In this lavishly illustrated biography of silversmith and graphic artist William Spratling (1900-1967), Taylor D. Littleton reintroduces one of the most fascinating American expatriates of the early twentieth century. Best known for his revolutionary silver designs, Spratling influenced an entire generation of Mexican and American silversmiths and transformed the tiny village of Taxco into the ""Florence of Mexico."" Littleton widens the context of Spratling's popular reputation by examining the formative periods in his life and art that preceded his brilliant entrepreneurial experiment in the Las Delicias workshop in Taxco, which left a permanent mark on Mexico's artistic orientation and economic life. Spratling made a fortune manufacturing and designing silver, but his true life's work was to conserve, redeem, and interpret the ancient culture of his adopted country. He explained for North American audiences the paintings of Mexico's modern masters and earned distinction as a learned and early collector of pre-Columbian art. Spratling and his workshop gradually became a visible and culturally attractive link between a steady stream of notable American visitors and the country they wanted to see and experience. Spratling had the rare good fortune to witness his own reputation - as one of the most admired Americans in Mexico - assume legendary status before his death. William Spratling, His Life and Art vividly reconstructs this richly diverse life whose unique aesthetic legacy is but a part of its larger cultural achievement of profoundly influencing Americans' attitudes toward a civilisation different from their own.

A representative collection of avant-garde American painting from the 1930s and '40s, owned by Auburn University. Conceived and funded by the State Department in 1946 as part of a new emphasis in international diplomacy, the exhibit of paintings called Advancing American Art was launched on what was enthusiastically projected as an extended goodwill tour of Europe and Latin America. But almost immediately the exhibit was attacked by conservative groups as "un-American" and "subversive" and its abstract paintings ridiculed in the national media, in Congress, and by no less a critic than President Truman. Following their recall by Secretary Marshall in 1947, the exhibit's paintings were quietly declared surplus property and sold under rather curious circumstances by the War Assets Administration. Most of the collection was acquired by a small number of public universities in what could be called the art bargain of the century, since works by such figures as Marin, O'Keefe, Shahn, Dove, Kuniyoshi, and Hartley were sold for $100 or less.
The chronicle of this exhibit tells us something about America after the war, when the nation sought to reconcile its sacrificial experiences from the Depression and in World War II with its new role on the international scene. Defining the figures of confrontation that challenged America's tenuous self-conceptions at the time, this book captures a significant transitional moment in U.S. history while also serving as a catalog of the 38 masterpieces purchased by Auburn University.