‘Degenerate’ or ‘woke,’ Paris museum exhibit shows what happens to art in the crosshairs of politics

The Picasso Museum in Paris has opened an exhibition titled "Degenerate Art: Modern Art on Trial Under the Nazis," the first such show in France, running until May 25. It features works by Van Gogh, Klee, Picasso, Kandinsky, Chagall, and others that were condemned by Hitler and the Third Reich as "degenerate" — targeted for destruction, sale, or concealment. The exhibition is organized thematically around Nazi persecution, including sections on race, museum purges, and the art trade, and highlights the fates of artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who died by suicide, and Otto Freundlich, who was murdered in a concentration camp.