As the art market sinks and federal funding shrinks, what will it take to protect arts, culture, and democracy?
Authoritarian leaders have long used art to promote propaganda and suppress dissent. In Fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini’s Ministry of Popular Culture issued daily orders telling editors what to print. In Nazi Germany, the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition displayed 650 works confiscated from museums as examples of art the regime deemed unacceptable; thousands more were later destroyed. In 1942, Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yan’an Forum declared that art should serve the Communist Party, setting a framework for state control over cultural life that intensified during the Cultural Revolution.\
History repeats itself, ever unsettling.