Reply #49: History of Rockefeller Center [View All]

[elleng]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Center

About Diego Rivera's work:

Thus it came as no real surprise when Rivera's Man at the Crossroads became controversial, as it contained Moscow May Day scenes and a clear portrait of Lenin, not apparent in initial sketches. After Nelson issued a written warning to Rivera to replace the offending figure with an anonymous face, Rivera refused (after offering to counterbalance Lenin with a portrait of Lincoln), and so he was paid off and the mural papered over at the instigation of Nelson, who was to become the Center's flamboyant president. Nine months later, after all attempts to save the fresco were explored—including relocating it to Abby's Museum of Modern Art—it was destroyed as a last option.<16> (Rivera re-created the work later in Mexico City in modified form, from photos taken by an assistant, Lucienne Bloch.)

Rivera's fresco in the Center was replaced with a stunning, larger mural by the Spanish Catalan artist Jose Maria Sert, titled American Progress, depicting a vast allegorical scene of men constructing modern America. It contains the figures of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it is wrapped around the west wall of the Grand Lobby at 30 Rock.<17>

In 1962, a plaque was placed at the plaza with a list of principles in which John D. Rockefeller Jr. believed, first expressed by him in 1941. It begins with: "I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and includes a list of other lifelong beliefs encompassing free enterprise and religion.