Culture Collateral in the Culture Conflict

An essay on- Art under attack in America- Brian Keeler

Yes, it is coming to this, in the wide amalgamation and continual blizzard of offenses in recent weeks from the DT and his minions, inspired in part by this horrendous Project 2025, as we are now on the brink of seeing an assault on the hallowed halls of our nation's museums.  At the top of this list and in the crosshairs of these culture terrorists is the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC, including the National Gallery of Art.

Above- the 1964 painting by Norman Rockwell, "The Problem We All Live With" is part of the uncomfortable and unsavory aspects of our history and art that would be expunged from our museums, discourses and history if Project 2025's mission were to be actualized. The sanitizing of text and purging of libraries is already underway. This painting of Rockwell's, complete with scrolled graffiti of racial slurs is part of the Civil Rights history of America.

Hands Off our Museums-

We have become used to culture wars for many years.  It is hard to avoid, as this is the main qualification for those entering the current administration's ranks. Now we see the ire and distorted mind set of culture wars turned toward culture itself.  Art is under attack. Museums, Broadway productions, the Kennedy Center in DC and so much are part of the scatter-shot offensive on just about everything.

There is a passage from a book read back in the mid-1970's, The Tranformative Vision, by Jose Arguilles. That book expressed fear that one day, power-mad gangsters would pillage art and it could be used to further corporate greed and the rest of the ugliness we see today. Yes, that prescient concern and warning is here now.

With all the other myriad of offenses in recent weeks and affronts to decency, this aspect of the culture wars may seem of less importance, but it stands as just one more part of a vile, vindictive and vicious administration.  We may recall similar attempts at cultural purges and pogroms in Nazi Germany when so much art and music was stamped as "degenerate" by the Third Reich. We are entering similar territory now.

At the head of the news is a former Fox news broadcaster, Lindsey Halligan, who is to spearhead Trump's efforts to impose this attack and distorted vision.  The continued irony is that she uses specious terms like fighting against "improper ideology" or combating racism and divisive content.  If this were not coming from the most divisive and racist man ever to breathe air we could empathize with it.  We are indeed in Orwellian doublespeak days now.  Speaking of Orwell, it is a curious turn of events also to see his words used as a justification for the deeds of VP J.D. Vance and many others.  This gives them an air of relevance or a patina and simulacrum of truth.  But in the end they've inverted the truth and used literature and art for their nefarious deeds- just as in the warning from Jose Arguilles mentioned above.  Orwell was a leftist for crying out loud,  he fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco's Fascist.   He must be rolling over in his grave to see his work being misappropriated by the likes of J. D. Vance.  Vance is known for his distortions of history and spiritual principle- as the late Pope Franics had to upbraid him about the nature of compassion and biblical principles.

Above- A paitning by the author- "Muse with Caravaggio". a self portrati in the NGA in London. Fortunately the antics of the POTUS are not being replecated in European museums.

The stated mission of this Project 2025 and the DT is to restore "correct ideology," whatever that may mean.   This has overtones of the Communist Revolution in China and the current authoritarian oppression in Putin's Russia.  There is a similar anti-intellectual mind set in Shakespeare's 1569 work, recall the misquote "The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers."  As with China, and in Renaissance England, (according to these people) anyone who can even add and subtract or is part of academia is part of the enemy. We also are reminded of Trump's disdain for experts of all kinds and his encouragement of hairbrained conspiracy mongers. Our universities as well as our museums are being bullied and some are acquiesing to the strong arm tactics of a gestapo-like administration.  

The mission that has been given to Lindsey Halligan is condensed to the improbable and ludicrous  task of ridding the museums of any content that is either non-American or shows any unsavory aspect of American history, say slavery in antebellum America.  We may think of iconic images like Norman Rockwell's 1964 iconic image of a young black girl being escorted by two faceless U.S. Marshals during the civil rights turmoil of the 1960's. Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn may even be on this new list of prohibited books.

Here is an excerpt from the Washington Post that let's Halligan speak for herself.

During her visits to the museums, Halligan says she saw “exhibits that have to do with either another country’s history entirely or art and sculpture that describes on the placards next to it that America and sculpture are inherently racist,” though she did not offer specific details.

She says she also saw exhibitions that did not focus on America at all. “There’s a lot about other countries’ history that has nothing to do with America, and I think, you know, America is so special,” she says, adding:“We should all be focused on how amazing our country is and how much America has to offer.”

