Plural Diplomacies Between Indian Termination and the Cold War: Contemporary American Indian Paintings in the ‘Near East’, 1964–66

From 1964 to 1966, the United States Information Agency toured an exhibition of modern artworks titled Contemporary American Indian Paintings to Greece, Turkey, Iran, Algeria and Israel. Among other exhibitions of Native American art sent abroad during the Cold War, the paintings were intended to counter Soviet critiques of US colonization with a message of benevolent modernization, while deflecting international attention away from Indigenous decolonization struggles. This article positions the tour between federal Indian termination policy and Cold War propaganda, considering how Contemporary American Indian Paintings quietly slipped Native American diplomatic concerns into a global arena shaped by imperialism.