At the Crossroads: Diego Rivera and His Patrons at MoMA, Rockefeller Center, and the Palace of Fine Arts

Catha Paquette's At the Crossroads: Diego Rivera and His Patrons at MoMA, Rockefeller Center, and the Palace of Fine Arts dissects three critical moments in the career of Mexican muralist and communist advocate Diego Rivera as well as the history of American (in the broadest sense) art and art institutions, public and private: the artist's retrospective exhibition at the fledgling Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, on view from December 23, 1931, to January 27, 1932; his mural commission at Rockefeller Center, on which he began work in March 1933 but was not permitted to complete and which was purposefully destroyed in February 1934; and finally, in November 1934, the re-creation of the obliterated Rockefeller Center mural in Mexico City's newly inaugurated Palacio de Bellas Artes. Based on extensive research in the relevant archives, the contemporary press, and audience and artists' accounts recorded or published then and later,...