Comment by somenameforme

This piece offers a limited perspective on what happened. There was quite a lot more than you can read about from other sources, such as this. [1] It wasn't just funding. The CIA setup an entire propaganda network, the 'Propaganda Assets Inventory', "which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organizations."

The CIA was directly reciting stories on an international global level, was ensuring that only positive critiques were widely scene, and much more. They also ensured the funds necessary to keep spreading the art always were readily available, but that was almost inconsequential in contrast to their other interventions. Incidentally the CIA was also doing much of this behind the backs of Congress who were ostensibly opposed to such a scale of propaganda, back in the day.

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"We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War.

"It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do - send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That's one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."

-- Tom Braden, Head of CIA International Organizations Division [at the time when this was happening]

[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...