Shaping the Perception of German Art after 1945: MOMA and The New York Times

Abstract

In 1957 the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York showed German Art of the Twentieth Century, the largest exhibition of German art since 1931. The exhibition, which intended to present a survey of German art, was in fact a revisiting of prewar modernism. Moreover, the exhibition reviews pre-established how the reader/visitor of the exhibition was meant to perceive the show and to interpret its works. “Homage to the Art That Hitler Hated” was the title of a significant review, published before the actual opening of the exhibition. This title was most certainly familiar to readers who followed the activities of MOMA in the 1940s: the museum's Bulletin had used exactly this wording in 1942 to promote “free and democratic art.” This essay investigates the 1957 exhibition and examines how The New York Times responded to the acquisition strategy and exhibitions of German art at MOMA—in particular its interest in German modernism—from the 1940s to the late 1950s. It also illustrates the rhetoric used to promote the 1957 exhibition, which ultimately facilitated the canonization of German art and its interpretation in the postwar decades.

Keywords:

• Modernism
• Art Politics
• Cold War
• National-Socialism (N-S)
• German Art
• Museum of Modern Art
• New York
• (MOMA)
• The New York Times
• Andrew Ritchie (1907–1978)
• Alfred Barr (1902–1981)
• Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt (1903–1992)
• Kurt Martin (1899–1975)

Notes

1 The original quotes states: “Der Veranstaltung kommt insofern ein ausserordentlicher Wert zu, als Museum of Modern Art nicht nur … die Plattform für gesamten Vereinigten Staaten abgibt, sondern weil auch gemeinsam mit der vom Museum geplanten Buchpublikation ein Wandel im Ansehen der deutschen Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts für die gesamte angelsächsische Welt angebahnt werden kann.” Letter from the German Embassy in Washington, DC, to the Auswärtige Amt in Bonn from April 22, 1954, in: Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amtes (PA AA), Kunstausstellungen, B 95, N. 590, 1953–1959. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

2 The original quotes states: “Wenn eine solche Ausstellung gemacht wird, dann sollte man sie auch von deutscher Seite aus oder doch zum mindesten mit gleichberechtigter wesentlicher deutsche Beteiligung ausgewählt und vertreten werden. Wir wollen uns doch als das vorstellen, das wie wir glauben das Richtige sei und nicht das, was Herr Ritchie für richtig hält.” Letter from Kurt Martin to the German Embassy in Washington, DC, from December 24, 1953, in: Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amtes (PA AA), Kunstausstellungen, B 95, Nr. 590, 1953–1959.

3 A copy of Ritchie's list can be found in the Will Grohmann Papers at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Correspondence with Institutions N, box 110.

4 William S. Lieberman, “Homage to the Art That Hitler Hated,” New York Times, September 29, 1957, 213.

5 “Museum and the War,” Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 10 (October–November 1942): 19. For a further analysis about where these terms originated from, see Keith Holz, Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London: Resistance and Acquiescence in a Democratic Public Sphere (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

6 See also Vivian Endicott Barnett, “Reception and Institutional Support of Modern German Art in the United States, 1933–45,” in Exiles + Émigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler, ed. Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art 1997), 273–84 (284n43); See also the Curatorial Exhibition Files, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, Exhibition n.186.

7 President Roosevelt's radio speech was reprinted in The New York Times: [Anon.], “Roosevelt's Message to the Art Museum,” New York Times, May 11, 1939, 29. President Dwight D. Eisenhower shared Roosevelt's opinion in his foreword for the museum's Bulletin, published on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art in October 1954, where he stated: “Freedom of the arts is a basic freedom, one of the pillars of liberty in our land.” Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Freedom of the Arts,” Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 12 (1954): 3.

8 Otto D. Tolischus, “Nine Muses Regimented to Serve Nazi Kultur,” New York Times Magazine, August, 22, 1937, SM4.

9 Howard Devree, “In Controversy: The Forceful Work of Emil Nolde,” New York Times, September 29, 1957, 133.

10 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., “Is Modern Art Communistic?” New York Times, December 14, 1952, 22.

11 Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Art Under Dictatorship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954) and Rockefeller Foundation Archive, RG 1.2, Series 200R.

12 Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, “Art in Germany Today,” Magazine of Art 41 (December 1948): 314–15.

13 Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, “German Art Behind the Iron Curtain,” Magazine of Art 44 (March 1948): 83–88. Another author who contributed to the The Magazine of Art and followed a similarly political approach was the German-American curator and writer Charlotte Weidler. See Charlotte Weidler, “Art in Western Germany Today,” Magazine of Art 44 (March 1948): 132–37.

14 Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt to President Harry S. Truman, May 17, 1951. Contained in the Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt Papers, Series 2, Box 7, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.

15 Edith Hoffmann, “Expressionism: Not a German but an International Style,” Art News 56 (November 1957): 40–43, 56–58 (57). For an even more critical interpretation, see also: Alfred Frankfurter, “Expressionism: A Dissent Opinion,” Art News 56 (November 1957): 23.

Additional information

DOROTHEA SCHÖNE is a Berlin-based art historian, curator, and writer. She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant, a Getty research grant, and a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange service. She studied at the Leibniz College in Tübingen, Germany, at the University of Leipzig and at the University of California Riverside. Her publications on contemporary Middle Eastern, American, and German art have appeared in numerous art publications—among them x-tra, Afterimage, Art Tomorrow, Canvas, and ibraaz. In addition, she has contributed to edited volumes on museum and exhibition history, such as for the Kulturhistorisches Museum in Magdeburg in 2006 and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt in 2010. Schoene has worked as curatorial assistant at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to work on the exhibition Art of Two Germanys—Cold War Cultures, which was exhibited in Los Angeles and two German venues in 2009–2010. In 2014, she became Director of the Berlin museum Kunsthaus Dahlem.