Machine Art: how Domela gained ground on the American modern art circuit in 1935/36

ANKIE DE JONGH-VERMEULEN

In the summer of 1935 two young and ambitious American museum directors came separately to Paris to scout for modern works of art for exhibitions back home. They were A[rthur] Everett ‘Chick’ Austin Jr. (1900–57), who had been appointed director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, and Alfred H[amilton] Barr Jr. (1902–81), who had become the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.