Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men focuses on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed?
http://www.monumentsmen.com/
One of them was the father of a friend of mine.
But back to the Entartete Kunst ... We had (and continue to have) our own little version here. It started with the Gingrich era culture wars, in which supposedly "degenerate" art by Mapplethorpe, Serrano, and others led to the banning of the NEA to giving grants to artists. We still don't have them. Then just a few years ago, this:
Strangely, the central figure in the more high-profile of the current controversies is a repeat player—David Wojnarowicz, who won a lawsuit against Wildmon over the misrepresentation of his artwork in 1990. Wojnarowicz, an outspoken gay activist as well as a gifted visual artist and writer, died of AIDS-related illness in 1992. This past November 30, a condensed version of his film A Fire in My Belly—which contains an eleven-second sequence showing a crucifix crawling with ants—was removed from the exhibit “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in response to complaints from William Donohue of the Catholic League and Representative John Boehner, neither of whom had seen either the video or the exhibition.
http://www.thenation.com/article/158097/return-culture-wars#The sad thing is, no one really cares that public support of art has been all but decimated in this country. It's nothing to be proud of. And now they want to sell of the holdings of the Detroit Institute of Arts to get the city out of debt. Very very sad.
As a last note: A lot of people--from the Nazis themselves to non-Jewish gallery owners--made off with that art for themselves and did quite well. I'm amazed it's taken this long to release the documents. The one thing the Nazis were good at was keeping detailed records of every crazy horrid thing they ever did.
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