{"id":866,"date":"2026-06-25T19:18:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T19:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=866"},"modified":"2026-06-25T19:18:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T19:18:19","slug":"the-veneer-of-authoritarian-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=866","title":{"rendered":"The Veneer of Authoritarian Art"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through <\/em>The Atlantic\u2019s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Read more What The Bear Has Always Been Driving Toward<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

According to George Orwell, there\u2019s a simple reason authoritarian cultural campaigns can\u2019t last: They assume that history can be \u201ccreated rather than learned,\u201d he wrote in a 1947 Atlantic <\/i>essay, and this produces superficial literature, unstable and fleeting. By contrast, free societies promote \u201cintellectual liberty\u201d and the belief that \u201ca correct knowledge of history is valuable as a matter of course.\u201d Their art lasts because it has depth, and it has depth because it has truth.<\/p>\n

Take Soviet Communist Party propaganda. As my colleague Anne Applebaum has written, throughout the 20th century, the party\u2019s posters and films were meant to be \u201coverwhelming and inspiring,\u201d with strong visual styles, rousing music, and a clear message: Here is the bounty of a communist society, with its abundant harvest and strong, healthy workers<\/i>. But many of those spectacles fell short, Anne observed: When people saw them, they felt a chasm between the propaganda\u2019s veneer and their own \u201cimpoverished reality.\u201d This is what Orwell meant when he said that writings in a totalitarian state are \u201cbolted together like the pieces of a child\u2019s Meccano set\u201d\u2014rigid, rote, and brittle.<\/p>\n

Which is not to say that art as propaganda cannot be effective. It has long been a powerful tool, especially since the advent of mass media enabled states to disseminate messages on an unprecedented scale. In the U.S., many administrations have attempted to extend their influence through art. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, which commissioned the famous \u201cI Want You\u201d posters of Uncle Sam that helped persuade people to join the fight; under Franklin D. Roosevelt, the War Advertising Council (now the Ad Council) coordinated campaigns supporting the World War II effort, leveraging symbols such as Rosie the Riveter to recruit women to the workforce.<\/p>\n

Activists, scholars, and critics have continued to track the ways the federal government has promoted certain kinds of art while sidelining others. Richard Nixon was accused of using his administration to monitor anti-war activists, including John Lennon and Jane Fonda, and he even attempted to deport Lennon in 1972; in 1990, Congress forced the National Endowment for the Arts to implement a \u201cdecency and respect\u201d standard for awarding grants, triggered by the controversy over certain NEA-supported works (one piece in particular, Andres Serrano\u2019s Piss Christ<\/i>,was denounced on the Senate floor as \u201ca deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Read more Pant-Pant, Choo-Choo<\/a><\/p>\n

But compared with those of his predecessors, Donald Trump\u2019s cultural campaign is perhaps the most overt and visually distinct. Memes aside\u2014his administration\u2019s social media has its own aesethetic\u2014Trump\u2019s architectural and design taste maximizes size, gilt, and jingoism, asserting the superiority of his administration above all that came before and all that will come after. The Independence Arch, whose nickname, \u201cArc de Trump,\u201d the president has embraced, could be the tallest triumphal arch in the world, with gold-lettered inscriptions and gilded statues. During his second term, he tacked his name onto the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chairman, declaring his \u201cVision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture\u201d; he razed the East Wing in favor of a ballroom, reportedly projected to cost about $600 million; he paved over the White House\u2019s Rose Garden so that it would look like Mar-a-Lago\u2019s beach club, featuring the same yellow-striped umbrellas; and his administration overhauled the selection process for the Venice Biennale, requiring American submissions to \u201cshowcase American excellence.\u201d (Trump\u2019s name was recently removed from the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ordered it, and a legal battle continues over whether the president has the authority to build the ballroom without congressional approval.)<\/p>\n

Then there are the attempts to censor museums. Last March, in preparation for America\u2019s 250th birthday celebration, Trump issued an executive order compelling cultural institutions to \u201cRestor[e] Truth and Sanity to American History,\u201d and directed J. D. Vance to wipe \u201cimproper ideology\u201d from the Smithsonian; several months later, Trump launched an extensive review to \u201cremove divisive or partisan narratives\u201d from the museums. Last July, the National Museum of American History silently cut\u2014and later restored\u2014a mention about Trump\u2019s impeachments from an exhibit, and in August, the administration ordered the Smithsonian to send over documents including internal memos and plans for forthcoming shows in order to vet them (it is unclear whether the Smithsonian has fully complied). Last week, a federal appeals court allowed the administration to remove a slavery exhibit from a Philadelphia park.<\/p>\n

Still, Trump\u2019s influence over American art and museums has its limits. Artists have canceled shows at the Smithsonian and elsewhere, and some exhibits are sidestepping the president\u2019s war on DEI. In January, the National Museum of African Art opened a show by LGBTQ artists from Africa and the diaspora, and this month, an augmented-reality display on the National Mall tells the stories of five women who worked alongside the men monumented there. And as my colleague Clint Smith recently reported, the leadership at the Smithsonian is holding steady\u2014for now. Lonnie Bunch, the 73-year-old secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said in March that \u201cthere is not a thing that I\u2019ve allowed to be changed at the Smithsonian.\u201d (But as Clint notes, Bunch also \u201cappears to be inching closer\u201d to leaving.) Meanwhile, the administration\u2019s threats linger, mostly in the form of withholding funding from museums and artists that do not obey its vision.<\/p>\n

Orwell argues that \u201cthe imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.\u201d Free expression in America has not been snuffed out, even when faced with political opposition in the past. But the Trump era is the latest test of just how much it can endure, and how it might evolve in response.<\/p>\n

Read more The Truth About Steven Spielberg\u2019s Alien Obsession<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Its propaganda seems like a hollow imitation of reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-time-travel-thursdays"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Veneer of Authoritarian Art - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=866\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Veneer of Authoritarian Art - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Its propaganda seems like a hollow imitation of reality.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=866\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-25T19:18:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=866#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=866\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"The Veneer of Authoritarian Art\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-25T19:18:19+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=866\"},\"wordCount\":1004,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=866#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/695a244ee8d0ead42efdf3ad8ace1d4c.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Time-Travel Thursdays\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=866#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=866\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=866\",\"name\":\"The Veneer of Authoritarian Art - 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