The American National Exhibition, held from July 25 to September 4, 1959, was an exhibition of American art, fashion, cars, capitalism, model homes and futuristic kitchens. Held at Sokolniki Park in Moscow, then capital of the Soviet Union, the exhibition attracted 3 million visitors during its six-week run. The Cold War event is historic for the Kitchen Debate between then-U.S. vice president Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, held first at the model kitchen table, outfitted by General Electric, and then continued in the color television studio where it was broadcast to both countries, with each leader arguing the merits of his system, and a conversation that "escalated from washing machines to nuclear warfare."
But the event is equally renowned for its art exhibition, which included such celebrated artists as sculptors Robert Laurent, Ibram Lassaw and Isamu Noguchi and painters Hyman Bloom, Jackson Pollock and Edward Hopper in an art show coordinated by the United States Information Agency (USIA). Prior to the exhibition, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) threatened to remove many of the artists who had been accused of links to communist activities. After President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened, however, the exhibition went on as planned.
Interpretations of the event are mixed. Some called the event a success because it humanized both countries, leading to better relations between them. Some also note that the event resulted in "a landmark contract to mass-manufacture Pepsi in the Soviet Union," creating new business opportunity, as well as a better relationship. But others argue that "[a] year later, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought both sides to the brink of nuclear war, and ties didn't begin improving until the 1970s." Meanwhile, liberal critics characterized the exhibition as an American Cold War "propaganda strategy."
The exhibit was sponsored by the American government, and "a similar exhibition was mounted by the Soviet Union at the Coliseum in New York City." Essentially organized as a cultural exchange, there were as many goals as there were interpretations of the event. Nixon, for example, used it as an occasion to increase his stature as an American leader and showcase American consumer goods.
The then vice president had embarked "on a ten-day tour of the Soviet Union that coincided with the exhibition in Moscow, and on the opening day, he and Khrushchev toured the exhibits together before the gates opened to the public." Using a videotape recorder, "one of the first to allow a live program to be easily recorded and quickly broadcasted on television," the two leaders stopped in one of four model U.S. kitchens, with each arguing the merits of his own system:In the upcoming presidential election, Nixon would cite the Kitchen Debate as an example of his fierce diplomacy. Ironically, the Kitchen Debate likely gave Nixon overconfidence in his televised debating skill. Just over a year later, Nixon agreed to debate a young John F. Kennedy and was humiliated in the first televised presidential debate.
"Even more so than art and fashion, it was the on-the-ground guides that would" serve to personalize America's presence in Moscow, answering questions and engaging in polite debate with Soviet visitors." The group included 27 women and 48 men," all purposefully younger than 35 to reflect America's youth. "All guides were fluent in Russian and some were (almost certainly) trained in intelligence gathering." Four of them were also black, and "President Eisenhower was apparently concerned with how they might represent the United States and its systemic violations of civil rights in 1959." So when he invited the guides to the White House for a meet-and-greet ahead of the exhibition, he "quizzed the black guides about how they came to be fluent in Russian." In the end, their answers reassured him that they would not give the Soviets reason to rebut America's emphasis on freedom with a discussion of inequality in America, and so, they were sent to Moscow as originally planned.
"One of the more popular exhibits ... was the IBM 305 RAMAC computer. It could answer over 4,000 questions within a wide range of topics—some of them quite uncomfortable for Americans to address. Not only were common questions like "What is the price of American cigarettes?" and "What is jazz music?" answered with a printout in just 90 seconds, thornier questions about race relations and lynching were also pre-programmed to give diplomatic responses.
Meanwhile, the exhibition itself was a showcase for the latest "home appliances, fashions, television and hi-fi sets, a model house priced to sell [to] an 'average' family, farm equipment, 1959 automobiles, boats, sporting equipment and a children's playground, as well as books and vinyl records." Overall, the various displays of the exhibit, which involved the designer George Nelson, showcased approximately "3,000 tons of material ... sent from the US to Moscow." Visitors could see everything from canned foods, tractors, and vinyl records to furniture and fittings, such as Herman Miller Bubble lamps; as well as a multiscreen film, Glimpses of the U.S.A. by fellow Herman Miller designers, Charles and Ray Eames. There were also "four demonstration kitchens ... with the RCA/Whirlpool Miracle Kitchen [being] the most futuristic." "It promised super-fast meal preparation, push-button everything, and automatic robot cleaners." Overall, "[a]bout 450 companies made contributions to the Moscow exhibition. Sears, IBM, General Mills, Kodak, Whirlpool, Macy's, Pepsi, General Motors, RCA, and Dixie Cup all had a presence, despite the fact that none of their products could be purchased in the Soviet Union."
"The Americans showed off a lot of consumer goods because—unlike heavy industry and space exploration—products like dishwashers and soda pop were areas where the U.S. was way ahead of Communist Russia. Largely unimpressed, Soviet leaders claimed that it was merely a bunch of gadgets. And in some ways they were right": Many of them weren't in American homes yet.
"Coca-Cola [had] declined to participate in the Exhibition, but Pepsi dove in with both feet." The PepsiCo executive present Donald Kendall convinced Nixon to arrange for Khrushchev to sample pepsi. He sampled pepsi made with water from both New York and Moscow and spoke positively of it. Kendall and Nixon would go on to maintain relations as Kendall funded the 1968 presidential campaign, and is heard in the second volume of the Watergate tapes. "This no doubt greased the wheels for Pepsi's entrance into the Soviet Union in 1972, after Nixon's re-election. Detente was succeeding in the early 1970s and there was a kind of swap: Pepsi would be introduced to the Soviet Union if Russian vodka could enter the American market....[T]he two countries signed a 10-year countertrade agreement, allowing Stolichnaya vodka in the U.S. and Pepsi into the USSR."
In 1959, the vice president of the Housing and Home Components department at Loewy/Snaith, Andrew Geller was the design supervisor for the exhibition, the "Typical American House," built at the American National Exhibition. The exhibition home largely replicated a home previously built at 398 Townline Road in Commack, New York, which had been originally designed by Stanley H. Klein for the Long Island-based firm All-State Properties, headed by developer Herbert Sadkin. To accommodate visitors to the exhibition, Sadkin hired Loewy's office to modify Klein's floor plan. According to one version of how the house got its name, Geller supervised the work, which "split" the house, creating its nickname "Splitnik," and a way for large numbers of visitors to tour the small house. In another version, it's said that [t]he Russians called the house the “Splitnik,” [as] a pun on “Sputnik,” the name of the satellite the Soviets had put into orbit two years before." At the exhibition the design of a "Typical American House" that was displayed featured a spacious kitchen and open floor.