ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The Degenerate Art Exhibition (German: Die Ausstellung "Entartete Kunst") was an art exhibition organized by Adolf Ziegler and the Nazi Party in Munich from 19 July to 30 November 1937. The exhibition presented 650 works of art, confiscated from German museums, and was staged in counterpoint to the concurrent Great German Art Exhibition. The day before the exhibition started, Hitler delivered a speech declaring "merciless war" on cultural disintegration, attacking "chatterboxes, dilettantes and art swindlers". Degenerate art was defined as works that "insult German feeling, or destroy or confuse natural form or simply reveal an absence of adequate manual and artistic skill".[1] One million people attended the exhibition in its first six weeks. A U.S. critic commented "there are probably plenty of people—art lovers—in Boston, who will side with Hitler in this particular purge".

RESEARCH

The research involved in reconstructing this exhibition has involved gathering photographic documentation, archival records, motion-picture footage, the recollections of visitors, and published accounts, aided in no small part by the work of LACMA curator Stephanie Barron and her 1991 exhibition "Degenerate Art" - The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany"

ABOUT THE PROJECT

3D MODEL

Historical photographs, video footage and documentation of the Munich exhibition were used to construct a 3D virtual model harnessing the latest in design software and VR technology.

360° PANORAMA

360° panoramas of each of the seven upper rooms of the Institute of Archeology in the Hofgarten, where the first stage of the exhibition took place in Munich.

VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE

The virtual reality experience features a binaural audio commentary on the artworks and a fully interactive experience of the exhibition. The installation includes four copies of paintings produced by Adolf Hitler during the four years he practiced as an artist in Vienna