In the Führer's footsteps

I was in Munich the other day. I went to see the Haus der Kunst (House of Art). This is a large art museum that is now home to contemporary exhibitions. When I was there, there was a show by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. But what I really wanted to see was the building itself. It was built under the Nazis in the late 1930s and survived the war more or less intact. Hitler intended it to be the new home for German art. In his mad world German art would be freed of Modernist influences and the art of jews, Communists and anybody else he didn't approve of. And this museum was to be the new home to this ideologically cleansed German art. It was an embarassment to the Nazis that the exhibition of works by the banned, so-called "degenerate" artists (everybody that Hitler didn't like) was more popular than that of the officially approved new German artists who were shown here at the Haus der Kunst.

Nazi ideology placed considerable importance on the arts. For those artists prepared to tow the party line (and with the required racial profile), the Nazis were good for business. Hitler himself was an artist of sorts and was keen to open the new museum himself when it was finished in 1938. There is a well-known photo of him delivering his speech to a bevy of luminaries in this very building. The building has changed very little since then. The monumental pillars of Nazi architecture are all there, the megalomania is still very present. It is not hard to find the exact spot where the Führer stood to delivery his speech and his views on arts policy. It is still somehow an eerie experience, standing in the footsteps of the most "evil" man in history. Europe is, of course, full of traces from Hitler and the Nazis, but for me at least, this was the first time I had stood in the same spot where he stood and delivered one of his withering speeches. It was a sobering moment indeed.

Photo: Adolf Hitler opens the Haus der Kunst with a speech in the main hall. The hall still looks much the same today.

Obama names his arts team

President Obama has appointed the members of his Committee on Arts and the Humanities. Chaired by First Lady, Michelle Obama, the Committee is notable for its inclusion of high-profile Hollywood stars including Sarah Jessica Parker and Forest Whitaker. Cellist Yo Yo Ma also got the gig.

One of the tasks ahead for the Committee is to rehabilitate the USA's flagging cultural diplomacy program. Cultural diplomacy is the attempt to favourably influence public opinion in foreign countries through cultural exchange. It was a key element in US efforts to "win hearts and minds" during the superpower struggle of the Cold War. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 US cultural diplomacy has lost direction. Its primary agency, the US Information Agency, was wound up in 1993 and some commentators see this withdrawal from the field as partly to blame for the animosity toward the US way of life seen amongst disaffected youth in many parts of the world today.

Obama's cultural diplomacy program will focus on Mexico and China and one of the major sub-programs uses film as a tool for international cultural understanding. Under the title American Film Institute 20/20 the film program has since 2007 brought international guests to the US for workshops, conferences and screenings while showing the world another side to the US film industry. Let's hope that Sarah Jessica Parker and Forest Whitaker also see the benefits of film beyond the world of Hollywood!