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Paul Klee, “Swamp Legend,” 1919, oil on cardboard, 19 x 16”. Courtesy of the Stádische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. This was among the over 700 works included in the Nazi exhibition “ Entartete Kunst ,” 1937. The Musée National Picasso Paris recently opened the exhibition, “ ’Degenerate’” Art: Modern art on trial under the Nazis .” It evokes the 1937 show of “ Entartete Kunst”  (degenerate art in English), displayed in Munich and several other German cities. The exhibition featured 740 avant-garde artworks by 100 artists, all confiscated by Hitler’s regime. Those modernist artworks were condemned by the Nazis as being, “produced by ‘idiots,’ the ‘mentally ill,’ ‘criminals’, ‘speculators,’ ‘Jews’ and ‘Bolsheviks.’” With its exposure under the umbrella of mockery and disdain, the Nazis presumed it would “… pave the way for a ‘healthy’ art in the image of the German race.” With the inclusion of stellar modernists such as Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, George Grosz, Vassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, André Masson, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso and many others, the show, attended by more than two million visitors, was a blatant political attack on culture that ultimately backfired. It also revealed Hitler’s revenge against the modern art world (which had rejected his own artistic efforts), in part by installing the so-called "degenerate" paintings and sculptures carelessly and crookedly on walls covered with graffiti that was originally of the artists’ own making. Does the Trump administration’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion, and its early forays into cultural dictatorship, augur the same attack on contemporary culture? Will Washington D.C.’s esteemed Smithsonian Institution, owned and operated by our federal government, undergo a similar fate as that of the "Degenerate Art" exhibition? While some of the Smithsonian’s 17 D.C.-area museums, including the National Air and Space Museum, are kid-friendly and not particularly identified with liberalism, others likely offend President Trump and his minions. These include the Museum of African American History and Culture, the Museum of the American Indian, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The latter is currently exhibiting “Osgemeos: Endless Story,” by Brazilian twins Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, who are known for their distinctive graffiti style. OSGEMEOS (Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, “Retratos (Portraits)” from “Endless Story” exhibition, 2023-24. Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. When I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) a few years ago, I toured its extensive historical display. That installation detailed in words and images several centuries of forced transport of Africans to the United States and to European countries. It also related how slaves ultimately claimed their own freedom, while also helping to define our country’s ideals of liberty, justice and democracy. A current exhibition at NMAAHC, “In Slavery's Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World,” describes how slavery helped shape our world today. Yet, considering President Trump’s effort to eradicate D.E.I. and his recent seizing of the Chairmanship of Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Performing Arts Center, his administration might revise or dismantle the show at the NMAAHC. Daniel Minter, installation detail included in “In Slavery’s Wake,” an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Courtesy of Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times. Similar oppression might be brought to bear on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. With three facilities, one on Washington D.C.’s National Mall and two others in New York City and Maryland, “The National Museum of the American Indian was established by Congress to rectify our nation’s historical amnesia about the role of Native Nations in the making of modern America,” according to the museum's website. That reality remains dramatically different from the national mythology that took form around the narrative of Manifest Destiny. As with the goals of the January 6th insurrectionists, the reality-based Indigenous narrative is now in harm’s way. “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations” is currently on view at the D.C. venue. The exhibition focuses on the unfortunate circumstance that, while most Americans learn about our Founding Fathers, we are told very little about the plight of the Indigenous people who were forced to relinquish millions of acres of lands to the United States. Approximately 368 treaties were negotiated and signed by U.S. commissioners and tribal leaders from 1777 to 1868; yet our government did not recognize or honor most of those treaties. Lexey Swall, view of “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations,” exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. Courtesy of The New York Times . Indeed, high school history classes barely teach how the Manifest Destiny movement of the 1840s was less the Word of God and more the seizure by force of Indigenous land by white settlers. After about 20,000 years living in North America, Native Americans throughout the continent suffered a genocide. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, also on the National Mall, owns and exhibits contemporary and modern work by hundreds of prominent artists from the U.S., Europe, Asia and beyond, much of it from the 20th century. Numerous surreal, abstract and in-your-face artworks are on view, pieces that would likely have greatly offended Hitler, and no doubt offend President Trump in the year 2025. Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase (No.2)” (1912) is a cubist-futurist inspired painting, conveying motion by a nude rather than presenting the nude in its traditional repose. The painting was one of the most controversial artworks at the New York Armory Show of 1913, with one critic calling it “an explosion in a shingle factory.” Marcel Duchamp, “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2),” 1912, oil on canvas, 57 7/8 x 35 1/8”. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Another provocative artwork at the Hirshhorn is André Masson’s “Legend” (1945), a surreal and cubist painting by the artist most closely associated with automatic drawing and altered states of consciousness. Among numerous other artists at the Hirshhorn are Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Alice Neel. The latter is known for paintings expressing her commitment to social justice and civil rights, and also for her portraits of counter-culture people from the 1920s right up until her death in 1984. A recent Washington Post  article reported that Washington D.C.s Art Museum of the Americas, run by the Organization of American States, “… has canceled two upcoming shows one featuring Black artists from across the Western Hemisphere and the other showcasing queer artists from Canada”. The cancellation, ordered by the Trump administration, had the goal of eradicating federal funding for diversity, equity and inclusion. Not surprisingly The National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian have closed their offices supporting work by racial minorities. Andre Masson, “Legend,” 1945, tempera on canvas, 26 1/8 x20”. Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. I grew up in the New York City suburbs. The city afforded me the continual availability of museums, concerts and Broadway shows. I never doubted that art of all types, including exhibitions and performances that reflect our ever-changing, diverse world, would always be accessible. Yet today I worry that many of the art forms that I love might soon be besmirched or seized by the current administration. Liz Goldner  is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009.  Liz Goldner’s Website .

