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Diego Rivera, Vaccination
Panel, from the North Wall Medical and scientific innovations spurred tremendous excitement in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and this excitement was even reflected in paintings, films, and and novels. Diego Rivera’s famous Detroit Institute of Arts frescoes are best known for depicting automobile production at the Ford Motor Company plant at River Rouge, but several sections of the frescoes were devoted to another Detroit industry: pharmaceuticals. A 1930s guide book to the frescoes published for museum visitors describes this section as portraying "science in its beneficent aspect. A child is being vaccinated. Below are the animals from whose blood come the protecting vaccines. Above, scientists toil unselfishly in their laboratory." (George F. Pierrot and E.P. Richardson, Diego Rivera and his Frescoes of Detroit, 1934) That the layout of this work mimics that of the Nativity is no accident,
and this resemblance did not go unnoticed at the time. Scholars who have
studied the frescoes have noted that after they were unveiled, some religious
authorities accused Rivera of disparaging religion and enthroning science
as its replacement.
Copyright © 1997, 2002 University of Pennsylvania HSS |
