Smithsonian artists and scholars respond to White House list of objectionable art

[DBoon]

https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/smithsonian-artists-and-scholars-respond-to-white-house-list-of-objectionable-art

The official White House newsletter has posted an article titled "President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian." It calls out some of the institution's artwork, exhibitions, programs and online articles that focus on race, slavery, immigration and sexuality. That includes works at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, The National Portrait Gallery, and The National Museum of the American Latino.

The list of objectionable content comes a week after White House officials sent a letter asking eight of the Smithsonian's museums to submit their current and future plans for exhibitions, social media content and other material. The institution's director Lonnie Bunche was told it had 120 days to comply for what the administration says will be a "comprehensive review," in order to bring the Smithsonian in line with Trump's cultural directives ahead of the country's 250th anniversary celebrations.

The administration has directed the museums to replace "divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions."
...
Gonzalez says the White House list reminds him of the "degenerate art" exhibitions in 1930s Germany. "The Nazis gathered modern artists they deemed to be not within the context of their ideals," Gonzalez says, adding that he believes the current Trump administration "has an agenda, and clearly they do not see it in my work."

The comparison to the German Nazi purge of modern "degenerate" art is right on target. Hitler eliminated works by the greatest artists of the 20th century and replaced them with kitschy pseudo-realistic works celebrating Nazi values.

The wikipedia article on Degenerate Art is well worth a read, as the parallels are obvious:

Degenerate art (German: Entartete Kunst) was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, was removed from state-owned museums and banned in Nazi Germany on the grounds that such art was an "insult to German feeling", un-German, Freemasonic, Jewish, or Communist in nature. Those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions that included dismissal from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art.
...
While modern styles of art were prohibited, the Nazis promoted paintings and sculptures that were traditional in manner and that exalted the "blood and soil" values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art for more

[TexLaProgressive]

1. Totalitarian regimes fear bards

The creative spirits of musicians, poets, writers and artists always shine a bright light on falseness.

[Timeflyer]

2. "Objectionable" is what he's done to pimp out the White House with his gilded dollar store trumpery.*

*Definition of "trumpery"--"worthless nonsense," also cheap, trivial, useless nonsense...

[tavernier]

3. I buy a lot of cheap, trivial nonsense at the dollar store

when I’m decorating for Halloween or St. Paddy’s Day or such. But I don’t want my White House to look like that, and you hit the bullseye, because that’s EXACTLY what he did to it! I wonder if there’s a separate aisle for boxed cookies and Little Debbie’s and pickle flavored sunflower seeds?

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Next ? Scientific papers "translated from the original Hebrew" ? Yes, they did that.

Many of the architects of quantum mechanics -- which revolutionized physics and upset many 'classical' physicists -- were ostracized for what Nazis considered 'degenerate' science. And, of course, Einstein, whose theories of relativity (and others, including the photoelectric effect, his contribution to quantum mechanics) brought about an earlier revolution, saw his published articles bearing that stamp.

The end result, of course, was that Jewish scientists fled Germany for the UK and (mostly) the USA, giving the USA an incredibly strong leadership role in science in the postwar years. See e.g.

https://malwarwick-98471.medium.com/the-scientists-hitler-drove-away-helped-the-allies-win-3560b9aeb9e0
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/online/5299/The-scientific-exodus-from-Nazi-Germany
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/online/5300 (Some fled to Turkey)
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/10/03/140815154/dissolve-my-nobel-prize-fast-a-true-story (fascinating story on the pettiness of the Nazi regime)

Now Turnip is doing a pretty good job of driving scientists out of the USA.

[pecosbob]

5. We can't have degenerate art in the Bundesmuseum...