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Acres of Walls - Johanna Barron - Exhibitions + Events

In the ongoing project Acres of Walls, artist Johanna Barron presents the first images from her efforts to access and re-create a collection of abstract paintings that hang in the original CIA headquarters building, loaned to the agency by art collector Vincent Melzac. Barron has used the Freedom of Information Act to access documents related to the collection, including research, denials, appeals, redacted pages, as well as her correspondences with the CIA, historians, curators, museums, politicians and scientists, among others.

Following an interest in the CIA’s covert operations during the Cold War, which supported and used art as a “cultural weapon” against the Soviet Union and communism, Barron considers how the Melzac collection is related to the work the CIA was secretly promoting. Barron’s re-creation includes the only images released by the CIA over the years, rendered in three-quarter scale, among them some works that were traded out to other collections. The loan to the CIA began in 1968 and continues to be in flux today with the Melzac estate.