Salvemini Colloquium - Projections and Reflections:

Exhibiting contemporary Italian art in the United States between 1935 and 1955 served multiple, often ambiguous roles. While the

primary goals for Italian organizers included penetrating a growing art market and advancing cultural diplomacy with an

increasingly influential partner, a less visible impulse was the quest for legitimacy in the symbolic heart of modernity. Bet ween

Fascism and the Cold War years in which the United States emerged as the dominant economic, political, and cultural power

these exhibitions became a reflective exercise through which Italians periodically redefined their concept of modernity. In t his

process, they internalized an American gaze that was partly real but largely imagined.

Host or Publisher Consolato Generale d'Italia a Boston