Tenzing Rigdol, “Biography of a Thought,” 2022-24, acrylic on woven carpet, 20’ x 40’. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In suddenly darkening  times like these, when it appears that our country is slipping into fascism, as our president fires tens of thousands of civil servants for disagreeing with him, halts foreign aid  that includes funds to treat  victims of starvation and Ebola, demands loyalty oaths to him rather than the Constitution, pardons violent henchmen, kisses up to Putin, throws Ukraine under the bus, mandates the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, defunds everything from DEI programs to the national parks, then declares himself King, all while taking direction from the richest man in the world, art can seem trivial by comparison, a highbrow distraction from the collapse of America.   But art is not trivial. Forms of government come and go, for better or worse, but the impulse to make art endures. Art is born of ideas, freedom, a love of truth and beauty. Artistic free expression is a basic human impulse, not to mention a right protected under the Constitution, which when exercised elevates the spirit and challenges the intellect. Art is the freest thing there is. Even when it’s suppressed, it survives, though funding for it may not. That will harm a lot of artists, but you can’t stop us from making art, not really, not all of us. You cannot banish us from the earth. You can’t even fire us. Most of us already work for very little; freedom wins out over profit. We are the little creatures that will hide in the woodwork and survive after the marauders pass through. The only thing art insists on is an open mind. Damien Hirst, “‘Mantra’ Kaleidoscope Butterfly Wings with Diamond Dust,” 2011, silkscreen, diamond dust, 65 x 64 x 2”. Courtesy of artnet.com . A recent visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, where the text of a 130-year-old speech has been transformed into a light installation, reminded me of all this. It was pretty comforting.   In 1893, soon after the museum opened, the first World’s Parliament of Religions convened in Chicago. Its main event site was the city’s new art museum, which was romantically named The Permanent Memorial Art Palace. The gathering assembled religious leaders from around the world for a global interfaith dialogue. There, in the museum’s assembly hall, two sets of high ideals, religious and aesthetic, married and produced a fragile offspring named optimism . A young Hindu monk from India, Swami Vivekananda, delivered the conference’s opening address. He called for an end to all religious bigotry. Jitish Kallat, “Public Notice 3” (detail), 2010, LED bulbs, wires, rubber. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. The text of that short speech now forms the content of “Public Notice 3,” a site-specific light installation by Indian artist Jitish Kallat. The work, now on view for a second time in Chicago, debuted at the AIC on September 11, 2010, commemorating not only the 9/11 terrorist attacks but the occasion of the original speech, which also took place on a different September 11. Kallat renders Vivekananda’s 456 words in glowing LED text on the risers of the museum’s grand staircase, in the colors of the post-9/11 terror alert system — green, yellow, orange, red — a subtle nod to the persistent climate of fear.   Swami Vivekananda’s speech was brilliantly simple, as many great ideas are. Some might call it naïve, but radical ideas are often dismissed as such. I prefer to think of it as radically hopeful. Vivekanandea makes his startling assertion about one third into the speech: all religions are true. He doesn’t explain or try to reconcile the apparent contradiction. He goes on to quote from a Hindu hymn he learned in childhood: “As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.” What this means in practice is a mystery, but his greater point is stunningly clear: All spiritual beliefs lead ultimately to truth. I would add that art, as a form of spiritual pursuit, does too. Tavares Strachan “Kojo,” 2021. Courtesy © Tavares Strachan and Perrotin. Now is the right time to revisit these ideas. More than ever we live in a time of divisiveness and hate. It’s even worse than 2001. We hate not only “foreign” “enemies,” we loathe our neighbors. We discount each other’s beliefs, be they religious or secular ideologies, and because we believe we are what we believe, we despise each other. And when we feel hated we hate back harder with a retaliatory intolerance that is at least as vicious. Political ideology has replaced religion for many, but the fierce loyalty it inspires, the complacency it permits, and the wrath it condones are no different than religious fanaticism. To quote Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth century French scientist and philosopher, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”   Vivekananda warned: “Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendent, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth, drenched it often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now.” He ends with the audacious hope that the gathering he addresses will usher in “the death of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.” Jake and Dinos Chapman, “Fucking Hell” (detail), 2008, mixed media installation. Courtesy of the Pinault Collection, Paris. Well, that didn’t happen. How we on planet Earth, and by we I mean all of us because it doesn’t work unless it’s all of us, get to such a state of high mindedness I have no idea. The world seems much meaner than it did even six months ago. But even to consider the possibility is to take a step closer. Art helps. Maybe some truth-telling humor would too. Check out this classic video by Monte Python’s John Cleese from 1987 . Margaret Hawkins  is a writer, critic and educator. Her books include “Lydia’s Party” (2015), “How We Got Barb Back” (2011) a memoir about family mental illness, and others. She wrote a column about art for the Chicago Sun-Times, was Chicago correspondent for ARTnews, and has written for a number of other publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Art & Antiques and Fabrik. She teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Loyola University. Visit  Margaret Hawkins’ website .