Voice of Fire with striped T-shirts and ties that mimicked the painting. The 1996 book "Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power, and the State", edited by Bruce Barber, Serge Guilbaut and John O'Brian, discusses the issues around the purchase of the painting. Commissioned for Expo 67, the International and Universal Exposition that took place in Montreal during Canada's 1967 centennial, "Voice of Fire" was part of the US pavilion organized by art critic and historian Alan Solomon. The exhibition, "American Painting Now" featured the work of twenty-two artists installed in the US Pavilion, a geodesic dome designed by engineer Buckminster Fuller. Explicitly oriented
Geodesic dome resists sun and weathering. Some form of internal flashing or caulking must be placed over the joints to prevent drafts. The 1963 Cinerama Dome was built from precast concrete hexagons and pentagons. Given the complicated geometry of the geodesic dome, dome builders rely on tables of strut lengths, or "chord factors". In "Geodesic Math and How to Use It", Hugh Kenner writes, "Tables of chord factors, containing as they do the essential design information for spherical systems, were for many years guarded like military secrets. As late as 1966, some 3"ν" icosa figures from "Popular Science Monthly" were all anyone