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.

Alice Paul: bravest American suffragette

The main U.S organisation fighting for Women’s Suffrage was the National American Women’s Suffrage Association-NAWSA, founded in 1869 by Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton. But over the next decades, successes were rare. Women in Wyoming got the vote in 1869, Col­or­ado in 1893, and Idaho and Utah in 1896, in time for the 1896 Pres­id­ential election. Women in oth­er states could not vote, so the NAWSA wo­men concentrated on pers­uading state legis­latures to submit suffrage am­endments to state constit­ut­ions.

Alice being arrested
Pinterest 

Alice Paul (1885-1977) was born in Mt Laur­el N.J, the first child prom­­in­ent Quak­ers, Wil­liam and Tacie Paul. William Paul led a Trust Co. in N.J, which provided for comfortable family living. Nonetheless Alice was still taught the Qua­k­er trad­­itions of working for society, gender equality, non-mat­erialism, closeness to nature, and modesty

Af­ter finishing high-school in 1901, Alice attended Swar­th­more College Pa because her Quaker grandfather was one of the Coll­ege’s found­ing fath­ers. And mum Tacie was respon­sible for int­ro­duc­ing Alice to the fight for women’s suffrage. Tacie was a devoted member of the NAWSA and often took Alice with her to the meet­ings.

After earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology at Swarthmore in 1905, she went to the Columbia Uni School of Social Work in New York.

Perhaps American suffragettes should have gone to New Zealand or Australia for guidance, not Britain.  NZ's suffrage campaign peaceably succeeded with women’s rights in 1893 and only later spread through Britain and its Empire etc.

Yet Alice Paul sailed to Britain, training in the Quak­ers’ Woodbrooke Sett­lement  Birmingham (1907-10).  Birmingham was where, in 1907, she became politically active and where she met Emmeline and Christo­bel Pankhurst. These were militant suffrag­ettes who endorsed direct measures like heckling, window smashing and rock throwing, to raise public aware­ness about their cause. And the Pankhursts also hel­d the pol­itical party in power respon­sib­le for dis­crim­inat­ion against women. 

Alice enrolled at Pennsylvania Uni on her return to the USA in 1910, earning a Ph.D in sociology and launched her car­eer in 1912. Work­ing within the NAWSA, Paul gathered a group of young women, many of whom had also worked in Britain with the Pank­hursts and who were willing to drop NAWSA’s conservative tactics.

Alice Paul addressing thousands of women, 1913
Washington DC

From 1910-3, NAWSA focused on passing legislation at state and local levels by org­anising St­ate referendums and tail­or­ing the fight tow­ards men. NAWSA believed that if the move­ment had more male support­ers, it would be more persuasive to male legisl­at­ors.

Leading the Congres­sional Committee of NAWSA in Wash­ington DC, Alice assembled a mass march of suf­­fra­g­ists around the most imp­ort­ant gov­ernment buildings: White House, Cap­it­ol Buil­ding, Treasury Building. This huge march took place in Mar 1913, the day before Pres Wilson’s inaugur­ation. Photo pinterest!

From 1910-4, some western states gradually yielded to suf­frag­et­te de­mands. The movement was winning the battle by slow in­st­alments: Wash­ington in 1910, California 1911, Arizona 1912, Kansas 1912, Oregon 1912, Illinois 1913, Nevada 1914 and Montana 1914. So it was evid­ent to Paul that the struggle for women’s vote needed a chan­ge in strategy to get a Federal amendment passed.

By 1913 Alice or­g­­anised eager young women who moved to each recal­cit­rant state, visiting newspapers and calling on local women to serve on vote-getting committees. Once the women had est­ab­lished thems­el­ves, the Congressional Union sent out a speak­er. From there, each woman moved to a new town, until every town in a state had been canvassed, when the woman returned to Washington and made a report to that state’s congressman.

