Young people, queer people, immigrants, and minorities have long used art as a means of dismantling the institutions
that would silence us first and kill us later, and the NEA is one of the few wide-reaching institutions that support that work.
The other featured what Hitler and his followers referred to as “degenerate art”: work
that was modern or abstract, and art produced by people disavowed by Nazis — Jewish people, Communists, or those suspected of being one or the other.
In its last round of grants, the NEA gave $10,000 to a music festival in Oregon to commission a dance performance by people in wheelchairs
and dance classes for people who use mobility devices.
One, the “Great German Art Exhibition,” featured art Adolf Hitler deemed acceptable
and reflective of an ideal Aryan society: representational, featuring blond people in heroic poses and pastoral landscapes of the German countryside.
Much like the disappearance of data from government websites
and the exclusion of critical reporters from White House briefings, this move signals something broader and more threatening than the inability of one group of people to do their work.
In her book “Brazilian Art Under Dictatorship,” Claudia Calirman writes
that the museum director Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt had to hide works of art and advise artists to leave Brazil after authorities entered her museum, blocked the exhibition and demanded the work be dismantled because it contained dangerous images like a photograph of a member of the military falling off a motorcycle, which was seen as embarrassing to the police.
Like the proverbial court jester who can openly mock the king in his own court, artists who occupy marginalized social
positions can use their art to challenge structures of power in ways that would otherwise be dangerous or impossible.