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.
Some were destroyed, some were taken by Nazis leaders for their private collections, many were sold.
Picasso museum in Paris has organized an exhibit of 60 paintings. I visited it.
In fact every school of modern painting, from Van Gogh and impressionists, to abstract painters as Kandinsky. was included.
And, i could not not to think of the Maga attitude toward arts and sciences, their obsession for purity, their views on wokism, and their will to banish wokism from everywhere, their rejection of science for ideological reasons.
Nazis crippled German science durably.
Comparison is not reason, but sometimes, it helps.
The president doesn’t merely want to break the government bureaucracy. He wants to reprogram what the arts mean to the American people.
February 11, 2025 - Washington Post
(I wonder how long before that columnist, Robin Givhan, is fired?
Absolutely tragic and in the end they will be ultimately destructive, since most Americans seem to be choosing to turn a blind eye - “it will be okay,” if we only wish it hard enough. You know, that was also the refrain in Germany during the 1930s.
“WE could have never seen such a thing happening.”
Actually We could have, had We only opened our eyes.
On February 12, 2025, President Trump announced on Truth Social that he was “unanimously elected” as the new chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Trump replaces former Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter, who was terminated, according to the The New York Times.
As of 5 p.m., Rutter’s bio on the yet-to-be-updated Kennedy Center website described her as one of the “strongest leaders in the arts today, combining artistic daring with fiscal sustainability and community-driven solutions.” It also stated that during her tenure, “Rutter has expanded programming to represent the diversity of art in America and led initiatives to integrate the arts into the daily lives of all Americans.”
Do you think that Trump substituted a partisan board to a bi partisan one and add himself elected as chairman dismissing a very comptent woman to promote and finance freedom of artists?
Even when he declares that " Woke and anti-amerian art" is finished or something like that?
I always know what I’m talking about. You never do. If you did, you would know the Kennedy Center is just a concert hall. It has no effect on what artists can create.
First, it is much more than a concert Hall, it is a center for performing arts, wit resident artists, which has inscribed in his status, since its foundation a principe of no discrimination, and has worked for inclusiveness, including disabled people
Second, performing artists are artists and they create .
Third, if he does not intend to interfere, why Trump has acted so, and claimed that it was a time in his cultural war ? He has vowed to be the one who decides what is allowed to be performed in the venue.
Fourth, following Trump’s takeover of the board, the national tour of the new children’s musical Finn , which involved coming-of-age themes and subject matter, was cancelled by the Center. Don’t tell me it was for financial reasons, that’s a lie
Oh man… you’ve got to be kidding. The Kennedy Center is a national cultural institution.
If the Kennedy center were just a concert hall, what is Trump’s interest then?
You make these statements without having made a single visit to the website.
You are a lazy researcher and that keeps you “willfully” ignorant.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a vibrant cultural hub that connects thousands of artists with millions of people each year. As a living memorial to President Kennedy and the nation’s cultural center, the Kennedy Center presents world-class art by the artists that define our culture today, delivers powerful arts education opportunities nationwide, and embodies the ideals of President Kennedy.
The Kennedy Center presents opera, ballet, classical music, comedy, dance, jazz, hip hop, popular music, theater, and choral music. Through educational programs, international festivals, cultural exchanges, live performances on the Millennium Stage, and the new arts center, the REACH, the Kennedy Center strives to cultivate a culture of inclusiveness, in which our art and our audiences are as rich, diverse, and ever-changing as America itself.
But I can see the problem for the MAGA types who are kooky enough to thing we can cleanse our country of Foreign Blood, and colored skin,
that diversity thing that MAGA Whities who believe it all belong to me, me, me, hate so much . . .
USA can never go back, we can only vandalize what we’ve achieved and speed our ultimate collapse. MAGA man.
Again, it’s Washington DC’s venue for highbrow arts. That’s it. New York and Los Angeles dominate the arts scene in America, not D.C. If Trump wanted to choke artistic expression he’d be better off going after those cities.
I don’t think Trump has any deep reasoning for why he wants to be the chairman other than the fact that he likes to have his name on everything.
Rhiannon Giddens announced she is no longer performing her May 11 concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, citing political reasons and President Donald Trump.
“The Kennedy Center show was booked long before the current administration decided to take over this previously non-political institution, but I cannot in good conscience play at The Kennedy with the recent programming changes forced on the institution by this new board,” she posted on Instagram.
Within your limited frame of reference (FOX faux news) I’m sure you believe all you say.
There’s more going on, you can kid yourself, but . . .
. . . The arts in America, however, have been marginalised for so long that throwing salt on the wound has greater symbolic connotations than the destructive ones implied in this instance.
Trump and his newly-anointed Kennedy Centre interim president, Richard Grenell, have expressed a desire to obliterate the current programming in favor of… well, so far, “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas” – as Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany under the previous Trump administration, told Conservative Political Action Committee. For his part, Trump himself proclaimed that the Kennedy Centre would no longer host drag shows (there was a small “drag brunch” event last fall, but little else). …
… Like so much else with this administration, it’s become a billboard for autocracy run wild. …
And you think that’s normal for an American president?
