What exactly is it that is depicted on these "compliant" works? Is it all propaganda?
Yes and no. We initially believed that all these works of art had been created for propaganda purposes. However, portraits of Hitler, of war and of other Nazi party values only make up about 10 percent of all the works. Americans kept large parts of the propaganda items for themselves. But 90 percent and even more of what you get to see in this exhibition looks like harmless pictures at first sight.
In truth, they also fuel propaganda, but for a kind of reality that didn't exist at that period of time. You will see healthy families with blond children, idealized depictions of industrial landscapes, mythological images, and harmless portraits. But the problem is that they were created at a time, between 1939 and 1945, when everything around them was being bombed to smithereens. People were actually dying and six million were killed in the Holocaust. This is something that, as we now know today, was widely known at the time as well. [...]
As a second location, we planned a collaboration with a museum for contemporary art in Wroclaw, Poland. The city is a European Capital of Culture in 2016. The director of the museum, Dorota Monkiewicz, was committed to showing the exhibition in her museum. However, the ruling PiS government fired her. Her contract was not extended. All agreed projects were canceled.
When we asked how we could help, she said, "I was kicked out because I'm a left-leaning liberal." When I asked her whether it had anything to do with the exhibition, she said it wasn't a problem to show original works by Nazi artists, but that the works were being shown in a critical light. It's deeply concerning that something like this should happen in 2016 in Poland - a country that was invaded by the Nazis in 1939.
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