Los Angeles’s Monuments Exhibition: The Triumph of Politics Over Art
Since 2021, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and The Brick in Los Angeles have been planning an exhibition which seeks to re-interpret works of American history as totems of shame. The Monuments exhibition set for this October, could showcase amazing Beaux Arts sculptures removed from their original locations. Instead, it will feature some paint-splashed monuments, replacing great works of art with political statements.
Removing sculptures and shipping them across state lines both endangers artworks and violates a curator’s proper care as outlined in A Bill of Rights for Works of Art. The museums will include contemporary artists with derogatory themes, also debasing Southern history.
The museums’ mocking of certain Confederate sculptures by displaying them with graffiti or paint is reminiscent in spirit to the 1937 exhibition of artistic works labeled “Degenerate” by Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda in Nazi Germany. Goebbels publicly ridiculed and demonized modern art and artists. In this case, the opposite is true. Many historical works, admired for generations, will be displayed fallen from their literal pedestals.
By exhibiting desecrated (euphemistically called “decommissioned”) works, the curators privilege small numbers of protesters over the majority opinion who value the statues remaining in place. Further, the Brick and MOCA seem to tar anyone who believes that Confederate monuments represent funerary commemorat
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