Alice spent 3 years with the NAWSA, yet the marches on Washington were seen as too rad­ical by some. So she broke with the NAWSA and joined the Con­gressional Un­ion, seek­ing a Fed­eral con­stit­ut­ional amendment. Then she formed the National Woman’s Party/NWP in 1916, headquart­ered in Wash­ington. Un­der her leadership, the NWP became known for its radical tactics that prop­elled the Women’s Suffrage Move­ment. In Jan 1917, suff­ragists from the NWP marched down Pennsyl­vania Ave, stopping in front of the gate to Woodrow Wilson’s White House.

Des­p­ite the US’s entry into WWI in 1917, NWP refused to abandon their tactics! There were thousands of women from different states who volunt­eer­ed to stand on the White House picket lines daily, in front of Amer­ica’s policy makers and press. But public opinion in war-time US changed to that of dis­dain. The women’s attacks were seen as an unpatriotic menace to the U.S government; opponents at­tack­ed the women, taking their ban­n­ers and in­cit­ing violence. And policemen never protected the pick­et­ers.

In Oct 1917, Paul was sentenced to 6 months in Occ­oquan Workhouse Prison Va. The prison cells were small, rat infested and dark, and the air fetid. Plus gaolers started brutal phys­ical intim­id­at­ion.

The women’s hunger strikes were to ensure the treatment of suffrag­ists as pol­itic­al pris­on­ers. So to deter the hunger strikes, prison officials began to force feed Paul 3 times daily. In solitary con­fine­ment, she was deprived of sleep by noise all night and event­ually put into the psy­ch­­iatric ward. The prison hoped that she’d be diagnosed as ment­ally insane, ending the legitim­acy of the National Women’s Party. But she was considered sane by the gaol psych­iatrist!

Almost immediately after the torture news broke, the NWP prisoners at Occoquan received support from some of the public, the press and pol­iticians. The women were released from prison in late 1917.

Silent Sentinels, picketing White House, 1917,
Library of Congress.

After WWI, Pres. Wilson returned home & en­cour­­aged legislatures to pass the 19th Amendment (Women’s Vote). The League of Women Voters (formed 1920) prom­ot­ed social reform through ed­uc­ation. But Am­erican women had a problem: only MEN could vote for the 19th am­endment. 

The 19th Amendment passed in both houses of Congress with the necessary 2/3 majority; it was ratified by the states and in Aug 1920, the Amendment was added to the Constitution. In 1923, Alice Paul proposed an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitut­ion. But that was a longer battle.

Read Fearless Radicalism: Alice Paul and Her Fight for Women’s Suffrage, by Anna Reiter.

Ralph Lauren, still a luxury life!

Born Ralph Lipschitz in 1939 to Jewish immigrant parents Frank (from Belarus) and Frieda Lipschitz (from Poland), Ralph was the youngest of 4 siblings. The family wasn’t rich, living in a poor Bronx neighbourhood. So Ralph occupied himself in the cinema world to escape boredom.

Despite his humble origins, he was thinking big. In his 1957 High School yearbook, he wrote being a millionaire was his life goal! Was this the lad behind the fashion house fortune?   

Left: daughter Dylan Lauren, Ralph, Ricky, sons Andrew and David

at the Ralph Lauren in NY City.

people.com

 

Michael Gross* described how the youth used his vivid imagination to step into the fictional world of cinema greats like Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. Lipschitz changed his name to Lauren in his late teens, after reportedly enduring years of teasing from his surname. In 1962, at 23, he joined the US Army and served until 1964, when he took a clerk job at Brooks Brothers, the oldest men’s clothing American brand.

In Dec 1964, Lauren married Ricky Loew-Beer in NY, dance teacher and author. They remained members of Park Ave Synagogue Manhattan, and had 3 children. [In 2011, their son David married Lauren Bush, granddaughter of ex-Pres George H Bush and the niece of ex-Pres George W Bush].

Lauren then worked for Beau Brummell, a famous tie manufacturer. Ralph persuaded the company president to let him design his own line of ties; hence the Ralph Lauren Corporation was born in 1967. His interest in sport then led to the launch of his iconic brand Polo. Watching his first polo match had activated his entrepreneurial spirit. He went with friend Warren Helstein who described how they were exposed to fabulous things; horses, silver, leather, tall blondes in hats and high society.

