Introduction

Reflecting the growing interest in international artistic exchanges after World War II, a breif overview of third issue of "Italian Modern Art" aims to analyze the pivotal role played by the 1949 exhibition Twentieth-Century Italian Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, including a literature review, methodological framework, and acknowledgements. Twentieth-Century Italian Art exhibition was the first opportunity after World War II for American audiences to see the work of a substantial group of contemporary Italian artists. Curated by James Thrall Soby and Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the exhibition was followed by a vast campaign of acquisitions: MoMA added key Italian artists, from Umberto Boccioni to Lucio Fontana, to its permanent collection and thereby situated them within the museum’s influential narrative of modernism. Further, the Italian show aided MoMA curators in revising their institutional perspective in the Cold War context, moving it beyond a Paris-centered canon. The intrduction highlighted the differences between the exhibition framework and the catalogue, focusing on methodologiacl features. Moreover, it presented different methodological approaches by several scholars, comparing exhibition histories, cultural transfer, cultural diplomacy, art and politics, the history of collecting, the history of the art market, and more.