Halligan is not alone in the MAGAverse for wanting to change the nation’s cultural institutions. The content of the executive order was foreshadowed by a Nov. 25 Wall Street Journal opinion piece co-written by the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, one of the contributors to Project 2025. With co-author Armen Tooloee, he laid out a plan for “How Trump Can Rid Washington of Wokeness” — and “retake control of museums” was one step.

This is where we are at today.  Just imagine the logical conclusion of this take on our museums and culture being allowed to continue.  The great breadth of wisdom and beauty of the ages would be purged from the galleries of The Metropolitan Museum and hundreds of others across the nation.   Rembrandt would be called improper ideology.  

We can further see the farcical nature of this in the isolationism of tariffs and similar insular America First nonsense.   Even Dijon mustard from France or Chianti from Italy would be purged.   The recent exhibit at the Met of Sienese religous paintings of Duccio and others would also be suspect. We are truly in a kakocracy or goverment by the worst. You get people like the DT who has barely stepped foot in a museum or read a book and the women like Halligan, with little or no interest in art, now being the arbiters of taste.

Like so much of the DT's last administration and even more so now the people who have been put in charge of our nation's agencies are the worst of the worst.  Not only incredibly unqualified and inept, their sole mission is to destroy the very department they oversee.   Yes, truly Owellian. The department of truth traffics in lies and now a cultural agency shows a disregard for the mission of museums and art.

The irony of it all keeps blatantly showing up.   The first act upon entering the Whitehouse for the DT was supposedly  "Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government."  Has anyone ever seen such a hostile and immoral transgression of the government used against its citizens?  We are seeing the deportation of innocent people to horrible prisons in El Salvador.  The parallels to Jews being sent in cattle car trains in Germany during the 1940's are unmistakable.

Here's a quote from the NY Times that underscores the dystopian and Orwellian aspect to the times we live in now.

"If this is what "Ending the weaponization of the Federal Government" means, it does resemble the up-is down doctrines of Oceania in 1984"

A further observation from the same NY Times Magazine article sums it up thusly-

"Orwellian dystopia comes to life because objective realities have increasingly ceased to be relevant, and truth and law seem to be whatever Trump declares it to be."

The above was part of a passage from the author Laura Beers, the author of "Orwells' Ghosts".  She further believes that as much as Orwell valued free speech, he valued true speech even more.

Aside from Orwellian parallels there is another work of literature in the news today as it is the 100th anniversary of the publishing of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The careless destruction and and recklessness are part of the mix. I first read this in art school in 1974 and we can now see some lessons here in high relief. I would call it part of the "any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one" syndrome.

Here's a quote from a Financial Times article of April 6, 2025.

"Fitzgerald's verdict on them at the end of Gatsby has become for many a defintive statement of unaccountable elites of today; they were careless people, they smashed things up and creatures and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

And more to the point from the same article in the Financial Times

"Fitzgerald was writing a a socially realist novel about the people he saw in the world around him- he knew many many like Tom, rich entitled and stupid. A century later they are still here, searching for ideologies to justify their dominance. Many of them now run the US. They adopt alarmist rhetoric- "western decline," "invasion," and "replacement" not because they are prophets but because they are predators, rationalizing the "hard malice" Fitgerald warned about."

In regards to the hard malice mentioned above and carelessness, we only need think of the photo of Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw as he destroys decades of humanitarian efforts that have benefited many and promoted a benefic America. We are now in an age of the malefic America and the disgrace of the world. In keeping with that, we see a photo of Kristi Noem, the US Homeland Security Secretary clad in expensive jewelry and a baseball cap in front of an El Salvador prison with wrongly imprisoned individuals. Could we begin to fathom something similar from 1944 - a photo op in front of Auschwitz- and bragging about it to boot? Yes, there is a problem with unbridled immigration, but treating people with barbaric inhumanity is not the course for America.

We have all seen this president untethered to truth with blatant and offensive lies, and now all of the President's sycophants are in lock step with spineless endorsements.  And like Nazi Germany, or in Orban's Hungary our culture is next.  Harvard has courageously said no to this bullying and cajoling of our principles. The Supreme Court is virtually anemic and the congress has been rendered ineffectual in protecting our core principles. Less we become a failed demcracy, art should be a bulwark of truth. The artists and museums of America should do the same- say no to meddling by the coercive and misguided executive branch.