Ralph Lauren opened luxury flagship in Miami

in 2023

It spurred Lauren into developing an elegant and high-class brand, which later became known as Polo Ralph Lauren. It was a massive risk launching the company, as he had only a high school diploma and some business classes, never finishing studies at the City Uni of New York.

His next big risk was designing wide, colourful ties, in an era when plain and narrow was the fashion. His radical approach paid dividends – Bloomingdale’s loved it and bought $500,000 of ties in his first year.

Polo Ralph Lauren pure silk tie

Reddit

Lauren continued expanding his company. He believed in enjoying the moment, constantly moving forward. When it came to designing clothing, he came up with designs that he would want to wear himself. He imagined clothing fit for movie stars. “The things that I made, you could not find them anywhere,” he said.

He had started out in menswear, not launching his first tailored shirts for women until 1971, with his now-famous Polo player emblem. He also opened his ship on Rodeo Drive Beverly Hills, that year! His signature cotton Polo short was launched in 1972, while his range of fragrances made their debut at Bloomingdale’s in March 1978.

                                             

His outfits for men and women were unfussy and very smart. Denim was very popular.

                          

He opened his flagship store on Madison Avenue and 72nd St in New York in 1986. In 1992, Lauren launched his iconic Polo Sport line, followed by additional lines and acquired brands eg Ralph Lauren Purple Label in 1995. His company was publicly traded on the NY Stock Exchange in June 1997.

The 98-seat restaurant RL opened in 1999 in Chicago in a newly built building adjacent to the largest Ralph Lauren store at cnr Chicago and Michigan Avenues. It was followed by the opening of two additional restaurants, Ralph's in Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris flagship shop in 2010 and The Polo Bar at Polo's flagship shop in New York in 2015. I have never been in any of these 3 restaurants.

The marketing genius is that his brand conjured romantic, nostalgic visions of rugged wranglers, and clean, Ivy League privilege, yet Lauren made billions from polo shirts and denim. But in 2016 Ralph Lauren brand seemed to be stressed. Analysts criticised discounting, claiming they cheapened its image, while a failure to attract younger buyers was also relevant. In 2017 the designer responded by launching wearable tech in a fitness technology shirt, combined with a mobile app. The Polo Tech Smartshirt athletic apparel pioneered physical tracking technology. It was embedded with sensors, tracking heart rates, breathing, stress level and calories burned. Data were streamed to an app that generated workout programmes, enabling Polo Sport to compete with sports brands eg Nike and Adidas.

Ralph Lauren's Celeb-Packed Show in the Hamptons

2024, Getty

Summary
Amassing a fortune, fashion designer Ralph Lauren went from rags to riches. The army veteran and former clerk earned his fortune through building an empire with his Polo clothing brand, launched in 1968. Thus the Bronx lad who dreamed of becoming rich is a multi-billionaire, with homes in Long Island, Jamaica and Manhattan, plus a huge Colorado range. He stepped down as CEO in Sept 2015, remaining executive chairman. In April 2024, his net worth was cUS$9 billion.

photo credit: Ralph Lauren Corporation.

In Jan 2025 President Joe Biden awarded Lauren the Presidential Medal of Freedom, making him the first fashion designer ever to receive the highest civilian honour. 

*Read Biographer Michael Gross’ Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren, 2003.

Best history books published in 2024.

Except for one book below, I have not read any list of best history books, so I relied on the historians in Smithsonian Magazine and BBC History Magazine. 

Silk: A World History by Aarathi Prasad in Smithsonian, Nov 2024 

reviewed by Meilan Solly.

Prasad’s Silk provides an engaging, exhaustive overview of a single topic, in this case the titular natal fibre. Blending the University College London researcher’s background in science and humanities, Prasad’s book upends common conceptions about silk, moving beyond the well-trodden history of China and the Silk Road to explore lesser-known sources of the fibre, including molluscs and spiders. Along the way the scholar shines a light on historical figures eg Shaikh Zain ud-Din, an C18th Indian artist who painted illustrations of silk moths, and Ramón María Termeyer, Spanish priest who studied silk-producing animals especially spiders in mid-C18th South America

Prasad wrote in Silk’s preface: “Because there is not just one silk, there is not just one story of silk. Not one road, not one people who found it, nor one nation that made it. Not one country can lay claim to its source. In silk is science and history, mythologies and futures. What follow are stories from silk’s many metamorphoses: caterpillar to moth; cocoon to commodity; simple protein chains to threads with very extraordinary capability. Across history, across cultures and countries, silk reigned as the undeniable queen of fabrics, yet its origins and evolution remain a mystery. This is the story of how it left its mark on humanity.

