The exhibition Diego Rivera’s America confronted the historical and cultural gravity of the Mexican artist’s representation of America’s past and present. Curated by James Oles with Maria Castro, it was seen at SFMOMA (July 16, 2022–January 2, 2023) and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas (March 11–July 21, 2023). It featured over one hundred fifty of Rivera’s paintings, portable frescoes, and illustrations, all of which are documented in this catalog of the same name. As Oles states in the exhibition catalog, Diego Rivera’s America corresponds with Rivera’s understanding of “America” as a hemisphere and “invites audiences to reflect on commonalities” rather than on the “tensions created by political borders or narrow definitions of territory and identity” (13). The ten-panel, 1,600-square-foot portable fresco Pan American Unity (1950), which was installed on the first floor of SFMOMA and on view free to the public, inspires both exhibition and...

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