Race and Visual Culture under National Socialism

January 24–April 14, 2013
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum @ 10975 SW 17th Street

Race and Visual Culture under National Socialism, a presentation of Wolfsonian collection objects at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, revealed how the Nazi Party in Germany promoted the idea of a racially pure nation—a campaign that helped lead to the atrocities of the Second World War and the Holocaust. It demonstrated how the Nazi regime combined pictures of vigorous young athletes, soldiers, healthy families, and contented rural people with pastoral landscapes and scenes of modern infrastructure rising on the land. Together, these images created a vision of the nation that was meant to be both inspiring and comforting, modern and traditional—yet excluded from this vision were “others,” primarily Jews, identified as unhealthy, degenerate, and dangerous to German society. 
 
The installation was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and curated by Oren Stier, FIU Department of Religious Studies.