Now my choices from BBC History Magazine, Dec 2024 

Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance 

by Ramie Targoff, Quercus. Reviewed by Leah Redmond Chang.

Except for scholars of C16th England, few know the names of Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary and Anne Clifford. Targoff brought these women brilliantly to life in Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance, showing what it meant to be both a woman and writer in Shakespeare’s England. As Targoff said, this was also the England of a powerful queen, Elizabeth I. Was it a coincidence that these four flourished in that era? This is women’s history at its finest.

Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief by Ronald Hutton, Yale.  

Reviewed by Simon Sebag Montefiore. 

Hutton’s Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief is his follow-up to Vol 1 of a biography that radically changed and improved understanding of Cromwell as a cunning manipulator and wily political player. Cromwell was also the godly, incorruptible and outstanding general of his own mythology. This next book was just as excellent: beautifully written, deeply authoritative and very sharp, as powerful as a cavalry charge and as exciting for readers. Generalissimo Cromwell emerged as ruthless, slippery, disingenuous and self-righteous, but also steely in his efficiency and dazzling in his military brilliance & political composure.

Young Elizabeth: Princess. Prisoner. Queen by Nicola Tallis. Reviewed by Tracy Borman.

Tallis created a vivid portrayal with compelling new insights into the real woman behind the iconic Gloriana. The author’s meticulous research unearthed some unknown details from Princess Elizabeth’s early life eg her close acquaintance with the daughter of one of the men executed for adultery with her mother, Anne Boleyn. Superbly narrated, the story of the Virgin Queen’s turbulent path to the throne was surprising, revealing and utterly irresistible. This is Elizabeth I as you have never seen her before.

Young Elizabeth by Nicola Tallis, reviewed by Alice Loxton.

Tallis explored the younger years of Elizabeth I, not as the Virgin Queen or as Gloriana, but as a resilient teenager facing immense upheaval and unaware of the remarkable future to come. Through Tallis’ brilliant writing, see how Elizabeth was shaped by her mother’s execution, her four stepmothers, the predatory attentions of Sir Thomas Seymour & the Wyatt Rebellion 1554. It wasn't surprising Elizabeth became such a skilful propagandist and, seeing the potentially disastrous fallout, never married.  

 

 All His Spies: Secret World of Robert Cecil 

by Stephen Alford and reviewed by Onyeka Nubia.

This unfolded like a John le Carré spy spoof, but it wasn’t fiction. Elizabeth I, a heretic hated across Europe, was not expected to survive. It was the task of  Robert Cecil, Robert Walsingham and William Cecil to ensure that she did, using translators, play wrights, ambassadors and assassins. Alford explores the spy masters’ motives: some were driven by Machiavellian self-interest, others by pragmatic statehood, but Cecil had ice, not blood in his veins. 

Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore, 

Weidenfeld & Nicolson and reviewed by Helen Castor and read by me. 

This reissue was the fully updated edition of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s epic Jerusalem: The Biography and could not have been more timely, reaching as it now does into our own present day. Rarely has such an elegant and enthralling read been so urgently necessary. The Guardian wrote: "Jerusalem is the holy city yet was always a den of superstition, charlatanism and bigotry, the cosmopolitan home of many sects, each of which believes the city belongs to them alone." Jew, Christian and Muslim alike feel compelled to rewrite its history to sustain their own myths. The 3,000-year conflict provides a terrible story, which he tells surpassingly well. Montefiore's book, packed with fascinating and grisly detail, is a gripping account of war, betrayal, looting, rape, massacre, feuds, sadistic torture, fanaticism, persecution, corruption, hypocrisy and spirituality.