#stephanie barron

artnet:

Degenerate Art in New York

A must-see show this spring is the Neue Galerie New York’s Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937, a fantastic exhibition that opened this month. 

Its aim is to recreate the notorious 1937 “Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art”) show organized by the Nazis in Munich as part of its battle against perceived cultural decay.

To this notice I would add that the Entartete Kunst exhibition was already re-created in 1991 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The catalogue for that show, Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, by Stephanie Barron, is easily found today and deserves a mention. According to the press release, Barron’s “catalogue not only recreated the original show, but contains exhaustively researched essays on such topics as the Nazi ideals of beauty and resistance efforts by some German museums. Biographical information is available for each persecuted artist as well as rare photographs, and there is a room by room survey of and guide to the 1939 exhibition with a new English translation.” Further interest in the original travesty of an exhibition caused Fritz Kaiser to re-published the 1937 exhibition guide under the title Degenerate Art: The Exhibition Catalogue Guide In German And English in 2012. The Neue Galerie is to be applauded for once again bringing this spectacle of shame to a new public’s attention.