80 years since the 'Degenerate Art' exhibition, cultural destruction continues

On July 19, 1937, the Nazi regime opened the infamous 'Degenerate Art' exhibition in Munich, designed to denigrate avant-garde art. Approximately 650 works by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, Lyonel Feininger, Ernst Barlach, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner were confiscated from 32 museums across Germany. The exhibition, inaugurated by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, was free to attract large crowds and toured eleven other cities including Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Salzburg, and Vienna. It drew about two million visitors, paradoxically becoming the most visited exhibition in modern history. After the tour, the works were stored in a Berlin depot and on March 20, 1939, many were burned in a public square, resulting in the loss of approximately 1,400 masterpieces. The article draws parallels to recent iconoclasm: the destruction of the 12th-century Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul by Daesh in June 2017, the damage to the archaeological site of Palmyra in January 2017, the burning of books in Mosul in 2015, and the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2002.