This is Time-Travel Thursday’s edition, a trip to Atlanticrecords to set the current environment. Register here.
According to George Orwell, there is a simple reason that authoritarian cultural campaigns cannot last: They think that history can be “made rather than learned,” he wrote in 1947 Atlantic essayand this produces a superficial, unstable and short-lived literature. In contrast, liberal societies promote “intellectual freedom” and the belief that “an accurate knowledge of history is of unquestionable value.” Their art endures because it has depth, and it has depth because it has truth.
Take the propaganda of the Soviet Communist Party. Like my colleague Anne Applebaum he has writtenThroughout the 20th century, the party’s posters and films were intended to be “heavy and inspiring,” with strong visual styles, upbeat music, and a clear message: Here is the bounty of a communist society, with high yields and a strong, healthy workforce. But many of the shows fell flat, Anne observed: When people saw them, they felt the difference between the propaganda and “their own poor reality.” This is what Orwell meant when he said that writing in a totalitarian state “is fitted together like the pieces of a child’s Meccano set”—complicated, rote, and discouraging.
Which is not to say that art as propaganda cannot be effective. It has been a powerful tool for a long time, especially since the advent of mass media enabled nations to spread messages on an unprecedented scale. In the United States, many administrations have tried to expand their influence through art. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, which commissioned Uncle Sam’s famous “I Want You” posters that helped persuade people to join the war; under Franklin D. Roosevelt, the War Advertising Council (now the Advertising Council) coordinated campaigns supporting the World War II effort, using symbols such as Rosie the Riveter to recruit women into the workforce.
Activists, scholars, and critics have continued to trace the ways in which the federal government has promoted certain art forms while marginalizing others. Richard Nixon was accused of using his administration to target anti-war activists, including John Lennon and Jane Fonda, and even tried to impeach Lennon in 1972; In 1990, Congress forced the National Endowment for the Arts to implement a “polite and respectful” standard of grant-making, fueled by controversy over certain works supported by the NEA (one piece in particular, by Andres Serrano. Piss Christ, it was condemned in the Senate as “a disgusting, despicable display of obscenity.”)
But compared to those of his predecessors, Donald Trump’s cultural campaign is perhaps the most open and visible. Memes aside-social networks of his administration has his own aesthetic-Trump’s architectural and design tastes add grandeur, glamor, and jingoism, emphasizing the superiority of his administration over all that has come before and all that will come. come back. The Arch of Liberty, whose nickname, “Arc de Trump,” the president has embraced, could be the tallest triumphal arch on earth, with golden inscriptions and gilded images. In his second term, he emblazoned his name on the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chairman, to announce his “Visions of a Golden Age in Art and Culture”; he burned down the East Wing in favor of a ballroom, reportedly expected cost approximately 600 million dollars; he bitumen over the White House Rose Garden to look like the Mar-a-Lago beach club, with the same yellow-striped umbrellas; and his administration reformed the selection process for the Venice Biennale, requiring American submissions to “show American excellence.” (Trump’s name was recently removed from the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ordered it, and a legal battle continues over whether the president has the authority to build a theater without congressional approval.)
Then there are the attempts to inspect the museum. Last March, in preparation for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of America, Trump provided an executive order forcing cultural institutions to “Restore(e) Truth and Purity to American History,” and directing JD Vance to purge “unfavorable ideology” from the Smithsonian; months later, Trump launched detailed review “to remove divisive or biased narratives” from museums. Last July, the National Museum of American History silenced—and later restored—any mention of Trump’s accusations from the exhibit, and in August, the administration ordered the Smithsonian to send documents including internal memos and plans for future exhibits for review (it’s unclear whether the Smithsonian has fully complied). Last week, a federal appeals court allowed the administration to do just that get rid of slavery shows from Philadelphia park.
Still, Trump’s influence on American art and museums is limited. Artists have canceled exhibitions at the Smithsonian and elsewhere, and other exhibitions are blocking the president’s battle against the DEI. In January, the National Museum of African Art opened an exhibit of LGBTQ artists from Africa and the diaspora, and this month, an augmented reality exhibit on the National Mall tells the stories of five women who worked alongside the men memorialized there. And like my colleague Clint Smith recently reportedleadership at the Smithsonian is holding firm—for now. Lonnie Bunch, the 73-year-old secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said in March that “there is nothing I have allowed to be changed at the Smithsonian.” (But as Clint says, Bunch also “seems close” to leaving.) Meanwhile, the regime’s threats continue, particularly in the form of withholding funding from museums and artists who don’t subscribe to its vision.
Orwell argues that “thoughts, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.” Freedom of speech in America has not been stifled, even when faced with political opposition in the past. But the Trump era is the latest test of how much it can endure, and how it can evolve in response.
