The American National Exhibition, held from July 25 to September 4, 1959, was an exhibition of American art, fashion, cars, capitalism, model homes and futuristic kitchens. Held at Sokolniki Park in Moscow, then capital of the Soviet Union, the exhibition attracted 3 million visitors during its six-week run. The Cold War event is historic for the Kitchen Debate between then-U.S. vice president Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, held first at the model kitchen table, outfitted by General Electric, and then continued in the color television studio where it was broadcast to both countries, with each leader arguing the merits of his system, and a conversation that "escalated from washing machines to nuclear warfare."

But the event is equally renowned for its art exhibition, which included such celebrated artists as sculptors Robert Laurent, Ibram Lassaw and Isamu Noguchi and painters Hyman Bloom, Jackson Pollock and Edward Hopper in an art show coordinated by the United States Information Agency (USIA). Prior to the exhibition, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) threatened to remove many of the artists who had been accused of links to communist activities. After President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened, however, the exhibition went on as planned.

Interpretations of the event are mixed. Some called the event a success because it humanized both countries, leading to better relations between them. Some also note that the event resulted in "a landmark contract to mass-manufacture Pepsi in the Soviet Union," creating new business opportunity, as well as a better relationship. But others argue that "[a] year later, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought both sides to the brink of nuclear war, and ties didn't begin improving until the 1970s." Meanwhile, liberal critics characterized the exhibition as an American Cold War "propaganda strategy."

The exhibit was sponsored by the American government, and "a similar exhibition was mounted by the Soviet Union at the Coliseum in New York City." Essentially organized as a cultural exchange, there were as many goals as there were interpretations of the event. Nixon, for example, used it as an occasion to increase his stature as an American leader and showcase American consumer goods.

The then vice president had embarked "on a ten-day tour of the Soviet Union that coincided with the exhibition in Moscow, and on the opening day, he and Khrushchev toured the exhibits together before the gates opened to the public." Using a videotape recorder, "one of the first to allow a live program to be easily recorded and quickly broadcasted on television," the two leaders stopped in one of four model U.S. kitchens, with each arguing the merits of his own system:

In the upcoming presidential election, Nixon would cite the Kitchen Debate as an example of his fierce diplomacy. Ironically, the Kitchen Debate likely gave Nixon overconfidence in his televised debating skill. Just over a year later, Nixon agreed to debate a young John F. Kennedy and was humiliated in the first televised presidential debate.

"Even more so than art and fashion, it was the on-the-ground guides that would" serve to personalize America's presence in Moscow, answering questions and engaging in polite debate with Soviet visitors." The group included 27 women and 48 men," all purposefully younger than 35 to reflect America's youth. "All guides were fluent in Russian and some were (almost certainly) trained in intelligence gathering." Four of them were also black, and "President Eisenhower was apparently concerned with how they might represent the United States and its systemic violations of civil rights in 1959." So when he invited the guides to the White House for a meet-and-greet ahead of the exhibition, he "quizzed the black guides about how they came to be fluent in Russian." In the end, their answers reassured him that they would not give the Soviets reason to rebut America's emphasis on freedom with a discussion of inequality in America, and so, they were sent to Moscow as originally planned.

"One of the more popular exhibits ... was the IBM 305 RAMAC computer. It could answer over 4,000 questions within a wide range of topics—some of them quite uncomfortable for Americans to address. Not only were common questions like "What is the price of American cigarettes?" and "What is jazz music?" answered with a printout in just 90 seconds, thornier questions about race relations and lynching were also pre-programmed to give diplomatic responses.