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.
The exhibition arrives less than a month after Donald Trump's inauguration, and while his name does not appear in the show, a parallel is drawn between Nazi-era censorship and current U.S. political attacks on "woke" art. Trump has cut NEA funding, taken over the Kennedy Center, and tasked Vice President JD Vance with removing "improper ideology" from the Smithsonian. The show matters because it serves as a historical warning about what happens when art becomes a political target, linking past state-sponsored persecution to contemporary efforts to control cultural expression.