was a Mexican-art specialist before joining the Bureau of Indian Arts and Crafts of the Department of the Interior in 1936. He went to MoMA in 1944, rising to Director in 1949. ‘Biographical Note’, Rene d'Harnoncourt Papers, MoMA, www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/EAD/dHarnoncourt.
  • TS to FHT, 16 April 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • Lindy Allen, ‘The Early Collection and Exhibition of Aboriginal Work by Aboriginal Artists’, Museum Victoria, http://museumvictoria.com.au/history/artists.html.
  • Sydney Ure Smith, Art of Australia, 26, 29.
  • TS to FHT, 16 April 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • ‘No Nonsense About Australian Art: Dr Sizer Sums Up’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 1941, 9.
  • TS to FHT, 16 April 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives. A similar summary appears in TS, ‘Report’, 5.
  • Telephone memo, FPK and TS, 25 April 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • Interview record, FPK and TS, 28 April 1941; Sizer blamed W.F. Ifould, the librarian at the Mitchell, for the leak to Alfred Barr. He described Ifould as ‘one of the most difficult men I met’. TS to Anderson, 11 September 1941; Alfred Barr (hereafter AB) to FPK, 30 April 1941; TS to FPK, 3 May 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • TS to FPK, 3 May 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • TS to Ashton, 13 May 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • TS to Ashton, 13 May 1941, CCNY Archives; Ure Smith to JSM, 2 May 1941, MacDonald papers, NLA. There is no definitive list of these added works. Sizer appears to have tried to work out what was added in his draft ‘Report, Group 453, Box 7, Sizer Papers, Yale, in an annotated list of 23 works, ‘Appendix No. 1: Additional works sent from Australia’ that he omitted from the final ‘Report in the CCNY Archives. A list of the committee's final overall selection is appended to ‘Meeting of the Selection Committee in Connection with the Exhibition of Australian Art for America and Canada’, 31 March 1941, MacDonald papers, NLA. In Richard Casey to TS, 17 June 1941, ‘Australian Legation’ file, Sizer papers, Yale, Casey refers to a list Boyer sent to him of the works Sizer had selected versus the works added by the committee, but I have not been able to locate it in the correspondence.
  • AB to FPK, 20 May 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives.
  • Casey to TS, 17 June 1941, ‘Australian Legation’ file, Sizer papers, Yale.
  • AB to FPK, 20 May 1941; TS to Anderson, 23 July 1941; Record of Interview, Anderson and Courter, 14 July 1941; all held in ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’, CCNY Archives. Anderson and Courter, female staff at the CCNY and MoMA respectively, took over much of the administration of touring the exhibition. Sizer's response to McCurry's unhappiness with MoMA's circulation of the exhibition in Canada is revealing: ‘I avoid this sort of thing wherever I can; I get the credit for running this gallery—and the women do all the work. It is the same thing here. Miss Courter will do it and the bouquets will be yours.’ TS to McCurry, 20 December 1941, NGC Archives.
  • TS to Horace Jayne, Vice-Director of the Met, 31 July 1941, NGC Archives.
  • TS to McCurry, 12 June 1941; McCurry to TS, 18 June 1941; NGC Archives. McCurry to Courter, 4 December 1941; Anderson to McCurry, 15 December 1941, ‘Australian Art Exhibition 1939–51’; CCNY Archives.
  • The other Casey works were Mary Cecil Allen Ring-Barked Gumtrees (1940), Russell Drysdale Monday Morning (1938), Rupert Bunny Black Swans (1932–3), Loudon Sainthill Design for a Ballet (1940), Arnold Shore After Bushfires (1938), Arthur Streeton Under the Peaks (n.d.), and Adrian Feint Map of Sydney
  • Harbour (ca. 1935). A painting by Maie Casey was also selected, but she declined to have it included. M. Casey to TS, 22 July 1941, ‘Australian Legation’ file, Sizer Papers, Yale.
  • In the end, the sculpture was not toured in Canada because of the risk of breakage. MAW (identity unknown), NGC, to Paul Rainville, Director, Quebec Museum, 23 March 1942, NGC Archives.
  • These films were Teddy Bears’ Picnic (on koalas), Heritage, and Australia Marches with Britain. ‘Australian Films Are Added Feature to Display Art, Evening Citizen (Ottawa), 21 January 1942, ‘Exhibition-Australian Art USA 1941’, Series A981, Item EXH 9, National Archives of Australia.
  • McCurry to Courter, 19 January 1942, NGC Archives.
  • Reeve to McCurry, 31 July 1942, NGC Archives.
  • ‘The Art of Australia’, Christian Science Monitor, 18 October 1941: 10.
  • Leila Mechlin, ‘National Gallery Features Fine Australian Exhibit: Paintings by Aborigines and Contemporary Works Are Combined Interestingly’, Washington Sunday Star, 5 October 1941.

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