In 1937, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels organized the “Entartete Kunst” or “Degenerate Art” Exhibition at the Archeological Institute in Munich. The exhibition displayed works of modern art that the Nazis declared to be “degenerate” or unacceptable. While the intent of the exhibition was to disparage the so called “degenerate” artworks, it featured many artists who would go on to become internationally recognized.
Join the Museum for a panel discussion about the history and lasting impact of the Degenerate Art Exhibition with Dr. Lucy Wasensteiner, Dr. Uwe Fleckner, and Dr. Bernhard Fulda. They will be in conversation with Dr. Paul Jaskot.
Lucy Wasensteiner is Junior Professor of Art Historical Provenance Research in the Art History Department at the University of Bonn, working within the Research Centre for Provenance Research, Art and Cultural Property Law. She is a qualified UK lawyer and holds a Masters and Doctorate in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her PhD explored the London exhibition Twentieth Century German Art (1938), the largest international response to the National Socialist campaign against so-called ‘Degenerate Art’. From 2018 to 2020 she was Lecturer at the University of Bonn. From 2020 to 2024 she was Director of the Liebermann-Villa am Wannsee in Berlin, a museum dedicated to the German-Jewish painter Max Liebermann (1847-1935).
Uwe Fleckner is a professor of art history at the University of Hamburg, a member of the board of directors of the Hamburg Warburg-Haus and head of the “Degenerate Art” research center (with 14 volumes of research results since 2007). A former guest professor at Stanford University (2011) and Peking University (2018-2019) and visiting scholar/fellow at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2008/2015), Fleckner is the author of numerous books and essays on art from the 18th century to the present day, in particular on French art, art theory and political iconography, as well as co-editor of the “Collected Works” of Carl Einstein and Aby Warburg.
Professor Bernhard Fulda is Vice Master, Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University. After taking his BA in Modern History at Oxford University, he completed a PhD on the political culture of the Weimar Republic at the University of Cambridge (Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2009). He has published widely on media, political and cultural history of the twentieth century. Recent publications include a biography of Max Pechstein (Max Pechstein. The Rise and Fall of Expressionism, De Gruyter: New York/Berlin, 2012; co-authored with Aya Soika), and a study of the politics of German modernism (Emil Nolde. The Artist During the Third Reich, 2019). He co-curated, with Aya Soika, the 2019 blockbuster exhibition in Berlin’s New National Gallery, ‘Emil Nolde – A German Legend’. He is currently completing a biography of Emil Nolde, and starting a new project on this history of European anti-communism.
Paul Jaskot received his PhD in Art History from Northwestern University. He teaches courses on architectural history, modern architecture and urban planning, and German art with a particular emphasis on National Socialist Germany. In addition to his teaching, Jaskot is also the Co-Director of the Digital Art History & Visual Culture Research Lab (formerly, the Wired! Lab). His scholarly work focuses on the political history of Nazi art and architecture as well as its postwar cultural impact. He is the author of The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor, and the Nazi Monumental Building Economy (2000) as well as The Nazi Perpetrator: Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right (2012). He has co-edited Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past (2008) as well as New Approaches to an Integrated History of the Holocaust: Social History, Representation, Theory (2018). In addition, he was a founding member of the ongoing Holocaust Geography Collaborative exploring the use of GIS and other digital methods to analyze the spatial history of the Holocaust.