Degenerate Art Exhibitions: from 1937 Germany, USA and France.

How do we remember art exhibitions held decades ago? This question is the key to an understanding of post-modernist practices. Reesa Greenberg called it the Remembering Exhibition, and used the term for modern exhibitions that recalled specific exhibitions from the distant past. We think of exhibitions as isolated moments in time, Greenberg said, and refer to extraordinary exhibitions as Landmarks, implying a journey where history was forever changed.

endless queuing at the Degenerate Art Exhibition, 

Munich 1937

Greenberg said the common form of remembering exhibition is the replica. This mode copies as much of the original art work as possible, even if reproductions are needed in a space employing the initial installation structure.

Remembering Exhibitions may be found in other historical displays. This device can convey a broader sense of the period than that provided by the art works alone. But since the 'remembering exhibition' is distant in time from the original exhibition, the art often needs to be supplemented by archival documentation. We can jog modern viewers’ memories by displaying photographs and documents relating to the show’s reception.

For me there have been many landmark shows, but none as powerful as the Entartete Kunst/Degenerate Art exhibition which started in Munich in 1937 and wandered around German and Austrian cities for 4 years. I have written and lectured about it at length.

works intentionally displayed badly, 

Degenerate Art Exhibition, 1937

 So of all the examples that Reesa Greenberg used, I am currently interested in two. The first was the 1937 Entartete Kunst/Degenerate Art exhibition, remembered in curator Stephanie Barron’s 1991 Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany. Assembled by the Los Angeles County Museum, 150 art objects from the original German exhibition were included.

Fate of the Avant Garde in Nazi Germany Exhibition, 

1991

The reconstruction was not entirely faithful to the original exhibition. In 1937 the original Entartete Kunst exhibition was shown in a number of very different warehouse spaces; these changed as the show travelled around Germany and Austria. By contrast, the 1991 reconstruction of Degenerate Art consisted of a free-standing corridor with a raised floor in the middle of an exhibition gallery. The effect of this structure was that of entering a time tunnel.  Only some of the reproduced art works were positioned in a crowded manner similar to the way they had been encountered in 1937. It was intended to convey something of the intensity of the experience of the original Nazi exhibition.

The second, more fascinating modern exhibition was the 1997 Exiles and Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler which featured a replica space based on Frederic Kiesler’s Art of this Century Gallery in New York. It was originally designed in 1942 for Peggy Guggenheim.

Barron and her German associate, Sabine Eckmann, vividly illustrated a nearly forgotten aspect of the late 1930s: the American public was largely unaware of Nazi persecution and in any case, mainstream America had little sympathy for the people the Nazis persecuted, especially those weird abstract artists. People who appreciated and supported the creative talent of the avant-garde were few indeed. The 1997 exhibition recognised some of the most prominent ones, such as Peggy Guggenheim, Alfred Barr and Reinhold Niebuhr. Notably missing, however, were the contributions of the American Friends Service Committee, whose Friendship House became a gathering place for refugee artists. They succeeded in convincing the sponsors of the 1939 New York World's Fair to include an exhibit of art banned by the Nazis!

Exiles and Emigres Exhibition, 

1997

Could the hysteria of the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition be relived 60 years later, knowing that many of the artists identified as degenerate had to flee into exile or face the Nazi regime? Could we imagine ourselves standing for hours in long long queues, waiting to see the modernist art, before it was sold off or destroyed?

Probably not, but we moderns could develop insight into why the Nazi party was so offended by the degenerate artists and their work. And we can at last unwrap the irony of Nazi taste setters displaying the very art that they wanted desperately to hide from the public. The 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition was to give, at the outset of a new age for German people, a close survey of the gruesome last chapter of those decades of cultural decadence that preceded the Great Change.

Stephanie Barron, Susan L Caroselli et al wrote Degenerate Art : the fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, published by Abrams and Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991. It is well worth reading. So is Exiles + Emigrés : the Flight of European Artists from Hitler, written by Stephanie Barron, Sabine Eckmann and Matthew Affron. Published by H.N. Abrams in 1997, the book could have been a text for my lectures - Varian Fry, Bauhaus architecture, Marc Chagall, Surrealism in exile etc.

Degenerate Art Exhibition, Musée Picasso Paris, 2025

sortiraparis.com

Until mid May 2025, the Musée Picasso in Paris has an exhibition entitled "Degenerate Art: The Trial of Modern Art under Nazism". This is a dark dive into art history, exploring the Nazi regime's persecution of the avant-garde. Based on an analysis of the Entartete Kunst exhibition held in Munich in 1937, see 600+ works by 100 modern artists, including Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Vassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, Paul Klee and Max Beckmann, in a setting designed to provoke visitors' disgust.