Word: ica
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...million) and the Communist Party's international activities ($150 million). It also includes such indirect propaganda efforts as TASS, the Soviet news agency, which spends $550 million a year spreading Moscow's view of world events to foreign countries. By contrast, the U.S. International Communication Agency (ICA)-which coordinates the Voice of America, cultural exchanges, films, speakers, exhibits and other aspects of U.S. "public diplomacy"-has a budget of only $448 million. Even if the $87 million the U.S. spends separately for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty are included, the total is still a small fraction...
During his presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan spoke of increasing the American propaganda effort, but in this winter of budget cutting no additional money is foreseen. This week the President is expected to name a new head of the ICA. The leading candidate: California Businessman Charles Wick, a close friend who was co-chairman of the Reagan Inauguration Committee...
...ICA EXHIBIT also fails to point out the relevance of showing Dada art in 1980. While museums commonly exhibit works from past periods without making historical connections, the situation here is different. The status of an institution of contemporary art that chooses to exhibit works that are now 60 years old is somewhat questionable; some reference to recent work would have proved that the spirit of Dadaism guides and inspires many contemporary artists...
...works in the ICA show reveal the formal similarities of much Dadaist graphic art to contemporary examples. The Dadaists experimented with the nature of graphic communication, mixing typefaces and altering size and scale. Ernst's poster "Dada Zeigt!" (Dada Wins!) uses assorted lettering with unrelated symbols--a rope, a bed, a cow, a housewife. The asymmetric anarchic quality of such compositions also characterizes contemporary New Wave graphics. This aesthetic, which has sprung up alongside of punk music and fashion, is characterized by the juxtaposition of disparate forms, symbols and lettering in designs that often are consciously crooked, random and askew...
Dada was outburst and outrage. It shook the cultural world, and its repercussions are still being felt. Some mention of contemporary endeavors would have rendered the material in the ICA show more conspicuously relevant to the present. Without such allusions, the apt timing of the exhibit looks like just a fortunate accident, an artistic coincidence--not a conscious design. More than simply betraying the spirit of Dada in straitjacketing its works, the ICA's presentation is a model of how museums function more as mausoleums than as regenerative forces that revive the art of the past to engage contemporary audiences...