ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with Albania because it demonstrates that with resourcefulness and pragmatism any nation has the potential to negotiate its national art traditions and thus locate moments and actors even when artistic freedoms are denied. It looks in detail at the role of national galleries in the construction of national art, focusing particularly on examples where this has been achieved very successfully and rather simply. The chapter includes the state regulation of art in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and communist China, nationalism in Polish art, the Prado and the invention of the Spanish tradition, and finally the National Gallery of Canada and the making of the Group of Seven. The chapter aims to reveal the different ways they have manifested national art particularly through acts that essentialise that art so as to imagine that it possesses a number of unique characteristics.
