Scholars acknowledge the traveling exhibition Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today, held in the US between 1950 and 1953, as a pivotal event in the forging of a new beginning for Italy in the postwar period.1 By invoking the Renaissance—often noted in accounts—the exhibition emphasized the rebirth or resurrection of Italian democracy following the fall of the Fascist dictatorship by utilizing the healing language of a golden age, of which Italy was the embodiment and to which the US also ideally aspired (Belfanti 2015). In fact, the show was presented as a “visual proof of the productive, artistic and spiritual resurgence of Italy” and the tangible seal of the tied partnership between Italy and the United States (see the November 29, 1950, press release in Brooklyn Museum Archives, Records of the Department of Public Information 1947–1952). On one hand, it contributed to the promotion...

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