The World Man Center on Cyprus was proposed in the 1960s and was envisioned as an artwork containing works of art, enclosed by a work of art, designed by WAAS Fellow R. Buckminster Fuller, and in large part funded by works of art. The World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) was proposed as the managing trustee of the project, along with prominent WAAS Fellows. As an aesthetic object, it was to be a symbol of transnational poetic creativity endeavoring to transform the everyday, to disclose more of the world, and to bring creative possibility to fruition. The project, although not realized (cut short by the Cyprus war) integrated the architectural design and the land of the site and transformed those involved in its making, who continued to interpret what is real and possible.
Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus required that the “World Man Center, Inc.” be operated for 50 years under a trusteeship of the highest order of intellectual and scientific capability, “for instance, by the World Academy of Art and Science which includes among its governing body a number of Nobel Prize winners.”
The individuals involved in the World Man Center project included R. Buckminster Fuller and his architectural associate Shoji Sadao; Caresse Crosby, philanthropist and patron of the arts; Xenon Rossides, ambassador from Cyprus to the United States; Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus; and Patroclus Stavrou, secretary to the archbishop. Artists who sold their art to benefit the project included Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, WAAS Fellow Henry Moore, Michael Lekakis, and Salvador Dali. United Nations Secretary-General U Thant raised funds at dinners for ambassadors. The project was to have been under the trusteeship of the World Academy of Art and Science.
Although the project was not realized because of the war between the Turks and the Greek Cypriots, it should not go forgotten and unexamined. Neither should the ideals it represented be abandoned. The project remains a symbol both of the power of the metaphysics of art and of art as a transnational magnet of creativity. Art forces man to reevaluate what he has or has not accomplished by reason. There are powers in art that go beyond philosophy. Art discloses what cannot be disclosed through the tools of philosophy and at least be complementary to philosophy in the penetration of the meaning of humankind.
Source: “Art, Science, and Peace: The Proposed ‘World Man Center’ Project on Cyprus.” Florence Hetzler. Leonardo, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1984), pp. 100-103