The only reason the CIA did it in secret is that congress _hated_ modern art and killed State Department projects supporting it. The soviets and every other go

The only reason the CIA did it in secret is that congress _hated_ modern art and killed State Department projects supporting it. The soviets and every other government also promoted their own artists abroad extensively. Not everything the CIA did was a psy-op, sometimes it was a convenient way for the executive branch to do something that congress didn't want to pay for.