A decade later - Fundação Luso-Americana

poLicy
The period of 1989 to today marks the last movement in this extraordinarily evocative exhibition.
Einstein and Claude Lèvi-Strauss. After
Hitler’s defeat and the bombs over Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, the United States would
emerge, once and for all, as the greatest
power in the world, a power that would
continue to grow and become the nemesis
of its arch-rival, the Soviet Union.
Mirroring Germany, the world was divided
into two blocs: East and West. We have
now come to the Cold War era (symbolically
portrayed in the exhibition by a chess
table), and Post-War America. The US is
now a prosperous nation with wealthy
suburbs, TVs and electrical appliances, a car
in every garage, and a juke box in every
diner. It’s the golden age of rock n’roll,
Elvis, and later Saturday Night Fever, and things
that go better with Coke. A decade later,
Madonna, Michael Jackson, microwaves,
video games, eT, and the fall of the Berlin
Wall would take the world by storm.
It was no longer a bi-polar world. As it
fell, the Iron Curtain buried the hammer
and sickle. The period of 1989 until today
marks the last “movement” of this extraordinary
exhibition in which both Europe and
America affirm their positions and attempt
to redefine their relationship. The US is now
enjoying its status as the world’s overarching
superpower, a nation with military, economic,
and cultural primacy in a post-September
11 th world, but one that has begun
to spy a new economic rival on the horizon:
China. Europe, on the other hand, continues
on its path towards reunification and union,
while still licking the wounds it sustained
during the Balkan War.
Today the United States and Europe are
both partners and allies. At the beginning,
their destinies were intertwined. They still
are. The proof is the grave financial crisis,
which started on the other side of the
Atlantic, and generated waves that crossed
the Pond, producing effects that are still
visible …especially in Portugal.
The exhibition ends as the settlers’ great
adventure began: with the sea. The last
hall of the show has literally been turned
into a beach to mark the Atlantic nature
of the relationship between Europe and
the US. It is a relationship that, like the
‘ The period of 1989 until today
marks the last “movement”
of this extraordinary exhibition
in which both europe and
America affirm their positions
and attempt to redefine
their relationship.
’
tides, has ebbed and flowed over the centuries,
a relationship of mutual influences,
of rivalry, affection, and age-old
fascination.
mirroring Germany, the world was divided into two blocs: east and West.
Parallel no. 6 | FALL | WINTER 2011 37