“Cross Road Blues,” December 8, 2025
Last week, we left artist Diego Rivera defending his murals at the Detroit Institute for the Arts against the criticism of some elected officials who saw his celebration of workers as left-wing propaganda. At least those murals are still there. When, a year or so later, Rivera refused to change the content of a mural he was creating at Rockefeller Center in New York City, it was literally torn out and destroyed.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was the driving force behind the creation of a collection of art deco buildings that would become the headquarters for the radio corporation of America and the national broadcasting network. Rockefeller’s wife Abby was a patron of Rivera’s, having bought many of his works, some from the museum of modern art exhibit that we mentioned last week. The Rockefeller’s became close with Rivera and his wife Frieda Kahlo. They knew he was a communist and that made no difference in the commission.
John D. wanted a grand mural on the ground floor of the main building that would to make people think. Make them ponder the big questions. and so he suggested the theme of Rivera’s mural be something like “Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future.” Rivera agreed and decided to call the work simply Man at the Crossroads.
A central panel, depicting a worker controlling machinery, was flanked by two other panels. One was called The Frontier of Ethical Evolution and represented socialism, and the other was called The Frontier of Material Development, which represented capitalism. The central panel would reflect the title: humanity was poised at the crossroads having to make a choice as to which was the better course to follow—ethical evolution or material wellbeing.
Despite the Rockefeller family having approved the designs, one New York newspaper aggressively criticized the mural as nothing more than anti-capitalist propaganda. In response, a proud and defiant Rivera added a likeness of Lenin and a May Day parade. To the ethical evolution panel.
That was apparently too much for John and Abby’s son—and future NY governor—Nelson Rockefeller who asked Rivera to paint him out. Rivera refused and Rockefeller immediately had the mural plastered over. According to a recent book about Rockefeller center, Rivera didn’t read the small print in the contract that gave the building complete ownership of the work he was creating.
Using photographs one of his assistants had taken of his work, Rivera created a new version. Meanwhile the actual Communist Party of the United States kicked Rivera out for accepting commissions from wealthy Americans.
And still, all this was before the McCarthy scare.
Rivera's recreation, at a smaller scale, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City where it was renamed Man, Controller of the Universe.